Is it just me, or is Facebook starting to feel like the new Amway?
It’s just you.
Get off my lawn!
None. He’s confusing me with his other wife. 
I use Adblock Plus and never ever see any ads on Facebook. One. Two, 99.9% of the time I have headphones plugged in so sound from Facebook, of which there is none, unless it’s a YouTube video link I clicked on, wouldn’t be heard anyway. I never play games and only have a couple of music apps. I’ve never gotten malware/spyware from Facebook because I don’t DO anything on Facebook to get any.
I joined Facebook years ago and rarely used it, but I started using Facebook more when I was in the middle of a project last summer that a lot of people were interested in, and it was a good way to get the word out to a targeted audience. I don’t have that many friends, 160, and the majority are connected to me in very specific ways. Some are relatives who live in other parts of the country. Some are fellow fans of specific artists. Some are fans of me, for something I did. I don’t use my real name so people have to work to find me. I don’t accept friend requests from people I don’t know unless they tell me why they’re sending the add request, and it better be a good reason.
I can’t even begin to understand the criticism of friending lots of people you don’t know or don’t want to know. Nobody has to be friends with anyone they don’t want to be friends with. I have my own criticisms of Facebook, but that’s not one of them. My major criticism is that I can’t add a new friend, comment, Like or join groups without it showing up in my Friend’s feed. You used to be able to block that from happening, and now you can’t. I don’t want that kind of random shit on my friend’s pages. The only thing that should show up there is if I post something to my Wall that I want them to see. Since I can’t control that anymore I’ve pretty much stopped posting to Facebook and have drifted away.
But still, geez, if you’re gonna criticize Facebook, it should be for real reasons and not made-up bullshit like the OP (and gaffa).
So you don’t enjoy a social networking site because you’re anti-social. What’s your problem then? I don’t particularly care for role-playing games but I’m not crusading against RPG websites. I just accept that they’re not for me and move on.
Facebook lets you keep up with old friends, make new ones, connect with people with similar interests, etc. And it’s not even an age thing. My grandma uses it to keep up with her daughters on a much more regular basis than would be possible with the phone. They even recently used it to easily plan a surprise birthday party for one of my aunts.
So to reiterate, just because you’re terrified of running into people in your past for some reason doesn’t mean others don’t enjoy it and see the value in it.
The complaints I hear about facebook, from people who don’t use it, are for the most part the exact complaints that people made about email. Which were the same complaints people no doubt made about telephones.
And most people who complain about what they find annoying about facebook, the things which easy, instant solutions have been posted here, they refuse to accept those solutions, they don’t want to hear them. Because they want to, and will, chime in every conversation they’re in in the future and make the same complaints. And when the same easy solutions are presented to them, they will refuse to consider them once again.
I believe you can do that. Whenever you do something you don’t want everyone to see, go to the posting on your wall, move your mouse over to the right, and click the “remove” button. This should remove it from the news feed. The only problem is that you have to do it retroactively, so it’s still kind of a pain.
Not to mention, no one is forcing them to even use Facebook. The guy has probably never even been ON Facebook, and all of a sudden, it’s the Red Menace.
I already do that because I hate the way that clutters up my page. I always remove “**** and **** are now friends” or “**** has commented on **** link/photo/whatever/” or “**** has joined such-and-such group” though that rarely appears since I quit joining/fanning/liking Groups and Pages and quit the majority of Groups and Pages I did belong to.
You’re saying that Removing those things from my page also removes them from my friend’s news feed?
Couple points:
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Whenever new technology is invented, we simultaneously invent uses for it. For example, before Thomas Edison, we used the telegraph. Before the telegraph, we used letters. Now that we have the technology to freely and easily watch each other, we do.
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Why are reality TV shows so popular? In the past 20-30 years, the amount of entertainment has increased. Whenever something increases in quantity, you can be sure that the amount of crap also increases. Nowadays, it’s really hard to find one tv show or movie that has a full cast of decent actors reading a script by a decent writer. Reality shows bring reality and drama to the emotions and writing. Stuff like facebook, survivor, etc. actually provide entertainment at a quality level that is sorely lacking in TV shows and films today.
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Before Facebook, it wasn’t easy to become a celebrity. You had to have a pretty awesome viral video or super blog to become one. But, notice how many people tried. Today, it’s still nearly impossible to become a celebrity, but Facebook provides the illusion that you are one and users feel like they’re relevant and important in the world.