Facebook has been making itself unusable, I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up too but I just get a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see. Facebooks algorithm for their wall is one of the worst. Even if I X the spam posts it find other crap to spam with so I just gave up and visit FB every other week instead of daily for a quick update.
Instagram is suffering the same fate, it doesn’t show my posts to my followers, really wants to show me post that have nothing to do with my interest and I’m getting a lot of likes from bots. I noticed my friends don’t post to it as much anymore so it’s feeling like a ghost town.
I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.
Same - the friends it churns up posts from tend to be the ones posting inflammatory political garbage. Unfollowing them doesn't always stick, I've observed. I call this the "facebook oopsie" - "oops we reset your privacy settings - again".
Facebook ads are egregiously bad. Overwhelmingly scammy: Drop-shippers pretending they are having a going-out-of-business sale, products priced double or triple where they are priced elsewhere. And of course, I've started seeing straight up malvertising campaigns which somehow made it through review. ("somehow" being - paid ads get little scrutiny)
If Facebook groups hadn't totally taken over a few communities I want to be a part of (car enthusiast groups, local fishing groups), I would probably never check it. Actually, less and less my friends and family post there, preferring other social networks, if any.
I don't know about scam ads, but I've been seeing badly targeted ones, for example a bunch for a lawyer who specialises in helping Americans who live in the UK to renounce their US citizenships.
I'm not an American, I don't live in the UK, and I'm working towards gaining a second citizenship rather than removing one.
Also for example, an ad from a government of a country I don't live in about them banning a breed of dog I've never heard of. I don't own any breed of dog, definitely now whatever that was.
There isn't supposed to be, but you have reminded me that I'm noticing signs of the iCloud Private Relay running even though that's supposed to be a paid feature and I'm on a free account.
Every time I report scam advertisements Facebook responds that they do not violate their TOS. I rarely spend any time on Facebook as a result. Big waste of time. I have moved all my friends and family interactions to text messages and WhatsApp.
I've been working on Haven[1] as an open-source self-hostable alternative to give control back to people. I actually wrote a blog post about how the move from "see what your friends/family are doing" to "just keep scrolling" was a pretty blatant bait-and-switch[2]. I think any alternative will fail in the same ways as Facebook has unless there are different incentives. I'm hoping that by making Haven open source and decentralized there won't be a path for me to make money off of it (beyond maybe hosting fees?) if it gets broader adoption.
There's things like https://www.meetup.com/ but honestly I haven't found any. The dead internet theory seems true. I block reddit, facebook, x, etc in /etc/hosts - Search top 100 websites by traffic and see what's really going on and who owns what..
I've been on the lookout for one. Wish there was a cool one. I go out and volunteer for sanity.
The issue is, the big platforms are where everybody else is. To them, the internet IS facebook, insta, X, etc..
I know this will sound weird but I found plenty of connections thanks to my blog: by writing about things I find interesting, by encouraging people to connect via email, and by emailing people whose writing I found interesting. There’s plenty of good humanity still out there, but it requires effort and it’s hard to find.
Nice. I have a blog, but, I never expect I'll have any readers. Good to know there's good humanity out there online, I see it in the real world. Digitally it's really overshadowed by a mainstream, paywalled, everything is a service and costs money.
I'm always checking out the blogs I find on here though. I should interact more with them.
1. Can you send me your blog? If you don’t want to post it here my email is on my profile. I’m always interested in reading other people’s blogs[0]
2. I think it’s a matter of being proactive. I treat blog-to-blog interactions the same way I treat person-to-person interactions. If you want the connection to happen you have to be willing to act. Which is why I often send emails, share thoughts on what they wrote, maybe share a link to something they might find interesting based on what they write about. More often than not, people with public personal blogs want to interact with others.
I've been working on Weavus (https://weavus.app/, see my top-level comment in this post) as an alternative to facebook mostly for events, but you can also create private groups where you can chat, share photos and todo lists, split expenses, and more to come. It's just a mobile app for now, and definitely not facebook-grade as a product, but we find it useful already!
I’m personally setting up a private Discourse instance to facilitate old school, friendly, online interactions. But it’s probably overkill if you just need a place to digitally hang out.
Great way to test the waters. Don't underestimate the cool and see what kind of posts and habits it could pave the way for, should it lead down some rabbit holes. Lots could be said for establishing even some crude habitations and running with it.
Around here, there is a very popular sports team management platform called Spond. While many parents call it a huge chore, it definitely beats the crap out if Facebook groups et al. I've seen people starting to use it more and more for any type of group that wants to organize events, communicate to members etc.
The obvious downside is that (like with other apps) everything is inside a closed ecosystem. But there is zero spam, only a few non-intrusive ads, and generally good UX all around.
Made a post down below. I scroll for like two minutes before seeing anything local in my town. I only use it to volunteer at places in my town, and it literally showed over 100+ suggested/Follow/sponsored things, the addon I used collapses it all.
Dead internet theory. AI generated stuff. Busted algorithms, and attention-soul sucking 'pull me in' psychological warfare ad induced stuff. We need to reclaim our sanity from doom scroll/infinite scrolling.
I have it in my /etc/hosts file to be blocked unless I'm at a computer that requires me to log in.
I don’t know what is going on at Meta but they are killing their cash cow.
I don’t mind the Youtube algorithm, it used to be better but it’s still good enough. I don’t use Youtube with an account so I have gotten good at “training” it and getting it to show stuff I’m actually interested in. The X algorithm is not bad either, if I post art related stuff it will only show me art related stuff.
> The X algorithm is not bad either, if I post art related stuff it will only show me art related stuff.
Highly disagree. I'm down to one hyperspecific account that follows hundreds of people, and my "for you" page might as well be someone else's. Literally nothing there matches the purpose of the account.
I'm also convinced that clicking "not interested" doesn't do anything because every time I click it, I can just refresh the tab and see the exact same tweet all over again.
Likewise I am convinced the "not interested" option does nothing, now I just straight block those pages/people when it shows up - the algorithm will send me another of nearly the same content but I keep blocking them and now a lot of that content is gone from my timeline, but FB is really convinced I want to see non-stop steam/model train and WWII content.
The account I’m using doesn’t follow anybody and the feed it gets is all art picture posts, I think not following people keeps the feed pure of outside influence. Also I rarely like posts, only really beautiful images so that probably has an influence as well. I really like what this account shows me but it is a special and narrow case.
I removed the finger-printing from my browser with degoogle: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle - Alternatives to google/other big platforms. Firefox addons at the top.
I scream this and my love for Linux from the rooftops, hoping other people show the love for the internet and things like I do and don't put up with the exploitation. It's _OUR_ psychyes and their psychological manipulation, and our future generations they're going after.
And you can check your fingerprints with: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/ that has a adtrack company that openly shows how it fingerprints you, with WebGL, canvas'ing, timestamps.
The Facebook news feed has always focused on random nonsense, ever since they first introduced algorithmic ranking. I think one of the main things going on is that they've decided - probably correctly - that Instagram is a better fit for what people want social media to be going forwards.
Well they ruined Instagram too, no one posts anymore, post reach has been crippled and it really wants to show you crap you don’t care about. Now they want you to use threads with pictures. And in like you just reinvented Instagram but worst, what’s the point?
> I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up to
Literally just call them. You don't even have to ask for permission. Cold call them. If they don't want to talk now, they won't answer. That's fine. Call again another time.
In the last year I have just started cold calling my friends and family. It's been great.
The success of this seems highly dependent on the nature of your social circle. I would probably be less inclined to be friends with someone who was randomly calling me for awkward chats about what I'm up to.
If you find a friend reaching out once in a while to be awkward, then I’m guessing you probably don’t want to be friends with that person. Or, maybe you have a bar for “friend” that involves more regular contact so it doesn’t feel random.
I think GP’s approach is optimized towards a smaller but closer-knit group of friends. Facebook does the opposite: it makes you feel like you have hundreds or thousands of friends when in reality you may not communicate with any of them at all. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a close-knit group of friends, or a few close friends, and communicate Facebook-style. But Facebook points you a different way.
I mean, if you’re friend with someone it shouldn’t be “awkward chats”. It should just be a chat with a friend that wants to know if you’re doing great and knowing what you’re up to.
the problem is that reaching this level of friendship is difficult. it depends on both people to be open and the ability and willingness to show they care, but also on opportunity. in my experience this is usually connected to some difficult situation that allows one or both to engage. for example of the few close friends that i have, one invited me to a private blog where he detailed his personal challenges over the decades. his level of trust made it easy for me to return that trust, and when i needed help/advice it was easy to turn to him. another i met a few months ago, and he likewise went out of his way to help out in a challenging situation. if he ever asks me for help, no doubt i will return the favor. and if either ask how i am doing, i have no doubt it is genuine. but then, if anyone else would send such a message i would approach it with the same assumption. there was another friend that i met many years ago, where i had the feeling that we could become close friends, but we lost touch. but writing this comment motivated me to reach out. let's see what happens.
what would make chats awkward is if the topics never go beyond smalltalk. if every so often a message exchange is like: hi, how are you? how are the kids? i am fine, kids are doing well. how about you? likewise thanks. and the conversation keeps remaining at that level, then i start wondering, why are we even talking. there has got to be more.
First, I think it's great that you have a couple of relationships that are at that level which is definitely not a given.
Second, I love that you decided to reach out to that old friend because relationships come and go and it's never to late to pick up an old friendship.
As for your final point, if the idea is to call someone in order to replace the classic facebook passive stalking I think it's fine if the conversation never goes too deep. It's a way to show you care and sometimes it's all that matters. Maybe in doing that, when it's time to have deeper conversations, they'll remember that you called them and showed interest. And that's something they can't see if you just scroll their facebook page.
And I'm saying you generically, not talking about you specifically.
But I do get what you're saying, if every time you talk to someone you have shallow chats, after a while you might start wondering what's the point.
For a long time my main use of Facebook was to check what events my friends were attending, and to check which events had which people going.
At some point Facebook crippled those features. Maybe for good reasons (I guess the possibility of stalking might be one). But in any case, I use Facebook much less now.
I love that we’re going full circle. Social media is so terrible we’re getting back to just call people on the phone. I hope the next thing to come back are pen pals. Proper old school with envelopes and paper pen pals. It’s gonna be great!
Most people really never left the calling people part. Tech just made it easier for them.
I've known people who have gone from on the phone all the time people to using skype to those in discord voice chats. Largely because of the costs of calling internationally as well, can't leave that out!
Although I will say, some of these platforms could learn a thing or two from the voicemail system!
You’re absolutely right although I do think there is a subtle but fundamental difference between old school phone calls (especially if done on a landline) and modern voice chats.
Now it’s a lot easier to do a voice call and also do something else since you’re probably sitting in front of your computer. And you can stay there for hours chatting about literally nothing.
Phone calls, had to be a lot more intentional. Firstly because of the cost but also because it was harder to do something else while on the phone.
I have a FB account with no friends and a pseudonym that I just use for being able to check the pages of local businesses (it’s usually the only way to see hours because nobody has normal websites anymore)
The garbage that they serve up on my feed is astounding. When they don’t have any info from “friends” to populate it, it looks exactly like a collection of chumbox ads
I feel like most companies would have a discussion about “what’s the new user experience? How do we make a cold start enticing so people want to give us more time and data?”
The Facebook experience when you have no connections is so horrid that I’m guessing they don’t put much thought into new users anymore. They already have everyone
In fact, Facebook is so sure they already have everyone that new users are often flagged as suspicious and banned by their automated tools without even doing anything. No other site could afford to do that.
Worse than that. I have a Facebook account that is at least 16 years old (yes, from the very first years of Facebook's existence) that I log in a few times a year when I have to use Facebook to do something. I don't post or read anybody's post -- a few years ago I unfollowed everybody (but still remain connected), just like what this article says. I might have actually used this tool but I am not sure. Guess what, my 2-factor auth enabled account got disabled for absolutely no reason. Same login location, same browser. I had to do a stupid video verification to reenable the account, something I refused to do for opening an Instagram account.
Your mistake is assuming Facebook's algorithm isn't written to be exactly like you explained.
"The algorithm is poor" is not a thing anymore, algorithms are easy to get right and even easier to break on purpose for their own benefit.
No large corporation actually serves their algorithm for you any more. That's why TikTok got so popular, their algorithm actually worked for you for a long time.
Individually visiting profiles seems to change the feed a little.
One guess is if social media engagement isn't as high as desired, users are increasingly presented with alternatives to take them in different directions until they're more engaged, or at such a deficit of dopamine they will be ready to jump to the next thing, maybe like a tik tok?
Today, if a social media network made and kept it about people and not algorithms calculating the topically desired outcome of one company, maybe there would be a different usage.
People have historically learned how to tune out certain forms of media when or if they became too focused on topics not aligned to them, including advertising. Newspapers, Radio, TV..
Hyper personalization may be an option, but if the result of it is distance and not supporting authentications in real life and not digitally, the brain is wired for one for the former a lot longer than the latter. An example of this is how much more.. vivid spending time in person with someone was after not being around people as much during the pandemic.
> a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see
Dunno what kind of weird experiment they were conducting last December but once I start scrolling, I was getting AI generated images of really poor quality accompanied by comments from bot profiles among normal stuff, obviously out of chronological order from my friend's list.
Not that I'm visiting that page that often - on contrary; every few months to see if those who don't have anything beside messenger want something.
Isn't this a variation on a theme? A lot of current unrest revolves around people feeling ignored and unrepresented because of the global aspirations of tech and government.
When I go there it just seems like a ghost town. I actually undid all my “likes” of various groups and companies etc and it quietened down dramatically. Not that many people are posting there and mostly I just have a few relative/friends groups going and that’s about it, and what it’s good for. I wish I could get them to move to signal or even WhatsApp and nothing but crickets.
> I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.
You post the same image? And then you're happy you get more engagement from x?
I don't get your experiment... You want lots of engagement when you post boring content repeatedly?
I would perceive a life ban from Zuckerberg a badge of honor. Congrats to this person!
Personally, would have just open sourced the project. Then Zuck would have to spend engineering time (and employ more people) to “combat” these types of usability hacks which reduce their bottom line.
Similar to how YouTube is in a perpetual battle with the entire world over ad blocking on the platform.
Personally, I just stopped using FB/IG all together. Much happier. And relationships are much more meaningful. No more filters/ai/thinly veiled bullshit/“curated ads”.
Unfortunately, it's not from Zuckerberg, it's from some underpaid, Third World content moderator churning through posts and accounts with only the most minimal of thought.
> These demands seemed outrageous to me. They also seemed outrageous to lawyers I consulted from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and in the U.K. But my options were limited. I’m a U.K. resident, so a lawsuit against Facebook would probably have played out in a U.K. court, where I would have been personally on the hook for Facebook’s litigation costs if I lost. Facebook is a trillion-dollar company.
Seems like this could have been answered by releasing the source code? Someone else could remake and distribute the app; and if Facebook didn't like that, they'd have to be the ones to file a lawsuit.
The author is exaggerating the risk, even if Facebook goes all the way, via hiring the most expensive gold plated Magic circle teams, and wins, the judge wouldn’t assign 100% of the inflated costs to the author.
Of course they could still be on the hook for normal costs relative to the actual workload imposed (i.e. what the median law firm would charge), but that’s a potential consequence for any lawsuit whatsoever in the UK. Or any other ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction.
> Of course they could still be on the hook for normal costs relative to the actual workload imposed (i.e. what the median law firm would charge), but that’s a potential consequence for any lawsuit whatsoever in the UK. Or any other ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction.
That still seems like too much for a free tool that they are getting no revenue or monetization from, and the author seems to agree.
And a tool that uses freely available features on the Facebook website without circumventing anything. It merely automates something everyone can do themselves.
U.S. law specifically allows programs like OPs to exist. Summary from gypty:
The statute you are referring to is likely the *Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996*, specifically *Section 230(c)(2)*.
Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity to providers and users of an "interactive computer service" for actions taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected. This includes the development and deployment of programs intended to block or filter malicious software.
This section has been crucial in allowing companies to create and distribute tools designed to protect users from harmful or unwanted content, including spam filters, antivirus programs, and parental control software, without the risk of being held liable for the consequences of their actions.
It loads 10 posts at a time and filters out all of the junk. Then you have to manually load more posts.
It's really eye-opening when you load 10 posts and it filters out 9 of them.
But besides that, the thing that's really pushing me away from FB is the pure hate, agression and stupidity on display in the comments section of local groups. It hurts to see the levels people descend to when they can comment without any repercussions.
how someone with a banhammer hanging overhead behaves is nowhere near as valuable an indicator, compared to behaviour when there are no perceived consequences.
[the thing that's really pushing me away from FB is the pure hate, agression and stupidity on display in the comments section of local groups] -- you are seeing what lurks inside, and what degree of personal refraint exists.
actually, on NextDoor, the population is so limited that it's fairly productive to Mute/Block the hateful or dumb people ("excuse me, but please pick up after your dog.")
FB, of course, has billions of users so that doesn't work.
nextdoor wouldn't even onboard me, i sent a message with details to their team and they said they'd fix it for me... that was like 3 or 4 years ago. I had to define a new neighborhood, so maybe that's why?
Nice. I installed one of those addons to hide that crap. I only use my fb for my local pet shelter that I volunteer at and other things I volunteer with since tech is well, in transition to say the least.
I have to scroll for like 2 minutes just to find a local group post (small town that gives out local town news), It's all suggested/sponsored/ads.
I have facebook blocked in my /etc/hosts file so I can only view it at the shelter etc. But yeah, that's the crap its feeding in our faces. When you visualize it, it's like and see what it's really doing to your brain/eyes, you need to reclaim that time and attention sink.
After being a fairly heavy FB user since 2005, in 2012 I decided to remove all of the 400+ Facebook pages I followed after it dawned on me that it was the source of a lot of my news feed garbage.
After deleting about 100 pages from my list of followed pages, I notice the last 10 would re-appear. Every 50 or so pages I'd delete from my list -- which to begin with is a purposefully slow and painful UX whether done manually or javascriptically -- 5 or more pages would reappear. It took a while to realize what was happening because it wasn't always 5 or 10, sometimes it was 2 or 4 and the time between occurrences was sometimes so long that I originally assumed I just missed some. Then I noticed some pages got re-listed after a day or so. This got me pretty upset but it was only the beginning.
I began making it a daily mission to delete at least 50 pages a day and keep deleting them as often as they came back. It was at this point when pages stopped reappearing and I'd get an alert from the app that went something like "Hey (stop sign emoji) stop! You shouldn't be doing that!" and a bunch of lines about how I'm using the app in a way that's not meant to be, and some vague noise about continuing in such a way may lead to repercussions to functionality and/or my account. What? I'm not supposed to use the delete button on the Pages Followed (or whatever) pop out list?
After ignoring these warnings and deleting as much as I could, one day I found the delete functionality would just stop working after deleting 20 or so pages, if at all. My frustration led to me pausing my account for a month or so, then reactivating when I felt motivated to delete more pages until again the functionality would either be limited or completely impossible. Finally I paused my account for 4 years until 2016 when I found I got delete all followed Pages. I was so happy about this I started using FB daily again but not nearly as much as I used to.
Funnily enough the same thing happened to me in 2021 on Instagram when I tried to unfollow accounts.
That said I've always thought FB had/has the potential to be a public utility as a local-first product. Like, families should have an FB. Your street or the floor of your building should have a FB. Neighborhoods should have a FB.It doesn't even necessarily need to be ad-free, just community oriented. I suppose that's Mastadon's intention but FB does it best IMHO
I find it so interesting that you say that, because I, for a long time, have been trying to manually erase/obfuscate details in my Instagram account—when I go to unlike posts in bulk, after about 40 or 50 of them Instagram gives me an incredibly vague "Something went wrong" error while spouting something about "protecting our community".
Even funnier, I did this with my story archive, and it actually hid my entire archive from me after I deleted about 10 of them. Now, I can't access my story archive except through Instagram's "Download Your Information" downloader. It now won't let me delete or even view my past stories.
i wonder if this is because they don't know how to secretly store (say, in an LLM) what your "reactions" were or whatever, so when you wholesale start wiping out your interactions on the site they have two conclusions - you're a bad actor who stole your account; or, you're stealing from them, stealing the only thing they care about, your personal info and preferences.
Parent's issues predate GDPR (i think?) - but i do know i tried one of those reddit "wholesale delete all content and interaction" apps/scripts/plugins whatever, and i got the same thing.
actually ignore my first, i just realized it's to stop people from either stealing and selling, or just the owner selling their account - imagine a 16 year old FB account, it'd be pretty hard to ban that account (you'd think).
I highly suggest you unfollow everyone on LinkedIn as well; the result is the same: nothing in your feed and no ads, but everything is still available to you—like searching for jobs and looking at profiles/messaging folks.
I don’t have a tool that does this for you, but it’s definitely the way to go. Literally when I go into LinkedIn it’s just a completely blank page; it’s fucking glorious.
—-
I deleted Twitter during the 2008 election cycle and I “disabled” my FB acct (allowing me access to Messenger and Marketplace; the former only used for the latter) and it’s been amazing.
This is how you deal with these companies: by using their services without the noise and advertising that keeps them afloat.
I did that for Facebook (unfollowed everyone but my direct family). It worked great for a time. Now my feed is filled to the brim with suggested posts from pages and groups that have nothing to do with me and low-quality fake AI images to push controversial fake news. It's become unusable unfortunately, so I don't use it anymore.
upthread is linked socialfixer plugin, it seemed exactly what i wanted so i installed it and ... it's exactly what i wanted. Just my friends and a couple groups i actively joined, on purpose. I don't know how facebook differentiates "joined by commenting" vs "joined by request", but it seems to do it. You can also tell it to stop scrolling, defaults to 10 posts. you can tell it to order chronologically, instead of "the algo".
I read this post whenever it was made (the OP) and i'm glad i read downpage a bit, because i remembered 3 plugins mentioned, and the other one is fbpurity, and the third is i forget, but the Vet mentioned it i think (ctrl-f vet)
> It also told me that it had permanently disabled my Facebook account—an account that I’d had for more than 15 years, and that was my primary way of staying in touch with family and friends around the world.
You don't need Facebook for that. Write down a list of the people you care about and contact them with some frequency, at least on their birthday.
contact them how? they don't read email (if they even have an address), they are not using any other messenger. and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable. at best i could send SMS, but that is not suitable (and across continents expensive) for real conversations. also none of the alternatives allow me to keep up with what's happening with them because they only post it on facebook. and there is at least one project that is important to me that i can't participate in without a facebook account because it is coordinated only there.
in general, reaching someone through other ways than their preferred channel only works if both sides are willing to do so. very often, especially with non-technical people that is simply not the case.
you can replace facebook with any other tool that is used for messaging, and you will find cases where not being able to access that tool would be a problem.
most of my contacts are only reachable through one specific messaging tool.
the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it. or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.
The actual reality is that you worked yourself into the untenable position of being so hands-off with people that you need a social network to do what a phone can do just as well, and that's because most of the people in everyone's social network are not actually people that we care to stay in touch with on a daily or even monthly basis. You don't need a social network. You choose to use one.
There are people in my facebook feed who I haven't seen in person in over 20 years. It's nice to keep up with them and their lives and families, but if I lost access to facebook tomorrow, it wouldn't change a thing for me. I am friendly with these people but I don't actually know them anymore and am not all that invested in their lives.
It is totally possible to have a robust social life and keep up with friends and family without Social Media. OP just needs to put in effort and not hide behind all those excuses. I burned my Facebook account at least 10 years ago, maybe 15... I can’t remember when, it’s been so long. Yet the people who are actually important to me stay in touch. I don’t consider someone an actual “friend” if they are unwilling to even communicate with me if I don’t use social media. These people aren’t actual friends.
it's not just friends. it's teachers, parents of my children's friends, my landlord. doctors, customers, employers, colleagues, even parents or my partner and other relatives, etc. these people absolutely do have the power to dictate which way i communicate with them (and for some of those people i absolutely don't want them to have my phone number if i can avoid it). same goes for groups, i may be able to ask individuals to switch messengers to stay in touch, but i can't move a whole group if that group matters to me.
the problem is that the choice of messengers is decided at the beginning when you meet someone for the first time. the person is not yet a friend but they may become a friend if you can only find a way to stay in touch. for me, as the more technical person in most cases this means that i must accept their choice of messenger, because i can't babysit them to switch. (though i do have counter examples where switching worked)
i travel a lot. when i come to a new place and i need to build up connections to locals it is totally not possible to come in and dictate which messenger they should use to communicate with me. i need to use theirs. only once i gained their trust and a friendship emerges i may suggest switching to a better way to communicate. but the reality is, that if i refuse use their messenger or worse are blocked from using it then i am unable to stay in touch with people i meet.
when i moved to china i long refused to use wechat. i was unable to stay in touch with most of the people i met during that time because of that. until i gave up resisting.
> the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it.
A right to an account on web platforms? Okay... does that apply to every single platform, or only those of a certain size? What size? What about people using the platform to spam, harass, or threaten other users?
> or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.
This is a far more reasonable take, though still not probably viable.
You didn't answer the rest of my questions, which are sort of relevant. If I run a small platform of a couple hundred users, and one or two of them are actively harassing and threatening other users, my only option should be taking them to court? To say nothing of jurisdictions, or anonymity, or any number of other issues, you should realize that this gives an unfair advantage to platforms that can spend more money on lawyers to argue their case, or lobby for legislative change, etc.
please use a more generous reading of what i said. clearly small companies shouldn't be held to the same standards as big ones. but even small companies should be able to provide an explanation for account closures, and no terms and conditions can abrogate the right to sue. so you don't have to take them to court, but they may well take you to court after you close their accounts. however if you have done your homework, and documented the abuse you'll win, and they will have to pay your court fees.
but until someone sues small companies will probably fly under the radar and the focus is on big companies as it should be. and yes big companies do have an advantage, that's why their actions deserve closer scrutiny.
I dunno. One of the core skills of bullies in school is taking advantage of "due process".
Funny in American schools teachers and administrators are known to show allyship to bullies in that they take no action to stop them unless they go really too far and kill somebody. I took a summer course though that was taught by two German instructors who actually led the bullying directly. Maybe they have a more toxic culture than the US.
I know the EU has a "right for embezzlers to reoffend" law which must have been an example of people who use their social skills as a weapon against other people using their social skills to turn the law into a weapon against the rest of us. The "right to be forgotten" is itself a crime when embezzling is concerned because embezzlers have a very high recidivism rate, essentially 100% when behavioral addictions like gambling are involved. This is a crime which can destroy businesses, ruin lives, deny people a secure retirement, and cause unemployment. I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot.
ignoring that in my opinion bullying is an entirely different issue that has nothing to do with what we are discussing, if bullies can take advantage of due process then the rules are bad or unsuitable, and just because that may be the case in schools that doesn't mean that due process is a bad idea to begin with.
yes, the laws are not perfect, may need to be changed. actually that is the core of most of this subthread. the example that for this case in germany the laws are better than in the UK, and that it is possible to improve the protection of users against these big companies.
I can think of no reason why embezzlement treason should ever be forgot
this is another example of a law that may not be perfect. again, laws can and should be changed when evidence emerges that the current laws are not suitable to protect people from harm.
in this particular case i would argue that we may not have enough data to decide. there may also be a component of believing that people can change, and the question is what causes them to recommit such a crime, and what can we do about it to change that. one problem here is that a permanent record does not stop people from recommitting a crime, but it does make it very difficult for them to reform because reform requires that past transgressions are forgotten.
but we could go on endlessly finding examples of laws that are broken, and argue about how they should be fixed, or claim that because there are other broken laws, then the one we are discussing must be broken too, or whatever the argument is here. but doing so while we are discussing one such law is not really helpful, and feels like whataboutism.
say, when 1-10% of a country's (or state's, or whatever) citizens are users of the service, someone should pop their head in and say "we need a different legal strategy for retention and user onboard/offboard."
It should be taught in MBA, and VCs should tell startups that aim to get "millions" of users that they need to plan, in advance, for this sort of thing.
This isn't really a gotcha, i'd put a hard line somewhere around "10% of the global population" as needing extreme scrutiny.
Due process? Tell me you’ve never read the Terms and Conditions without telling me. You don’t have a legal right to anything on Facebooks servers. Just because you invest effort and time into something doesn’t mean you have a right or ownership. You aren’t squatting on Facebook’s land. They just haven’t forced you off yet.
In some countries you have legal rights to information collected about you. This can include information collected by social media sites. Just because Facebook has a forced arbitration agreement in their TOS doesn't mean it's valid everywhere, especially in countries that nullify those clauses. The same goes with information collection clauses. Laws supercede terms of services.
And personally, while I don't mind users being able to be banned for harassing users, I do think everyone, including trolls, should have the right to information collected about them and their account
It’s valid in the UK where this person is limited to their rights. Sure people should have right to information collected about themselves but a lot of countries don’t extend that right. Perhaps in a different reality or in 10-15 years time things will change. Not while Zuck is sucking people dry of their data and people use Facebook because they see identity as a valid reason to give up their freedoms so they can sell something to someone they’ll never communicate with again.
Not for people in the UK where it matters. Yes I understand hypotheticals and navel gazing at Germany’s data laws. That doesn’t make them more real or possible for this incident.
Sounds nice but the UK doesn’t benefit in regards to laws from another country.
this person doesn't benefit, but the country does. people could demand a change based on the german example. i don't know how likely that is to happen now, but some time ago the UK used to be part of the EU, which means there was a time when such a change would have been quite likely actually.
the german federal cartel office forced for example amazon to change their terms and conditions so that they may no longer arbitrarily close accounts. account closures also must include a reason. further german users can now sue against closures in germany.
so yes, companies can not arbitrarily ignore due process in their term and conditions
Well this person lives in the UK where such protections do not extend so I do not see such relevance to this topic. I would also be curious to find out if there is a difference between “account closed” and “account disabled indefinitely”.
the point is that it doesn't have to be that way. and the examples in other countries show that it is indeed not like that everywhere. it is a fair question to ask which way is better, and looking at other ways to respond to these cases is relevant in my opinion.
It doesn’t have to be that way but it is and won’t be anything different until many variables change. As far as this case is concerned: no there is and never will be due process for this situation nor does any UK law allow for that.
Maybe the user could make an argument in court that Facebook was hurting his business but hard to prove with a free service. No real harm has come to this person.
Usually a “losing access to customers” argument is tied to loss of capital to make the argument stick. It is harder to tie a customer to loss of capital in a free service. Especially a free service that isn’t the only offering.
i don't see how you could come to that conclusion. first please read my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41350245 and then reread my parent comment, in particular the last paragraph where i talk about "these companies" and "major messaging systems". it's clearly not referring to "all companies" and even less to a custom tool you built for your friends. at best "replace facebook with any other tool" could be interpreted as applying to your tool, but even then it should be pretty obvious that i could not possibly have a problem not being able to access your tool unless at least one of your friends is also my friend.
> and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable
It's got nothing to do with introversion, you aren't comfortable makeing phonecalls. Start making phonecalls and it will get better.
If you truly struggle, stop lying to yourself that it's just your introversion and seek help. Mental health issues aren't something to be ashamed of, it is affecting your quality of life and should be diagnosed and treated by a professional.
I'm not saying you have a mental health issue. I'm just saying if you do, you don't need to let it effect your life.
possibly, though the reality is that i grew up before the internet and i was making phonecalls just fine then. somehow it got worse. either bad experiences, or something changed when i discovered the ability to communicate with written short messages instead. i have no idea.
i like to take the time to think before i answer, and that just doesn't work on the phone.
but the real point here is that you tell me i should be able to switch away from a method to communicate that i don't like but use another one that i like even less. that doesn't make any sense. why would i do that? (and i haven't even touched on the fact how much i hate giving people my phonenumber, on most messengers at least i can ignore people if they bother me)
The person in the best position to fight the nightmare company that is Facebook is the next Instagram, Oculus, or WhatsApp founder. Please don't sell to Facebook. kthxbai
I currently have 388 videos bookmarked on TikTok all about home design that I used to help guide decision making on my home remodel. I have 389 videos bookmarked about cooking. I’ve never amassed a collection of resources this size on any other platform, both text and video. It’s a really good system for disseminating knowledge that I care about.
I like the rule about loser paying attorney fees and such, but it should be capped at whatever the loser paid for their fees. That way, if you hire a local lawyer to sue a trillion dollar international corporation, sure, you might lose, but they will have to eat the cost for whatever legal fees they spend above “local lawyer rates” are. If they hire a local lawyer too, then by all means, loser has to pay for that attorney.
I created Weavus [1] as a way to take my events away from facebook. It's a social app (mobile only for now) where events are the main element and the home screen shows your upcoming events.
The philosophy is no feed, no ads, no addiction, just your real social life. It would have been easier to have users sign up with facebook, but I decided the best thing to do was to be entirely Meta-independent. They will undermine anything that threatens The Feed.
The idea is also to merge in a single app many needs of events, like group chats, photo albums, expenses splitting, and I'm planning to add more. I realized groups have similar needs to events, so I added them as well. They're not designed for massive communities though, more like small groups of friends.
All of this is stil very early in development and it definitely needs some more work before a Show HN, but we've found it very useful for weekends and holidays already.
Consider it an open beta, so feel free to give it a try and give me your honest feedback :)
Could you elaborate? I'm not a web dev and it's just a landing page in raw HTML/CSS (developed mostly on firefox btw). I intend to improve it but some pointers would be great.
I've seen nothing but ads directly promoting malware as "AI" image and video creation tools.. The malware steals credentials and uses the credentials to post similar ads from the compromised accounts. Facebook seems to be doing nothing as all methods of reporting are ineffective.
I was banned for life for pointing out how the Tuttle Twins choice of pricing $14.88 and $88.88 for their children's book bundle sale could be perceived as hate speech.
If it weren't for Fluff Busting Purity Facebook would be completely unusable. What I hate most is that it fills my news feed with crap from other people and groups that I have no interest in, and no desire to see.
I have noticed a phenomenon where people I am connected to on FB rarely post anymore. I have a ton of history on there but I mostly use it for the groups which is a very useful feature since I am in a few ham radio groups, my local HOA and community groups. I can’t stand Nextdoor so I don’t use it for similar purposes.
I'd enjoy watching Facebook make a miserable decline into obscurity. In the last couple years I've moved away from using Facebook Messenger to keep in touch with people, and I don't remember the last time I've opened Facebook "proper". The only reason I'd even consider opening it is for Marketplace.
Everyone says FB is sh*t and unusable, but every quarter their ad revenues go up. So are we wrong, or are the ad buyers wrong? Or is Instagram 80% of their revenues?
I do have FB account to communicate with couple of people which happens like once a year. Other than that, the further I stay from Zuck concoctions the better I feel.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if this person's efforts at helping people use Facebook less is materially affected by loss of access to Facebook, they weren't really helping people use it less.
He is clearly saying that the goal was to help people reap the benefits of facebook usage while limiting the drawbacks. The goal was never to get people to quit altogether.
It would be so much easier to believe this was a question of incentives ("it's not just/never just One Person At The Company") if Mark Zuckerberg didn't have a history of knowingly stealing from other people and generally being a backstabber
People who claim they would say the same thing about "...dumb fucks" because it's dumb to give away information (already pretty spurious, but whatever) seem to miss the other part where he says "If you need any info on people, just ask"
Because it sure seems like the pattern of behavior keeps continuing, rather than stopping, as a once young immature person who then learns
Why are you bootlicking for trillion dollar corporations? I would think on a forum this technical you could realize that the dynamic of and the philosophy behind these TOS's is not laudable.
Facebook - and Whatsapp and maybe Instagram too - need to be reframed as a global public utility rather than a private enterprise.
It would take some doing... But they're too big, too powerful, and too spooky to be allowed continue as they are.
Think of it like nationalizing water or rail services - expensive and complicated at first, but ever so worth it in the end.
"But that's not fair to the founders and shareholders!" - Fuck 'em. Facebook has done so much damage: amplifying misinformation, polarizing societies, warping our most vulnerable minds, selling scams, etc. Shareholders ought to count their blessings they haven't been held responsible yet. They made their money - enough.
Instagram is suffering the same fate, it doesn’t show my posts to my followers, really wants to show me post that have nothing to do with my interest and I’m getting a lot of likes from bots. I noticed my friends don’t post to it as much anymore so it’s feeling like a ghost town.
I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.