Facebook

I watched 'the social network' last night (not terrible but way too dramatised IMO) and it made me re-think facebook.

I setup an account years ago but quickly shut it down when I started getting contacted by people from high school who I wasn't friends with at the time, and certainly have no interest in being contacted by now 15 years later.

People at work mention it often, but I would classify them as boring people who for some reason have a strong desire to give others blow by blow accounts of their boring lives. (I'm not trying to imply that I'm NOT boring BTW)

But it's huge for a reason so there must be more to it. Do you guys use it? If yes then why?

Barely. It's good to keep in touch with far flung family and friends. But you're right, there is a lot of boring inconsequentail spam people post. I use it for the big life event stuff only. But now, find it too tedious to wade through all the inconsequential fluff...

Thrasher said:

Barely. It's good to keep in touch with far flung family and friends.

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Same for me. I tried getting rid of it but people whine too much that I need to be on it so they can reach me bla bla bla so I just leave it up but don't do anything with it.

To me, I view it as basically another web based email service plus an alternate to Evites. I don't use all the Twitter style wall and feed nonsense. I am not famous and no one needs to know if I am walking the dog or drinking a diet coke or eating a sandwich.

I usually check it once a day to keep up with friends and family and occasionally post comments on other people's posts that I see on the news feed, but I almost never post anything myself ("what's on your mind?" type of post). Facebook was cool when it was brand new and I was in college. The Social Network (which I thought was a great flick by the way) characterized the problem I have with Facebook now almost perfectly. When it was new, it was exclusive. It was cool because it was exclusive. You had to be a college student to be a part of it and it was a great place to talk to your other college buddies about parties and things that college kids were a part of. Now, it's no longer exclusive, so it's not nearly as interesting as it used to be. Something else is bound to come up and take a portion of Facebook's market share simply by following the scheme Facebook started with, and leave it more exclusive to certain groups of people.

My 72-year old father heard his brother was on Facebook. He bought a computer, I orded mobile network, so now he's mostly watching accordion music on Youtube and reading online newspapers. He managed to create an account for Facebook too but I don't think he's been using it much.

I use it for the reasons listed above and I also play Scrabble on it quite a bit. It's a great way to kill time on slow days at work.

For the first year or so I was on Facebook it was great and I was on alot, catching up with old friends that moved away, keeping up with family, etc….but once everyone was pretty caught up with each others lives, the novelty kind of wore off, and now I only really look at it occasionally. WAAAAAY to many of my "friends" (IE: people I barely spoke to when I was younger) just make post after post after post after post, and with the new format I pretty much see the same crap from the same couple of people every day. Still its a good way to keep in touch with the true "core" friends (that are more like family to me) that have moved away

I have never had a FB account and never will. I find Skype is sufficient for me to keep in touch with others outside of email.

Corwin said:

I have never had a FB account and never will. I find Skype is sufficient for me to keep in touch with others outside of email.

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I would like to do that, but a lot of people I know these days either out and out refuse to use email instead of Facebook messaging to communicate outside of work, or they check their email very infrequently while checking Facebook daily.

I use it because my entire family and friends do, but I hate it. When I want to use it, it doesnt seem to do what I want it to. And it seems to bring out the most annoying things in people.

Interface-wise I prefer Google+, while the same concept it's more user-friendly but it's still annoying in the way that people have to report on every little inane detail of their lives. Have a baby? Get Married? Find a funny video or interesting page? Have something you want to share or vent about? Ok, I'm all ears. I dont want to hear that you just ate french fries and they were good, that's Twitter bullshit of which I have even less interest in..

The problem is that everyone who I knew made G+ accounts were going to "give up facebook", but of course half their contacts stayed on facebook and dont care about G+. So now, not one source of annoyance but TWO different services we have to keep track of. aRgh

Maybe I'm just turning into a grouchy old tiger!

Motoki said:

I would like to do that, but a lot of people I know these days either out and out refuse to use email instead of Facebook messaging to communicate outside of work, or they check their email very infrequently while checking Facebook daily.

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See, I don't care. If they want to communicate with me, they have to use either email or Skype. If they won't do that, then they lose out not me (at least IMHO)!!

Corwin said:

I have never had a FB account and never will. I find Skype is sufficient for me to keep in touch with others outside of email.

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Way to go Corwin! I'm in the same boat.

Not that I dislike Facebook, I simply can't find a use for it. Most of my outside communication is done through email.

People that refuses FB (for the sake of refusing) or even refusing having a mobile phone comes off as a bit arrogant, imho.. But it also depends on the situation ofcourse, if neither of my friends or family used FB then it would be completely useless to me.

I agree that it's not always fun to read about whatever people are doing. But at least it beats having a face-to-face conversation, or a mobile call from someone you find boring, on FB you can just ignore it, so i dont see the problem. If someone has a problem with reading about someone elses life i think the problem is really on the reading persons end

Oh, I check my FB account once in the morning as well, and once I return from work. Most of my friends and family have accounts, and it's a nice way to communicate with the US part of the bunch. I also have a G+ account, but the few people I know who post there use it to post political stuff mostly, which is why I don't go there all too often.

Facebook creeps me out. It's like it's getting everyone used to divulging every little thing about their lives. People used to care a bit more about privacy, but not anymore it seems.

But I'm on that damn thing too. If I wasn't my family would have a hissy fit. I've posted a few things on the "walls", played that D&D game on it and liked a few of the games that asked me to like them on Facebook, but other than that I try to avoid it as much as possible.

Do I win anything if I don't have a FB account?

I like the idea of having a "social network" - even if I don't have much use for it. I'm very much a face-to-face person when it comes to meaningful interaction, and I don't think it's a particularly efficient substitute or even supplement for that purpose.

But there are undeniable practical benefits of having a means of communication that doesn't require physical proximity - and as such, it would be somewhat foolish to completely renounce it.

My main concerns with FB is that using it supports the people behind it, who're not in it for any reason except to line their pockets - and especially what it seems to do to people who "get stuck" in that world and blindly participate in things that inevitably steal their time and their opportunities to do better things with it.

I'm also a very private individual when it comes to personal stuff, and I don't think people are capable of handling the kind of information that's shared on FB in a healthy way.

I organized my latest two courses via facebook and got almost every person into groups, covering 20-30 people. I also organized them to build up documents covering answers to upcoming exams through Google docs. Both of these became about 25-35 pages long like a mini-booklet to read before the exam.

Technology is best when it's open to you, so that you may make up your own ideas how to use it.

What I do not like with FaceBook is the censorship that seems like people with Sexual Neurosis are in charge. Their attacks on art because it shows "nudity" is no more than a display of psychological sickness.

I don't have any account there and I don't plan to. Seriously, German "Datenschützer" (rough translation : it's a "Data Protection Bureau" erected by the government) and IT specialists have grown a great worry and distaste about Face Book and they are outright warning of it nowadays.

One could use it - but should very, very, very well be aware of what to "publish" there and what not.

A German student recently asked Face Book to give him the data which is stored about him, to look into them, this can be requested by IT firms by law here.

The result was that he got several hundred pages about him : Not only his own data, but also connections Face Book had made.

Another point is that Face Book apparingly even stores data which a user deletes. This was one of the results of this student's request. He received - among many other pages - data which he had deleted sometimes even years go.
Another point are cookies which are put on a PC every time one visits a page which has a "like" button implemented. This is a great tool for monitoring user "movement".

Security professionals argue that Face Book is basically a Black Box : You really can't see what they are doing - and especially not what they are doing with what you are feeding into it.

Here is a joke picture which imho illustrates very good their data security concerns : http://i.imgur.com/WiOMq.jpg (Found it via another forum.)

Ofcourse you should be a bit careful of what you publish, anywhere on the internet, not only on FB, it kind of goes without saying? That data is often cached and isnt really deleted for real when you delete something over internet doesnt apply only to FB.

I'm also not sure exactly what a law abiding citizen has to fear anyways? "But, but - it's my privacy?!" Yeah ok it's your privacy, and everyone is super interested in you and your "privacy"? yeah right. In your dreams maybe.

In Sweden all data that is sent, even telephone calls, is stored. I'm pretty sure it's the same deal for most countries, even if it isnt official yet everywhere (it wasnt here either until some 2-3 years ago or so). Unless someone is a sloppy criminal that likes to boost over the internet i don't see what the big deal is. And people whining about privacy and FB, if you decided to share something with your 200 friends, maybe it wasnt that "private" in the first place, and again, probably not that intresting to neither the FBI or the CIA?