ten reasons to quit facebook

Started by japanesebaby, August 24, 2010, 17:59:21

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japanesebaby

an interesting article in the newspaper today, called "facebook warning".

http://www.city.fi/artikkeli/Facebook-varoitus/3546/

brief translations below by myself.

ten reason to re-think about using facebook:

1. it makes you unhappy

- you only have a limited amount of time in your life so which one is more valuable, keeping touch with 500 fb friends or finding time for your loved ones? because sometimes you really might not have time for both. many people find it hard to quit fb (because of the addiction) even if it takes too much of their time.

2. it can accidentally jeopardize your career

- what if your boss sends you a friend request ? or, your mom? is it really possible to "be friends" with all your friends in the same way? i mean, is that really what you are, or isn't it rather much more natural that you don't wat to update everyone form your best frieds to your more distant acquitancies the same way?
of course, the facebook creator zuckerberg wants to see this as a strength, how it gives a "more thorough and all-inclusive image of you" - but is it really so?

also, people are known having been fired because of something they said on facebook.

3. it leaks your personal information

- your information is being shared with third parties and there's nothing you can do about it.

4.  it will save your data - forever?

- facebook saves your personal data ad your uploads - even if you deleted them yourself. people are known to have deleted all their personal material (like photos) and other page content together with their complete profile. when they signed up again a year later, all their old data suddenly popped up from somewhere. 
it actually costs facebook more to delete data from their servers than just to get more server space.

5. it's killing city culture/social life

- we used to go visit our friends and go knocking our neighbor's door and go bowling together or something. now we say hi on facebook and use the bowling application on facebook. go figure.
also, many surveys how that people who meet other people in real life are generally happier than people who mostly meet people online.

6. it destroys environment

- a little known fact. a year ago facebook had 30,000 servers. to serve all its 500 million users creates a carbon footprint the size of a city of helsinki (appr. 600,000 people). and the numbers keep growing.

computers were hailed as saviors in the 90s, everybody expecting them to help cutting down the environmental strain and emissions. in fact, it has proven to be the exact opposite.
it's like horses and cars one hundred years ago: in the early 1900s the cities were literally drowning in horse manure and the cars were supposed to be a beautiful solution to that problem and nobody then realized what sort of environmental hazard cars would end up creating.

7. it makes your ass go fat

- facebook seems to be "related" to public holidays like christmas and thanksgiving: it makes people to lie on the sofa and doing nothing - but eating all the time.

8. it causes addiction

- people get severely addicted, having to check check check they facebook profile many times a day, even though there's no real reason for it. that way facebook is a time thief.

9. it is set to destroy small national/local companies

- other social networking companies have been or are being destroyed by facebook. facebook is even known to sue another company (studiVZ in germany) that became successful - facebook can't stand competitors so it wants to kill other companies in the market and dominate the world alone.

10. it might cause you getting sued in some foreign country

- you get into problems/fall a a victim of a crime or some dispute on facebook, what could happen? at its worst you have to be prepared getting sued in some foreign country's court, a country which laws you are not even familiar with. and even if you're not from the US, you might end up getting sued in the US due to facebook's policies.
and what does facebook's 'Statement of Rights and Responsibilities' say? of course it releases facebook from all legal responsibilities saying that facebook is not responsible for any disputes that it might cause to its users.
quote:
"WE TRY TO KEEP FACEBOOK UP, BUG-FREE, AND SAFE, BUT YOU USE IT AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE ARE PROVIDING FACEBOOK "AS IS" WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT GUARANTEE THAT FACEBOOK WILL BE SAFE OR SECURE. FACEBOOK IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ACTIONS, CONTENT, INFORMATION, OR DATA OF THIRD PARTIES, AND YOU RELEASE US, OUR DIRECTORS, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS FROM ANY CLAIMS AND DAMAGES, KNOWN AND UNKNOWN, ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ANY CLAIM YOU HAVE AGAINST ANY SUCH THIRD PARTIES."

the conclusion: facebook will become your master.

zuckenberg's favorite movie is 'troy' by woflgang petersen. some people have noted that facebook itself is like the troyan horse: it looks interesting and it's free, but it's sole goal is to get rid of its competitors and have everyone under its own control. facebook is about bloodless world domination - maybe bloodless but domination all the same.

several times zuckerberg has even compared facebook to governments. now that, if nothing else, is truly starting to sound scary, don't you think?


Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

lostflower4

I do see things like Facebook and MySpace as proof of the decline of modern civilization, but some of the points here sound too much like some "conspiracy theory" stuff.

I don't understand how deleting stuff from a server can be more costly/intensive than continuing to store stuff. I do think it's odd and creepy that they do store stuff forever, but the main reason they do that is to maintain some form of control/dominance/superiority (so I agree about this point).

And as for getting sued and all that legal stuff, maybe it IS possible in rare cases - but the threat seems really overblown.

However, I do agree about the possibility of addiction and the general destruction of social interaction. There's no doubt about that.

I also find it hilarious/sad (depending on how you look at it) that virtually everyone on Facebook has like 5000 friends. I'm sorry, but we all know that you probably haven't even talked to 90% of these people more than a handful of times in your life. And yes, I realize I'm calling out virtually everyone reading this who has a Facebook account  :lol:, but I still have to ask what's the point of all that???

japanesebaby

yes, that list was not written by me (i was just quoting/referencing) and i also agree that some of the points are less valid than others.
sure, the threat of getting sued is overblown from the point of view of a common user/private person.
but it could be much more valid for people working in companies and accidentally slipping some piece of information there that should have been kept out of public. it might be some innocent looking slip but turn out to be enough to cause damage. that kind of things have happened and people have been fired for it.
so no wonder many companies have prohibited their employees using facebook at work: it's not only uneffective use of time, but the employees might accidentally babble what's currently on their mind - which just might be something they should not babble about. anyway.

i also feel the most important points in the list are addiction and the downfall of social interaction. and ironically facebook is called social networking - even though it actually works against it, making people more passive and even more antisocial.
from the point of view of online communities it's also bringing down other forms of online interaction, like forums. i see that as a serious decline and a more or less deliberate degeneration of the content.


Quote from: lostflower4 on August 24, 2010, 21:57:02
I also find it hilarious/sad (depending on how you look at it) that virtually everyone on Facebook has like 5000 friends. I'm sorry, but we all know that you probably haven't even talked to 90% of these people more than a handful of times in your life. And yes, I realize I'm calling out virtually everyone reading this who has a Facebook account  :lol:, but I still have to ask what's the point of all that???

exactly.
in that article there was actually a example story about a 26-year old finnish guy who's whole life became a big mess because of facebook. he ended up having some 500+ friends on facebook and hardly had time to spend any quality time with his real friends anymore. moreover, his marriage was about to fall apart because he kept receiving friend requests from his ex-girlfriends and his wife found out and wasn't too happy. the guy said:

"in the end facebook was even pushing me towards cheating my wife. i saw no other way out of this approaching catastrophy but to "kill" my facebook identity. (and facebook has made this pretty laborous: i needed to remove all my 500 friends manually one by one before i could "kill" myself."

but he's never regretted that he did it. it saved his life and marriage.


one reassuring thing that i can see is that especially young people have started to question social networks that merely seek dominance over their users (like facebook) and are actually starting to look for alternatives - because there are alternatives. alternatives that don't seek to dominate users and don't treat people like dumb mass but offer them some real channels to interact and exchange ideas.

to me it seems to be mostly people from young adults to middle-aged who still rave about facebook being "so cool" and how "everyone has to be in it". i hope this trend would continue, before the fb brainwash reaches 100%. that would be too embarrassing.




Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

lostflower4

The odd thing is that I always thought Facebook was supposed to be the "mature" alternative to MySpace (which is the most godawful mess I've ever seen  :oops:). 

In a lot of ways Facebook IS better, but in the end it still sucks.  :roll:

japanesebaby

Quote from: lostflower4 on August 24, 2010, 22:48:43
The odd thing is that I always thought Facebook was supposed to be the "mature" alternative to MySpace (which is the most godawful mess I've ever seen  :oops:). 

In a lot of ways Facebook IS better, but in the end it still sucks.  :roll:

yeah. i always thought myspace platform was/is sort of childish version of facebook. but i the end i can't say facebook is much more mature either. so....
also, one thing in common with the two is that they are incredibly messy and illogical. some settings are almost impossible to find. not to mention everytime fb does some site upgrades they are known to bump down your privacy level to the lowest, regardless of what your previous setting was. that's really dubious.

by the way, here's another kind top ten list, with some different points:

http://www.rocket.ly/home/2010/4/26/top-ten-reasons-you-should-quit-facebook.html

1. The Facebook application itself sucks.
Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" (which always guesses wrong - is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I'm single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don't bother.


what's the real use of facebook? i think it's a good question. i don't find anything in it either that would be truly unique and useful/couldn't be done (and mostly even better) by other online means.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

dsanchez

Quote from: japanesebaby on August 24, 2010, 22:55:02
what's the real use of facebook? i think it's a good question.

for it's founder, to make lots of money with publicity ads

for the artists (musical), it serves to promote their music and get more fans

for politicians, to get more votes (see Obama)

for webmasters, it serves to promote their websites. In my case, as Webmaster, I can't be blind to the fact that people use Facebook. So I use it to promote curefans.com and it works, because I see this site have been referenced often from Facebook or other social networks. Statistics are there.

I agree with lostflower4 about the social interaction thing decline. The best example are two collegues of my Master. They were living in the same flat, yet they prefered to communicate throught their Facebook wall to tell stuff like the heating is not working, etc.  Completely silly :?

I think there are more than 10 reasons to quit Facebook. Personally, I would never (and I don't) use Facebook as a personal diary or to put my pics or my friend's pics. But if people want to do it, that's their thing.
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dsanchez

Quote from: japanesebaby on August 24, 2010, 17:59:21
an interesting article in the newspaper today, called "facebook warning".
http://www.city.fi/artikkeli/Facebook-varoitus/3546/

the most funny thing is that even this article has a link to share the story in Facebook lol :-D
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alwaysprayingforRAIN

i agree with you guys on most of what's been said. for me tough facebook is the only way to stay in touch with my american friends, because they love it and are not pretty good at writing long emails.. so if i want to know what's going on i need to check on facebook... it's not like i can just drop by to say hi or anything.

doesn't mean i spend a ton of my time there or use any of these crappy annoying applications. as soon as they are gone i will be too.
give it a few years and facebook will be a dusty old internet graveyard!!! just hope they get rid of all the data some day.
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japanesebaby

Quote from: dsanchez on August 24, 2010, 23:42:17
Quote from: japanesebaby on August 24, 2010, 22:55:02
what's the real use of facebook? i think it's a good question.

for it's founder, to make lots of money with publicity ads

for the artists (musical), it serves to promote their music and get more fans

for politicians, to get more votes (see Obama)

well all these are plain as day of course - doesn't mean peopl should agree that they are good reasons in general though.
and my question was kind of rhetorical anyway.

Quote from: dsanchez on August 24, 2010, 23:42:17
for webmasters, it serves to promote their websites. In my case, as Webmaster, I can't be blind to the fact that people use Facebook. So I use it to promote curefans.com and it works, because I see this site have been referenced often from Facebook or other social networks. Statistics are there.

but isn't this a very good example of what was said already: that people feel obliged to use facebook "just because everyone else does it", and not out of their own choice?   
and that's what facebook wants - they don't mind whether or not you're critical about them or just love them, just as long as you use them.
and that's why we need alternatives. not just go along "because everyone else does it".

statistics are there but can just as well be read the other way too:
fecebook is killing forums because it's drawing people out of other online interaction and focus on one place alone, facebook. ad facebook which hardly offers any deeper and meaningful content anyway, like forums used to do.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

japanesebaby

Quote from: dsanchez on August 24, 2010, 23:50:36
Quote from: japanesebaby on August 24, 2010, 17:59:21
an interesting article in the newspaper today, called "facebook warning".
http://www.city.fi/artikkeli/Facebook-varoitus/3546/

the most funny thing is that even this article has a link to share the story in Facebook lol :-D

yes it's linked because all the articles in the newspaper are linked the same way.
but why should that be funny? not sure.

i think it's only good that it's linked: because maybe someone on facebook sees it and reads it and decides to quit the whole silly thing. so using facebook to spread the awareness of how stupid facebook really is - now that's not too bad.
at least finally facebook would serve something truly useful there then.  :-D

Quote from: alwaysprayingforRAIN on August 25, 2010, 12:18:45
i agree with you guys on most of what's been said. for me tough facebook is the only way to stay in touch with my american friends, because they love it and are not pretty good at writing long emails.. so if i want to know what's going on i need to check on facebook... it's not like i can just drop by to say hi or anything.

there are other alternatives to keep in touch than just facebook and emails. i also think it's great that nowadays we are able to stay in touch with our friends on the other side of the world. but there are tons of alternatives to facebook how to stay in touch with friends and interact online, things like skype etc.

and i do agree with you, all the facebook hype is bound to pass. one day it'll be just an old joke and people feeling embarrassed and/or regrets that they ever gave so much of their precious time for something like it.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

dsanchez

Quote from: japanesebaby on August 25, 2010, 12:46:19
but isn't this a very good example of what was said already: that people feel obliged to use facebook "just because everyone else does it", and not out of their own choice?   
and that's what facebook wants - they don't mind whether or not you're critical about them or just love them, just as long as you use them.
and that's why we need alternatives. not just go along "because everyone else does it".

well there are alternatives. for instance, curefans.com is promoted by twitter, myspace, youtube, hi5, as well :)

I mean, people promote their music, websites or products throught something that reach lots of people, this something is facebook now, but can be anything else later.


Quote from: japanesebaby on August 25, 2010, 12:46:19
statistics are there but can just as well be read the other way too:
fecebook is killing forums because it's drawing people out of other online interaction and focus on one place alone, facebook. ad facebook which hardly offers any deeper and meaningful content anyway, like forums used to do.

maybe. many mods here prefere to use facebook than post here (and I don't blame them, it's their right to choose where they want to publish their things). However, lots of people who signed recently found curefans.com because of facebook and lots of people who see the new topics come from facebook. so for me is the other way: I use facebook for curefans.com purposes.

in the end is all the same, facebook, google... everybody wants to rule the world.
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japanesebaby

Quote from: dsanchez on August 25, 2010, 13:03:26
Quote from: japanesebaby on August 25, 2010, 12:46:19
statistics are there but can just as well be read the other way too:
fecebook is killing forums because it's drawing people out of other online interaction and focus on one place alone, facebook. ad facebook which hardly offers any deeper and meaningful content anyway, like forums used to do.

maybe. many mods here prefere to use facebook than post here (and I don't blame them, it's their right to choose where they want to publish their things). However, lots of people who signed recently found curefans.com because of facebook and lots of people who see the new topics come from facebook. so for me is the other way: I use facebook for curefans.com purposes.

might seem so at first but in the end it's clearly the other way round: facebook is using curefans.com, drawing traffic away form this site and on their site. that's what facebook wants. it welcomes people there to advertise their own sites/forums/music/whatever ad you can gather fans on facebook for whatever you are advertising there but there is the whole trick: it also wants people to stay on facebook, it wants all interaction to happen only there. it wants us to become just another facebook group, instead of being an independent site. in the process it's also killing most of the meaningful content, since in the end everything is run "in a facebook way" (i.e. short updates, readers just hurriedly clicking "like" or "dislike" and that's it). 
this is what facebook is doing to countless other sites/forums out there. it wants to dominate everyone and amazingly people do go and put their necks in that noose.

i'm not saying things shouldn't change, they always do in life/over time, it's natural. but it's surprising and also alarming that people consciously let them change for the worst/choose to join the decline that facebook, myspace etc present.

Quote from: dsanchez on August 25, 2010, 13:03:26
in the end is all the same, facebook, google... everybody wants to rule the world.

sure there are people with goals like that in life. but everyone can choose whether one wants to be part of that kind of thinking or not.
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine

dsanchez

Quote from: japanesebaby on August 25, 2010, 13:22:19
might seem so at first but in the end it's clearly the other way round: facebook is using curefans.com, drawing traffic away form this site and on their site. that's what facebook wants. it welcomes people there to advertise their own

fair enough I guess. facebook uses curefans.com, curefans.com uses facebook :)

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dsanchez

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