Ask HN: Knowing what we know about Facebook, why do you still have an account?

Groups is the only reason I signed up for FB three years ago. These groups are very important for my open-source projects and professional life. FB is the only platform that offers a common place where these diverse communities exist. Formerly, mailing lists and discussion forums like phpBB filled this need, but unfortunately FB has become the internet for many non-tech people. I have tried my best to lure members of these groups to free spaces that I have set up using software like Discourse. (And briefly, Flarum.) I've put hundreds of hours into building content within Discourse and providing support, but to no avail. It's simply too convenient for people to use Facebook, instead.

I'm really saddened by this development. The rich archives of mailing lists and forums from these communities from the 90's and 00's are still searchable online via a few old sites and archive.org. But all of our discussions and knowledge shared within FB seems to fall into a "black hole". Search functionality within groups is horrible. Not to mention that it's impossible to search if you're not logged into Facebook.

FB is a horrible place to build and share knowledge. But I haven't found a way to convince people to go elsewhere, nor have I found software that's convincing enough an alternative.

I have family and friends all across the US and across the world. I like them all, and I like hearing about their lives, even in the silly little details. Social networks are the easy way to do that, and Facebook is the network everyone seems to use.

For people who are more misanthropic or introverted, or who don't value their connections as much (I mean that in a non-judgmental way), the utility of Facebook is probably a lot less. I think that's one of the big things I see on HN: a lot of people who hate Facebook partly because one of the main services it provides (maintaining long-distance social connections) isn't useful to them.

(And of course I could call/email/text/etc. many of these people one-on-one, and of course I do that, too, but Facebook is a useful supplement for major life announcements from more distant friends/acquaintances, as well as trivial little details from closer friends.)

Facebook is not only a sketchy company, but the FB product itself has also gotten continually worse. It's now a bloated mess absolutely plastered in ads and viral/scammy/politics-as-sports trash. Even the annoying autoplay "facebook trash" videos in the feed have interstitial ads now - i.e. ads inside of ads. The whole site has become a down-market cesspool that I have very little desire to use. That's ironic because I feel like FB got it's start because MySpace became a cesspool of trash and FB felt like the upscale alternative.

But all that being said, I still have a FB account so I can check in on family members who don't (yet) use something else. But even among that unhip group of older people, they are quickly drifting away to instagram and I barely ever check in on Facebook anymore.

Honestly, public & private FB groups. Groups dedicated around specific subjects (mostly related to my career) have been some of the most influential places for learning, networking, building relationships that I've been able to call on later.

FB groups are king because:

1. Everyone is already there. 2. It's tied to your real identity (for the most part).

Other areas to learn/network and ask dumb/advanced questions exist, but to "community" vibe in FB groups is unrivaled.

My FB feed is almost nothing but groups posts. I've hidden/unfriended most people I don't care about and no one I've kept really posts to their actual pages much these days anyway.

I really wish Groups was a separate app. I'd keep that and messenger.

I realize my privacy on fb, and likely around the whole web is the tradeoff for this but unfortunately that's what's required to stay on. The advancements I've made in my career and personal life directly & indirectly due to the FB groups I'm in are definitely worth it, and likely would not have happened without the existence of FB groups.

I don't.

But it isn't because I disagree with FB's politics. It's because all my friends (Europeans around 35 yo) just stopped using it.

They all moved to Instagram.

Facebook (the product) will be a desert by 3-5 years. However, Facebook Inc. had a lot of hindsight and bough Whatsapp and Instagram.

I commute via train every day. 99% of the phone screens are either Insta or Whatsapp.

Facebook Inc. wins.

PS: I miss Facebook (the product). I hate Insta. I loathe the fact that it's all pics and no text. I have no good way to share ideas or jokes with my friends. But if I want to know what my friends are up to, that is the app I have to use.

I think it’s important to take a more active stand. My child joined a school sport this fall and the coach told us information will be provided on a private Facebook group. I told him I don’t use Facebook and demanded he also put the information elsewhere, which he did end up doing. I hope over time, as more people demand this, more people will float away from FB.

Because nothing on my account is actually private.

I use fb mostly for groups (buy/sell groups, some technical knowledge sharing groups) and being up to date with band/companies news.

I accept only people I really know and like, but I rarely invite anyone first.

I don't "share my life" nor I look at other people posts about their lives (most of them haven't written a wall post in months anyway). I share "life stuff" with people in person and looks like most people are doing the same.

Oh, and while a lot of people use Messenger I completely don't. Not at all.

I would like to request my data and delete, but severing the only mechanism I have for finding some people I know from previous academic programs is anxiety-inducing, so I avoid making a final decision.

I've been bearish on it for a while now. I think I've been pondering deleting my account since around 2011 or 2012.

I'm not sure when I last logged in.

To a lesser degree, it's also probably the only way I'll find out if a few former professors/mentors die. I am slowly discounting the value of this one because I visit so infrequently that I already only find these out if my spouse notices, or someone I stay in regular contact texts/emails about it. I should probably look into configuring search/news alerts for this, or something.

I have two groups of friends who mostly communicate via private Facebook groups, and because I decided to travel for a few years, I don't see either group enough to know what they're doing without Facebook. The social penalty for deleting my account would be the potential loss of a lot of my relationship with a large chunk of my friends.

This also means that I don't use the feed, which is the primary source of Facebook's problems. I get an unfiltered list of posts my friends make, which is really all I ever wanted anyway.

Facebook is just another website. Sure it has problems, but it’s super handy for keeping up with a ‘distributed’ family across the globe.

What are you fishing for?

I haven't looked at the newsfeed or added new posts in over a couple of years. It's only used to access Pages, but I see activity stalling as quality declines. US growth is stalled and I hear nothing but negative sentiment against the Facebook brand from regular users. It's the equivalent of MySpace now, but will always have its diehard users—those who don't like change, or those who just don't get the anti-privacy and adtech poison it's built on.

We should be asking why those who left Facebook still use Instagram which is feeding the same machine.

Because for keeping in touch with people and being aware of events, there isn't a better alternative.

It's an easy way to see what people are up to. Especially once you have kids it's not often you get to catch up with friends. And they aren't going to another service en masse.

It's also a way to see some random content, much like my LinkedIn. Just a bunch of articles and memes. I do find that it's low quality, often very political on the articles side. But the memes and jokes are okay.

It's gotten a lot less addictive over the years. Maybe I'll end up using it less and less naturally.

I don't have an account now and never had an account either.

Their purpose seemed somehow shady from the get-go. All that for free, what's the catch? What do they sell? And later the catch became obvious.

For some people Facebook is certainly useful to keep in touch with folk. But for my part, I am happy I never joined.

A corporation in a position to collect all kinds of information about you, to build graphs of who you know, when you communicate with them within the service, to learn even the people you know but who are not in the service yet appear in your pictures (shadow profiles), and so on... That is too much power for a single entity. Who watches and regulates them? Who looks after how that data is used? Who makes sure they behave? How can you ask them to go away if you don't like them? What if the political situation goes bad as in post-1920s bad and someone repeats the IBM/Hollerith tabulation machine use-case using data from Facebook?

Some might say the tinfoil is strong in this one but come one, after everything with Snowden, after the Cambridge Analytica and everything else, I am happier and happier about my initial decision. The only way to win is to not play the game and all that.

Facebook does have utility for making new friends. Just last night I was out at a bar, chatting to some people, and at the end we added eachother on Facebook. We need some kind of service like Facebook, just one which is fully encrypted and where the data is in the users hands.

They require use of real names and are popular. That means that there is a decent chance people who encounter me offline might try to look me up there, because all they need is my name.

If my name was something like Lorenzo Von Matterhorn, then I could go without having an account on such sites and people looking for me would find nothing.

But my name is not Lorenzo Von Matterhorn. I have a very common last name, and a reasonably common first name. Such sites have many people with my name. People looking for me will find people with my name.

By having an account at such sites, I can make sure I show up when people look for me, reducing the chance that they will mistake someone else for me which could lead to misunderstandings.

Beer.

Im part of a bunch of private beer raffle groups. It goes like this

1. Someone buys a rare and sought after beer (say, at a release they waited hours in line for) 2. They come up with a valuation 3. They post the beer for N spots in one of these groups (almost always 10 spots, 0-9) 4. Folks buy spots by claiming number 5. Everyone pays up 6. Once full, the next Illinois fireball pick 3 "fireball number" (0-9) that gets drawn decides winner 7 winner gets shipped their beer

These communities only exist on Facebook. And in that sense, fb works very well as a way to keep people honest (must use real accounts, must be vouched for to become a member)

Yeah its a niche, but it's my niche.

I have a need to connect with people on a couple of specific topics that I believe are very important, and unfortunately, Facebook is where most people are. So I use (only) Facebook groups. All the forums and message boards of the past are not where many people are. I stay away from my timeline and the news feed. I believe that the timeline is a useless stream of junk with people always arguing and fighting one another. Recently I noticed that Facebook has prioritized video content, and now the news feed is an endless stream of useless videos that auto play. This is not the result of personalization, because I do not react to people's posts or comments (and give hints to Facebook). It's as if Facebook intends to create its own version of a future based on Idiocracy (the movie). [1]

Facebook groups has some good features and has improved a lot for administrators over the last couple of years. But as dpau says in another comment here [2], search on Facebook and Facebook groups is terrible — it's worse than any bad web search engine one can think of. Most people end up posting the same posts and the same comments over and over again (this is not a Facebook-only issue, but the lack of good search makes enforcing "searching first as the norm" next to impossible). All the etiquette built around newsgroups and online forums over decades is nowhere to be seen on Facebook groups. Everybody seems to want to be spoonfed with answers, instantly.

As dpau says [2], Facebook as a place to store useful information for posterity is a lost cause. If, either intentionally or unintentionally, Facebook were to delete all content older than a week from groups and timelines right now, nothing will be missed! Facebook _is the place_ where content goes to die! I tell people to put their content elsewhere on the web and share the link on Facebook, but many people are loathe to do it, not understanding that their effort, knowledge and time are wasted so pitifully by an incompetent and arrogant corporation that doesn't care much about anything on the human side (except showing more videos to show more video ads to make more money).

I'm of the opinion that the sooner Facebook dies, the better off we'll be, even if there's no single alternative that fulfills all the features it offers.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18481458

I honestly have not an account since an year but just for two reasons:

- all of my contacts stopped using it well before, basically their whole profiles were empty of any news, photo or share. They just used it to read some news from some groups

- I was still there because a group of my college was still active and I needed the contacts with some of those people. As soon as I didn't need them anymore I left

SW-eu seems a totally empty space for facebook for what I could see. New generations are directly ignoring it, old generations are not even using it, and my generation has just stopped to find it useful at all

I use Facebook's login on some websites, its groups... and I like the ads.

It may sound weird, but I adblock the hell out of ads everywhere when I'm doing something "serious", so the only ads I ever see are the ones in Facebook's app... and they're over 50% relevant and interesting to me.

So I pretty much know that Facebook on mobile is a time waster, and I only use it to check out fun/cool stuff, which includes looking at curious things I'll never buy.

Also, I have Facebook's notifications disabled, so I only use it on my terms.

As someone else said, Groups.

Would I prefer them to be hosted somewhere else like a forum? Yes, Groups on Facebook are quite terrible to use with the non-chronological ordering, the comment system that encourages everythign but in depth comments, ... but the reality is that for a few subjects that I'm interested like development projects in the city where I live, .. they're the place where I can find the most up to date info and discussion

I haven't bothered to delete it because I'm not very exposed to privacy issue there (I don't given them much of anything to sell) I don't actively post much of anything at all, but within my family it is considered a social norm. I'm expected to occasionally check in and give a like to some posted photos, and send the obligatory "Happy <something> | <congratulations>" here and there.

Ultimately explainable by the fact that extremely few, possibly zero people actually live their life according to principles.

Everyone has their pet topic, everyone has their set of vices.

I don't have a Facebook account, but I do own a (non-electric) car. I'm very much aware of how bad it is. Giving it up would restrict my life dramatically, so I don't. (I'd love a Model 3 when they finally hit the UK).

I deleted my account over a year ago, and I periodically consider rejoining for a few reasons:

a) My social life has suffered considerably. I've heard that if your friendships are so shallow that they vanish when you're not on facebook they weren't worth much anyhow. That may be so, but at least when I was on facebook I would know when my "friends" (read: casual acquaintances that I met once) were throwing a party or going out somewhere that I could join. I'm single and I moved to my current city a few years ago and don't have old friendships. If I want any hope of meeting new people, making friends, dating, etc I need to be present enough to get opportunities. Leaving facebook cut off the most valuable tool I had to expand my social circle, and I now rarely go out or meet new people. I'm lonely, but I'm really uncomfortable creating a facebook account so I haven't done much about it.

b) Meetup was a nice idea, but other than tech talks, nobody seems to use it where I am. If you like $hobby and want to find other local ${hobby}ists to share your activity with, you need to be on facebook. Do you like riding dirt bikes, but know that going to the desert with a bike without a buddy is dangerous...well, if you don't have facebook how are you going to find a buddy? You won't, instead you'll ride alone and hope you won't break a leg somewhere there isn't cell reception.

b) Groups have replaced Craigslist. Where I live, not being on facebook costs money. Want to buy used furniture? Facebook. Interested in a cordless drill that costs $$$? Buy second-hand on facebook. Or just pay retail and buy new. Looking for an apartment? You can find a roommate on...wait for it...Facebook.

Don't give them any information you don't want them to have.

I only keep the account to log in into various services.

To share updates with my friends and family, buy used stuff on the marketplace, get info and be helpful to townspeople on town happenings from my town group (where I've also met some nice people that I now buy beef and eggs from), etc.

Nothing in recent history has changed any of it's utility for me.

I'm somewhat of an introvert and have frequent bouts of depression that keep me in the house for anything other than work. FB is how I follow up on my friends lives and maintain some contact with the outside world. I don't personally know anyone on any other forum.

Too many of the social event/party/gathering things that I go to use Facebook events as the primary means of letting everyone know about the details (when, where, last minute changes, door code, etc.).

Simple: I like looking at my friends’ posts and don’t value my privacy.

Not long ago I closed my Linkedin account because where I live, far eastern India, recruiters hardly use linkedin for anything & the rest did not find me employable either. I had been using Facebook in the hope of staying in touch with friends but of late I feel that my friends posting their lives not to connect, but to gather likes & comments. I shall close it too! Instagram, I use to follow interesting people, but is connected to my Facebook. I don't need that addiction too & hope to close all cyber social nuisance in near future!

For chat, I haven't posted anything for 4 years but i still use it regularly to get in touch with people.

It would be great if you could clarify and be more specific about “what we know”...because so far I haven’t come across a single reason me and my friends should stop using Facebook.

Broad generalizations and statements don’t help the conversation

Sure, there is a lot of headlines with reasons...but I can’t remember a single one that wasn’t hugely out of context or debunked.

Troll groups and meme groups

You could ask the same question about every company: Google and China censorship, killer drones, IBM role in the Holocaust, Ford's Nazi creator, majority of German corporations 'employing' slave labor, NASA importing Nazis, concentration camps sciencists.

And I don't use it. I just find the recent outage hilarious.

events. and addiction.