Comment by finaliteration | Hacker News Reader

Comment by finaliteration | Hacker News Reader

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Facebook prioritizes "connection", but doesn't question whether all of those connections are -good- ones. I know there are a million comments out there about how deleting Facebook led to someone having less anxiety, depression, etc., but I'm also in that camp for a reason that I don't think gets mentioned a lot.

I suffer from PTSD due to childhood abuse and neglect (and I'm talking heavy drug use, physical, verbal, and psychological abuse, gas-lightning). But when my parents, my abusers, added me on Facebook I felt obligated to add them due to pressure from family members and friends who don't get how the abuse affected me, and out of guilt because I had a child and didn't want to deprive them of some relationship with their grandchild. I do know that responsibility lies with me for not ignoring them or speaking up about it. However, leaving Facebook severed that connection again, and I felt slightly more free knowing I wouldn't have to interact with them or let them have a view into my life.

I started using Facebook because I wanted to cure my loneliness and make some friends in college, which did actually happen. At first. Now it's just a platform that reminds me of the past by forcing these "connections", suggesting people who I had long forgotten and never wanted to speak to again.

I say, "Good riddance".

Thank you for posting this comment.

I think creators of social platforms need to be vastly more aware that just because you know someone or are related to them doesn't mean it's a positive. They need to stop assuming that making certain associations is all to the good. Such default assumptions tend to do the most harm to very vulnerable people who most need some kind of support for protecting themselves.

How do we solve this problem of discovery w.r.t. smart suggestions based off degrees of separation from mutual friends or other data on either end algorithmically?

Anyone have any insight into a more thoughtful recommendation approach that can be represented algorithmically?

Also any social platform would be hurting user growth metrics if they made you jump through hoops for discovering if someone you know has a profile. This is super nuanced, thanks for the unique perspective.

How about not recommending people some algorithm thinks you should be "friends" with? If you can't bother to remember or type a person's name in and manually make that connection, chances are you're just fine without it anyway. I used Facebook in college back in 2004-2008 before they had any kind of suggestions and I had no problem amassing over 1,000 "friends." On a side note the whole site is totally different now and I don't use it anymore.

It's a Strange Thing ... all the power, prestige, and money to be had by creating a pleasant alternative.

So far it hasn't happened. Many were called and none were chosen. Look for The Others.

Sorry to hear of what you've been through

> Now it's just a platform that reminds me of the past by forcing these "connections"

It doesn't force those things.

Maybe "force" is too strong a word. However, it strongly pushes them by generating lists of people you may know even if you haven't talked to them in over a decade. It also makes it easier for someone to just click "Friend this person" rather than having to find someone's number and pick up the phone.

Guilt is a strong motivator, as least for me, so granting someone that access makes it a lot more difficult to set appropriate boundaries.

It's up to you to accept a friend suggestion or request. And the UI makes it easy to delete any friend request. If there's pressure it comes from outside FB itself.

> If there's pressure it comes from outside FB itself

When I was a kid, long before Facebook, my mom would frequently receive an anonymous chain letter in the mail.

The letter would have some dramatic emotional appeal, or it would claim to be raising money for a poor family in the church, or it would promise pyramid riches, or it might have some mystical mumbo jumbo warning about breaking the chain.

But in the end, the stories about heartbreak or helping people or mysterious calamities were complete horseshit. Their only purpose was to convince my mom to copy the letter and send it to 12 other people, thus expanding the base of the pyramid for the benefit of whoever started the chain letter.

Facebook is the modern chain letter.

Just like chain letters, Facebook has lots of horseshit stories about connecting people, with implied mysterious social consequences for not participating.

But underneath all that, the real purpose of Facebook is to amplify social pressure to get people to expand the base of the pyramid for Facebook's benefit.

I'm jealous that there's nobody in your past you'd rather not be reminded.

I view FB as a negative force in the world but mostly not malicious.

Although FB software doesn’t “force” any connection, as the comment above so well illustrates, there can be incredible social pressure enabled by FB to do something such as stay connected to an abuser.

If you consider FB to be literally the software only, rather than the software plus community, then you may be technically correct. This IMO is a narrow and limited view of what companies and products are.

I'm saying no-one is being forced to friend anyone (whether by the software or the larger social context).

To me there is a clear and significant difference between "pressuring" someone and "forcing" someone, and I'm honestly a bit baffled by why this simple (to me) and small point seems controversial in the subthread anchored in the grandparent comment.

It also reminds you at the most inappropriate times about people either via "people you might know" and other annoyances on whom you should be connected with. These unwanted reminders can certainly create unwanted distress.

Absolutely. But I was just making the point that what they were describing wasn't a case of it forcing them to friend those people.

Yeah, force might be a strong word but I think for some it indeed creates social pressure and fear of repercussion if they dont friend people they "should be" connected with because of social structures, etc.

I think it does.

"But when my parents, my abusers, added me on Facebook I felt obligated to add them due to pressure from family members and friends who don't get how the abuse affected me..."

How did Facebook force them to add those people as friends?

Because the structure of Facebook encourages those kinds of pressures.

No, facebook the company did not force them at gunpoint to add their parents. That's correct. There are degrees of pressure, yes? If someone found them too much to put up with, is it unreasonable to accept the term 'forced' as apropos?

Yes, it is unreasonable to call "encouraging" (your term) "forcing" ("forced" - "obtained or imposed by coercion or physical power" - Google's definition).

[EDIT: to the people downvoting this, the subtleties of language matter. There is a big and specific difference between concepts like "encouraged", "presssured" and "forced"]

"the subtleties of language matter", yet you're the one interpreting language like a robot with a dictionary.

Under the everyday notion of forcing someone to do something, Facebook is not forcing people to friend others.

The definition I cited was for illustration. Since when does backing up you point with a definition mean you're being slavishly robotic?

Since you're trying to imply my usage of the term is narrow and unrealistic, what's the different notion of "forcing" someone to do something that would make it true that Facebook is forcing people to friend others that they otherwise wouldn't want to?

I can't read the commenter's state of mind, but the word "forced" seems to be used colloquially/artfully, to portray what they personally and subjectively experience with Facebook, and not meant necessarily as an objective description of Facebook's feature/UI/UX.

From a Facebook designer's point of view, the UI/UX most surely is intended to be "encouraging". But it may also be the case that for some users, the social dynamic may feel particularly oppressive.

"trying to imply"? Hardly!

I'm explicitly stating.

You hold conversations with people, not dictionaries.

Are you saying that definition is not in line with what that term means in practice? What do you think "forced" means, if something quite different that?

Colloquially 'forced' is often used in a sense weaker than coercion. For example, a train delay might force you to take the bus. A move in Chess can be forced because all alternatives immediately lose. In this weaker sense, it might be taken as "left with no better option".

Yes, to force means to leave no alternative or option, and in this sense Facebook is not forcing those connections, and it's unreasonable to say it is forcing them.

So, in my examples, nothing forces you, in the strictest sense, to take the bus instead of walking. And in Chess nothing forces you in the strictest sense to not make a move that immediately loses.

So perhaps loosen your grip and understand what the OP was saying?

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