I deleted my FB a while ago and it truely helped my online mental health. The fb feed was full of false news and hate speech. I reported as much as I could but nothing happening. There wasn't any regulations and I felt more toxic on the contents. I am not gonna lie there was a positive side like knowing the news instantly but It's not worth it apparently.
It's so interesting how different people's Facebook feeds are so different. I do have excessive ads for products, that's fair enough, but I have absolutely nothing political. My only issue with Facebook is that it's poorly designed, actually very dated and cluttered, and none of my friends really use it for personal posts except me.
I suspect that each Facebook user exists in a different bubble. Possibly they see someone reporting frequently and think "oh great, here's an engaged user, let's show them some more hate speech to get them even more engaged".
In my experience FB is what you make it to be. It requires some curration effort but you can mold it to be useful. But you can’t just add, you’ll have to block as well, including ads - each ad source can be turned off.
For me, FB is the main source of news about local concerts. Sure, you’ll find about major ones anyway, but there’s no way to effectively track small ones. It doesn’t have to be music. FB is the easiest way to track niche local businesses, events, or groups of interest. Some of them even don’t have web sites and FB is where they post. Even when they have sites, you wouldn’t visit each of them every day to find out what is new and interesting and you’ll miss stuff.
It’s not. With RSS you are in charge, as you select exactly which feeds you subscribe to and see everything from those feeds. Facebook hides posts from things you subscribed to and shows you stuff you didn’t subscribe to, to keep you hooked.
Problem is we have dozens of various interests, which are different for each one of us. Single interest platforms can be good for only subset of things.
FB does come with lots of strings attached. We're all aware of that. I'm just suggesting that, with some effort of unfollowing and blocking, it can be useful.
But the web isn't "single interest" and, as you yourself referenced, there are open standard ways (RSS) to compile information from across it. This may have evolved more without FB so heavily dominating the scene.
Most of this long-tail stuff we're talking about here had minimal or no web presence before FB created "alternative web publishing" experience for them. And centralized easy experience for their audience to follow what they like.
I still use RSS, but sadly, that's not where I find news from local music school or running group. Could it end up differently if FB didn't show up? Quite possibly.
Sponsored and suggested posts consisted of roughly half of my feed.
It's also known that even if you subscribe to some page they won't show it in your feed unless the other party pays their fees.
I lived in Southeast Asia. Have only a low three-figure friends and did not follow any pages. I was sent sponsored content and suggested content quite often. I tried to check why the particular posts reached me, but the answer is just a blanket (Speaks language, age within range). I will be more forgiving if they showed how my friends interacted with the page, but the criteria shown isn't helpful.
There are niche solution for all such niches. Spotify has the best concert agenda for my town. There's two local publishers doing online presentation for businesses here (one is indebuurt).
Not surprising though. That small, focused, local niche solutions are more effective than a giant behemoth can ever be.
Yes, FB has all the data. But it needs to analyze that in tiny contexts before it can build a tailored solution for that context, first.
It's not that useful in my part of world. Also, I'm not only interested in pop/rock bands. I also want jazz, classical, movie festivals, etc. That's why I follow handful of small venues, organizers and cultural magazines. It's all very niche and hard to follow otherwise.
For instance there's no way I would find about "Days of Organ music" few months ago. I didn't even know that there's a catholic cathedral with pipe organ in Belgrade, most churches here are orthodox and they don't have pipe organs.
This is just an example. There are other kinds of local interests you can only follow effectively on FB - hiking groups, sales in local music stores, environmental protests, whatever rocks your boat.
Fair enough, for me it's fairly useful even with niche genres, but promoters around here tend to use it too (or the info gets scraped because the area has more things going on). I've had free open air (no venue) concerts of Balkan folk pop in there!
This is exactly what happens. What's worse, I thought it was doing that because I had responded to some political post, but FB just sees "you engaged with person-X, I will now alert you when person-X posts, and when people respond to his posts, even if you haven't looked at it"
This led to increasingly divisive messages literally showing up in my notifications that I had nothing to do with. This still happens months after I stopped responding to any of those messages.
Ye FB does something like this. I hate "funny" videos where people hurt them self. But somehow FB thought my annoyance with them was that I liked them, so they spammed them on me. Maybe I moved my cursor to slow over them or something when I took my time to mute the guy posting them.
The same is true for YouTube. Somebody sent me funny cat video which I don't usually watch, and now my feed is full of funny videos, or I quickly searched some Minecraft guide for a friend (which I don't play), and now I have many Minecraft guides in the feed.
I unfollow everyone on facebook, I found it gives me peace of mind that I can still message them, but very little incentive to use facebook since I see no news feed.
If you talk about real life, a "hack" that I also discovered by myself is called "grey rock method" -- for people you cannot cut out of your luck, you respond in such a generic, brief, unemotional way that there's no payoff for them in interacting/playing with you.
>I unfollow everyone on facebook, I found it gives me peace of mind that I can still message them, but very little incentive to use facebook since I see no news feed.
You might be interested to know that you can actually deactivate your Facebook account while still retaining an active Messenger account if the ability to message is all that's keeping you around.
Yeah same here, the only thing I see are posts from the groups I've joined which are mostly field of work related, the occasional corporate promotion and maybe a friend post about someone's holiday or something once in a blue moon.
When people say "I deleted facebook because of all the hate" it just makes me wonder what kind of assholes they're friends with. Removing their facebook posts from your view just hides who they are, they don't stop being assholes. What they really need to fix is their damn social circle.
My FB isn't full of fury and hate speech. It's boring!
Half of my friends like to post anodyne motivational quotes, "hilarious" forwarded jokes, pretty pictures of events they attended, and their own not-so-interesting musings. Unfortunately, that half is by far the most active on Facebook.
The overall atmosphere is mawkish. The best aspect is seeing pics of people's kids. You can't fault that.
Facebook shows you whatever is working to keep you there. I do like reading about politics but I also mute or unfollow anyone that is putting too much of that on my feed.
Twitter is where I go to be mad about news. I've managed to keep FB about old-friend stalking.
I have very little content on my news feed. Friends used to post a lot more often, but now all I see are posts from local government accounts and, of course, ads between every two or three posts. After a few pages of this I get an error message asking me to reload the page and a reload page button that does nothing.
100% agreed that it is poorly designed. I suspect it's that design (and the bugs) that are driving away my friends.
You may think you've deleted your FB account, but its probably still there...
I "deleted" my FB after they acquired FriendFeed (still the best social network I've ever come across) back in 2009.
I was puzzled, then, to receive an email in November last year asking if I had tried to log in. "Impossible", I thought, "that account was deleted!". So, I visited Facebook, and because my old username/password were still in my password manager, I was able to log in! Imagine my shock to find my old profile, still there with it's old profile pic, my old connections, etc.
When will "delete my account" actually mean my account is deleted?
(The final kick in the nuts to this story is that within 2 minutes of logging in, I get a chirpy, "Welcome back to Facebook!" email. Fuckers.)
Deleting FB account is slightly more complicated. After you have deleted it, don't try to login for months to check out if it's gone.
To permanently delete your account:
1. From your main profile, click account in the top right of Facebook.
2. Select Settings & Privacy, then click Settings.
3. Click Your Facebook Information in the left column. If you have Facebook access to a page in the new Pages experience: Click Privacy, then click Your Facebook Information.
4. Click Deactivation and Deletion.
6. Choose Delete Account, then click Continue to Account Deletion.
7. Click Delete Account, enter your password and then click Continue.
I had the same issue as GP… deleted around 2011 and it was back again with no indication I even deactivated it (let alone deleted it) when my password manager let me log in around 2017.
I can tell you with 100% certainty that I did everything FB allowed you to do to “delete” my account the first time. When I did it the second time, it’s not like it was more complicated or hidden than the first time, but it actually worked.
My conclusion is that, today, FB has a weird split between deactivating and permanently deleting your account (the latter takes more effort), but 10 years ago was nothing of the sort. They just let you think you deleted your account but didn’t actually do anything. Or maybe there was a bug with account deletion back then… or maybe they had an outage where they had to restore some stuff from a backup and my account got “recovered” in the process.
But the important point is that FB didn’t even acknowledge it with a message like “do you want to re-activate your account?” on my login in 2017… it was as if I never deleted it in the first place.
It was a while ago (2009) so I can't remember the exact process, but I seem to recall that even back then it was quite convoluted, and differentiated between deactivate and delete.
That said, I certainly haven't touched it since 2009 to check if it really was deleted.
That is important to know but orthogonal to the GP's point.
Removing Facebook from my Browser bookmarks etc. improved my life a lot. However I didn't delete the account as some shops unfortunately update their opening times etc. only there and especially in current pandemic world that sometimes is needed to check ...
At least the account blocking features still works for users, unlike with youTube and Twitter.
The UI is more and more horrid though on FB and Instagram with every update. My ability to do the most simple things is extremely frustrating, and I don't understand how they believe those changes help to inspire deeper engagement, It's getting really difficult to see any value in either platform as they shrink organic engagement of each post to 1-2 people when I have over 1k followers. I refuse to pay for ads just to reach the audience that has already chosen to follow me. Instagram shows a mile of ads and posts from accounts I follow on every news feed before my desired content now, it's totally outrageous.
Likes are completely worthless across the web right now, they mean absolutely nothing... and the stats aren't even accurate on so many of these sites, they're really showing desperation by pushing their user base away, I honestly can't believe that "brilliant minds" are at the helm any more... It feels like they sacked the experienced development minds and are just left with interns, marketers, and psychiatrists on staff. Something's either got to fail or change majorly before year end or I'm going back to IRC and local message boards for good, social media has become a total waste of energy.
Totally agree with your criticism of the UI and news feed. I rarely use Facebook to begin with, but I noticed a major decrease in user experience and usability as of late.
Infinite scroll is just...laggy. I don't have this issue on Tiktok (which to be fair I also don't use often). The news feed used to be curated for me specifically, but now it seems to be the same recycled content I see on YouTube recommendations.
I don't want to see the same sh*t over and over again, show me something unique and new.
You might lose access to things you logged in with "Login with Facebook" or lose out on some connections that are only on FB. Doom-scrolling FB is a bad idea, but whenever I log in to FB, I do it with a purpose (usually to text someone on FB)
That's a big jump from the time when typing "facebook" in the address bar used to almost be a reflex on opening a new tab.
Another approach is to unsubscribe from everything (friends, groups etc.). You feed is empty, but you can still visit profiles/groups etc. but nothing will be pushed to you.
I did the same thing when I read about a plugin that was banned by facebook for allowing you to unsubscribe form everything and decided I was going to do it manually. Funny that facebook temporarily banned me from unfollowing people even though I was doing it manually, not using an app/plugin.
The change I made was to change my facebook bookmark to messenger, and thus I can still chat to all of my mates who use it to talk but otherwise have to consciously decide to visit facebook itself. I find myself doomscrolling WAY less, and maybe visit it once a day if I'm bored.
I recently reported a hate speech targeted at Indian minority (not Muslim). The text literally had gen$c!d3 threats and other usual trigger words in it, and there were like copy paste of same post in thousands (probably a campaign). Facebook replied "does not violate their conditions blah blah".
I guess it very much depends on the minority in question, FB like the government only responds to "mi orities" with street veto or global muscle power.
I actually didn't have any false news and hate speech in my feed - I used FB purity and consistently blocked all bad actors. I left the FB anyway, because it's has been a terrible platform for discussing anything even before the latest bout of censorship, but with redesigns, bans and constant intrusive hectoring about what I am supposed to be thinking is really getting old. It just became not good for anything but wasting time, and even that wasn't really enjoyable.
And there are so many other places to get news nowdays...
Reddit can be like this.
But delete your account,
Make a new one then add r/homelab r/homeassistant and r/chainsaw and it becomes a very positive place. Your desired subs may be different.
I once reported explicit pornography that posted on an electronics group I belonged to and the response I got from the system was that it was deemed not inappropriate and no action would be taken.
I don't know what good reporting does for anything...
I reported a comment thread discussing which ethnicities needed to be put in camps, and got the same thing about it somehow not being against the community standards.
I did catch a 30 day ban for saying that 'men are trash; I'm going back to dating women' though.
Also, it will get messy with a collection of links.
For small audiences I like google photos the best. If you want to share something with more people (all your friends) then facebook is probably the best option.
They can reply with any comments to the email / txt can they not? I'm thinking of the scenario of sending photos to close friends / family. For larger audiences, I'd use my own platform running something like WordPress.
As for "likes" - I guess I'm of a generation where they are irrelevant to me :)
> For small audiences I like google photos the best.
> They can reply with any comments to the email / txt can they not?
Not to the individual photos, unless you go with "You look funny in that photo named DSC0124.JPG". Not to mention that people often have trouble with "reply to all" function.
In practice, I can't see people commenting photo album with email.
I believe there's something much more sinister than that going on with that feed. I believe it's specifically programmed to fish out your mental vulnerabilities and bully you with content that touches on exactly that.
Just unfollow everybody. It's such a liberating thing to do.
You can still manually check on people if you want to and you can still message them.
After a few weeks it feels like a superpower "wow, so I can just use facebook for 5 minutes every couple of days and easily stop using it? Unbelievable!"
The only useful thing about it was messenger but they disabled that on mobile browsers, so I stopped using the whole predict and then deleted it altogether.
For me, personally, FB just became boring and uninteresting at some point. I sometimes open FB for Marketplace and, I think, this is it. Had no need to go cold turkey and delete the account.
I still have it for Messenger which I use as an app both for desktop and mobile because I don’t want to lose touch with my friends, esp. during these times.
Social media worsens people’s perceptions of the world can actively influences what they share and consider their own opinion.
The same point applies to family, for example, and whether I need better family or not they’re all I’ve got. And Facebook has pushed them really far down whatever fringe they had a slight inclination to. Before Facebook any extreme views could be tempered a bit in family conversations, but now everyone thinks they have the weight and authority of the whole world, or at least their tribe, behind every argument.
This bait and switch is not something we agreed to as a society. We joined for the pics of partners, kids and puppies, and to stalk and ‘poke’ people we had real life crushes on. We stayed because we found a million welcoming tribes all defined by hatred and anger.
To be fair this is true of most online platforms. It's easy to go down the slippery slope of always doubling down on defending your argument and never admitting to be wrong. People who get caught up in this cycle can end up in psych wards, no joke
On a different note, I joined FB as part of my college's freshmen induction class. It was "part of the course". I imagine Mark really pulled some favors from his frat bros to get that going
I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that? If, let's say, the government shuts down Facebook, they will go to Telegram. If the government shuts down Telegram, they will go to a bar and hang out with their tribe. Or find another new service that's not censored. It seems to be a function of communication, especially enhanced by technology, not Facebook in particular.
For me, data point of 1, I don't see a problem in my feed. I use FB to stay in touch with my friends and family all around the world, whom I would very rarely hear from otherwise, I get 0 political posts, if somebody posts something that upsets me, I mute them, yes, including family members. Even if this is your family, you are still not obligated to sign up to every one of their posts, just like you are not obligated to listen to everything they have to say in person.
Passive vs Active exposure is more the problem. If I walk past a graffiti wall that has conspiracy theories on it along with everyone in my city, the effect on my is very different from the post office choosing to deliver only pamphlets from conspiracy theorists to my mailbox instead of the mainstream newspaper.
Actively targeting fringe ideas to people to the exclusion of other mainstream ideas is different from the general availability of ideas and lack of censorship.
London has Speaker's Corner at Hyde park, for instance, where anyone is free to come and loudly discuss whatever crackpot ideas they have without censorship. Think it's been active for hundreds of years — but it does not overwhelm society because it allows the ideas to compete fairly on merit and evidence. Same for the salons of Paris, the tea shops of Calcutta and any other forums. The internet also had this mechanic during its beginning — anyone could say whatever they wanted on their geocities, myspace or livejournal, and all these ideas competed on fair terms with everything else.
Social media is a different beast altogether. Actively pushing whatever ideas are algorithmically calculated to achieve engagement is not a fair fight.
> I still don't get how this is unique to Facebook or even at all avoidable in the future. Internet facilitates communication. Unless you censor every word, it _will_ be used for pushing conspiracy theories, too, how can you avoid that?
Imagine you had control if your feed algorithm, or that engaging wasn't automatically translating into endorsing and recommending.
But either way, is FB really to blame for your family’s lack of discernment?
I’ve set plenty of family members to “unfollow” so I don’t have to deal with their craziness. I’m also not above to distancing myself from crazy family members in real life.
Yeah, I really don't get this all or nothing approach. Either I'm on Facebook reading every single piece of crap whoever throws my way, or I'm quitting the evil social media cold turkey. Why?
Maybe I’m old school, but there’s usually more to someone than what they share on Facebook. One of the funniest people I know, and a good real life friend for nearly a two two decades, posts dumb stuff like that all the time. We also have great conversations full of conflicting viewpoints, which I love, and we’ve both changed the others perspectives. I don’t really care what their political beliefs or medical choices are. We can find common interests outside of that. It doesn’t affect me. For some reason, that’s now the primary focus of many peoples lives and identity. He’s more than that, and I hope I am too.
You’ve identified what makes Facebook evil. If your friend shares two things, one of which enrages you and causes you to post an angry comment, and one of which causes you to smile gently and scroll on by, which one do you think Facebook is going to show you?
They probably don’t need better friends. We need a communication medium that isn’t powered by hate.
Have you ever used Facebook? You see divisive rage-bait garbage regardless of whether your connections specifically shared it. The Algorithm(tm) decides what you see, and it favors whatever is as "engagement"-worthy as possible.
Yes I've been using Facebook several times per week for years. I have hundreds of friends there and don't really see any divisive rage-bait garbage, so I'm not sure what you're complaining about. Maybe you're using it wrong?
What I have done is "Hide all from" most of the pages that show up in my feed. So I mostly only see original content posted by my friends and very little shared from other pages like the fake news on CNN or whatever.
The algorithm is dogsh*t. It somehow got it in its head that I was a Harry Potter fan (I’ve never read a book or sat through a film - no interest at all). It kept pushing HP fan groups at me. Constantly. I would hide all from them, but there are thousands. It felt like I was going mad.
In the end I just Social Fixered the hell out of it all - bye bye ads too. I can’t imagine what it must be like it wasn’t something so innocuous.
You have to adjust your feed a little for the best experience, yes. Hard to imagine HN being against taking a little up-front effort to get something that's more efficient in the long term.
I hear this very often and while deep down it's a reasonable take, the more you think about it, the less useful as advice it becomes.
While I can't comment about Facebook specifically (I haven't been on it for over a decade by now), but I've seen the same happen on many other platforms as social media has become staple of life.
I know people I've been friends with (and I mean, close friends) for almost two decades by now. I have all kinds of family members, far and close friends, acquaintances, online friends that go back to a decade or two ago on IRC channels, etc. I'm not saying every single one of them has changed, but a very LARGE portion of them has. We all have our own demons, our own beliefs, our own pet peeves and general grievances. People are sharing all kinds of sensationalist news and (let's say it) garbage all the time related to whatever orbits their belief or view of the world (or what they are afraid of). The more sensationalist something is, the more divisive it is, the more rounds it will do and the more it will get entrenched into the minds of someone.
Very often, that someone can be you, your friends, or your family. That doesn't make them (or you) bad people necessarily. I know people who I'd consider to be very good people, nice, caring, outgoing, friendly, etc. And yet they still share their demons on social media. The vitriol-induced "us vs them" articles, the fake news-style misinformation, the half truth, whatever fits their view of the world (because we simply don't know better).
It's a huge mental and emotional toll to be consistently bombarded by this kind of stuff. I don't mind talking about certain topics with certain people, what I do mind is getting consistently dragged (either willingly or not) into the same topics/conversations all the time, mostly fueled by emotional outrage (whether it is justified or not).
This doesn't make them "bad" friends. It just makes them "human" friends. You can definitely be completely and utterly emotionally drained talking with friends about topics that you care about, not in a bad way, it's just the way it is. The world is being more and more painted like it's all going to shit (whether or not that's true depends on what news you're being fed, I'm not making judgement here), and that does have a toll on you as a human.
Sorry for the long rant, but I just had to get it out there.
It doesn't take any mental or emotional toll on me. It helps a lot to "hide all from" all third-party pages so that you mostly just see original posts from your friends.
I don’t think all friend need to share political views. Just from my own group of friends, I know our views vary wildly. I am libertarian, I don’t buy the COVID and climate change narratives and I just want to live my life and want to deal with as little of the government as possible. However most of my friends like big government (socialist welfare state) and do buy in the COVID narrative as pushed by big media and government.
In the past we’d sometimes have very heated discussions around the COVID situation (initiated by a friend who shares my views), but as I noticed people becoming very “aggressive” in the debate, I asked everyone to just not discuss this issue anymore. And happily everyone agreed on this.
So now we’re still all great friends, but we just avoid this very sensitive topic, which I feel is for the better. It’s not worth it to lose friends just because you don’t agree on some issues.
We do our discussions over Signal by the way, I haven’t used Facebook for many years now. Most of my friends have quitted Facebook. In the past we mainly used Facebook to organize group events (weekend get-togethers), but we use Signal for this functionality now.
>> I don’t think all friend need to share political views.
This is the #1 thing, and I upvoted because you said this.
I'm also mostly a libertarian, but I think anyone who doesn't get a vaccine is extremely stupid. I'm also prone to conspiracy theories - I tend to think 9/11 was an inside job, for example. But let's say you believe in conspiracy theories, like, let's say the government wants to kill a few million people. Who do you think they want to kill? The people who line up and take the vax? No way!! Those are compliant people (according to this kind of reasoning). The people they'd want to kill - hell, the people I'd want to kill - would be the people who refused the vaccine. So they can just let them die from the virus, or let out a stronger virus next year. Anyone who thinks they're "smart" for avoiding a vaccine has not thought about what the government would do if they really wanted to kill the non-compliant people.
But having said that: I don't believe that this is all being coordinated. I think there are just a lot of countries and health agencies that all have partial information and do the best they can with it. And a lot of individuals who try to make political impressions with it. But if it were coordinated, if it were a conspiracy, then the only logical people to kill would be the ones who refused vaccination. And again, I mean this as a libertarian. If you think this is a "test run" for when a really bad virus comes out, you can bet that if you're unvaccinated for covid you're considered an enemy. I don't know why a rational person would put themselves in that position when you look at all the evidence. And I know my balls still work after having a vaccine. To me the biggest proof was Israel being first up front to vaccinate the population. (I'm Jewish). I know Israel isn't in the business of killing Jews. It's in the business of keeping Jews alive. So when I talked to Israelis who were asking why I wasn't vaccinated yet, and I had to explain it wasn't even available in America, I was sure the vaccine was nothing to worry about.
My FB feed is essentially zero content (500+ friends mostly over 25). It’s an aggregator nowadays of group discussions and primarily page content, even pages I don’t follow. Nobody but boomers use it to share nowadays.
I haven’t been on Facebook for a few years, but I saw the same the last year I was on the site. I had unfollowed everything, except friends. You could go through my entire feed in 3 minutes once a week.
Almost nobody was posting anything, mostly it was shared posts. If it wasn’t for Facebook killing forum and small websites, more people would have left years ago.
Was your page full of actual hate speech such as "exterminate the jews" or was it full of "hate speech" such as criticizing politicians who happen to be minorities?
Same question regarding fake news: was your page full of actual fake news suh as "Elon Musk has died", or was it full of political speech you don't like, such as "wearing masks is not worth the inconvenience"?
Unfortunately most of the arguments against wearing masks are petty and bullshit given that the inconvenience of wearing one is insignificant for most people.
Sure, if you have genuine health concerns wearing one then don’t. But most of the people that moaned about it were really just moaning about being told what to do.
I had one mum in my kids school quoting the Magna Carta as a reason not to wear masks, which is simply ridiculous. And others claim that long term use of thermometers could be damaging to kids health, which completely misses the fact that such devices are entirely passive instruments.
That was the point I quit Facebook. I realised my time was too valuable to read so much stupid.
I couldn’t give a crap how you might choose to describe it. It’s still too much stupidity to be worth my effort reading. So I chose to stop reading it.
You cannot force intelligent people to read your mindless drivel just because you consider it “political”. And “mindless drivel” is exactly how I viewed the baseless debates against masks, vaccines, public health and such like.
> (removed because parent comment edited their comment substantially)
I really didn’t. I just added some personal anecdotes in a subsequent paragraph to describe why I personally quit Facebook. The body of what you replied to was unchanged.
> I couldn’t give a crap how you might choose to describe it. It’s still too much stupidity to be worth my effort reading. So I chose to stop reading it.
Nobody here is advocating that you must continue reading Facebook. I'm not on Facebook. I don't advocate anyone else to go on Facebook either.
> You cannot force intelligent people to read your mindless drivel just because you consider it “political”. And that’s exactly how I viewed the baseless debates against masks, vaccines, and such like.
Nobody is forcing you to expose yourself to political opinions that are contrary to your political opinions. People are entirely free to stay in their own little bubbles if they choose to do so, but they should also be free to discuss major political decisions, such as mask mandates, if that's what they want to do.
> > (removed because parent comment edited their comment substantially)
> I really didn’t.
This is a flat out lie. Please stop spreading disinformation.
> I just added some personal anecdotes in a subsequent paragraph to describe why I personally quit Facebook. The body of what you replied to was unchanged.
Your comment originally described unwanted political speech, but implied that the speech was actually fake news. I called you out on that, my comment was roughly "That is a good description of political speech. It is not a description of hate speech or fake news". Then you edited your comment to add in a description of fake news. Specifically, you added this: "And others claim that long term use of thermometers could be damaging to kids health, which completely misses the fact that such devices are entirely passive instruments." This anecdote is a good description of fake news. So now my comment appears as if I claimed that this fake news is not fake news. So you essentially edited your comment to make me appear like a conspiracy nut. And now you're lying about what you did.
Your comment about fake news is about masks. The context of that is clear. My comment cannot retroactively change the context of a comment I’m replying to.
Though this is another good example of why I gave up with Facebook (and an increasing tendency I’ve noticed on HN too): conversations get really meta really quickly. When peoples views are based on opinion rather than science it’s impossible to hold a conversation with anyone because you cannot cite opinion. Thus conversations quickly degrade into meta arguments where opinions are “proven” by boring their opponents via “death by a thousand paper cuts”. It becomes as worthwhile as debating atheism with a priest (people are entitled to opinions but arguing over beliefs is never going to end well for either party).
So the smarter thing to do here is me to duck out of the conversation now.
It can’t. Period. That’s simply not how conversations work.
I mean if you cannot agree in that basic premise then there’s no hope in ever having a contextually specific conversation because someone can just shift the goal posts whenever it suits them and claim that was always the narrative.
> It can’t. Period. That’s simply not how conversations work.
This is the most pedantic nitpick I have ever seen. Yes, current events can not modify historical events, because time travel is impossible. That said, it is possible to fool outside observers (in the future) by editing a previous comment.
It’s not a pedantic nitpick if the sole premise of your replies is repeatedly arguing the opposite position. This post, however, is a pedantic nitpick ;)
And no, I cannot fool outside observers because I didn’t edit your post which contained the context you defined. To that regard, I’m as much an observer as anyone else.
Honestly, I wish I took my own advice about not engaging in stupid meta arguments.
> And no, I cannot fool outside observers because I didn’t edit your post which contained the context you defined.
You say "Vegans are awful."
I say "I disagree 100%"
You edit your post to say "Nazis are bad."
Now the outside observer sees 2 posts, one by you saying that "Nazis are bad", and the next post by me, saying "I disagree 100%". Thus, you have fooled an outside observer to think that I don't think Nazis are bad.
> To that regard, I’m as much an observer as anyone else.
No you're not, you have knowledge that "I disagree 100%" was in response to vegans being awful, but an outside observer who comes in late will not have that knowledge.
Even putting aside that I didn’t edit anything out of my post, unlike the ridiculous Nazi analogy you made, I couldn’t have changed the context of your post because you posted it before my opening comment
Or to use you’re ridiculous nazi analogy, I’m the one replying, not the one making the ridiculous nazi comments.
Of course not. But comments don’t have to be hate speech to be damaging nonsense. And things don’t even have to be damaging for them to be too stupid for me to want to read.
I only have a finite number of hours in the day, so why would I waste them reading stupid comments from people latching onto conspiracies because they need some form of belief system to cope with the chaos?
Common problem that words are taken to heart by those that weren't meant to do that in the first place.
But I think there cannot be objective rules. Sure, you can scrap some vulgar words but even that could be negative. It is a problem that has to be solved on the receiving end.
I think indignation of what other people say online is the vastly larger problem than any conspiracy. What we have seen related to comments about Covid was not pretty. It really underlined why content should be as unrestricted as possible.
> Common problem that words are taken to heart by those that weren't meant to do that in the first place.
I’m not so sure about that. I think many of the opinions shared on social media are ones that people are passions about. Even if it’s unconsciously passionate.
> But I think there cannot be objective rules. Sure, you can scrap some vulgar words but even that could be negative. It is a problem that has to be solved on the receiving end.
Indeed. Which is why Facebook are losing members. To quote the movie “Wargames”: The only winning move is not to play.
> I think indignation of what other people say online is the vastly larger problem than any conspiracy. What we have seen related to comments about Covid was not pretty. It really underlined why content should be as unrestricted as possible.
The comments about COVID come from the same folk that follow conspiracy theories. The problem is once you stop listening to science and assume that experts cannot be trusted, you’re then defaulting to a position that there must be a conspiracy. It doesn’t mean all folk who are curious are worshipers of Qanon but the fact remains they still believe there is a conspiracy.
To believe there is complete consensus between experts is a similar conspiracy theory.
People don't get vaccinated for different reasons and one very sensible on is not to make yourself a subject to "science". Because that does not exist and even statements from scientists need scrutiny, their work even depends on it. Any serious scientist will confirm that for you.
You cannot generalize critics as "folks that follow conspiracy theories", as a matter of fact that is why we see less and less trust in officials. They need criticism too.
> To believe there is complete consensus between experts is a similar conspiracy theory.
There’s a gulf of difference between accepting that scientific opinion is divided; and thinking experts cannot be trusted.
Conflating the two is simply silly because the former is being open minded to new evidence and analysis, and discussing those findings. Where as the latter is being closed minded to all formal evidence and analysis and refusing to discuss the science. To be honest this feels like a bloody obvious distinction that shouldn’t need to be made yet people do seem confused by it.
> People don't get vaccinated for different reasons and one very sensible on is not to make yourself a subject to "science". Because that does not exist and even statements from scientists need scrutiny, their work even depends on it. Any serious scientist will confirm that for you.
Confirm what? Your comment here it gibberish.
If people have a medical reason not to be vaccinated then they obviously should not be vaccinated. However that just means it’s even more important for all those who are able to be vaccinated to be vaccinated (to reduce the overall risk so those at risk are protected by proxy).
Saying “I don’t trust the science” is just a bullshit way of saying “i don’t understand science but also too lazy to learn it” and thus not an acceptable reason to avoid vaccination.
> You cannot generalize critics as "folks that follow conspiracy theories", as a matter of fact that is why we see less and less trust in officials. They need criticism too.
I can and I did. ;)
Yes, science does need criticism. Which is exactly why it already happens. We called it “peer review” (in fact you said yourself that scientists don’t always have a consensus so you’re contradicting your own arguments now).
The problem is people like yourself just assume those reviewers are also part of the conspiracy whenever that peer review doesn’t align with your assumed position. There’s literally Jack shit one can do to convince a person that due diligence has been done if that person has already convinced themselves that something isn’t safe and anyone that tells them otherwise is a liar.
> here’s a gulf of difference between accepting that scientific opinion is divided; and thinking experts cannot be trusted.
In contemporary culture I see people trying to ban diverging opinions. There is no depth to it. So nuance is not permitted. I don't see people blankly refuse or forbid statements of experts. There is not a rift between the closed and opened minded people. If so, both sides must be close minded.
> Confirm what?
That any scientific discovery must hold against scrutiny, it is as simple as that.
> If people have a medical reason not to be vaccinated
There is a huge political component. I am vaccinated but have called an anti-vaxxer because I don't support mandates, which are now pretty much off the table anyway. People that called for it should be glad most people are not that reactionary to refuse any further discussion. Really glad.
> I don’t trust the science
Nobody is saying anything like that.
> I can and I did. ;)
That is pretty unscientific of you as a the diagnostics of hate speech.
> In contemporary culture I see people trying to ban diverging opinions. There is no depth to it. So nuance is not permitted
Yeah, I can’t say I entirely agree with banning of opinions either.
> I don't see people blankly refuse or forbid statements of experts.
Really? The EU referendum in the U.K. was literally based around the phrase “so called experts” as a way of undermining reports from experts in finance and trade so MPs could focus on the more emotive topics of sovereignty and immigration.
You see it again with COVID about how experts are hiding the truth. Etc etc.
Lately there has been a huge anti-movement against trusting experts.
> There is not a rift between the closed and opened minded people. If so, both sides must be close minded.
I see what you’re trying to do but that logic doesn’t work. You can have a rift with both sides being open minded and still disagreeing.
The fact that science promotes debate and peer review suggests it is open minded. The fact that conspiracies depend on distrusting sources means it is not open minded. One is open to exploring new ideas and research. The latter pretends to be open minded but actually only accepts ideas that confirm an opinion already held.
> That any scientific discovery must hold against scrutiny, it is as simple as that
That’s literally what already happens.
> There is a huge political component. I am vaccinated but have called an anti-vaxxer because I don't support mandates, which are now pretty much off the table anyway.
That doesn’t make you an anti-vaxxer. Whoever called you that was clearly being more emotive than factual. Objecting against vaccines is being an anti-vaxxer. Supporting freedom of choice is being a libertarian.
> > I don’t trust the science
> Nobody is saying anything like that.
I’ve seen people literally say that regarding the COVID vaccines.
> That is pretty unscientific of you as a the diagnostics of hate
Not really. That comment you quoted was me being flippant (hence the wink). The paragraphs that followed that remark explains the rational behind my remark.
Also even if you disagree that people who believe experts are conspiring to deceive them aren’t conspiracy theorists (I can’t see how you’d disagree with that statement but it seems you do), that still doesn’t constitute as “hate speech”.
Your definition of hate speech is irrelevant. Whatever the GP saw was enough for them that they made a decision to remove their personal exposure, which is their right. They aren't censoring you or anyone else by making that choice.
Sure. And if GP genuinely believes that what they saw was actual hate speech and fake news, they may (or may not) feel like they want to explain that yes it actually was that. At least that's how I usually respond when I see outrageous lies being spread.
> Saying all white people are racist is considered progressive.
By whom? Not progressives. It is a standard right-wing a
way of attempting to distract from actual progressive statements like “white people, including those who aren't personally racist, are privileged by institutional racism” or “White identity is grounded in racism”.
Yes, by progressives - and don't start the "no true scotsman" fallacy please.
Also, your second statement maybe applies to the US, but there are many countries where white people are not the majority, or where there were virtually no other races than white. Saying that e.g. Norwegians or Italians are privileged by institutional racism is absurd. I am from a post-communist country that was always 99.9% white, saying that “White identity is grounded in racism” is absurd and of course totally racist.
> saying that “White identity is grounded in racism” is absurd and of course totally racist
Sticking my neck out a little, and leaving out my personal positions, I think you are interpreting "White identity" as "any identity held by people who are white", where dragonwriter meant something more like "holding White as an identity"?
I never asked for a white identity, but it is being applied to me by other people.
Any way you spin it, it is not ok. The color of my skin is my immutable characteristic, any derogatory statement about the whole white race will always be wrong.
The alternative interpretation I proposed doesn't say anything about anyone based on the color of their skin, doesn't say anything about the individual members of "the whole white race" where that label is assigned to them by others, and if we restrict "the whole white race" to those who voluntarily choose to identify as such then it only says something about that particular choice not the individuals more broadly.
You could reasonably argue that I have misinterpreted dragonwriter, that dragonwriter's interpretation doesn't match that of the other progressives who use the phrase, or that there are other problems with that interpretation (I don't, here, even endorse it). But your particular rant is off base enough that I don't think you understood it.
> Also, your second statement maybe applies to the US,
Since we are discussing a distinct American center-left faction’s position on domestic group relations, I don't know why you'd think the positions ought to apply to conditions elsewhere.
No, we are not. Progressivism spread from the US to the whole world long time ago. There is literally a party called Progressive Party where I am from that even adopted the "white male privilege" narrative even though, as I said, my country never had any racial minorities (other than jews, if you consider it ethnoreligion a race) or colonial history. It would be comical if it wasn't tragic.
If you are talking about a whole race of people, but you actually mean only a specific subset, then it is up to you to define the context, not up to the reader.
(And even in that case you will still probably end up with a racist generalisation.)
Yet I never see propaganda or hate on my feed. If your feed is full of hate and propaganda, it’s coming from the people you choose to allow to enter your feed.
Well, sure, but back in 2011 when a family member taught your uncle moe how to signup onto facebook at a christmas event you only now realize how little you actually knew your uncle moe.
Well, treat your uncle just like that creepy Uncle that everyone knows about, no one talks about, but you know to be careful when he is around your kids.
If others are looking to keep up with news in a low key way (including the OP), I'd highly recommend this approach that's been working well for me.
1. Create an instagram account to follow just one account.
2. Follow an account called @mosheh. It's run by a former CBS News Producer [1]
3. 1x or 2x per day, go through his stories.
No affiliation but I'd highly recommend this approach for those that are already on instagram or want to use the platform to keep up with the news. He aggregates news stories from most major news sources and in a couple of minutes you can be informed of what's happening around the world.
