Social Media

Over the last year or so I have disengaged from most social media platforms. The last to possibly go is FB. The problem is I have friends in a variety of communities. I am weighing the cost/benefit ratio for staying with the platform. I am leaning towards departure, I feel it is becoming a theft of time. What are your thoughts about social media engagement?
 
I pulled the Facebook plug when Facebook went public. I was dumbfounded that I make Zuck a billionaire.
Did not delete my profile and even hit on a few women I am friends with afterwords.
Now, fast-forward to today and I am so disappointed that Zuck knows who I am hitting on via PRIVATE messages.
There is no sense deleting any of it. Once the info is out of the bag there is no deleting your data.

I am a news junkie and I am so disappointed at the output at Google News.
They could do great work but they chose to push politics more and more.
I am tuning them out now.

I only use a flip phone with very limited browser. So not a cell phone == computer user.

If it wern't for Facebook I would not have heard of my High School 30th Class Reunion.
So there was value to me.
But before Facebook there was Classmates.com. A paid service.
Would you now have PAID for a 'classmates.com' if you knew your details were not whored out by data pimps.
Why yes I would have.
 
I dislike Facebook much more than Twitter, specifically I dislike the concept of “Friends” vs “Followers”.

On Facebook I (and others I’ve spoken to) feel obliged to accept “Friend Requests” from real life friends and family, occasionally work colleagues too. They then spout a load of stuff, Facebook then dredges through it and decides to show you the stuff that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the world not able to afford a holiday/kids/house, or whatever.
I’ve resolved to looking at Facebook once a day from my home desktop, which actually only gets powered up two or three times a week.

Contrast that to Twitter where I don’t feel obliged to “Follow” people I know, but rather people I like. I use it as a sort of interactive RSS feed. Plus third party tools (Tweetbot) allow me to hide tweets with specific words in so I can further curate what I want to see.
Because of the relationship difference you can stop following me, but i am still welcome to follow you, and that’s fine.

With the somewhat new ability to “unfollow” a Facebook friend, Facebook now struggles to find posts to show me. I often see a friends post, that I’ve already seen the day before, followed by three or four adverts, then the end of the feed…

Regarding the theft of time, I thought the same about Twitter a while ago. I trialled a week without it, but that didn’t work for me (actually I spent more time browsing here and other forums). When I returned to Twitter I decided one of the problems was I was following too many people.
After cutting the amount of people I followed from around 200 to around 60, I’d open Twitter to find nothing had changed then simply move on.

Depending on where exactly Facebook takes your time, it may be a stepping stone to unlike groups or unfollow friends that don’t post constructive things for you, and even defriend people who you’ve not interacted with for some time.
 
I spend just as much time here on forums.freebsd.org as I do on FB. The difference is that on FB, I keep up with old friends, like from 50 years ago, that aren't going to be anywhere else. The benefit of FB is that it can be used and you can control how it uses you.

That and my Mom is on FB and we are friends. But she is not a BSD user, so here, I can freely say stuff without her reprimands!
 
Let's start with Google: It is a search company. It's purpose is to give people those search results that the people want to see, meaning the results that they click on. If Google News gives you too much politics, it is because either you yourself, or the average person is clicking on those results more frequently. There is some way to tune Google news to emphasize certain sections over others, or to weight them, but I don't know the details (found it once, adjusted what I liked and disliked, reduced sports, turned off entertainment, increased international politics, and then forgot how to adjust it). Do some web searches for it.

One particular aspect of social media is that much of it is simply a 1-on-1 communication mechanism. These days, the communication techniques I use include face-to-face meetings (like driving over to a neighbor), paper letters (those are getting to be very rare and used for formal occasions, like legal proceedings), landline phone, cell phone, e-mails, and an insanely large variety of instant messages / voice / video calls, including at least cell phone SMS, Facebook Messenger, Skype, Google Hangouts, WhatsApp, Apple iMessage, Facetime, and so on. And some of those work better than others in unexpected places. For example, a few weeks ago I was in a strange foreign country, but staying in a nice hotel with good WiFi. Long distance calls to home were very expensive, and had bad voice quality. So instead I used Facebook Messenger calls to talk to my wife, and sometimes even Facebook video calls 3-way with my son and my wife.

But that meant that my wife had to create a personal Facebook account (she only had an account she used to care care of the Facebook page of some work-related stuff). So now she is a Facebook "user", in the sense that she has an account, with nearly nothing posted.

Social media, and in particular Facebook and LinkedIn, are a two-edged sword. As described above, to some extent they are simply a necessity: you have to sign up, just to use their free and very useful messaging / communication mechanisms. I actually have quite a few friends that I can ONLY reach via Facebook Messenger, or via LinkedIn. While I fully expect Facebook / Skype / WhatsApp / Apple / ... to listen to my personal communications, I don't care: The NSA is listening to all my phone calls too, and privacy of communication is unfortunately a thing of the past. If I really need to have a conversation that I expect others to not see, I either meet with them in person (with my wife, my manager, my doctor, or my lawyer), or I send a paper letter in a sealed envelope.

The other useful feature of things like Facebook is as a replacement for closed e-mail lists. For example, a few months ago a group of about 20 friends found themselves having been kicked out of their favorite discussion forum (for reasons of power struggle among administrators of that forum). We had no place to connect. What did we do? We quickly created a secret and closed Facebook group. Took less than a few hours, and we were communicating again.

The public features of Facebook and friends are not all that bad, if you use them correctly. I post things there. When I do, I first think about what I want the whole world to see about me. My political views? Hardly. My preference in drinks, cars, and such things? Only if I really want to. My profession? Not at all. I do post pictures and texts about my hobbies there.
 
I find the effect of social media (which makes filter bubbles and detachment from reality almost a given) very very dangerous for people, families and cultures. In the end, a danger for humanity.

The feedback loops of facebook for example make divorce more likely. You get to see so many happy people, models, whatever. Sadly, the human brain keeps track of 50, maybe 100 people (tribe, village, clan) so anything else does not really register. And so the world is full of happy princes[es], and you are the miserable one who deserves (!!!) better. So divorce rate correlates with face book usage.

In some decades, society will have adapted, IFF it survives. So do with social media like with adult beverages. Know the limit and keep it away from minors. Just go out and imagine each mobile smartphone in someones hand, lit up, was a bottle. You would consider THAT a huge problem, yes?
 
I only participate in Twitter and anonymously. My wife did pressure me to create a Facebook account (aaarrrggghhh) but I do not put pictures of myself, just my avatar which is one of my dogs. I also post a lot of technical (FreeBSD of course!) things like screenshots, or other things of that nature that drive her nuts ;)
 
Off-topic of the FreeBSD forums is especially social media. All of the forum can technically be seen as it for the subject of FreeBSD, but it's useful.
It's ok, but I don't see as much discussion on setting up interesting or new features. There are, but some areas don't interest me, or fewer people participate in them. It's great when they do. There's a lot of complaints how they don't want the FreeBSD forums to be a social media, yet, many including myself seem to gravitate towards the subjects on these forums. There's also gravitation away from technical subjects, which is fine, but that is a social media habit. This type of arguably social media is fine, but not to get wrapped up in like how some absorbed self-serving companies (Facebook) promote (not the case here).

There's social media that's harmless or informative, then there's exploitative and (to various degrees) time wasting social media. Social media such as Facebook, I never understood its potential usefulness, and that was because it turned out later, it wasn't ultimately useful to anyone except for exploitation and far too often meaningless social circles: namely Zuckerberg', his associates, those who bought data to manipulate, then those who get trapped in it, but get used and still don't realize it. I read Twitter, and I don't see it like Facebook. Twitter is straightforward in its purpose and policies, has useful purposes, but it's not truly anonymous.
 
I was an FB member for only a couple months. That's all the time it took me to figure out it was really just a network metadata collector. I was a Gmail beta tester, and thought it was OK at the time, but that was before the (ahem) "new and improved" privacy policy. I never agreed to the update, but they didn't kill the account. I rarely use it anymore. Forums are social media. They're media (connect people), and that's social. But, forums are a long way removed from the big-data oriented social media for the masses sites. I stay away from the latter.
 
Facebook gives me a way to get in touch or stay in touch with people whose telephone numbers I don't have, but I don't hang out there. Most of the people on my contact list there don't hang out there either; rather, there are maybe 10 or 20, out of about 300, who actually do seem to check in regularly every day, and who seem to spend a lot of time there. Of those, many of them seem to be there mainly for political trolling, but there are also a few who use Facebook to organize real-life social events, or post their vacation pictures, pix of their kids or themselves, cartoons, gags, artistic efforts, philosophical diatribes, or even mundane stuff like photos of what they had to eat for dinner sometimes.

Even if I had no account there, my name and picture would still be on there, due to friends and relatives posting their own stuff that sometimes has me in it.
 
Facebook is anti-social because it separates people from the internet. That is a travesty.
 
Can you imagine people sending in their DNA to a website. Upload your whole genealogy.
"For Free" they said. Wow what a great deal.

Before Facebook there was Myspace. AOL bought them on their death spiral.

Was Usenet Social Media?
Looking back I think so.
IRC Social Media... yup
 
Can you imagine people sending in their DNA to a website. Upload you whole genealogy. For Free they said.
Wow.
They've solved 20 year old crimes from DNA from a scene that was matched up to someone who've never had their DNA tests, because they narrowed them down from extended relatives who submitted DNA.
I was spewing vendom about ...

Anyway, while I see the dangers of Facebook, the government is not likely out to get people, unless they do something like try to build a bomb, make a corrupt person upset, are a target for a corrupt person, or if they express their opinion in an authoritatian country. Calm down.
 
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IRC Social Media... yup
I use IRC as a social thing. It's been wonderful, but it does not offer a way to connect people except the few on your channels. For actually connecting people, and me with them, I use the internet.

It is unfortunate that the internet, or perhaps more specifically, the WWW, is not something that people feel is theirs and they steadfastly refuse to take an active role and instead just watch - completely passively. I make sites for people and that helps them, but in terms of an actual "social network" kind of function, I made a simple page with some basic stuff that I feel distinguishes me on a personal or family level. Unlike Facebook, this is picked up by search engines. From that I have gotten emails and telephone calls from long lost friends and others from half a century ago.

PS: I actually put my email, telephone, and address, on that little page. In a period of 10 years or more, that has not resulted in any security or privacy issues. Many people are surprised that they can just "google" me for my contact info.
 
I'm a social media hypocrite. I know what Facebook does is wrong, but I use it anyway, because everyone else does.
My best friend is working all the hours God sends and trying for a baby... If I told her she must use another app specifically to contact me, we'd never talk. I doubt she could even log in to IRC - it's too technical for her. My favourite thing is computers; her favourite thing is nice shoes :D.
I long for the MSN days when conversations were only logged if you chose file->save. That seems much more obvious/intuitive/civilised.
Just on a purely technical level, Facebook's web UI is awful too. So cluttered.
 
... Unlike Facebook, this is picked up by search engines. From that I have gotten emails and telephone calls from long lost friends and others from half a century ago.

PS: I actually put my email, telephone, and address, on that little page. In a period of 10 years or more, that has not resulted in any security or privacy issues. Many people are surprised that they can just "google" me for my contact info.

I have been the recipient of contacts from my ancestral land, via a small site I used to run. I think blogs on big commercial blog sites are actually de-rated in search engines, so they're sort of anti-connect, anti-social sites.

Anyway, I easily found your city, as it's in your forum profile. That's a little refreshing. The "wolf under every tree" mentality that almost every netizen feels has driven the population into self induced permanent anonymity from the rest of the population (you mostly only know other netizens as screen names) - while crooks and gubmints can know you better than any of your nameless screen friends. Doesn't seem right. The mentality keeps the individuals in the population isolated from each other, actually.

I looked up your locale on Google maps - you have hundreds of miles of national forest to your south, and virtually nobody within maybe 50 miles on the other sides? Plus, it's probably cold up there? So, you're perfectly safe up there! (except for bear, of course :) ).

BTW: Good to see you posting again,
- Ron
 
It is all fine in moderation. I scan through facebook about once a week to see if anything is happening; then I get back to work the FreeBSD forums.
Things like Twitter and Facebook only get bad once people invest their lives in passively consuming content and uploading all their information.
If any social media requires information from me, I just mash the keyboard and send them jibberish. No commitment, 100% safe and no real loss of functionality.

Social media is just like the tax man... Try to send him as little correct information as possible ;)
 
Next up ditch the fitbit or smart phone and get a phone with a removable battery for true locational freedom..
Allow yourself to be free from the digital pimps.
 
Next up ditch the fitbit or smart phone and get a phone with a removable battery for true locational freedom..
Allow yourself to be free from the digital pimps.

Very true statement. Ultimately, if you don't have what you term "locational freedom," you will eventually not have any freedom at all. In countries where they ask for papers at strategic points on public travel conduits, they are using that process to eliminate "locational freedom". People think such phraseology sounds antiquated, because it's no longer necessary to ask for papers at checkpoints, since that process has been automated with technology. However; while the process can now proceed clandestinely with automation, the same dangers still exist whether it's enacted via persons or instead by technologies.

People who believe that all the collection will always be used just for digital pimping are being short sighted and naive. What amazes me is how people are so willing to accept the referenced technologies - such that they make fashion statements by adorning themselves with it. I hope they understand whose fault it is at the point where the downsides are easily recognized. These concepts are really connected with social media too IMO.

Don't assume your battery can't track you, and keep wearing your IR/5.0 welder's glasses (new term to know is "tracking photon") :).

-Ron
 
How far are you gonna go?
Today it is almost impossible not to be tracked.
Example:
  • cards (for payment, access to public transportation, etc.). Are you able to do daily life without any? If not, you are tracked.
  • cars (both personal cars and carpool / rental services): all modern vehicles are tracked through their internal systems, and all vehicles through traffic surveillance
  • identification: any place you need to identify yourself (for example to get access to a service or a place) you can be tracked.
web browsers: don't get me started. Many browsers track you whenever they can; if they can't get an id (from a sign in for example) they use a fingerprint instead.
 
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