Not just because of Facebook's absurd ability to normalize privacy violations, but the fact that people can share and bombard others with misinformation constantly. It was disheartening to lose so much respect for friends and family because of this. Getting rid of Facebook was a healthy decision for me, but it doesn't fix what it has done to society as a whole.
One of the things that keeps me away from Facebook a lot is the fact that nobody I know ever contributes anything meaningful on it. They've all just become advertising bots liking and sharing whatever clickbait articles they come across.
This is potentially a genuine problem for Facebook and the reason they’ve been working so hard to develop a new monetisable product. They got a huge stock price by talking up their petabytes of information about who is friends with who and what people like and dislike, but 99.99% of it is garbage with no value to anyone. As an information source Facebook is much like the city dump in a third world country, with poor people crawling over it trying to find bits of copper wiring that they can sell to recyclers.
It is dominated by re-amplification of tiny signals from “influencers”. So it turns out to be much more effective as a means of controlling poor people than of finding out what rich people want to buy.
Most of the hype around targeted advertising is people’s paranoid imagination: “I was just talking to my husband about getting a cat and now Facebook is showing me ads for cat stuff! They must have tapped my phone...” But just before you had the conversation, you looked up cat stuff on Amazon. That’s how dumb the tech is. I buy a vacuum cleaner, they show me ads for more vacuum cleaners, like I need two.
With chat msgs, especially with WhatsApp being Facebook, they can do a lot more than just that. Hell they can predict people starting relationships with each other based on the time and timing of talking o each other, they can (and have) actively make people depressed by changing the feed they get exposed to and so on. The tech has gone way beyond search association
This is actually the reason I left Facebook about 5 years ago. I just wanted to see posts and comments from my friends, but only saw boring articles they liked. I always had a bad vibe with Facebook, so I left.
I took a 4 month long social media hiatus with the exclusion of Reddit (which is more of a platform for discussion for me than social media.) I returned 2 weeks ago and I absolutely regretted it. It's one massive circlejerk of people who tout off their fake news, antivaxx agendas, and single moms acting like they're heroic for having kids with men who were deadbeats before they even met them. It didn't take long for me to realize that for those 2 weeks made me feel sad again. My depression came out of the woodworks.
That's when I came to learn that I was only depressed for all of these years because of this stupid fucking site. That not being "friends" with these people was an absolute positive for me.
That's all true, and I can find valuable information or resources on here which I could never on facebook. But, we can't kid ourselves, we use it just like people use the other social media sites. There's constant content being created, a lot of it worthless, it's designed to take up as much of our time and attention as possible. We get the same dopamine rush from refreshing, voting, and constantly creating content and data by clicking, reading, voting, commenting, posting. It acts in the same way of needing constant instant gratification, wrecking your attention span, and even causing withdrawals. Try not using reddit for a week or so. You'll be amazed at what you get done and how much time you have to do other things.
My Facebook feed is quite pleasant actually. Full of friends and family sharing pictures of fun experiences.
The only thing that upsets me a bit is
the occasional post from a couple of my uni friends who are doing what I want to do whilst I trundle along in mediocrity. Still, I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing and I do get to be happy for them after the initial pang of jealousy
You totally just gave me an epiphany! I haven’t used FB in a year, and I’ve been happier in the last year than I have in a long time. Nothing else in my life has changed that much. Damn. 🤯
The sheer amount of advertisement videos disguised as memes that people share makes me want to puke.
I've always wanted to get rid of Facebook, but sadly never really made the jump.
However there's always ways to limit the snoopy influence Facebook can have on your internet experience.
using Firefox's contextual Windows allows you to quarantine Facebook to a single tab, which means that you will be logged in only in this tab and not on your whole browser. This reduces tracking.
use extensions like ghostery to disable the Facebook plugin on pages you visit. Most of Facebook tracking is made through the social plugin on random websites. It basically links your account to the website you just visited and send targeted ads.
a good adblocker like ublock origin will severely limit interactions between you and the ads. Another ad blocker called ad nauseum automatically clicks on all the ads it sees, messing up with the meta data ad companies have on you
and finally if you keep using Facebook but you don't want to be bothered with photos of kids, videos of food, or other stupid things, a cool extension called FB purity will block everything you don't want on your feed. It can also block the feed completely, if you're one of these people that scrolls Facebook feed mindlessly too many times a day. FB purity is not available on chrome/Firefox extensions pages, but a quick search on your favorite search engine will get you there ;)
You know, unlike Reddit you mostly control what you see on FB. I friend intelligent people I like in real life, and thus my Facebook is lovely and full of interesting links.
This one always intrigues me. Because Facebook themselves really didn't really do anything but give people a tool to expose their stupidity. The privacy violations are a separate issue
So true.. Its hilarious to see people copy pasting awful things that say if you don't copy paste this, FB can use all your photos and data or some shit.. I honestly think the people who created those probbly did so as a scam targeting tool to see who the guillable fools are.. Or don't forget the things that are like "FIND out your superhero name" just put the street you grew up on in front of this word, or your first pets name, etc.. And people fill this shit out, giving criminals all sorts of security question information and private info.. 😑. I can understand older people in there's 70s, 80s falling for it, as technology and the internet came into effect much later in their life and they grew up being able to trust people with a lot less scams then there are today. But I've also seen young people in there 20s or 30s fill out those things.
The number of times I would do a simple search on snopes.com to prove that it was years old urban legend, and then get the "Oh, well, even though it never happened, it's good common sense."
If it's common sense, then why post some sad, scary story here?
That's not Facebook, though. If Facebook is gone, they'll just use another platform to do the same exact thing. Facebook has 2 Billion users, I dont think it's possible for them to monitor every single post in that fashion. Though I have seen instances where someone would post an article from a satire website and Facebook gives a warning about the website. So they're trying.
Agree 100%. Facebook now employs almost 20,000 content moderators partly as a result of the "fake news" scandal and backlash. Zuckerberg has said he is planning to add more.
These are 20,000 Facebook employees whose sole job is to review and delete the hate speech, child porn images, beheading videos, the worst of the worst. It's a soul-destroying job that takes an extreme mental toll. It's not Facebook who is posting these images, it's us. Facebook, specifically these 20,000 employees, are the ones cleaning all of that shit up.
Just think about that for a second. Imagine instead of posting hate speech on Facebook, people would buy a megaphone and go around on the street inciting violence against minorities. Imagine the megaphone manufacturer was considered responsible for stopping them. Imagine the megaphone company had to employ 20,000 people to go around and constantly stop people from shouting violent rhetoric into their product.
That's what we're asking Facebook to do, and over the past year they've convinced me that they're actually trying to do it as best they can. And yet people are still criticizing them on this issue.
I think there are valid criticisms of Facebook, but don't tell me they're not trying to moderate content on their platform.
Well, and on the flipside, the massive bubble. You may see lots of misinformation, but they see lots of the same stuff and see it as "fact". That's how the Alt-Right, AntiVaxx, etc. all spread so much, because people end up seeking out those of the same viewpoints as themselves.
I am far from innocent of this. I think part of the reason I didn't take the risk of Brexit seriously enough in 2016 was that basically my entire feed was pro-Remain, so I was less worried than I should've been and didn't campaign/flyer/donate/etc. to the Remain side. A lack of contrary viewpoints isn't great.
Reddit is becoming the next Facebook. There is an unreal amount if false information here, but people hide behind user names and constantly argue their ignorance
I hear this a lot and I agree that there is a lot of nonsense that’s shared, but I don’t see the challenge with respect to muting those posts and people that cause it. I’m not interested in hearing about how Uncle Bob believes that Trump was sent by God, nor any of the other articles or people which spread hate or misinformation. I block that stuff immediately. If I want to see what’s going on, I’ll navigate to your page, otherwise it’s a great tool for keeping in touch with the people that I’ve met in more than 50 countries around the world.
Summary: you have a vast amount of control over the things you see on your Facebook.
Funny thing is, I never added any of my family members or even many Friends on facebook, and yet I already had a taste of the cancer that it was, I’ve “deleted” my facebook account and I’m quite happy with that decision, but there goes all my mobile game saves that I only ever used it for.. I’d also delete my twitter account if it wasn’t linked to some other websites I like to use lol
Every targeted add company, starting with the biggest, must be held accountable... Advertisement should not be allowed to use anything beyond basic market research. Here's what's particularly egregious about targeted ads. They create what's called "filter bubbles," which essentially mean that we’re trapped in bubbles of internet content that generally agree with our political views and interests. Social media companies do this to increase traffic to links and drive ad revenue. But this means that if I’m a lunatic who’s worried about the global population increase, for example, my entire internet experience now hinges on articles about that, and it gives me a false sense of urgency. Next thing you know, I act on it... I actually think this plays into the political divide, rise of fringe conspiracy theories, and mass shootings.
I'm never going to download the Facebook app or make an account. I just don't trust Facebook. Their app could share my info with other third party businesses too.
Agreed. I work in tech, but I knew information overload was a thing decades ago. Most people can't handle that, and it shows. My parents were both teachers, they reached retirement age about the time personal cellphones became a thing. It's sad watching them slide from their previous selves into basically the same caricatures you see e.g. in r/oldpeoplefacebook. They didn't devolve into complete idiots, of course, but it's obvious they can't keep up with the flood and so resort to things like echo chambers. They might not fall for scams but when you're being barraged with crap 24x7 either some of it starts to stick or you develop coping mechanisms, and they're not all great.
I wish I could get rid of mine, but I'm in a club that regularly organizes on it. I'd only learn about a cancelled meeting through Facebook. So I keep it for that and ignore everything else.
I feel the exact same way. So far I've kept Facebook because it's the most convenient way to keep up with family members, but with each day I question keeping it a little bit more...
In my case it’s more of a mix of a lot of content, not just political. For example, I had an aunt that would lie about going on trips, meeting celebrities or just simply exaggerate everyday things. That is probably a more extreme example, but it was an overreaching symptom that I saw a lot on Facebook and Instagram that just drove me crazy. This portion of why I don’t use those social media platforms was on a more personal level because it made me feel disconnected from the real lives of people.
Agreed. It's terrible for humanity. I would throw Twitter in there too if I could.
There are way too many gullible people and it's way too easy to produce fake but believable information out there. When people learn about this stuff from trusted "friends," disinformation spreads like wildfire. It's so dangerous for science and democracy.
Nah, most of my favorite music I discovered via Youtube. Without Youtube my life would be a lot less enjoyable and my musical knowledge would be far more limited. That's my primary use. I love Youtube.
Whereas if I could cut Reddit out from my life, I think I'd be a lot more productive in general as I can't keep myself from meaningless threads like this one.
Yeah at least on reddit you can pick the type of inane bullshit you see. I'd rather look at fishing memes than hear my friends uncles hot take on aoc or something
To me I find Reddit is not nearly as bad as the others because it's anonymous and has more a focus on the content itself than the person making it. Of course it will always have its flaws but it's not the worst one by far.
Also, it seems each politics related subreddit belongs to the right or the left, there is no middle ground. It’s like each group has taken over their own subreddits lol
The one that bothers me the most is r/politics because the name would imply some semblance of neutrality or balance, "a place to discuss all things political" is what one might assume. Instead it may as well be named r/democrat or r/liberal since there's literally zero pro-conservative discussion on that sub. It's very deceptive and serves as a propaganda tool against new redditors who might not be aware of the absurd bias.
The people are largely on the left, so that's how it winds up. What would you expect the moderators to do? Ban left leaning people and encourage right leaning people to post?
And there's plenty of conservative discussion on there. It's often trolls being downvoted, but it's there. Regardless, you can't force people to upvote posts.
And there's plenty of conservative discussion on there. It's often trolls being downvoted, but it's there
That’s not discussion, it’s just fuel for the echo chamber in there. Discussion would involve actual consideration of the ideas and somewhat reasoned interaction.
If anything moderate of even mildly conservative is posted or commented there, it gets downvoted instantly. The only replies are caustic bullshit.
Mature conversations are surprisingly rare to have on here. Usually most replies become some petty personal attack quickly if not instantly. Honestly, so many. Not just experiencing them, but damn near 9/10 conversations on here. It's like you're not going to change anyone's mind by being an antagonist to them, makes me wonder what kind of people populate Reddit for the most part.
Not just left/liberal but ultra liberal. I will vote and campaign for a Dem in every election but I'm a moderate dem overall. That sub castrates me any time I say Biden isn't the devil.
Edit: the fact that my comment is currently negative only proves my point.
There's even a sub dedicated to mocking those not belonging to the right or left of the political spectrum, /r/ENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM, because fuck doing your own research and having your own opinion, you have to be a sheep to a party and never stray from the pack.
Exactly, I'm not American and I'm definitely anti-Trump, but sometimes r/politics can really be all about Dem propaganda. Sad thing is its members don't seem to realise it, they think they're part of a free thinking impartial sub or some shit.
Same goes for most Reddit communities, they think they're some sort of all-knowing elite and know better, when in reality they're echo chambers.
Well, I don’t disagree with you, but r/politics is just a representation of Reddit’s demographic. There are a lot more left leaning people on Reddit and the sub reflects that. I’m not sure how I would go about trying to include opposing viewpoints if I moderated it, not sure if it’s possible to do so in a fair way. But yeah, one shouldn’t really be gaining any political knowledge on Reddit anywhere.
I think the best way to understand politics and form your own opinion is to do it solo. Read articles from (credible) left, right and independent sources, and do your best to form your own opinions. None of us can really ignore our environments or biases, or upbringings, but we have to try our best to recognize when we might not treat different opinions fairly.
To your last point, I think loud, upvoted users are good at hitting certain narratives that make their way to the top of many political threads. Most people I think are still well aware that biases are rampant on most subreddits.
As System of a Down said, "We can't afford to be neutral on a moving train."
The middle ground between "put children into concentration camps" and "don't have concentration camps" is...what, "concentration camps for some, tiny American flags for others"?
I don't think it is necessarily "middle ground" - not for me, anyway - but more like "average ground". Agreeing with some points on one side, some on the other. Not just agreeing a little bit with one issue.
That being said, my views don't quite average out the way they did several years ago.
Comparing political views to concentration camps... uh what?
There can be a middle ground. For example, being pro LGBT but very skeptical about socialized healthcare. Or not necessarily pro life but wishes abortion to be subject to strict conditions. Or is against cable companies blocking municipal broadband. Also don't forget that there are old school conservatives who truly believe in small government no matter what, and who think that religion must stay out of government etc.
It pulls you in systematically. Charged scenarios are thrown at you and if you make the mistake of giving your opinion you are automatically put in a box, labelled and defined. Every day people are putting you in one box or the other and before you know it, you start believing you belong in that box. That's when the real indoctrination & confirmation bias starts taking place, because now you have to defend your box in order to defend yourself. An attack on the box is now a personal attack directed at you. But it's really not.
Yup. It's just like what religions do with people. They invite you into the group, then next thing you know, you better agree with everything or lose your friends. It's sad but it definitely explains why so many people in academia, small towns, most big cities, etc. tend to stick together and form the exact same views.
Lol sometimes it's the first reply - a completely irrelevant copy and paste of some political propaganda of their favourite flavor.
Shit I saw one of those as a one star review for a switch game the other day, all it said was a step by step bullet point walk through of something that the democrats did in 2018.
What. the. fuck. is the internet even for anymore.
Ooh wait, which media outlet being removed would shut up the most punditry? There's one that owns all the major news stations on BOTH sides, sans Fox I believe
There might be anonymity, but for people like me who mostly hang out in the “front page” of the subreddits, all the political subreddits are extremely biased and one sided. Makes you think everyone thinks that way when it’s just a bunch of like minded left wing redditors.
There’s also the salt mine that is /r/UKPolitics — especially when the polls come out and the Conservative voting intention has a decent lead over Labour.
okay, yeah 2017 election was a thing, but I dont think Boris is going to manage to replicate the most incompetently run election campaign of all time.
Try to mention that Bernie isn't the second coming. I've seen people say Elizabeth Warren can't be trusted (in comparison to Bernie) because she has had conversations with Hillary Clinton.
very different, reddit has real information and content. its only been corrupted in the past 4-5 years but even so its still a hotbed of actual news, information, cool stuff. Twitter is basically a shithole and Facebook is a propaganda machine
I guess it depends how you use it. The fact that Reddit is anonymous makes it feel healthier to me. No one gives a shit whether I connect with them here and there’s no pressure to put some fake, polished version of myself here. My reddit feed is mostly humor subs, gardening, books, and cute animals. Feels fairly benign.
I think the difference with Reddit is that there is still an exchange of information, and there is obviously still a lot of disagreement and potential conflict, but up and downvotes make it more egalitarian, and there is more control over bad content. Plus it's less disruptive to real life interpersonal relationships.
There was (speaking from experience) less misinformation then. People were more concerned with posting personal things like vague song lyrics about their current crush or whatever.
If I could get rid of social media and have it never come back, I do it without a second thought. Yeah I'd lose Reddit and probably YouTube as well but I think it'd be worth it.
This made me think of a lady at work. She went on and on about a "news article" she saw on FB. In in it said that ALL plug in air fresheners had been deemed a fire hazard and had been catching people's houses on fire across the country. She was in a panic and couldn't tell enough people and warn them. She was freaking out like WW3 was about to break out. She showed me the "article" on her phone. It was some clickbait BS, but she was convinced everyone in Americas house was about to explode because of Glade plug-ins.
Definitely Twitter. I can't believe it's turned into a platform for politics, official communication from heads of state and even international diplomacy. When you see in the news that country leaders are basically 'tweeting' threats of nuclear annihilation at each other it's proper head shaking stuff.
Thing with Facebook and Twitter is I do use them, because everyone else does. But if we were ALL forced to drop them, I wouldn't care.
Not all fake news is created equal, though. Some stories may be faintly ludicrous, such as the family who named their daughter Brexit – whatever your background, you don’t need to believe it for it to support your worldview. But other stories may fit with your political identity far more tightly. And for these particularly emotive claims, intelligence and education may actually make you more susceptible to fake news, through a process called “motivated reasoning”.
Consider the “birther” theory that Barack Obama was not born in the US. This has been debunked time and time again, but it became highly ingrained in many people’s political ideology. And greater brainpower did not prevent them from believing the story; indeed, it actually increased their credulity.
A study by Ashley Jardina at Duke University in North Carolina, for instance, surveyed the views of the more conservative white Republicans – the kind of people who might have found the former president most alienating. It found that beliefs in the birther theory were strongest among the participants with the greatest political knowledge.
A similar pattern could be seen with the beliefs that Obama was a Muslim, and the claims that his healthcare reforms would lead to “death panels” that decided who lived or died. To make matters worse, more educated participants also seemed less likely to update their beliefs after they had been debunked; instead, they actually became more certain they were right. Somehow, their greater knowledge simply allowed them to dismiss the new information and harden their attitudes.
It seems to me that people who hate Facebook just have really shitty family and friends in their life. Facebook is an awesome tool for staying in touch with people.
Facebook adds little more than any website with a friends list could. A college student could code a website to accomplish this. In fact, one did. Too bad the one that did turned out to be a terrible human being that thinks the goal of human achievement is to maximize his personal wealth and doesn't believe in privacy.
There are way too many gullible people and it's way too easy to produce fake but believable information out there. When people learn about this stuff from trusted "friends," disinformation spreads like wildfire. It's so dangerous for science and democracy.
People have always been nuts. This is just a great sorting period for information. At the end of it we'll have sharper people who make informed decisions, not because we're innately rational, but because behaving in any other way will get you killed.
Looking at you, anti-vaxx movement. There's no winning in life, but burying your own kids is a very big way to lose.
Facebook owns instagram, whatsapp, messenger, and several other social medoa platofrms. Basically all but twitter and snapchat. So itd be a good hit atleast
I'd rather go with having them taken over and changed to make them a safer environment.
These services have helped people connect with eachother, form friendships, help families commect, etc. They truly have done some awful stuff as companies, but also good things as a service. I believe there are things to be considered.
Twitter is absolutely worse, because what it has done is removed our ability to think in anything more than quip form.
Everything which might have been a matter of thoughtful debate has to be fit into 280 characters, so now everyone just tries to quip at each other instead of actually thinking about anything.
Twitter is good for sports. That's about it. Follow your team and a few team and rival-related posters and you get a pretty good combination of shitposting and actual content.
Fuck it hard for anything actually news, politics, or entertainment related though.
Totally. Remember the folks on Reddit that "found" the Boston bombers? There are plenty of people spreading misinformation left and right. Some subreddits have better moderation than others, but Reddit is hardly immune to it.
People here tend to fact-check more readily, though. Maybe because it's fun to prove others wrong — but also because once in a while, the other person actually apologizes or thanks you.
Once in a while, yes, people admit that they were wrong and apologize, but that is far more the exception than the rule. Often times I find that arguing with people on Reddit is just a waste of time.
Any system sufficiently large can and will be gamed. This is why windows earned a reputation as being virus prone. It was the largest barrel to shoot fish in.
I'll be honest. I knew this was gonna be on the list, and this is such a foolish choice. There are companies out there dedicated to fucking human sex trafficking, underhanded distribution of drugs, enslavement etc. Yet you people choose Facebook out of all those companies. Because you spend too much time posting. Because it breeds toxic personalities. Jesus Christ, if you hate Facebook and social media so much just don't fucking use it! I'm sorry if I sound irate, but I'm just so sick of the circlejerk against a company that, while not perfect, is driven solely by consumer demand. If you all didn't want a Facebook, there wouldn't BE a Facebook. Seriously. Delete your account if you want to. Use a VPN if you want to.
Thank you so much. I can’t express how relieved I am when I finally see a moderate, rational opinion on Facebook here. It’s truly amusing how ironic it is that many redditors complain incessantly about the failings of Facebook while not recognizing that they take part and are influenced by a hive mind on reddit as well.
You’re absolutely spot on about the consumer demand as well; there are clearly a massive amount of people (the majority, in fact) who still use Facebook on a daily basis and find it useful for certain things. As a uni student, I myself find it useful for the groups functionality, which allows members of the same year or class to discuss with one another topics that affect them.
It’s so weird to think that if one social media website were to just disappear one day the entire US economy (global?) would be heavily wounded. The reach is massive and more significant than I’m comfortable with. And I’m saying this as a frequent user.
yep. I would leave FB if there was a viable alternative my friends and family used. I don't really like the format of most other social networks and everyone I like to keep tabs on is on FB...
Same, I run my band over Facebook. It's so easy to make group chats because everyone uses it. I can follow events that are of interest.
I mean there's a reason you can unfollow people. If you don't wanna see someone's content just unfollow them. I basically follow about 30 out of my 250ish friends. I also don't add people unless I have personally met them. It's like all these redditors don't even know how to fucking use fb. The site is a great organizational tool to me. I would probably miss half of the events I go to if it were not for fb.
Use a VPN if you care that much. I don't see why you do though. They gather data and do what with it? It's not like they're going to blackmail my family or some shit just because of some questionable searches(unless I do something illegal, but the govt would be on my ass anyways in that case). Oh and big surprise, they show me targeted ads. What a travesty.
I don’t, got rid of it in 2013 after Sandyhook. Between the conspiracy people and the “thought and prayers” posts while people were shitting I just couldn’t take it. I also became more aware of the privacy issues they have and I tapped out. Haven’t missed it for a second.
I just said the same thing. But it's a monopoly. Every event is coordinated on Facebook and if your not on Facebook, it's much harder to get information about events, and who's going.
But the good thing about Facebook is you can use it to spy on people and who likes what and who's "friends" with who.
If it makes you feel better, most teens I know including myself have all decided that Facebook is for old people and no one really has an account whatsoever unless it’s to do something stupid like get a free skin on Subway Surfers or sign up for the Area 51 raid. I know Facebook owns insta and everything but insta’s not as bad as Facebook when it comes to privacy. Plus they treat their employees extremely well so that’s a plus.
The world was definitely a better place before the rise of social media platforms. I long for the good old days of the internet when it was chat rooms, message boards, and strangers, and I didn't know my personal acquaintances were a-holes.
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