iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

nothing ruined anything

everything ruined everything

it is kind of the logical endgame of the internet though; the limitless access to information essentially and necessarily leads to learning what so-and-so thinks about obama's self stick.

i really have no idea, but i wonder what effect the widespread adoption of smartphones had on the typical content that's created and shared. seems like the kind of article/website/onlinething that you would create for the perusal of someone glancing down at their phone while waiting for an elevator would be different than what you would create for someone assumed to be sitting at a desktop and with a little more time

My biggest problem with relying on facebook for what-to-read-on-the-internet is that it's the same 3 people contributing 95% of my thread at the times I happen to look, and also there's just such an avalanche of stuff to read that I feel overwhelmed and shut down. OTOH it does seem to have replaced people forwarding things around or making threads about them to some extent. I still prefer finding content through ILX. I suppose I could open one of those tweeter accounts hand just have things twitted at me.

i guess the answer to this question depends on what you think is wrong with the internet, too. like, for me, an argument on the 'inevitable byproduct of long-running process side' is that the internet is now way more streamlined and standardized now. and of course standardizing things makes sense, and it's inevitable. but i miss the glory days of proto-blogs that each looked totally unique and were detached from the rest of the internet, or existed as part of Rings or whatever. now everything has wordpress over the top, or a generic Tumblr theme, whatever. bleh

Though I am an avowed Facebook hater, I don't think Facebook ruined the internet mostly because I don't think of the internet as a static thing that can be ruined by the presence (or absence) of one website (even a really big one). It's more that the internet is a constantly evolving thing made up of whatever it is that people use it for. Plus I mean, Facebook is going to change, and its reach will be diminished, and the internet will continue to exist.

One thing I've noticed from being friends with a lot of ilxors is that a lot of the conversations that used to happen on ILX now just happen in people's facebook posts

realizing i could do this was a big breakthrough for me. instead of arguing w/ the void i could argue w/ ppl who i chose to friend on fb. also they have better killfile + blocking mechanics.

no, you did

this seems really hostile

i feel like in my head im using facebook as a proxy for a bunch of things but mostly involves 'the internet' being less separate from 'irl'. like i dont think the internet is any less awful than it was in 2003 but it feels less anonymous and interestingly weird a lot of the time. also i do think that 'internet culture' doesnt exist as much anymore? idk

Twitter's way worse

Of course there's also the whole narrative now of the kids not even taking to facebook, using all kinds of ephemeral, non-verbal communicative devices instead.

facebook is so boring and mundane and most people i'm very close with don't really use it. yet deleting my account seems like more effort than not deleting it. for some reason i still browse my newsfeed pretty regularly, just as a general "let me escape this present moment" thing (not dissimilar to ILX, but ILX generally has funnier or more insightful shit to say) but not because i find any great worth in it. in general "let me escape this present moment" is a net negative in my life so i can't say i gain anything worthwhile from facebook.

otmfm

I also use it for, "let me get a quick hit of attention and gratification by posting something funny my toddler said/something witty I thought of," which has a pretty big overlap with "let me escape this present moment"

facebook ruined books

Facebook didn't ruin the internet, but it did some significant damage to the way that Facebook users (in general) manage expectations within their interpersonal relationships.

facebook ruined faces

one of the biggest effects facebook's had is replacing screen names/aliases with real names/identities as the default for presenting & identifying yourself on the web. like usernames obviously still exist but even on a site like twitter where ppl use usernames they generally have their real name/pic as their display name & avatar, whereas pre-facebook internet interaction happened on message boards where everyone was ShadowDragonX and had a pic of sonic the hedgehog

The whole thing of having to "log in" to comment, which includes facebook but is not limited to it, has definitely pretty much halted me from commenting on news/blog sites.

like i was always taught that revealing any personal info on the internet was A Bad Idea but facebook was the first major site to encourage it because of its origins as a college-level thing where that actually made more sense bc you were only interacting w/ people in your irl english lit class

fb is one thing the internet had to become as it mainstreamed into the "real world" i.e. the economy. i think it's a point along this continuum of claiming the reality of social interaction for the market, through a syntax of desire created from the forms of representation that networked machines allow. the fb effect i've noticed the most irl is people it would seem increasingly turning their lives into a bunch of discrete performed categories in this ongoing game for visibility, sort of the same for all social media it's true but fb was there first. not pretending to be an expert or anything, just cobbling stuff together from a limited pov

and fb being there first prob why it's the most boring lamestream version of it now i guess

xp 'log in to comment' is a necessary evil now because spambot technology has gotten too good

fb effect i've noticed the most irl is people it would seem increasingly turning their lives into a bunch of discrete performed categories in this ongoing game for visibility, sort of the same for all social media it's true but fb was there first.

and not like this is super new or bad or anything, just a thing people do that is aided by fb imo

people definitely did things for the sole purpose of bragging rights long before they could take selfies and post them to their news feeds, although facebook tends to elevate that aspect of social experience.

more like: did millennials ruin the internet or did the internet ruin millennials

my wife's news feed seems way more annoying than mine but that's because people actually share personal information whereas my friends are pretty laconic. something related to gender going on there.

realizing i could do this was a big breakthrough for me. instead of arguing w/ the void i could argue w/ ppl who i chose to friend on fb. also they have better killfile + blocking mechanics.

― Mordy, Monday, February 23, 2015 12:31 PM (33 minutes ago) Bookmark

You moving a lot of this to FB has definitley made ILX a much more pleasant reading experience, ty

xps definitely, it makes that process very easy and "liquid".

don't mean to march into the convo, just "sharing" some "thoughts" in a box. i feel like there were visions for the internet, flawed geek visions with totalitarian flavor maybe, that posited it as something outside/above "the hustle" or w/e but that was not to be the case lol, and that sort of thing is definitely being pushed against because it isn't really compatible with "we have to turn everything into a possible revenue stream", see for example why ISPs in the US are actually worse for free and clear access rn.

Twitter's problem is that people can hide behind seemingly endless fake profiles and numerous accounts. Facebook is way stricter on this and pretty much always has been so it's harder to post evil shit on there, or if you do it's under your own name. still happens like but even Twitter's head honcho did some major mea culpa last week about how useless they are at dealing with trolls/ spambots and how he personally Will Sort It. god knows how.

i mean i have my suspicions about why ISPs really want to throttle service but nothing solid at all, that info isn't exactly the first thing that pops up on google (lol) for a lazy researcher like me.

There's also kind of an interesting, unspoken sadness to my facebook feed when I look at whose posts make up 50% of it -- the divorced mom who quit her job to start an ill-advised business and seems a bit adrift, the "older cool guy" from my college town who I generally like as a person but never seems to have found his way in life, the middle-aged poet my wife knows from some discussion group -- also a very nice and intelligent person, lost her non-profit job a couple years ago and hasn't been able to get back on her feet, the perpetually single, the trapped-in-bad-relationships. And then also just a bunch of random parents and show-offs.

re what euler was saying, there are definitely gendered versions of the sharing / liking economy.

fb def. makes it easier to judge it's true

I find Facebook more depressing than Twitter because with FB you learn that some people, no matter how much they claim to care about you, think you want to read their repugnant political views. Twitter is a more appropriate place for that - I think FB should be like a set of concurring reunions.

xp - you know you can unfollow these people and your feed will change?

The interesting thing with fb, how it feels "different" from past internet experience, is the ongoing chess game with the algorithm -- how what fb presents you with is responsive to your behavior, but you aren't entirely sure how. Like if you are promoting an event, do more people see your post if you link to the event page, or if you game the system and post the event flyer as a photo, because "people prefer to look at photos"?

Trick question: The internet was never good.

twitter ruined ilx, facebook ruined the internet

xp - you know you can unfollow these people and your feed will change?

This is seriously the magic bullet right here

unfollow is so crucial

people show up more in your feed if they've been clicking on you / scoping you out - y/n? paranoid?

i still don't really get pages or events, seems like there are pros out there, i just want to make a thing for my thing and not think about anything, y can't i do that.

p. interesting to me how earnest this thread is -- like, there's a joke or two but this feels like a q that is important to people. I think about it too - feel like fb didn't ruin shit until the upworthy style of presentation got perfected but once that happened, fuckin A. if you don't curate the shit out of your fb feed it's just garbage clickbait forever and it feels like it's getting worse daily, but at some point even your ex-coworkers will get sick of that too and stuff will change a little...maybe? if upworthy headlines are the terminal point of social media that's kind of hilarious and horrible

One Shocking Truth About Social Media

think-pieces ruined the internet

wow i never get upworthy shit just constant deejay / electronic music / albums by bands news and social justice axes / snarky stuff from brit ilx zing crew ("look at that over dere!") but then i'm pretty strict about unfollow, if you post one annoying thing u r gone from the safe space of my feed immediately.

mordy otm about killfiling on facebook, pruning your feed for annoying people is so necessary. but i keep some in there just to keep me in check even though they are basically spamming my life.

i moved away from the city i had lived in my entire life this year and fb is an okay way to feel connected to my friends back home, so i appreciate it for that. i'll occasionally argue with someone in the comments but i don't find it's a great platform for that, better to have some distance than like arguing with a random dude u went to hs with over whether bill maher is islamophobic

i know this is a set up for a knee-slappingly self-deprecating comeback but communities like ilx or sa at their best is the best form of the internet imo. unless you're a celeb or "work" for it (lol) twitter is just too much shouting into the void (the only non-spam followers i have on twitter are irls and ilxors) and fb is too personal so u can't go full sociopath. like u get good writing, you can outsource a lot of 'content' mining to ppl you "trust", get enough feedback to not make u feel like a shrimpy voyeur, perfect anonymity

mords is always a welcome sighting, i don't get why everyone's always so seemingly annoyed @ u tbr. xps

Facebook fixed the internet for a lot of people who never would have used RSS, Twitter or message boards. Their options before Facebook were the "funny" email forwards from their uncle or going to the Yahoo front page.

I don't really post to FB any more, because I don't know who I'm talking to and it feels weird. But it's good that people have a way to share stuff with friends and family. I mean if all Facebook did was provide the world's best platform for baby picture sharing that's a legit thing for a few hundred people to spend time building imo.

great post flopson

i moved away from the city i had lived in my entire life this year and fb is an okay way to feel connected to my friends back home, so i appreciate it for that.

yeah this is largely its function for me, and those are the same people sharing clickbait - former coworkers who I love and care about but who are really very normal people, y'know. so like 3/4 of their posts are "are you fucking kidding me" stuff but fb is otherwise the best & probably only medium for staying connected to them.

otm about how ilx (or sa no doubt, haven't posted there so I'd only know passively) are, when they're working and people are hearing each other and responding, some of the best of the internet.

pruning your feed for annoying people is so necessary. but i keep some in there just to keep me in check even though they are basically spamming my life.

haha if i was into "truth bombing" things, this would totally be one for me

not to come off all "my friends are cool" but "very normal" != sharing upworthy trash, ime

I used to prune the feed but I opened the floodgates a while back to get the full experience

What if... *huge bongrip* the tagged person died in the metaverse and that's what the link was rightfully showing?

-meta product team

Relatedly, my IG feed rarely has content from people I follow

there's a filter for that.. tap on the Instagram logo and select 'following'

Shame you have to do that every single time though.

Just watched two couples that I'm close friends with, who previously had no beef and were very close themselves, end their friendship very publicly in an argument in a FB thread. One where one couple was pretty deliberately misunderstanding the other, even when the other was trying to point this out politely to them.

Kinda blows my mind. The only friendships I've ever insta-ended on social media were people who I didn't know well who turned out to be racist/sexist/transphobic. I could see if someone was being abusive or if there was long-standing friction that bubbled over. Or abusive

This was just one couple's insistence on hearing something the other didn't say or imply

- the extra "abusive", lol

Facebook is very accessible when you have some kind of problem. Contact them, and they will work to bring your friends back together.

I am most definitely not getting involved. I have enough to deal w in my own house lol.

Just find it interesting how many times I see this happen but it does kinda suggest the friendship wasn't as healthy as they thought it was when it does happen

The argument was over Guardians of the Galaxy

I can't even comprehend what you're saying here, please set more.

I was just kidding--see my own troubles with Facebook earlier in the thread. Your account could be taken over by blood-sucking Nazis from Jupiter, and you're not getting any help from them.

ok I have to know what about GotG did it

Couple A made a comment about how they thought the public criticism about Gunn's depiction of violence against Rocket's friends was overblown, because it was just fake CGI shit, and people were being too sensitive*. Wife in Couple B lightly pushed back to say that she enjoyed the movie, but that those scenes upset her and that she probably couldn't see it again.

Couple A apparently heard "if you liked this movie you're literally Heinrich Himmler" and reacted needlessly aggressively for the next few hours until they both blocked each other.

*which was weirdly out of character for them, as they are usually progressive and empathetic, so I'm guessing there's more at play here

lol clemenza. that was a helluva dry post.

Defriend anyone with strong opinions about GOTG IMO. not in real life but on social media.

I have FB Purity to block the words "guardians" and "galaxy" but forgot to get the acronym

Lol thank you for elaborating (I no longer look at Facebook nor have I seen the movie so I appreciate the glimpse into the Metaverse).

then again, I guess this type of thing plays out in the flesh too.

still remember freshman year of college, scurrying away angrily from the common area as two groups of six people got into a shouting match about the other's supposed misunderstanding of the Star Wars timeline (this was right after Phantom Menace came out!)

The disputes are fiercest when the stakes are small

Twas ever thus

the only relationships i ended via facebook were all very early in the trump era. i made one of those "if you have ever even thought about supporting trump for a millisecond i fucking hate you and you're terrible" posts, and some family and a handful of high school acquaintances made it very clear that they were proud of being terrible

A great way to sort out who you do and do not need in yr life imo

I realize it's fashionable to hate on Facebook but for me it has been a pleasure. I get exactly the right amount of contact with people I only like a little bit.

The people I really love? I have multiple ways to reach those people and I am happy with how much we interact, and If I need a break from them I can just not interact with them; it's fine.

For some reason I have exactly no contact with Trumpy / Republican / conservative people. Like, at all. I literally do not see them or their stupid shit.

I don't think it's because I'm better at curating my feed than other people, nor is it because I live in a rarified coastal cultural bubble (hi I am from fucking Missouri).

For whatever constellation of reasons, the site has somehow done a good job of showing me what I want to see and not showing me what I don't. Sorry for those who it doesn't work for.

I witnessed a friendship collapse over FB recently because one person was posting about travel and referred to his long sightseeing walks as "death marches," and then someone else posted that she has family in Ukraine and is very worried about them so can we not make jokes about death marches, and Person A blew up and wrote a bunch of angry posts to Facebook at large about how he's a member of several minority groups and how could someone have the audacity to accuse him of insensitivity.

(xpost) All my Facebook issues are with the company itself, and all the weirdness they've forced on me; like you, my friends (real-life friends and FB-only friends) cause me little grief.

i have p much no far-right wing friends on FB or outside only because in my 20s and 30s I was pretty hostile to all of those people to suggest I didn't want anything to do w/ them.

The fact that some people can't quite grasp metaphor - or that other people can't modulate their language to suit the audience they are addressing - is not really the fault of the platform imo.

Even here (on comparatively civil ilx) I know I have said stuff that wasn't appropriate. Several times! I try to take those corrections to heart, apologize, and strive to do better next time.

And I have also observed some conversations where I did, kinda, think someone was intentionally looking to be offended and might have been taking something a trifle too literally, and restricting perfectly reasonable figures of speech like hyperbole and metaphor. In those instances there are (inevitable) judgment calls to be made.

To me "death march" seems like forgivable hyperbolic figurative language. But I wouldn't refer to a dinner made on a barbecue grill as a Holocaust. It's a subjective matter of taste and judgment and timing.

Working out those balances takes grace and empathy and thoughtfulness.

Whether it's real life or ilx or FB or Twitter or Reddit or whatever, it's still a matter of grace and empathy and thoughtfulness.

Pretty sure these concepts predate social media and, indeed, the Internet.

I don't think the medium is the fault, but when you're angry and on the telephone or in-person, when tensions get hot, if it truly is a misunderstanding, it's something that usually gets successfully sorted out after a few minutes.

when you're angry and online, and lack impulse control, and don't want to look like the bad guy publicly to hundreds of people, you might wind up going on the offensive and keep typing hurtful things, extending your fight-or-flight reaction to where regret has no chance to set in.

I think most people don't fall into this trap because their predilection is "ok, this has a potential to go bad, let me call so-and-so and prevent things from going south", but there are some who just seem to enjoy having their little battles out in public. idgi really.

she has family in Ukraine and is very worried about them so can we not make jokes about death marches

We recently had a pretty big tornado tear through our city, coming way too close to my mother's house.

Talking on the phone about all the damage last night with her, and she proclaimed that the whole neighborhood looked like Ukraine now!

I winced a little, but then had the warm thought of a Ukranian looking at a bombed-out office building, thinking, "Goddamm, we must look like Arkansas now!"

Watching the essential oils Christians I grew up with devolve from Paleo and CrossFit to COVID denial/anti-vax to Blue Lives Matter to Q-adjacent shit was fascinating, like a nature documentary on the lives and mating habits of white evangelicals.

Then I blocked them all.

Tornado has unfollowed you on facebook

like a nature documentary on the lives and mating habits of white evangelicals

(David Attenborough voice)

"Behold the alpha male displaying his Ford pickup truck. He hopes to attect the attention of a female, whilst also discouraging other, less dominant males whose trucks are less resplendent and not as accessorized."

Neanderthal otm. The fact that there's always an implied audience in particular raises the stakes imo.

Neanderthal OTM, yeah (as well as many others).

Not just FB per se, but … I just don’t think this many minds are really meant to be squeezed together on a social media platform. It isn’t necessarily healthy for humanity.

I’ve been on FB since 2011 and it’s been instructive to watch people grow up through trial and error (and also to grow up *myself*) in terms of interacting with people and kind of checking myself as to whether or not my comments or thoughts are really always necessary. Sometimes you just keep scrolling, or mute someone for a month, or unfriend, or whatever. And a firestorm is avoided, mental energy and emotion conserved.

A lot of people have just left social media - the combative and the mild alike. And as I’ve gotten older, my impulse has been to communicate more frequently with people in real life (remember that?) or singly or in small groups via text or DM, when I have an opinion that’s barbed or need some specific feedback about something. The whole world doesn’t always need to know why I had a bad day or a bad week (or even if I’ve had a good day or a good week).

Saw this last night, a new low?

https://i.imgur.com/xGO5U2E.png

(narrator: I saw plenty of posts from friends, and I never see ads on FB nor anywhere else)

what the hell is this

Sign up for Meta Verified on the web and get all the same benefits at a discount, including a verified badge.

I enjoy the byproduct of FB that is two strangers ripping into each other on a post about a local event and a friend who somehow knows both people intervening so the other two don't kill each other IRL

Most of my posts in this thread are about how much I hate Facebook and hate that I've let it become part of my life, so I'm really loathe to defend it in any context. But god it's nauseating to watch Josh Hawley and Lindsey Graham get all self-righteous for the cameras in that hearing today. "You have blood on your hands" says Trump/Jan. 6 apologist Lindsay Graham to the approval of the room.

you don't have to watch that! you and i and everyone except the new york times knows that it's just playacting. don't do it!

that said, the part with tom cotton doggedly asking the singaporean guy if he was a commie spy who approved of tiananemen square was . . . really something

I wasn't watching, I just caught it on the news. (If I had been watching, though, I'd say so--I hate the supercilious "Why are you watching this?" posting on ILX.)

what hearing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCB-SQJLr9E

what does he apologise for

Anyone else find themselves inundated with unwanted "Reels and short videos?" Every time I hide them and ask for fewer of them, but they're never not there. Complaining via help and support is pointless, of course.

Reels seems to be a big part of FB's business strategy right now: https://www.reuters.com/technology/metas-reels-revenue-narrows-tiktok-boosted-by-ai-2023-07-27/

I'll see if I can talk them into ignoring their marketing strategy to please a retired Canadian grade-school teacher.