Social Media

[hitest]

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?

[LeFrettchen]

I use FB cause lot of friends use it, so we can stay connected together, but I find that FB is full of crap and fake news/articles, it's scary.

I also use LinkedIn, cause I'll need to find a job after my formation.
So only 2 social media, and it's more than enough for me...

And in general, I don't feel confortable with social networks : I find'em really intrusive and potentially dangerous, so I'm really reluctant to use them.
And when I see my nieces happily using them, I feel like an old goat : just not something for me or my generation.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by LeFrettchen

I use FB cause lot of friends use it, so we can stay connected together, but I find that FB is full of crap and fake news/articles, it's scary.

Agreed! My only regret about deleting my FB account is lack of connectivity with friends. I am leaning towards deleting my account tomorrow. Unless I chicken out. Haha.

[sacerdos_daemonis]

I wish I could off constructive feedback, but I have never seen Face Book and Twitter. I seem to survive without such things though.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by sacerdos_daemonis

I wish I could off constructive feedback, but I have never seen Face Book and Twitter. I seem to survive without such things though.

I will learn to do that in the coming days and weeks. Just deleted my FB account.

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by LeFrettchen

I use FB cause lot of friends use it, so we can stay connected together, but I find that FB is full of crap and fake news/articles, it's scary.

Yes, but I think modern Internet is full of that. On the positive side after thorough searching one usually finds valuable knowledge. This takes days. Sometimes for somebody new to topic it may take weeks to filter information on their own.

Originally Posted by hitest

Agreed! My only regret about deleting my FB account is lack of connectivity with friends.

I recently convinced a few friends to Signal Private Messenger

[e1-531g]

Problem with Facebook is that they track also people who don't have FB account. I think it is important to block domains of Facebook to prevent that. I have this in Unbound config file:

local-zone: "facebook.com." refuse
local-zone: "facebook.net." refuse
local-zone: "fbcdn.com." refuse
local-zone: "fbcdn.net." refuse
local-zone: "fbsbx.com." refuse
local-zone: "tfbnw.net." refuse
local-zone: "fb.me." refuse
local-zone: "fb.com." refuse
local-zone: "fbcdn-profile-a.akamaihd.net." refuse
local-zone: "facebook-web-clients.appspot.com." refuse
local-zone: "fbsbx.com.online-metrix.net." refuse
local-zone: "facebook.com.edgekey.net." refuse
local-zone: "facebook.net.edgekey.net." refuse
local-zone: "facebook.com.edgesuite.net." refuse
local-zone: "instagram.com." refuse
local-zone: "cdninstagram.com." refuse
local-zone: "whatsapp.com." refuse

[scottro]

How many opinions do you need? I see you posted the same thing on FreeBSD forums. Are you trying to find a reason to change your mind?

[hitest]

Originally Posted by scottro

How many opinions do you need? I see you posted the same thing on FreeBSD forums. Are you trying to find a reason to change your mind?

Good point! I did indeed! I felt very ambivalent about deleting my account up until I deleted it two days ago. I was looking for a variety of opinions. I am glad that I did delete the account. I'm not going back to that.

[jggimi]

I've been considering joining FB. Really. Only because of a local club I belong to, with an extremely non-technical membership.

• About half of the members use FB only, and equate FB with "the Internet." I assume those folks transitioned over from AOL.
• The other half receive notices via a Yahoo mailing list and most of that half don't understand what a mailing list is, or how to use it. They perceive it as an inbound service only.
• We also have a (mostly) static website which provides calendars and PDF newsletters, and it gets low usage. Many members have trouble with the PDFs.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by jggimi

I've been considering joining FB. Really. Only because of a local club I belong to, with an extremely non-technical membership.

One of many reasons why I quit.

Attention Engineers

[jggimi]

Yes, but his big three objections don't address the reason why I would consider FB. To reach people electronically who can't easily be reached any other way.

And knowing, if I bite that particular bullet, what I would be eating.

[Funkygoby]

I joined FB 4 years ago, I guess, because I used to work as an artist.
This was part of a process where I created my website, twitter, youtube, foo, bar,... account in order to reach people.
This brought exactly 0 gig. Complete waste of effort (but the website was a learning exeprience).

With that in mind, I believe social medias are evil because:
- this by no mean a communication tool. You have to blend with the flow. On FB, if you don't post often, your next post might not reach a lot of person. tl;dr: post crap, post often
- on the cognitive aspect, not suitable for a human being. You end up in circles where most peoples/ideas align with your opinion, no reflexion on yourself. You are either shown all the world misery or fuzzy/comfy stuff: You might loose connexion with your reality, direct interaction with people, life ...
- life is ephemeral by nature. As sad as it sounds, you can't keep all friends, toys, memories, pictures forever. And this is fine. True friendships are not the ones that need monthly call, FB, whatever
- distractions. I feel sad when I see people riveted to their screens, couples at the restaurant spending most of the evening answering notifications or simply browsing FB. Also, I think boredom, loneliness is part of life (unless you are deeply suffering from it of course) and should not be "fixed" through superficial distractions

I am mostly reacting on the abusive use of social medias. My point is that they are not healthy for humans and society.
On a more nuanced note, a friend of mine once said: "It's a tool. Just use it, don't be controlled by it". Maybe he meant it both ways: don't depend on it and don't be afraid by it either. Can't remember exactly, I was browsing daemonforums on my phone...

[shep]

As far as facebook/twitter/linkedin, my major gripe is that I lack control. I joined linkedin and found it difficult to cancel. The process to dis-enroll was buried and even after completing it, I continued to get emails. It was not just me, there was a class action suit. Linkedin said they were having "technical" problems. I wondered if they were anything like AOL where you were worth more as advertising revenue.

I finally sent a registered letter threatening FCC reports/legal action if I received another email after 30 days.

Many members have trouble with the PDFs.

As far as the club not being able to handle pdf's - Seriously??? The major browsers all support pdf and, if not, are more than happy to install an Adobe plugin.

I previously managed a club Website with monthly newsletters and the biggest pdf issue was the newsletter editor putting in unscaled/high resolution (ie more than the 72dpi of the monitors at that time) photos. In a rural area, with members on dialup, it would take about 20 minutes to download the newsletter.

[jggimi]

Originally Posted by shep

Seriously???

Yeah. The majority of these people use smartphones, and aren't sure at any moment if they're using SMS, iMessage, eMail, browsers, or their FB app.

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by Funkygoby

With that in mind, I believe social medias are evil because:
- this by no mean a communication tool. You have to blend with the flow. On FB, if you don't post often, your next post might not reach a lot of person. tl;dr: post crap, post often
- on the cognitive aspect, not suitable for a human being. You end up in circles where most peoples/ideas align with your opinion, no reflexion on yourself. You are either shown all the world misery or fuzzy/comfy stuff: You might loose connexion with your reality, direct interaction with people, life ...
- life is ephemeral by nature. As sad as it sounds, you can't keep all friends, toys, memories, pictures forever. And this is fine. True friendships are not the ones that need monthly call, FB, whatever
- distractions. I feel sad when I see people riveted to their screens, couples at the restaurant spending most of the evening answering notifications or simply browsing FB. Also, I think boredom, loneliness is part of life (unless you are deeply suffering from it of course) and should not be "fixed" through superficial distractions

I am mostly reacting on the abusive use of social medias. My point is that they are not healthy for humans and society.
On a more nuanced note, a friend of mine once said: "It's a tool. Just use it, don't be controlled by it". Maybe he meant it both ways: don't depend on it and don't be afraid by it either. Can't remember exactly, I was browsing daemonforums on my phone...

Social media is a tool. There is a lot of bad things that can be said about social media, but there are also upsides. Social media connects some people (some with serious knowledge and experience), who would be otherwise inaccessible.
When it comes to ending up in circles - it is dangerous that you can't stop reflection about yourself, but I think that in general society also have some taboo topics and prejudices. Sometimes it is worth to disconnect from general society opinion to discuss some topics. It should be judged on case-by-case basis, though.

[hitest]

Originally Posted by jggimi

Yes, but his big three objections don't address the reason why I would consider FB. To reach people electronically who can't easily be reached any other way.

And knowing, if I bite that particular bullet, what I would be eating.

For me the most negative aspect of FB is digital addiction. The FB engineers have designed their product to be habit forming,

[e1-531g]

Originally Posted by hitest

For me the most negative aspect of FB is digital addiction. The FB engineers have designed their product to be habit forming,

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist

[hitest]

Originally Posted by e1-531g

How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist

Good article. Thanks. Yes. I did feel like I was being manipulated by FB. Six days clean of FB.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I don't have any social media accounts at all, it's easy when you don't have any friends

It can be irritating sometimes though, for example my local aikido club puts out updates & videos via FB and they're difficult to read with pop-ups being thrust in my face every few seconds demanding that I create an account

It looks like there will be an effort to force FB to take action over the conspiracy theorist accounts and anti-vaccination bollocks that gets prominence due to their ubiquity, this is long overdue IMO.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...ng-controversy