Here on HN, over the years I've mentioned my "spouse firewall" for Facebook, which I considered to be the perfect level of involvement.
Well, about a month ago my spouse firewall very nearly failed entirely. The problem was that with her mature Facebook account, with dozens of "friends" with a ton of other "friends", the stream of continuous bad news just became too much. Partially that's particular to some relationships we have, but even ignoring those, it was still an unrelenting stream of people having surgery, complications, financial troubles, and then very bizarrely mixed in with cute puppy photos, and then mixed in with political shitfits, to say nothing of some other family's "drama", all mixed with a "healthy" helping of continuous ads.
As it turns out, my firewall "recovered", but usage has been toned way down, and a lot of people got themselves hidden.
It gets said on HN every so often, but MySpace and the previous social networks often collapsed virtually overnight. I still think there's a good chance Facebook could still go that way.
Edit: Sorry, my "spouse firewall" is that my wife is on Facebook and I have no account. I hear about the family gatherings and other such things announced only on Facebook that way, but don't have to have an account myself. So it's like a "firewall" filtering out only the most important stuff.
Happy to see I'm not alone. My wife is also the facebook person. I do have an account and all but I feel no need to use it. Every once in a while I'll log in when she tells me to go do something like like a post or respond to a message or something. I quickly get overwhelmed with the site, so much junk going on. I do not care for 99% of what is posted there and my wife tells me the 1% that matters.
> Every once in a while I'll log in when she tells me to go do something like like a post or respond to a message or something.
Have you noticed Facebook getting needy and messaging to remind you that "X posted a photo" and "Y updated their status" etc.?
I'm a pretty light Facebook user myself, and I've noticed that, after not using it for about a week, they transparently and ineptly try to lure me back with increasing numbers of messages reminding me that people I don't care about are posting lots of stuff.
I see this too. FB is pretty tight with letting you get data out of the system (RSS doesn't really work anymore, and external notifications force you to visit the site if you want to see the actual content).
They're stuck between being a platform and being an application.
yeah I get those, "You have 98 updates", ok great. It's probably a pain to try to turn that stuff down. The most interaction I have is with their SMS. I sometimes press 1 to wish people happy birthday.
Facebook has an old phone number and email of mine (like, I've changed countries twice since them). It has warned me every time I've been on the website in the last 2 years, but at least I don't get the "We've been missing you" emails. And it's up to them to cut the wire now.
I have two Facebook accounts. The one I stay logged on with uses a pseudonym; I'm not connected with anyone I know in real life, and I use it to participate in certain Facebook groups (as bad as it is, it's still probably one of the best places to look for active web groups).
The other is my old account. I've removed any photos, changed my last name, and check in using a private window (since I don't log out of my pseudonym account) about once a week to see if any friend's messaged me there. If they didn't, I close the private window and I'm out.
Basically the same for me. Changed my name to a pseudonym in 2009, hid all my photos, and deleted all my info. Now it's a glorified rolodex + lets me see pages for businesses & events that are Facebook-only for whatever reason. Spent a total of 4 years as active user, 6+ as inactive, and vastly prefer the latter.
That's why the best thing Fb put on the site is the ability to unfollow people (or quiet them down) without unfriending.
I started doing this with every crap post on my timeline, now I have (mostly) ok content. Yes, you can't escape the political crapposting, but since this usually originate in pages there's a helpful "Never show me content from page X again".
And I still get to use Fb to share relevant content with my friends and to use messenger.
I also used the "spouse firewall", and had a different firewall failure. Firewall failures can happen in two ways: letting things through that they shouldn't, and not letting things through that they should.
A few years ago, after the Sandy Hook shootings, my wife was very upset by all the news coverage (she is very empathetic, and the thought of children being harmed seriously bothers her). I told her that she should just ignore it all and focus on our family and more immediate concerns. After all, we were lucky enough that it didn't affect us, and worrying about it couldn't help. So, she focused on more local concerns, and felt much better.
I was shocked a month later when I was talking to a close friend and found out that one of the children killed at Sandy Hook was the child of an old friend of mine; someone I had not spoken to in years, but who I went to high school and college with, and who was DM of our gaming group senior year. FB had been the center of the outpouring of community support for my friend, and I felt very guilty for not being part of that. No one had even thought to tell me, because it was all over FB, after all. My friends all just assumed I knew.
It's always a hard problem to filter the important 0.1% from the unimportant 99.9%. I'm glad that my friend was able to get so much support from friends and community, and I think FB, for all its faults, helped in that.
I have the same deal, I don't have a Facebook account but my girlfriend does and we share a lot of the same friends. I hear just enough information through her to still feel like I'm keeping up without having to actively browse the site.
I'd hesitate to blame Facebook because people in need use it to reach out to their community for support. If Facebook hate stems from rich healthy safe people being bothered by the presence of human suffering, Facebook is not the villain of the story.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that you've stepped in it. Part of the reason why we get such bad news, which I tried to politely dance around, is the support groups we're on for our children's special needs. (Yes. Plural.)
But, bizarrely, the real problem isn't those friends (she did basically ask for that, after all, and many of them are people we really know), it's the fact that by being so essentially random it gave my wife a lot of friends-of-friends, because the more serious special need is a genetic disease that results in an essentially random hodge-podge of all backgrounds and ethnicities. (The disease in question is generally a highly disadvantageous random mutation, and thus not tied to any particular ethnicity.)
Take your cheap moral preening somewhere else, please.
This is the life that happens to people - as you said either unfollow or use the firewall approach or dont use it at all. But how does that change what the parent said?
If your spouse wasn't on Facebook, would she not hear about the bad news, or would she hear about it from friends & family via phone calls and in person instead? Facebook might be more efficient, but people did communicate before it.
Good question; the bad news in question is mostly stuff that we don't really need to hear. You don't need to here that your acquaintance's acquaintance's father's colonoscopy revealed cancer... and I'm not really being particularly sarcastic about that example, we really were getting similar things.
We still hear about the relevant bad news, but even with my somewhat large family it's much less bad news.
I'm guessing he means that he doesn't use Facebook and lets his spouse (who is on Facebook) tell him about significant news about friends/family and filter out all the gibbrish. That's what I do anyways. :)
Firewall is more appropriate. A Mentat, in that sense, remembers things for you. Like whose birthday is coming up, which holiday party is Friday, etc.
A firewall just tells you, and you have to act on that information yourself or in concert with them, but not strictly at their direction. They're a filter (my youngest cousin's new relationship has no bearing on my partner's wellbeing or life, especially given my cousin's history; if it lasts a few months, then it'll be worth mentioning).
I deleted (deleted, not deactivated) my Facebook profile 4 years ago. It had clearly become an addiction, kinda like my mobile phone is now (cost/benefit balance of mobile phone is still too good to throw away).
I remember actually having withdrawals in the first few weeks. Not sure if it was withdrawals or muscle memory that kept kicking in to check my feed, but there was an element of angst not being connected to the feed.
Now I am quite happy without it (almost liberated), and trying to spend that time I would have spent on Facebook doing something that adds value to my life like reading HN! Surprisingly my circle (more of a triangle) of friends still exists, even without Facebook.
Ex-heavy Facebook user here (multiple times per hour) - I stopped checking it altogether and uninstalled the app about 3 weeks ago, just to see how I would get on. I know exactly the feelings you're talking about. After a week cold turkey I'm now back to checking much more infrequently (a couple of times a day) but it takes a huge amount of willpower to use it passively and not like / comment / post anything.
I'd delete my account altogether but I find the Messenger really useful and I manage a few pages / events on there, not to mention wanting to keep up with some distant family. It's amazing how they've managed to create this feeling of dependence.
What's also amazing is just how much more productive I've been over the past few weeks without the constant (self-inflicted) interruptions!
I realize for an outsider it may feel like a support group or a bunch of complainers ranting, but I'd like to add here: Me Too!
I left facebook late in 2011, for various reasons, but mostly because it was making me sad and depressed. I was an extremely heavy user before that. I can say for sure that leaving facebook has made me objectively happier and less sadder.
I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it.
Full Disclosure: I opened a different facebook account. JUST for family, because my mom didn't _believe_ that I didn't have a facebook. I open it maybe once in a couple of weeks, and have gone for many months without logging in.
Here's something I'd tell to other people: if you feel depressed after using facebook, delete it. Forget about 'not keeping in touch', 'being a loner', etcetera. Your mental health is way, way, wayyy more important than knowing what your freaking high school acquaintance's third child had for lunch on a random day. Have a small group of close friends, and call them, hang out with them. Your larger group of friends will always be yours. If you need social networking, get snapchat (I'm a critic turned fanboy). It's fleeting, so you don't feel as bad about yourself, and people are not as annoying.
Addendum:
Here's how people make non-FB friends. A friend of a friend wanted help with grad schools, so I agreed to talk to her. We chatted on Skype (second encounter, EVER), and we ended up talking for an hour. She wanted someone to talk to and asked if we could talk again soon, and I didn't mind one more friend so we're skyping again soon. You make friends out of nowhere; don't need facebook for that. Facebook gives you the illusion you're 'in-touch' with everyone, when all you're doing is gathering 'intelligence' on their lives.
> I remember that XKCD comic about social network effects. Our minds are 'trained' to 'compare' ourselves with 10-15 of our friends, and assert that we lie around the 'average'. When we look at facebook, where everyone puts on their best (and in the hundreds) our brains 'think' we're doing a lot worse than the average, and we feel bad about ourselves. I've heard a lot of people talk about not comparing to people on facebook, but... you really can't help it.
I'm quite fortunate to have been quite successful in life, especially recently, so it's not this aspect that creates problems for me. It's the constant sharing of political / religious opinions and ensuing bickering (especially among my family) that gets me down. I've actually seen a few family relationships completely break down as a result of arguments over petty things on Facebook, with real life consequences. I'd rather not be exposed to any of that anymore and that was my reason for massively reducing my involvement in it.
Haha, oh yes, that too. I'm not doing too bad myself ( the 'gradstudent' lifestyle isn't THAAT bad), but I see what you mean. These things take up emotional energy to be dealt with, and most people consider the cost when using Facebook (that's what I got from the article).
It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started.
> It's the fear of missing out. All the social media services build their foundation on that addiction. Once you delete the accounts then the feeling slowly goes away and you get back to what life was like before all this nonsense started.
And Facebook explicitly tries to prevent you from getting rid of that addiction. They have a "feature" that kicks in after a few days of non-use to incessantly remind you via email that you're missing out. So-and-so posted a picture, etc.
As far as I can tell, there's no way to disable them without also disabling emails for event invites and direct messages, which is just shitty. I've had to setup gmail filters to get rid of them.
I fear not missing out. If I need to hear about it, I will. I mainly use Facebook as a thing to waste time with while I'm waiting for it to be time to do something else.
Yea totally. I suppose a lot of people are actually using Facebook for work and their businesses (and Tinder) and so can't really get rid of their account.
Also, I feel quite smug when someone asks to add me and I can say I don't use it... Maybe that is douchy...
Haha, the smugness seems pretty common around here. Each to their own I say. Still, I do secretly envy the ones like yourself who have managed to escape!
FYI you can use the Messenger app without having a Facebook account (at least before attaching Messenger to a Facebook account, not sure what would happen if you’ve already done so).
I was fine with deactivation only. The way I saw it, I didn't much care to change the fact that my past was on Facebook. I just wanted to make sure my future wasn't.
There is a certain bit of psychological hacking going on calling connections "friends". Facebook has allowed a lot of people to reconnect and stay in contact, but maybe that isn't a good thing. Maybe we're supposed to only have transient interaction with most people. Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia. Perhaps the fact that none of the kids I grew up with are on Twitter is a feature of Twitter.
I could maybe get back on Facebook if I treated it like Twitter: I disconnect as soon as your stream turns to anything that even gives me the feeling of wanting to make a negative comment[0]. My twitter feed is full of a mix of on one hand very interesting people, and on the other very quiet people. I like it this way.
[0] I'm mostly successful at avoiding making that negative comment, which is kind of scary considering how many negative comments I do end up making.
Excellent points throughout. Strongly agree with all of them.
>Maybe not knowing more about our cousins or our friend's friends is a sort of social lubricant. It's easier to be polite to my bigoted grandfather at Thanksgiving if I don't have daily reminders of his racism and homophobia
This has actually been how I connect to my friends lately, haha. I ask them what they've been upto, and they mostly go "you know, the same thing on facebook". And then they remember I'm not on facebook, so we go on hours and hours of heart-to-heart bringing up one another up to date with our lives.
As the resident twitter fanboy (most of my karma comes from one pro-twitter comment), I couldn't agree with you more. To be fair though, twitter can be sometimes toxic too, but then I just mute the people and they fade from memory. Twitter feels more like the community I _want_ to be a part of, and facebook used to be the kind of community that I didn't particularly like (i.e, the facebooked version of my friends and family). I'll repeat what I say often on HN: the Twitter network/community makes me feel smarter and more excited about things in life. Facebook... never did. It made me want to gain the 'likes' (I wish they'd rename it to something less emotionally attached).
I de-activated my profile 4 months ago. It's nice. It was weird at first, but now I can't imagine checking it so many times an hour.
I removed the app from my phone because after swiping to unlock, my thumb had a muscle memory to touch the corner of the screen the icon was in. I'd be on Facebook without even thinking about it.
I still check sports, news, and other sites on my phone. But it's read-only. ESPN, Instagram, Imgur. I'm not sharing anything. I'm not reading the same types of status updates from 'friends' every couple days (but then again I'm still here on HN).
At Thanksgiving I had family members asking why I haven't been on Facebook. Even my own father had asked my aunt "What is he up to?", since he doesn't have an account but she's always telling him about food I posted or places I checked in at.
For those who find it too difficult to delete your profile, consider just unfollowing random people.
Whenever I see an update, I ask myself "would I go to this person's birthday party?" Answer turns out to be "no" 95% of the time.
Overtime, my timeline got more and more boring, and sometimes when I log on I would still see updates from days ago. Now I only check it once or twice a week because it's so useless.
Follow people you don't know, unfollow friends, like things you don't like, change the email address, let it expire (If you don't log in at Yahoo for 1 year, they delete it), change the password, lose it, don't update your phone number. There's always a way back because they're really keen to give you access to your account, but as you progressively get bored of it, you'll feel like you don't need to install it on your new phone. On top of that, they now have to filter our false information.
The only problem is to explain to the TSA agent that you've falsified your identity on a US corporation website, but I've given up going to US too ;)...
I use a slightly less stringent policy, "if I saw this person in the grocery store and they hadn't seen me yet, would I go say 'hi' or active avoid them"
Deleted anyone who fell into the second bucket - worked out really nicely
Yup I did the same thing is 2012. It has been the best. Except reddit quickly moved in to fill the void. However, at least reddit is anonymous people, and I generally filter on subreddits that have positive communities and generally quality content. I guess you could really implement the same sort of filter with facebook though. I guess I just think the medium for sharing content on reddit or HN is better.
Same here. Deactivate when on a business trip a few months back and I found myself opening the app first thing when I woke up. Feel so much better about it. Still have muscle memory that makes me open the page once in a while, but it really feels better without it.
Of course, now reddit has taken over some of that time, but it is primarily in the sysadmin/tech subreddits, so it is less depressy :-P
This is was any addiction feels like. Your brain aggressively telling you to do something and rewarding you when you do.
I've been addicted to other things, but never got that dopamine rush from facebook. From the looks of it though facebook appears to me more addictive, or at least more available than your average addictive substance.
This is probably the primary reason that I can't get behind the Zuckerberg worship, no matter how much philanthropy he's involved in or how dedicated he is to self-improvement and so on. The man's main contribution to humanity is the spiritual equivalent of cigarettes -- toxic, addictive by design, and marketed to young people. It's gross. FB is gross, and that makes Zuckerberg gross.
Mark Zuckerberg didn't invent social networking. If it wasn't facebook, it would be some other website. Social media doesn't cause people to envy others or engage in behaviors that you don't approve of. Human nature does. The problem here lies in the collective mirror.
I've seen no evidence that Mark Zuckerberg is anything other than a normal ivy league type guy. I'm sure that he hears dozens of positive things about facebook every single day - it helped someone meet their spouse, connect with old friends, solve a problem. It's likely that in his view he's doing something to make the world a better place. Some may focus more on the negative aspects of facebook, and that's fair. But there doesn't seem to be any reason to question his character.
> Social media doesn't cause people to envy others or engage in behaviors that you don't approve of. Human nature does.
That's precisely what's in dispute here.
Different social media applications yield different results. Some of us believe that facebook is designed to cause envy, woe, and want in order to sell.
The thing about Usenet is that it trained you how to discuss things in public. It is a rhetoric laboratory. It's very useful learning to harden yourself to envy, woe and want. Eventually, such things become a mirror and if you don't like what you see, change it.
You can take out Zuckerberg and it would change things only at the margins.
People are constantly trying to figure out how to be attractive, and they constantly look out for who is attractive around them. The embers to produce social media websites like Facebook are already there, Zuckerberg was only the match.
Zuckerberg not creating Facebook doesn't change the fact that we're in an era where singers and socialites are celebrities, as opposed to the previous era, where society was more enamoured with intellectuals like Einstein and Haber, or the era before that where people looked up to generals like Ulysses Grant for unifying the nation.
Facebook is a product of today's decadence, rather than the other way around.
Would Facebook fit in a society with attitudes from (my take):
1. 1700's England? Nope, people are too serious back then.
2. 1000's Baghdad? Yes, in a world singers and celebrities and everyone wants to be attractive.
3. 800's Baghdad? Nope. You'd lose your head.
4. 300's Rome? Why yes, breads and circuses everywhere, why not another distraction?
5. 200BC Rome? Hardy people don't use Facebook much.
Here's a nice short book talking about these cycles.
"1. 1700's England? Nope, people are too serious back then."
I found the perspective in your post interesting, but I have to suggest that you research 'coffee shops' in London in the earlier 1700s. They declined towards the end of that century for reasons that could be quite interesting.
Are you really comparing social media to cigarettes and guns? Even if social media has downsides (virtually everything in life does) it's a silly comparison.
At no point is evidence presented in the link that shows that social media leads to clinical depression and suicide. Once again an awful and incorrect comparison.
hacker news is a form of social media so that makes it just as bad as guns, cigs and heroin. Ycombinator and the people who run it are just as evil as kim jong un.
> Researchers have proposed a new phenomenon called “Facebook depression,” defined as depression that develops when preteens and teens spend a great deal of time on social media sites, such as Facebook, and then begin to exhibit classic symptoms of depression. Acceptance by and contact with peers is an important element of adolescent life. The intensity of the online world is thought to be a factor that may trigger depression in some adolescents. As with offline depression, preadolescents and adolescents who suffer from Facebook depression are at risk for social isolation and sometimes turn to risky Internet sites and blogs for “help” that may promote substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or aggressive or self-destructive behaviors.
Clinical depression isn't a requirement. Exhibiting symptoms of depression (as stated) is all that is necessary. Clinical just means it's recurring at a regular interval.
>adolescents who suffer from Facebook depression are at risk for social isolation and sometimes turn to risky Internet sites and blogs for “help” that may promote substance abuse, unsafe sexual practices, or aggressive or self-destructive behaviors.
How is that remotely the same as actual depression? It's an insult to people who suffer from this medical condition.
Those aren't a list of symptoms, but instead an outcome what happens given typical depression symptoms coupled with teen behavior (and not knowing how to handle the feeling). Actually, social isolation is a fairly typical symptom of depression. Substance abuse and so on are often correlated as well.
Looking for the study itself (which I can't seem to find), but the article says something along the lines of "showing symptoms of depression". Symptoms of depression are often caused by depression.
No, it's not an insult at all. The biggest insult to depression sufferers is not recognizing it as a condition or implying that they are something other than depressed.
Edit: I'm sorry; perhaps you are simply not understanding the article. Is English your primary language?
If it was depression then it would be called depression, not "facebook depression". None of the symptoms you listed are actual symptoms of "facebook depression". Perhaps you forgot your reading glasses?
Yes--Hacker News is a form of social media. I don't want to point out all the differences between the sites.
I can only comment on my own phyche after being on the two sites. I don't feel good after being on FB. I've gotten into the habit of deativating my account Monday-Friday. I keep it open on the weekends--just in case? So far nothing, but I've never been a popular person.
On the other hand, I don't feel bad after being on HN. Yes--like any site, I can only take it in small doses. And yes--if it changed up too much from its current format, I would delete my account.
I use the Internet for information, and enjoyment. FB just brings up too many bad memories, or just puts me in a weird mood. I don't think I've evolved enough to like FB? Were we, as monkeys, ever designed to see so many other monkeys?
He may not have, but just because it's just another and the most dominant flavor of the addiction does not mean it is not as OP described. He's essentially the head of a psychological drug dealing organization.
I'm not saying Facebook couldn't be changed to not serve that purpose, but the whole nature of Fb leads to people envying idealized illusions of people's lives.
It also does not allow people to move forward because you are always reminded of and connected to the past. I don't think that is a topic that has received anywhere near enough attention. The people that are bad for you are and will forever haunt you through facebook. It really needs more study and I would not be surprised on bit if it were shown to facilitate things like substance abuse relapse and poor choices.
Tools shape behaviors and amplify effects, so I don't think tools automatically get a pass.
Further, I think this is bunk:
> If it wasn't facebook, it would be some other website.
This can be used to justify pretty much anything. "Somebody'd be selling this heroin. Might as well be me." Or, less obviously: cigarettes, fossil fuels, and junk food.
If good people to refuse to do something harmful, it will be done less well, hopefully causing less harm. Whether or not Mark Zuckerberg is better or worse than the average ivy leaguer doesn't seem relevant. What matters is that he's the one with the power to change what Facebook is doing, and he's the one who profits most from it.
>But there doesn't seem to be any reason to question his character.
I guess that depends on how you view facebook itself. Advertising is one thing, but I find the model of encouraging people to share their personal information for one purpose, then surreptitiously monetizing it by selling it to others to be downright slimy.
Facebook is in many ways an organically occurring reaction of people.. people doing things the internet enables. Facebook is as led as they are led by their users which is everyone.
I agree that there are some negative consequences of online behavior. COnversing online can get nasty easily, with people feeling little slights and reacting until the whole thing collapses into far worse than normal human interaction. On the other hand it allows us to converse with a much wider group. Would we be talking in Person Mr. Stokes, about Facebook? Facebook didn't choose features for addictiveness, they chose and promoted features because people used them. We're attracted to a lot of things that aren't good for us. People read celebrity magazines, and feel bad. They wallow in jealousy and other negative emotions. They do this on Facebook because they're on facebook.
There's a sense which this reasoning excuses everything. Tobacco companies gave people what they wanted too. But this is way more mixed.
People follow the objects of their envy, a bastard sister of admiration. It's hard to lay that on Zuck.
I'm going to completely bastardize a Douglas Adams Quote I can't find because I don't remember what words he used:
> The man's main contribution to humanity is the spiritual equivalent of cigarettes
It's more like fast food or candy. When consumed moderately or intermittently , they can be relatively fine but when consumed voraciously, they can be very destructive.
I've had mine deactivated for 8 months now an I feel better than I have in a long time. No more jealously over friends having beautiful children, getting new houses, being able to afford cars. The envy is gone and so is the depression.
In a lot of ways I agree, but change doesn't come from attacking people. "Don't hate the player, hate the game" - we live in a place where we don't yet draw clear lines for capitalistic behavior or how it might affect the exploitation of our environment, our friendships, or our life-saving drugs. I'd suggest you help facilitate change by suggesting systemic improvements to how these economic behaviors could evolve and evangelizing ideas in that direction.
It's absurd to say that you shouldn't criticize a person's actions unless you first fix the systemic problems in our entire economic system.
Anyway, change very well can come from attacking people. Publically criticizing actions which are harmful is part of the way that we, as a society, build up the standards and norms by which we judge individuals' actions--and, ultimately, form legislation and other institutions to diminish harm and exploitation. The idea of "Don't hate the player, hate the game" is an attack on morality as such.
You can reason with people, sometimes. Attacking them triggers the competitive urge and it becomes about winning rather than the thing you originally intended to do.
The anti-tobacco movement is a prime example of this, just as were the people who brought you Prohibition.
We have very clear lines for "capitalistic" behavior; people are just disinterested. Not even just the capitalists; people write their own version of the world.
The Vast majority of capitalists struggle with ethical concerns because there's downside risk in behaving badly. It's an iterated version of "all problems stem from Man's inability to sit quietly in a room."
I certainly agree there is nothing noble about Facebook, and the amount of depression and unhappiness around the world from people who don't like 'showing off themselves' and being often brutally judged based on their profile (which is the only mode of Facebook for high school, college, and even 20-something users - and at that age you have no choice but to use it or be ostracized) is astronomical.
Just to add to this, I was talking to a co-worker sitting across me who's a mother of three kids. She says, "we don't sit like a family anymore; chat and discuss like we used to when my kids were growing up. All my kids are on phone 24X7. I like to talk to them but facebook has taken away that family time and I don't think I can get it back".
It's funny - I haven't seen that. Usually it's he does something like give money to charity followed by pages of people saying how iffy that it is. If you google 'smug little shit' Zuck comes up. Who's worshiping?
merely exposing your own feelings. (Is that what you meant?)
Yes, in that case it is. Facebook is forcing us to stare in a mirror of our own mistakes and failings. We should fix them and not avoid them. Unfortunately the mirror is crooked. It only shows the apparent best features of a person, and it doesn't tell who are we supposed to compare to. There are always people who are (or appear) more successful; Facebook makes them visible to anyone as if they were the average case and not the rarity, what they really are.
I find the general accreted ... stuff I've read on facebook simply confirms my bias about confirmation bias. I unfollow people who get too noisy.
I still think the original Usenet - even after the Eternal September* - to be in all ways superior to anything else online. Then came the binaries that killed it.
*I would think that because that's when I found out about it and you could get one a' them dialup Internet connections boy howdy.
Zuckerberg is not responsable for the existence of the Friendship Paradox or our natural instinct to envy, etc. Facebook mission in itself, is good. We have no reason to doubt Zuckerberg honesty to do good. Do you have any example where Facebook did something that they knew was bad but still did it?
It's true that social network bring bad side effects, everything does. They can only try to correct them.
> Do you have any example where Facebook did something that they knew was bad but still did it?
Yes, here's a study on manipulating the feed of over 600,000 users, in order to elicit an emotional response. Without asking for permission of course, because apparently you agree to FB playing mind tricks on you when "agreeing" to their terms and conditions. Really, it can't get worse than this and they have no justification.
Ah yes, I had forgotten about this unethical chestnut you have brought forth. This is the kind of research which would never (and I do mean literally never-- no chance, zero, nada, zilch) get approved by an institutional review board (IRB) if a scientist wanted to perform a similar experiment. There was no consent process, and the study aimed to effect a tangible and measurable emotional change, for no real greater good/purpose.
You are aware that every advertisement you look at every day has been designed to elicit an emotional response yes? The advertisers in the newspaper, Internet and billboard down the street didn't get your opt in permission either.
They do it explicitly with malicious intent; there is no bones about their goal which is to manipulate you and trick you into spending money on their products based on psychological charlatanry rather than offering you actual value.
It's different when you do 'research', i.e. purport to act like a scientist, not a scam artist.
Actually it does. They did something relatively harmless for science (and maybe, indirectly, for profit). The whole advertising industry is based on doing worse things, all the time, for pure profit. That this Facebook study is a subject of an outrage is, frankly, ridiculous.
That is an appeal to tradition, and it a fallacy. It isn't moral for advertisers to do harmful things to users just because most advertisers do it.
Most scientist do not do harmful things to their subjects. Modern science requires consent. So your fallacious argument, even if it weren't, fails to argue correctly in the first place, because scientists aren't advertisers.
Facebook study was done without consent. It was harmful to their users (subjects) because it interfered with their emotions. It is immoral.
The outrage might seem ridiculous, from the perspective of an advertiser, because, as you said, they do worst things all the time, so this study is hardly appalling for them. But from the perspective of other people, it is.
I hope this gave you an insight into (our) reaction to the study.
Not the same context, though you're right, it's similar-- the context of this was specifically to study the capacity for an effective emotional change controlled by social media only. They didn't have any monetization plans for the emotional change, which could potentially be negative.
I have always been surprised scientific and ethics committees haven't somehow come down on Facebook and its decision makers for this? Let alone, where is all of their data for public review to allow as many third-parties to analyze it as possible to view its impact?
The main problem is the industry has known for almost a century that severe health problems are linked to smoking tobacco, and spent the better part of that time hiding the truth while addicting a nation.
Now they're concentrating their focus on the Third World, getting millions more addicted where they aren't pestered by pesky "laws."
Nor should they be (although they are, IDK what absence of laws you're talking about, there are pictures of dead children in cigarette packs and advertising is illegal in most of LA). Everyone knows the risks, people smoke because they want to. Or do you think we, citizens of third world countries are all illiterate know nothings who got tricked by tobacco companies? I can't understand people wanting so bad to be other people babysitters. If you don't want to smoke don't, don't want your children to, teach them not to. Is that so hard?
No, they probably don't. People don't know that smoking is the leading cause of erectile dysfunction; or that smoking is linked to penile cancer; or what the actual risks of lung cancer are.
People just know that smoking is harmful, but they laugh that off with "I might get hit by a bus tomorrow".
> Or do you think we, citizens of third world countries are all illiterate know nothings who got tricked by tobacco companies?
It's not about citizens of developing world being illiterate know-nothings, it's about tobacco companies being abusive manipulative arseholes who lie and who have millions of dollars to fund those lies.
now don't make people people completely stupid just because they don't have an university degree (or read HN). the fertility/ptence issues are not that famililar (and definitely should be spoken about more loudly, this would have bigger impact than photos of cancerous lungs), but even in very remote and undeveloped places, all know that smoking = potential lung cancer, and that's a very miserable way to die.
but guess what - all sorts of biases step in, we like to lie to ourselves, nicotine addiction isn't neglible either. in 2015, this information is world-widely known for years and years (apart from north korea, maybe), but people like to ignore it. somebody gets cancer from smoking? well man up and blame his own stupidity/weakness.
"... no reason to doubt Zuckerberg honestly to do good."
That is not the way making a claim works. A claim is made, and evidence to support that claim must be brought forward before the claim is to be accepted. We have a claim, but no evidence for that claim in hand, and as such, intellectual honesty dictates that our doubt is 100%.
There is the old yet reliably sourced claim of Zuck calling his users dumb fucks. It is probably that his opinion has changed as he has matured, however the sourness of the original intent remains a part of his Facebook website.
Yes, you are right. Without any evidences, our doubts about any claims is total. I was just transposing my belief that people are generally honest and good. Though, I don't have any proof for that matter.
> Do you have any example where Facebook did something that they knew was bad but still did it?
The long con of Facebook itself -- fooling us all into giving up our privacy. We got here by FB misleading it in incredibly calculated ways. Google "Privacy Zuckering". It's a dark pattern that tricks users into giving up more privacy than they would want to, by making purposefully misleading UI. One trick after another like that is how we got here.
I just unsubscribed from everyone's feed. No need to be that drastic (deleting facebook). If I want to catch up on someone's life, I simply look at their page (like in 2005 pre-feed).
If you're so concerned about people's "staged moments", it seems you should create the life you want for yourself instead of assuming their moments are "staged". I'll never understand envy, such a childish emotion.
Yep, this is the key. I like occassionally sharing our photos with family, and the messaging is convenient. Feed doesn't make me depressed, it makes me annoyed at how stupid my "friends" are. I've just been hiding people more and more and then I'm liberated of their stressful stupidity.
On my case I've just installed the 'News Feed Eradicator' extension which deletes all the news feed and replaces it with inspirational quotes. So I have the best of both worlds, I still use Facebook to contact people but I don't see all the bad stuff, I essentially use Facebook as MSN.
I like that approach. I'm going to give it a shot, thanks for the idea.
I'm a very infrequent Facebook user. I'll like posts from close family occasionally, and that's about it. I took my birthday off my profile and haven't posted anything in probably about a year.
"...we inadvertently make our friends feel like losers and contribute to a swirling vortex of envy, in which we ourselves risk drowning."
I always had the feeling that this attitude is worst in the United States than in other places. I guess that it is related to the way society tries to categorize others as winners/losers instead of looking at life as a shadow of greys. And how it blames people for being poor instead of taking into account different circumstances. (But, of course, is not an USA only problem)
If you want to be happier on-line and off-line stop looking at others with envy and begin to look them for inspiration. Have they meaningful lives? How can I improve mine?
If being connected to social networks makes you unhappy disconnecting is the right thing to do. But if envy is what makes you disconnect then your problem is also off-line and sooner or later you will need to get over it if you want to be realised and happy.
This passage from Slaugterhouse Five has really stuck with me:
>America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves. To quote the American humorist Kin Hubbard, 'It ain’t no disgrace to be poor, but it might as well be.' It is in fact a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: 'if you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?'
>envy is what makes you disconnect then your problem is also off-line and sooner or later you will need to get over it if you want to be realised and happy.
While I somewhat agree with this in spirit, the truth of it is that our well-being is a relative proposition. We are social creatures, living within a social construct.
Hence, even in your suggestion that we look to others to ask whether they have meaningful lives and seek inspiration from them, you are encouraging people to measure themselves against others.
But that begs the question that is the subject of this article. The notion that others have more meaningful lives is itself skewed by Facebook. So, viewed through that lens, nothing I do will make my life as meaningful as it "should" be.
And, this need not have anything to do with the typical negative connotation of envy--that is, jealousy--in order to be harmful. I can be genuinely happy for the success I perceive in others, while simultaneously receiving the message that my own life is lacking.
> our well-being is a relative proposition
Yes. But you can change the framework you work with. You can relativize the situation (e.g. take into account that some one had a better starting position in life than you). You can compare different things (e.g. wealth vs wisdom). Even you can compare agains worst scenarios instead of ideal situations. To be happy at all costs will be delusional. But I believe that to achieve small goals, to move forward to the person that you want to be should improve your well-being.
> nothing I do will make my life as meaningful as it "should" be
If you change "should" by "can" then I agree. We never will achieve our "full potential" as seen on some not-so-good self-help books. Because that is unrealistic. We will make mistakes. We will change goals. That idealised state is no achievable but I think that having it as a moving target is helpful.
> typical negative connotation of envy--that is, jealousy--in order to be harmful
Agree. I made a bad use of words. I meant jealousy.
> I can be genuinely happy for the success I perceive in others, while simultaneously receiving the message that my own life is lacking.
I agree. And that's a good thing about comparisons. You can find things that you lack and you can try to achieve them.
In a perfect world we would have the social plumbing without the psychological manipulation. But we're not, so here's how I've found how to make do with Facebook without it poisoning my brain. And yes I do benefit from it a lot, which is why I'm not leaving.
This is what my redux version of Facebook looks like, using custom uBlock filters - basically just news feed and notifications. Manages to eliminate ~90% of their manipulation attempts I reckon.
Other tips: unsubscribe from anything/one whose posts you don't want to see (sounds obvious if you're disciplined about this it makes a lot of difference), stick to messages only but inbox 0 it so you aren't storing useful info there, get event requests sync'd to an external calendar, untick 'remember' when you login.
I've found it totally manageable this way, and am cautiously hopeful that one day it wont be necessary once the Silicon Valley psychopaths grow up.
Also don't use the like button for anything except stuff friends post themselves. Otherwise you will get spammed with that stuff and you will get less of what your actual facebook friends post. You can remove likes also afterwards.
The main problem with social media is that we (generally) post only the good moments in our lives. Leading to the idea that everyone else's lives are always awesome.
We see the good and bad in our own lives, but see only the absolute best of other peoples' lives, leading to feelings of inadequacy.
Now that's not to say it's Facebook's fault. We also generally keep pictures of our 'best' moments in our house. The problem is that, when everyone else's 'best' is on tap, visible so easily, we often forget that everyone is mortal.
If someone were to look on my Facebook (which is now deactivated), they'd see travel adventures, me and my wife dressed up, doing fun things, etc... They wouldn't see me stressed out drinking cup after cup of coffee before a test. Even if I post the dinner I make every day, they wouldn't see the pile of dishes afterwards.
Anyhow, I don't think Facebook is necessarily the cause, it just magnifies our weaknesses. And people have become so vain that I see people who go out just to get that 1 picture to post, not to enjoy themselves. The current generation are becoming more vain, because too many are obsessed with social media and the need to always appear perfect. In the old days when you saw your friends only once a week, it was far easier to hide weakness.
As far as following celebrities, the problem is that it's a celebrity's JOB to appear perfect all the time. The 40-60 hours we spend trying to be good at our profession is 40-60 hours they spend trying to be good at promoting themselves and appearing perfect.
Furthermore, celebrity worship just reinforces the lottery nature of our society. It's not good enough any more to have money, or to have friends. You need to be rich, and have followers...
i manually unfollowed everyone on my list, so now my facebook home page is empty. i still go on other people's profiles from time to time, but way less than i used to
this way it feels like i'm more in control of my activity and not getting flooded with "news" helps a lot for my peace of mind
It's weird how this article finds so many things wrong with Facebook, but it cannot even think of an alternative. Instea it talks about how Facebook can adapt (and has adapted by every year introducing a revolutionary feature like "unfollow"), how it's not so bad, how we need to change to adapt to it like it's a new body in the sky.
How about just spend more time in real-life and less time photoshopping and broadcasting life-in-front-of-a-selfie-stick?
> It's weird how this article finds so many things wrong with Facebook, but it cannot even think of an alternative.
Why should we think of an alternative? One can "find so many things wrong with smoking or using drugs", without being requested to "think of an alternative".
Did I miss something?
For people who also feel this feeling, I suggest you to try some browser extensions that will hide the news feed while letting you use the fb messengers & group function.
I basically turn the notification for my best friends post, etc and delete the FB app. So I'm always connected and only receive notifications when one of my best friend posted something.
I admit that it's not the ideal solution but it's the best one so far.
Micah Daigle pointed out to me, four years ago now, that Facebook forces to user to view their life as "my day-to-day compared to all my friends' highlight reels."
It was at that moment that I realize that Facebook leverages the darkest parts of emotional hurt in order to convert sales.
It took my another year before I quit, but once I did, I felt better almost immediately and have never gone back.
I've been depressed since I quit Facebook. I no longer have access to the groups I used for countless purposes. Yea, there's alternatives, but I'm starting to see how many bridges I burned deleting a useful tool.
How'd you burn the bridges? You closed one channel of communication. If it was your only channel to those individuals and groups, then that may have been a mistake.
I use FB strictly for scheduling and coordinating events with friends, it's easier and it shows up on everyone's calendar (except the handful that I text because they don't have FB). But I did this just as well, with a bit more friction, before by using texts and emails (primarily texts, it proved more reliable with more people). It takes more effort to maintain relationships without the passive FB connection, but it's very doable.
EDIT: Leaving what I wrote, but an apology since, on rereading, it's dismissive of your plight.
But I'll maintain, unless it was your only channel of communication the bridges aren't burned. And if it was, they still aren't, you can go back. If folks don't accept you back, then that's on them, not you.
For many of the connections I refer to, Facebook was my only way of contacting them. You're right, I could return. It still makes me think that this implicit claim that leaving Facebook improves our mood is faulty. Rarely or never do I see disclaimers about possibly increasing depression by quitting.
I think it depends on how people use Facebook more than merely presence or absence on it.
I barely use it. I have an account for two things: An exercise/health accountability group I started with friends (so we could post achievements, and failures, in a private to us spot that doesn't come off as bragging and doesn't discourage honest discussion of issues); to organize events (movies out, dinners in, parties, trips, etc.) with friends.
I'm effectively not a Facebook user 99% of the time, and I'm happier for it. If someone really wants me to know about their accomplishments or pains they'll let me know, or they're too many degrees away (off Facebook) for my awareness to matter to either of us.
The depression you're experiencing from quitting is the depression of social isolation (opinion from two comments, but this was my experience with moving cross country several times and not having any connections in the new locale, so maybe projecting a bit too). Explore other social connections in your physical area if it's possible, or reestablish your Facebook connections if it's not.
I always thought the depressing aspect of Facebook wasn't the demands or negative content, but the "positive" content: The feeling that everyone else is more successful and doing cooler things than me.
I have the opposite issue, especially in the current political climate. I have people I consider true friends who are on both extremes of the current election cycle, so right now my news feed is nothing but extremely negative left vs right bullshit. It's made me stop following people who I genuinely care about and would otherwise like to keep up with, and it's so depressing that it's beginning to affect my daily life. The only positive posts I see anymore are silly memes or the occasional "I accomplished something cool" status updates.
All of JWZ's links do that, because he chose to break the internet for specious reasons. I doubt it even achieves his aim of reducing traffic from HN.
I've contacted HN staff about disabling autolinking for URIs in his domain for the reason you state. They're effectively no different than any other "spammy" link due to his HN-specific redirection.
You could also take out <meta name="referrer" content="origin"> from the pages, then there's no special casing and no referrer (in the https case). Aside from enhanced privacy it might serve as a disincentive to game HN since it becomes less obvious how much traffic HN brings in.
That's not hotlinking, that's just linking. Hotlinking refers specifically to embedding content (e.g. an image or iframe) from another host.
JWZ, despite being one of the main engineers at Netscape, does not seem to know what hotlinking means, and is (a) happy to break the web, and (b) happy to look like an asshole by making penises pop up on random people's computers because they didn't know "don't click a link to this random dude's site from HN".
HN mods, any chance of disabling autolinking for JWZ sites?
Your link is blocked too. As long as you paste it into a new tab you're fine. I'm not going to bother looking up the specific tweet he said this in but jwz has "no time for HN"
Found it:
"@sloverlord Hacker News is a steaming cesspool and I don't have time or desire to deal with their bandwidth demands, so I just block them." ~jwz
https://twitter.com/jwz/status/665658171415859200
Gamification is a demand dropped on users, seemingly forcing self-promotion and social reciprocity in an endless circle.
And for what? In the end there is absolutely no gain, but many like and favorite and heart primarily to ensure that people like and favorite and heart whatever they do. We follow to be followed. We comment to be noticed.
Because the metrics are front and center. I stopped using Flickr when I couldn't post a simple picture for any random passerby or my own storage without having the embarrassment of a low view count sitting highlighted on the page, the site imploring me to evangelize for me.
If you build a site and try to leverage users by forced social metrics to encourage them to become ambassadors and self promoters...well I'd like to pretend it will hurt you, but sadly it won't.
Well, about a month ago my spouse firewall very nearly failed entirely. The problem was that with her mature Facebook account, with dozens of "friends" with a ton of other "friends", the stream of continuous bad news just became too much. Partially that's particular to some relationships we have, but even ignoring those, it was still an unrelenting stream of people having surgery, complications, financial troubles, and then very bizarrely mixed in with cute puppy photos, and then mixed in with political shitfits, to say nothing of some other family's "drama", all mixed with a "healthy" helping of continuous ads.
As it turns out, my firewall "recovered", but usage has been toned way down, and a lot of people got themselves hidden.
It gets said on HN every so often, but MySpace and the previous social networks often collapsed virtually overnight. I still think there's a good chance Facebook could still go that way.
Edit: Sorry, my "spouse firewall" is that my wife is on Facebook and I have no account. I hear about the family gatherings and other such things announced only on Facebook that way, but don't have to have an account myself. So it's like a "firewall" filtering out only the most important stuff.