Probably not uglier, as race-hatred is just about as ugly as humans get. But the anti-Clinton shriek is going to outpower and outscream Cat 5 hurricanes. Not to mention the “we’re the 34% and we were totally screwed out of a fair and balanced election” crowd. (Jesus, I have a headache already thinking about it.)
It is absolutely against FB’s working model to allow any filtering. If they’re ever beaten into submission on the point, it will be because they’re fading in popularity, and it will break everything that users like about it. (All of which feeds into what the owners like about it as a data-mining and tracking system as well.)
You can have freedom. Or you can have control. Don’t count on ever having both at once. (Hmm. That sounds familiar…)
I have one friend who is on “my side” (she’s a liberal as am I) but every. little. thing. sends her in a huge Facebook tizzy about injustice. Shares and likes and re-posts all day long about the injustices du jour.
I nearly un-followed her when Bernie was winding down his campaign because I was just tired of her constant posts of “THE SYSTEM IS RIGGED!! IT HAS FAILED US!! WE ARE DOOOOOOOOMED!!!” I made a funny comment during the DNC about how uncomfortable Bernie looked when Hillary was addressing him directly during her speech and my friend just went off on me.
“Thankfully” she has moved on to some other aspect of her life that takes up all her mental time…which is good, because it’s so much healthier for her. She is taking care of her body and working on losing weight and I sincerely think that calming the fuck down about all of the injustice in the world will help her reduce her stress 100-fold and be more successful with her health goals.
I only have a couple right-wing friends and they don’t bother me. Like someone else said I have made good use of the “Hide all from [crazy page]” so I can avoid some of the stuff they like and share. No biggie.
Otherwise, Facebook is an echo chamber, politically. And a place for me to post about my dogs.
There was, for a fleeting moment, a way to see only the “best” posts from your friends. But they got rid of that.
One of the best tools right now is when someone shares a post or you see that they liked a post, and you don’t want to see it is click the gray arrow in the upper right hand. You can choose “Hide Post” which I think might sort of filter out you seeing further likes/shares by that person or “Hide All From [stupid facebook account that posted it in the first place]”. The “Hide All From…” option will keep you from seeing further activity from the stupid page or website, and that might help more than you think.
Dropped the wife of a gamer buddy last year because she was completely batshit insane and I was tired of just blocking her. “How is this muslim still in the White House!” and other nonsense. Her husband rolled out of the National Guard for lack of promotion from his then-current rank. I don’t think she was bright enough to grok that her constant, insane anti-Obama, anti-Democrat rants likely stunted his career.
Had another gamer buddy drop me last month, saying “You democrats just want everyone to be like you”. Couldn’t really respond to him and haven’t seen him since, but my thoughts were “Well, if you mean not being racist assholes like you, then I’ll take that as a compliment!”.
In my case the “crazy contentious political season” stretches back to the recent Scottish indy referendum. I had to temporarily unfollow a couple of people I’ve been friends with since high school because they became, err, somewhat detached from reality on the subject. We’re still actual real-life friends, though. That was quite a fractious time, both online and off.
Oddly the Brexit referendum provoked no great arguments in my circles - pretty much everyone supported the remain position as far as I could tell.
I ditched Facebook for Twitter a few months ago. Much more fun. I don’t know where I heard it (maybe here) but Facebook is where you lie to your family; Twitter is where you tell the truth to strangers. Much more in my wheelhouse.
My Facebooking is minimal. My last post was a completely sincere mass-thank-you for people clicking a button on my birthday.
Unfortunately, most political posts I see are those “quotes-on-a-jpeg”, often without commentary would trigger a filter.
I always wonder where do they find them “Hey guys, here’s the anti-Obama/Trump/Hillary thing to post today, spread the word!” I remember one day when three different people, who don’t know each other, posted the same thing with the same picture!
I unfriended one of my high school acquaintances for posting some hateful and bigoted things. At first I was like, I’ll just ignore it. Then he started posting all sorts of lying conspiracy stuff on any of my Hillary Clinton posts (where were just sharing official statements that sort of thing). In the past I may have engaged, but I came to the point where I realized angry Facebook arguments don’t end well. So I didn’t respond. But he would post ignorant stuff on every. single. shared. post. I was getting pretty agitated at this behavior when I clicked on his page and saw he was railing against how “Jews” were driving in a high Jewish population town close to where we grew up. I saw that and I was like… I don’t really need this person as a friend in my life.
That’s a good question. I lean right. Yet I have many left wing friends. How is that possible if you can’t be friends with someone you disagree with on a “existential moral topic?” With that standard all religions should be in a perpetual state of war.
One thing I got into fairly heated arguments about- some friends were avid Bernie supporters. Now that fine, I like Bernie, but slightly preferred Clinton.
However, their posts NEVER praised Bernies ideas, they just attacked Clinton. They kept doing this even after the election was secure, even after Bernie gave his very magnanimous concession speech, even after they stated they would hold their nose and vote for Clinton as trump was far worse. Yet the Hillary bashing continued, some of which came straight from the Rove hate machine.
I’ve blocked one person’s posts, but she’s okay as a person so I didn’t unfriend her. I have only unfriended one person in the entire time I’ve been on FB and that was a former high school classmate who was incessantly posting vile things about Muslims, blacks, Latinos, and about every other minority out there. I just decided he wasn’t the kind of person I could call a friend or even an acquaintance. Some of my friends are probably a bit racist and prejudiced but not in a hateful way (not that I minimize the impact of that), but for most of them I sense that they still have the ability to treat fellow human beings with kindness and fairness, regardless of race and that there might be hope that they can perhaps relent with some of their biases at some point. But for this individual who was unfriended, I just didn’t see that.
The way I look at it is this: I’m black. My daughter is black. Why would I want someone who gladly perpetuates racism and oppression against black people (and thereby, my daughter) to look at pictures of my kid or share in my family’s joy? I’m not ok with “being one of the good ones” or whatever.
Like I said in my posts, I still have plenty of Republican friends-people who I’d trust with everything. I may disagree with what they think, but I can respect them as a person. But once you start crossing the line into racism then I have no use for them. They’re part of the reason why I have to worry about my kid’s life.
Either you’re not having frank discussions on these topics, or your principles aren’t as strong as you pretend. “How can you support abortion when abortion is murder? I like your dog pics, though.”
It is one thing to have political differences, even profound ones, with friends. It is another when said differences are expressed in vile or dickish fashion.
Yup. IRL, I dropped a friend because he and a woman stood (well, she stood, he’s in a wheel chair) very loudly speaking about how they wanted Obama assassinated because he was some fascist muslim whatever. While we’re all waiting for the bus with 40 other people.
Frankly, I don’t care who the President is. If you want to talk loudly in a public place about wanting that person assassinated, while throwing in racist smears (the woman used the N-word) and outright lies, I have no desire to associate with you.
I would have done the same if Dick Cheney (honestly the most vile example I can use) was President. That behavior isn’t acceptable to me.
That is exactly how it works for me but, then again, I don’t choose my friends based on political beliefs and I am not that principled. When it comes to Facebook in particular, this issue is easy to correct through settings and its machine learning algorithms. It doesn’t just give you a raw feed of everything people are posting - everyone’s feed is different especially if you customize your own settings and use the ‘Like’ buttons consistently.
My mother made a big, dramatic deal about dropping off of Facebook until after the elections because she couldn’t take all the conflict. We have many of the same friends and I don’t see much of that at all because I turned off the biggest offenders a long time ago the same way I don’t see any game invitations.
She showed me her feed and it looked like an insane gang took a dump on her screen but it doesn’t need to be that way. Mine is set up so that I just get nice pics, birthday notifications, nostalgia messages and links to articles that I am usually interested in. A few political messages slip through (left, right and everything else) but not many and I just turn those off too when I see them.
Facebook is not the place to announce your opinion on abortion, Donald Trump’s hair or your profound views about how the country needs to be radically reformed.
I’ve considered dropping 2 people. one woman because she is such a right winger. She always posts things from conspiracy boards or stories that make minorities look bad.
The other whos a major feminist and thinks Hillary is the dream. She said the night of Hillary’s nomination her and her daughter held hands and cried with tears of joy.
Well if you are monotheistic religion A you can’t be friends with a person who is monotheistic religion B? You are each wrong and condemned to Hell or some other punishment according to the other. Real world isn’t quite so black and white.
So the idea is you don’t attack the other person to that degree to earn an enemy. Are you going to change someone’s mind by calling them names and attacking their core principles? No.
