iyo did facebook ruin the internet?

i mean that certainly happened to me as well, maybe events as we know them are over

i've deliberately 'ruined' my facebook feed, joined bundles of groups like 'i lived in skokie illinois in the 60s and 70s' and at one point the algorithm suggested i add a bunch of russian military academy guys, so i friended them and then got nudged to add some old russian rock and rollers. now my feed is really good TBH

lmao that sounds awesome

i just get advertisements for complicated shirts

when i go to facebook it's like "where the fuck did you go. you turned your back on me. fuck you"

Before FB my high school class (1989 FWIW) had various web sites attempting to gather us and organize reunions, etc. Post-FB these felt redundant and lame (even in comparison to FB).

Before FB, Evite was trying to do what FB events does now. But again, once all or most of the participants have FB accounts (of whatever activity level), it just feels like extra work to set up an event in one of those services and then go tell everyone on FB.

Just as it is extra work to have an FB event, and then at the last minute remember that there are those two friends who "don't even have a Facebook account*," and you need to email them separately.

Of course I know the anti-FB arguments. A lot of them seem to focus on the shitty "content" - including all the terrible politics and the malign information landscape and the allergy to facts. But I keep scratching my head because A. Facebook didn't invent any of those things, and B. How TF are you using Facebook for content and news and information? It's terrible at that. There are loads of better ways to get information. C. IME Facebook makes it reasonably easy to avoid shit you don't want to see. Or people you don't want to interact with. D. There's always the old "dude, just scroll" approach to information that you dislike.

* = aka the new "I don't even own a TV"

I hardly look at Facebook, and if I do, it's never through the app, but instead on Chrome with the Newsfeed Eradicator plug-in. This way I can see whose birthday it is, new events, and etc, but never see the feed... because frankly, the feed is mostly bullshit.

Twitter is also bullshit.

I despise Instagram but stay on it because it's one of my only means of maintaining contact with a wider community.

Tldr: These are people I would not ever directly call or email, but who I'm not ready to completely drift away from. Don't most people have that category? How do you reach them if not FB?

i don’t, i drift away from them. shit or get off the pot imo

if you really want this instagram does this job too. except way simpler and easier.

If I quit facebook not only would I lose the contacts of tons of acquaintances that fall into that category Puffin pointed out - people whom I'd occasionally see if I was still living in Portugal - but also tons of potential networking connections; not like anyone uses linkedin for that shit im earnest.

Instagram is terrible to communicate with beyond putting a like on someone's picture.

You're using it wrong then.

Much to my chagrin, I probably text more with acquaintances on Insta than I do with my phone number.

oh the messaging's ok, it's the commenting that's shit

I've lived for a while in three countries in different parts of the world, and now live in a city I hadn't even visited until 2014, if it weren't for Facebook I would keep in touch with people by email or sth but that's just not how it goes now, at this point it is a struggle to stay in touch with anyone beyond family and colleagues, It's a bad thing and it makes me unhappy.

Do y'all actually keep in touch with these people though? As in actually exchange messages with them (including relying to a post). Or do you just see their posts / know you could contact them if you wanted to?

I quit FB six years ago not because they facilitated genocide and collaborate with fascists or other political reasons or their relentlessly terrible data privacy policies—seriously, gtfo with this being comparable to "I don't even own a TV"—but because I had grown tired of it due to having to use it at a job. I left that job and pretty much never used my account, yet people assumed I was seeing posts & events there because they could tag me or whatever. It has worked much better being one of YMP's "two friends," and besides in my world of variously aged people no one talks about FB anymore. It's been years since anyone expressed surprise that I don't have an account. You'd have to kidnap me to get me to a high school reunion though, so I guess ymmv

Yeah, I comment on stuff occasionally, give the customary birthday wishes, order shit when I see an acquaintance has a new thing out.

I mean, some? But lots of people don't bother posting anything these days so it's a moot point. Feels like a holding pen, people who have deactivated their accounts I have lost touch with entirely, maybe they don't care.

i don’t, i drift away from them. shit or get off the pot imo

That's a valid way to be and live, of course; I guess I admire the purity in this approach. But it doesn't work for everyone.

i would like to quit instagram but where else will i see pictures of pottery and people doing that pelvic tilt stomach exercise

pinterest and pornhub?

less pottery on pornhub than you would expect tbh

"Unchained Melody" intensifies

thanks to 3 30-day bans in a short period of time, I'm realizing when I can't post to FB, I don't have any desire to read it, and just use Messenger to talk to friends and.....it just *feels* better.

that I wound up going to Twitter for a bit kind of cancels it out but it really feels like a fucking detox, taking a break from this place.

flipside - people actually msg you thinking you're depressed or deceased when u don't post for a while and didn't tell them yr banned.

through Messenger I did find out TWO of my high school friends are getting divorced....within a 5 minute span....so FB still sux.

barely a month back on, and I got banned for 30 days again for quoting Dawn of the Dead in a thread specifically about Dawn of the Dead.

I quoted the doctor saying "they must be shot on sight" in response to someone doing the "dummies" quote, and someone on my profile reported it as incitement to violence and FB agreed and upheld on appeal.

truly worthless website. i'll enjoy another vacay.

deleted my account five years ago and there hasn't been a single solitary second when i was like "damn i wish i still had a facebook account"

it's been about 4.5 years for me as well. was shortly after trump lost by a few million votes (in 2016, i mean, not 2020)

most of my posts lately had just been sharing COVID-19 hospitalization/case stats updates for friends anyway but yeah you're not missing much.

most of my actual friends I just message on messenger anyway.

i really do echo clay's assertion though - it's not something you would think about afterward. you'd adapt. i'm still on instagram by the way (obv, but just in case people don't know, owned by facebook). it's not heaven or anything, but it is not facebook

i'm with you KM

i have been edging closer to ditching IG too tbh

i'm back in the instagram game because so many artists are on it, and the medium/format/platform of ig is actually pretty compatible with that****

****in some ways. in some ways, it's horrible for art and especially for time-based mediums like film and sound. forcing the world into portrait mode on their phones rather than landscape was a bold move. anything that involves as an important element is also screwed, because people don't have sound on half the time (🔉sound on!🔉) and even if they do, they're probably listening to it through tiny phone speakers, or in a loud place. but for photos and paintings and images and stuff like that, it's pretty good

anything that involves ^^sound^^ as an important element is also screwed,

my (not really) post-pandemic fomo has been so bad that i had to reduce my instagram usage to near zero

you're missing my haircut instagram stories. RIVETING.

Clearly, you should make people upload a schematic of their video and audio setups before you decide whether they deserve to view your content or not

"you mean, you don't even have a process?!"

Sorry, Karl, I can't really read that post due to compression artifacts.

You're going to have upload it in a lossless format (pm me for the ftp information) thxbye

i will what it takes to expand my network and make new connections that could lead to personal success

goddammit

my fb account has been disabled for no reason and unfortunately since facebook is irreparably broken i can't recover it because they believe i've requested "too many sms codes"; this would be fine if my instagram weren't also disabled

not that i want to be on either platform that much but it's just annoying

Be grateful.

How is this God damn website so popular when every experience of it is anti-human. Sometimes I think it’s just AIs and bots talking to each other and clicking on each other’s videos and pages.

the food is terrible
yeah, and such small portions

Be grateful.

― Porking level G4 (Boring, Maryland), Tuesday, September 21, 2021 7:58 AM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol, i mean, i am, but even though i barely use them now i kind of like to have my facebook and instagram accounts up just so my mom doesn't worry about me

also they disabled my account because of something i didn't do, so i'm like freaked out about that additionally

would prefer to delete facebook and instagram on my own terms instead of there being some inexplicable suggestion that i violated community standards

that i can't contest, because the website is irreparably broken

https://www.politicalorphans.com/something-weird-is-happening-on-facebook

"What are those accounts and why do they matter? It isn’t clear and there’s no definite pattern. A lot them are, for lack of a better term, squirrelly. They seem to be “promoter accounts,” generating dozens of posts of day consisting mostly of spam. Some are offshore. A few appear to be ordinary people. Why these tagged accounts deliver such huge impact is unclear, but the results are impressive. How this works is murky, but it’s clear that someone has found a way to gain absolutely stellar reach for these apparent spam posts. What they have in common is help from affiliate networks."

No

This hearing is extraordinary.

Side note: “Despite being battered by lawmakers all morning, Facebook seems unaffected. Since the hearing began, its share price has risen 2 percent to roughly $332 and continues to push upward.”

if anything, i'm sure investors are heartened by facebook's turn from the 'zuck apology era' to the 'nameless guys in suits who don't give a fuck era'. seems better for business

the whistleblower also said she doesn't think FB should be broken up