Nope, it seems the actual stats back this up.
I like the jokes and the political snark on my FB feed.
What REALLY amuses me is, I can get into a BIG back and forth debate with one of my friends. But then when I see them in real life, nothing ever gets said. It’s like that whole conversation on FB never happened. It’s like they’re too embarrassed to talk to you about it.
I wish FB had the option of only showing posts where my friend actually made a comment, not just liked or shared it. That would cut out about 60% of the posts that show up on my feed, and greatly increase the value of them. If you don’t actually have anything to say, then I don’t really need to see it.
I went the opposite way. I’ve never had a Facebook account, but so many people lately have been telling me its benefits that I decided to try one.
I had been reading about all the privacy issues, the breaches, the hacks, the congressional sessions on Facebook and anything else in the news about it.
I opened my account, and within a couple days, Facebook shuts it down for “suspicious activity” and asks for my phone number. At this point, my Facebook days may be over before they started. I already found them too invasive for my taste without giving them my phone number.
I too wish there was a platform that gave access to groups without being so invasive. I’ve researched Facebook alternatives. They all have pros and cons, but I haven’t found one that has the benefits without the drawbacks, although I’m taking other people’s word on the benefits since I’ve only been on the platform for a couple days.
I too dislike seeing too much from one friend. There are certain people who post all the time that if I so much as like or respond to one of their posts that’s almost all I see in my feed for the next week. I wish FB wasn’t so hyperactive in trying to show me only things it thinks I’ll like rather than a more moderate mixture.
I only rarely see posts that someone only “liked” and I don’t think it’s in Facebook’s interest to stop them because most of them that I do see are advertisements.
Seeing posts that others have shared is the point of sharing them: although I would not turn them off, I always like flexibility so I wouldn’t mind having an option of turning them off as long as it came in a package of a lot more configurable options (like algorithm sensitivity that I mentioned above.)
This. I can really do without stupid memes that my FB friends are merely passing along.
I started being active on FB earlier this year (I’ve had an account for ages, but almost never used it), and gave it a try for a few months. Now I’ve all but backed out of it again, because the ratio of crap to people I care about sharing stuff about themselves is about 10 to 1.
And FB makes it worse by whatever algorithm they use to decide what’s at or near the top of your feed. Shit floats to the top, including, for no apparent reason, shit that you’d already seen days ago. I’ve really come to despise the whole medium.
When Facebook first became a thing I had an account for less than a day. I opened the account with a brand new gmail address and a phony name. Up popped pictures of three “people you may know” – but I had no idea who they were. Turned out to be a friend of my sister (who lived 2000 miles away) and the girlfriends of my sister’s sons. The only possible way FB had made that connection was by scanning my regular email. I quickly deleted the account and never went back – that was enough for me.
Engineer who created Facebook ‘like’ button swears off social media apps
That makes sense and may explain why my account was flagged for suspicious activity. I also used a new email address. But I made sure that the email address didn’t have any link to a previous one. I had no recommended “friends”.
Without people to link to me (or vouch for me, I guess), I became “suspicious.”
I find them (the people who created Facebook) to be much more “suspicious” than I will ever be.
Back in the day, facebook had a button that said “see less from this person”. I’m not sure why they got rid of it, but this is pretty much exactly what it was intended for. If you had friend that posted 8 times a day, it might show you 3 posts a week, using whatever algorithm they had to decide which posts are more important.
The feature has been gone for years, but I did notice just recently that they added a new one, “Mute this person for 30 days”, I assume it does just that.
On a similar note, I always recommend hiding/unfollowing friends, rather than unfriending them, at least in these cases.
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4. FB is overstuffed with all kinds of shit nobody needs and doesn’t work well. And I say that as someone who blocks ads on the desktop version. Event invites are “friends” just spamming you with their petty business shit; it is simply impossible to separate out that from things that you might actually want to do. If you join a group, then you get those notifications in your face all day long. Too busy, too much to sort out. Overstimulating and useless at the same time.
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Get F.B. Purity. It cleans all this up. It’s 100% user customization. It (on a computer) gets rid of ads, but you can also choose to get rid of events, invitations and just about anything else. It runs locally on your computer and esentially intercepts the facebook feed and decides what to show you, based on your own personal choices.
Also, the whole reason I got it was because I could make my feed chronological instead of only being able to view it in the order that FB decided I “want” to see it.
Seriously, go take a look at F.B. Purity.
That alone is enough to get me to check it out. The other stuff would be icing on the cake.
Definitely will check out FB Purity. I have mostly family members on FB (several of whom, it turns out, are white nationalists-- but that’s another story) plus a few good friends.
I find that Facebook can’t give me what I’m hungry for, which is intelligent conversation. I keep going back time after time expecting it to be something more than it is. I have had a few satisfying interactions talking about political issues with people on the right – avoiding screeds and reaching détente on several topics, but that’s unusual.
It’s not the only way. They use the phone number, which most people give so they can use Messenger. I’ve done experiments, making new accounts, first with only a new email, and then a new email and using (a friend’s) phone number. The result is that, with only the email, they couldn’t connect me with a single person in anyway connected with me. But when I added the phone number, they started connecting me with people that my friend knew (but I didn’t).
That’s why nobody goes there anymore - it’s too crowded.
I have a limited “friend” circle, most of whom I don’t follow, so the majority of posts I see are from members of a few specialty groups.
How else am I supposed to keep up with the latest trends in gesneriad and fig culture?
Besides, I get a boot out of Facebook’s weird “People You May Know” display. In addition to folks posing with figs or small spaniels, I get an ever-changing assortment of young women from around the globe. First it was Hispanic hotties, then cuties of the Former Soviet Socialist Republics, followed by Turkish arm candy and now Southeast Asian dishes, clad in variously provocative outfits with many gazing intently into their cellphones (about to take selfies? checking their e-mail?). Somewhere there’s a frustrated entity wondering which ethnic groups can be recruited to separate me from my $$$. They just haven’t hit on the right algorithm yet. 
Ooh, interesting! Have you had any experience with locked accounts? Are there any indicators that create the locked accounts? I was thinking of trying another account, but I wasn’t sure if it would be worth it since I’d be doing the same thing, and I figured they’d lock it for the same reason, whatever that was. Is there any action I can avoid that would allow me to continue on there without getting a locked account?
Hell, I gave up on the site months ago. My wife was right - Facebook is shit. It brings out either the worst or the dullest in people, the content provided is unbearably monotonous, and it has an ugly and cluttered interface. The only reason I have yet to delete my account is that Laura has to use it for her organizing work (TedX, SA Food Bank, work, others) and she doesn’t want her status changing from married to… whatever… as she is concerned that may bring out the creepers (even if she can still keep her status as “married” to somebody w/o a FB account, she wants ppl to know her hubbie is a real person.)
But, yeah, don’t even have it installed on my new phone. Google and Sprint track me enough, no need to add another monitor voluntarily.
I’ve made a game out of trying to guess who the “People You May Know” are linked to, that I’m also linked to. Name, photo, number of shared contacts. All are considered. So far, I’m really really bad at this game.
Correct me if I’m wrong please, but most of the above are criticisms of their Top Stories news feed I think.
I try to keep the Most Recent sort active but Facebook seems to manipulate it without regard to any chronological sense as well.
I use Facebook to post and look at family pictures and funny pictures or videos from friends and family that are scattered around the world. It seems tailored made for that, not sure what other app I could use to do that.
I don’t expect much from a social media site.
I had the same thing happen. Without an account you can’t see any Facebook page. A bunch of idiot companies and non-profits have decided that they don’t need a Website, just a FB page. So to even find out their hours of operation you have to log in to FB.
So I rolled up an account and looked at the page I needed to access. A week or so later the same thing happened with another org. So I go to log into the account and they want a phone number, which I grudgingly supplied, only to have them request a photo as well, in order to continue.
So I deleted the account. :mad:
I find it useful. Some of my FB family come up with some funny cartoons or videos which are worth a chuckle. If someone in the family has a baby, I can see what it looks like within an hour of its birth. I confess I also use it to see how my lost loves are doing and amazingly they didn’t spend their lives pining away after me. Family parties are easy to plan with FB, you can coordinate dishes to bring pretty easy. I even find the mindless GOP/KKK/KGB postings useful if only to see what the other side is thinking. “OMG! Hillary gave 20% of our uranium to Russia!” kind of thing.