Facebook - helpful or waste?

[chibae]

Also I would like to echo the dis-dain a few others have expressed for the "free" games. The barage of requests are rediculous and unnecessary, but more importantly to me, I have watched people close to me spend hundreds of dollars that they do not have on these "free" games. Somebody please burn down Farmville!

Don't blame facebook for this. There are plenty of free game sites out there which can time/money suck people just as well.

For those who are barraged with game requests form "friends" explain to them that they can create specific friends lists and to put you on the NO NOTIFICATION list. The only two people I am friends with whom I get requests from are my choldren's mothers-in-law. Everyone has tactfully suggested it to them but they just don't want to bother. Since it's only those two, and they are family now, I just ignore the requests.

 

[Keith]

Oh I don't blame FB for the poor decisions of others chibs. I'm just venting the farmville frustrations. Had I created Fville tho I would be filthy stinkin rich lol.
And untill the need arises I am gald to be rid of FB.

 

[fullcollapse]

There have been at least three 20-ish girls that have friended me, with no message, and when I checked out their profiles, all I can conclude is that their intentions were probably less than honorable. They seem to collect guys.

Then there's 20-something female co-workers that are my friend for awhile but when they leave the company they defriend me. Some just quietly defriend me later on, without any discernible reason.

There have also been a few women that have friended me and a bazillion others, whether they knew us or not. I believe that they are lonely women, based upon listing themselves as single and interested in men.

Chicks dig CPs.

 

[chibae]

I have no FB friends from work except my boss. My company has extremly strict social media rules. my boss and I are friends in the real world as well and we are able to both post to FB without a single mention of work other than a simple "boy I'm tired, was a long week' I wouldn't want to be in the position of watching co-workers, ex co-workers, etc posting things against the workplace rules, which include posting the company name.

 

[jimscott]

I remember being roped into Farmville, Farmtown, Mafia Wars, Cafe World.... and one time the site was asking me for my credit card. I'm like, these are imaginary crops... I decided that I'm removing the APPs for those games and just keeping Scrabble & Words With Friends. I tolerate the constant ads, only because I love Scrabble.

 

[Whimgrinder]

I find it interesting to see just how much of a polarizing effect F-book has on a population. It seems that people generally determine (at least in part) its usefulness based on how much of the negative aspects they are willing to tolerate. IE: if you can put up with advertising, erosion of privacy rights, and banal game requests, then you are much more likely to regard F-book as a useful resource. I also find it amusing to watch many F-book fans step up to defend the utility, as if F-book really needed defending! ;-)

 

[jimscott]

I found a lot of long lost friends from grade school, college, former jobs. That alone is worth it to me.

 

[Favian]

Bahaha! Sometimes I share the hate for FB like some of you, but I refused to close it because…..

 

[RL7836]

I find it interesting to see just how much of a polarizing effect F-book has on a population.

Yes, even knowing of this effect when I posted, I was still amazed by the vitriol.

I envision two primary catalysts for my future joining .... this is one ...

I found a lot of long lost friends from grade school, college, former jobs. That alone is worth it to me.

Starting sometime when my kids were in their early teens, we lost the time to stay in contact with many friends -- or maybe a more accurate way of saying it is that all of the 'stuff' associated with work (both my wife & I worked full time), school, school activities (two kids in multiple varsity sports, tournaments, etc) crowded out any efforts to keep in touch with many others. Finding the long-lost people from school, college & old work will be another pleasant positive - I'm really looking forward to reconnecting ...

... and this is the other catalyst

...It is also easier to post pictures for my family to see what we are doing (because, believe it or not, some people actually do care what others are doing...

We plan to get a small 5th wheel RV and do a significant amount of North American travel as well as some in more far-flung regions (Europe, Central & South America & maybe a few Nep mountains). During these travels, we would like to stay connected with family & friends & share some of what we are experiencing. I can either re-invent the wheel with my own creation of a website or possibly start a blog or join the big, bad FB ...

While I'm not obviously not pleased that my curiosity and need for assistance was a catalyst for nasty feelings, the information that has been shared has been very helpful & appreciated. I need to reread the thread some more to solidify a few of my questions (which will follow)... Thanks again for contributing to an expansion of my FB knowledge.

 

[Whimgrinder]

During these travels, we would like to stay connected with family & friends & share some of what we are experiencing. I can either re-invent the wheel with my own creation of a website or possibly start a blog or join the big, bad FB ...

IMO, this is where a personal blog excels. In that environment, you control the signal-to-noise ratio: the content is yours alone and participants/viewers do not have to spend any energy sorting the content from the background noise.

 

[amphirion]

Problem with blogs is that it takes a while to network stuff and finding friends that also have blogs can be difficult. Add the fact that finding family members who you haven't seen in a while and have no idea where they live or their phone numbers will make locating them difficult.

You can create a both of best worlds though. Use your Facebook account to reach out to family and friends and use it to direct them to your blog. As such only use minimal info on Facebook.

 

[Whimgrinder]

Problem with blogs is that it takes a while to network stuff and finding friends that also have blogs can be difficult. Add the fact that finding family members who you haven't seen in a while and have no idea where they live or their phone numbers will make locating them difficult.

You can create a both of best worlds though. Use your Facebook account to reach out to family and friends and use it to direct them to your blog. As such only use minimal info on Facebook.

A perfectly reasonable suggestion.

 

[mobile]

I only have a few select friends on FB, many of them family members or close friends. I find it useful for keeping in touch and sharing photos with them. Those friends who fill my news feeds page with junk, such as those that like to 'share' everything they see, get their 'Show in News Feeds' unticked. As for advertisements, Firefox + Adblock Plus deals with them and for tracker privacy DNT+ deals with that.

 

[jimscott]

On occasion, a few of my co-workers have communicated with me, on work-related matters. For instance, one guy asks me to make a mobile phase solution for him on Saturday, so he can use it for his HPLC run on Sunday.

 

[Dexenthes]

Things wrong with Facebook:

Mark Zuckerberg

It harvests your information and gives companies who do not have your best interest at heart a profile of your interests and beliefs.

It creates energies within your personal relationships which would not have ever existed were it not for the existence of facebook. The majority of these energies are negative ones such as jealousy, neglect, or irritation. In a sense it extends the reality of your relationships into its own perimeters, perimeters which due to the above reasons can not and should not ever be trusted.

It devalues human interactions.

It is a poor website in general. It is not customizable, there is no way to personalize it to an significant extent. Every profile is uniform, detracting from humanity's innate individual uniqueness.

You cannot erase your time on facebook from the world. Everything I did on the few years that I had facebook is now stored somewhere and exists outside of my control.

Its influence is leaking over into all realms of my life, whether it be advertizing, my social interactions, the organizations I am a part of, or even my beloved Terraforums.

I also have to say that I agree with Cthuhlu, though its never fun to say it so harshly. The vast majority of facebook users could just as easily live a full and happy life without ever supporting that machine.

 

[Whimgrinder]

Things wrong with Facebook:
It harvests your information and gives companies who do not have your best interest at heart a profile of your interests and beliefs.

It creates energies within your personal relationships which would not have ever existed were it not for the existence of facebook. The majority of these energies are negative ones such as jealousy, neglect, or irritation. In a sense it extends the reality of your relationships into its own perimeters, perimeters which due to the above reasons can not and should not ever be trusted.

It devalues human interactions.

These three things in particular are what prompted me to exit FB, and all three of the above statements is absolutely true, especially the first one. You cannot trust FB and its policies to have your best interest at its core. You are simply a resource to be harvested. If that were not the case, you would be paying for the service. Which brings me to the following: on the internet, if you are offered something for "free", you ought to be asking yourself "what are they getting in return?", because there has to be something in it for the service provider to offer you something gratis.

 

[mobile]

Many internet services are free, that's what we have come to expect, but of course it comes at a price. It costs the service providers money to run their infrastructure, which tells you that they get their money from somewhere and often that is by collecting and selling data. To be honest, if your primary concern is privacy, your best bet might be to stay off the internet!

 

[scottychaos]

meh..I dont know..I think some people WAY over-estimate the level of evil..
if you are a moron and you post every tiny personal detail about your life, then yeah, you have a lot to lose..
but those people would find other stupid ways to be exploited if facebook didnt exist..

for the smart people, they can only harvest what you *choose* to put out there..
which again, makes it no different than any other discussion forum..

im not seeing the grand evil scheme..
like anything else in life, they cant take what you don't give them..
and seriously, what is facebook going to do with the knowledge that I took a new photo of a model train and posted it? I guess they could use it to target custom ads to me..but everyone else does that too..yahoo, amazon, google..

If you are really paranoid about Facebook "stealing" your personal info and somehow using it for evil schemes, then you need to stay off the internet completely..they all do it, not just facebook.

Scot

 

[LeafKirby]

Helpful, I don't really do too much on it, but it makes communication a lot easier with work or just social stuff.

 

[RL7836]

Many of my questions have been answered within the various posts (thank you!). I know I'll have others once (& if) I actually sign up but the one I do have now is: is there a way to segregate your 'friends' into different levels or categories? I suspect that I would want to have a group of close friends & family - with whom I could share stuff and another group of people (like old high school friends) with whom I'd like to keep in touch but not share stuff to the same degree.

Without having ever joined FB, my next comment may be naive ... but I see FB as a potentially useful tool (as many have detailed previously) that some people abuse - similar to texting, cell phones, or TV. Each can be valuable or each can be extremely abused --- the choice is in the hands of the user....