I'm going to be blunt, and I'm neither going to apologise for it, nor ask your forgiveness or understanding.
Do you really think I haven't considered all these points? Do you really think I haven't considered alternatives? I have, and I have, and my conclusion is that I (a) want to stay in touch with these people, and (b) have no effective alternative.
These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else. Despite many attempts they are unwilling or unable to use email as effectively as they use FB, and proliferating platforms would do them no favours at all.
You, and several others in this discussion, are using what you believe to be ironclad reasoning to replace any sense of understanding, sympathy, or empathy.
Out of curiosity, did you consider good old paper mail? That is what I switched to with my relatives, we just exchange letters once or twice a month. Sharing photos is easy, just put it into the envelope. Seems to work fine even with my grandparents (they seems to prefer it honestly, feels more personal they say).
I'm honestly curious if you considered this and why did you rule it out?
That would help with single-point-contact, but it doesn't help with "The Group". It would also be a problem with several of them who struggle to write physically because of arthritis and poor eyesight, but who have learned to use the FB app or the web interface on a laptop/desktop where the tech can help.
But they (most of them) don't know how to use email, despite my trying to coach and coax them through it multiple times. Their children or niblings have set them up on FB, taught them how to use it, and it's the only thing they use.
I do send a monthly letter to my mother's 97 year-old sister -- my aunt -- because she doesn't use a computer at all, and doesn't even use SMS. But she can't write back to me, so I rely on getting news from her via the phone calls I have with my mother.
Part of the problem is that these relatives (and pseudo-relatives, very close friends of my parents who were like aunts and uncles) have an relatively (pardon the pun) active group, posting photos and statuses (individually rarely, but as a group there's a post a day on average) which keeps the group connected and active. And they want to know what I'm doing.
The many-to-many aspect of FB really makes it a winner, along with the ease of posting, reading, and staying in touch with the group as a whole. As a platform for capabilities it's genuinely fantastic. It's the underlying cesspit of scumminess that's the problem.
> These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else.
Just to be clear-- they send and receive rich content over the FB app (taking and forwarding pictures and/or video, etc.), but they don't know how to send/receive that content through text messages?
Not trying to be unsympathetic-- it's just that every non-technical user of a smartphone I've ever seen degrades to text messages.
Using FB to post photos is really, really easy. Sending photos via SMS costs money under the plans they use.
And you're asking people in their 90s to become familiar with more than one interface when they struggle to understand that "internet" is not "the web", and "the web" is not "Facebook", and worse, they think FB is everything.
And for them, it is. It's the only interface they use.
I think there’s something to be said about being uncompromising and unwilling to accommodate others. It shows some amount of conviction which is admirable but conversely I think, accommodating others shows empathy and care for them.
I think the argument that this filters out those who do not care could also illustrate that they them self also do not care (not that loosing friends to mutual apathy is a terrible thing ultimately).
I agree with you. For most people 'just don't use it' simply is not an option. We just have to hope Mark Zuckerberg gets removed or the proper regulation gets introduced to make the platform better
It's not a lack of empathy or understanding it's that those of us who faced the dilemma you seem stuck on found the people who care and we care about still found ways to communicate after we left Facebook. Calls and texts are sufficient. I'm sorry you feel that trapped though. Something seems off in your replies. And ultimately nobody here has said anything that you have to listen to but you seem pretty defensive.
Helps the site (and is less irritating personally) to just flag the thread-invariant toplevel trope comments. 'stop using facebook' on anything fb-related is just that kind of comment.
Sorry, I should have said We've found calls and texts sufficient. My point is people seemed to be giving you anecdotes about how they personally got away and you are taking it as "DO THIS" You are free to keep up on Facebook. We're not shaming you or at least I'm not reading the comments that way. My point is - if you really want off Facebook, you can do it.
There was a time my entire network was on Facebook. I decided I didn’t want to be anymore. I reached out to everyone who was important to me off Facebook. Within 12 months, I knew who I was actually important to too. Sure, some of them I now only speak to once or twice a year, compared to comments regularly on posts, but the interactions are much deeper and more meaningful than that superficial FB interactions.
It wasn’t easy. It was worth it. This isn’t for everyone, and depends in your own stage in life. Be safe, be strong, be happy.
This is an incredibly condescending and dismissive reply to someone expressing vulnerability. I ask you to consider simply scrolling past and/or closing the tab if your reaction to someone expressing vulnerability includes the words “I’m sorry you feel […]” or “[…] you seem pretty defensive”.
Is the inverse not true? If you interpret your family member's refusal to migrate from Messenger to Signal as them not caring about you, what does that say of your refusal to use Messenger for them?
I continued communicating with those I cared about via standardized technologies. Those who communicated back in kind I still keep up with. Those for whom this was a bridge too far, are no longer in my life. Maybe they weren't ever really important to me, which made it easy for me to drop them? Or maybe they were, but I was never important to them? It doesn't really matter; they're not in my life anymore, and I'm okay with that.
Exactly. At some point I've had a conversation with most of the people who have filtered out of my life over this. I explained the reasons why I feel that Mark Zuckerberg is a sociopathic scumbag and his company is a cancer upon humanity, with the consequence that I won't knowingly use any product made by any company he owns or controls. For those who've filtered out of my life, their response was mostly along the lines of, "You said words, but I wasn't paying attention. I think Facebook is fun."
For most of the non-techie people in my life, I just communicate via common open protocols like SMS and email, things everyone can use easily. I do encourage people to try Matrix or Signal, but I certainly don't require those to communicate with me.
Oh man. I used to be up to around 2014 the last asshole keeping a specific group in Facebook Messenger. It wasn't much of a problem for them because my friends were using FB for other stuff anyways, but they wanted to move to WhatsApp (now they're on Signal), an app I didn't really used.
What it took for me to bite the bullet and accept changing platforms was all of them agreeing on moving, and then one of them making a hard stance.
Sorry that wasn't much of an answer, but I guess my point is that you (EDIT: royal you, not talking to you directly) gotta find sympathetic people before you declare war on the ones that don't wanna change.
I feel like various people are misunderstanding what I've written, so I'll try to clarify here.
> before you declare war on the ones that don't wanna change
I never "declared war" on anyone. I guess it's a lot easier having never used Facebook or Facebook products. I had a bad feeling about them from the very beginning and I've only ever felt more right in that feeling.
What would usually happen was, I'd meet someone new at some event, or maybe I'd be talking to a relative at a family gathering, and they'd say something like, "What's your Facebook? I'd like to add you to GroupX," and I'd reply that I didn't use Facebook. Then they'd follow up with, "You should join, it's <blah blah blah>," to which I'd politely explain why I won't ever join Facebook. And then one of two things would happen. Either they'd understand, and we'd exchange phone numbers or email addresses, or their eyes would glaze over and they'd find some excuse to walk away.
For the latter group, obviously we didn't interact online. For the former group, I'd text or email, and maybe they'd respond, and we'd have what I consider to be a normal relationship, or maybe they'd rarely or never respond, and we'd have no relationship. But in either case, I wasn't haranguing people not to use Facebook; I just wasn't using it. If not using Facebook meant I didn't have a relationship with someone, I was okay with that.
Sorry, I didn't really assume you did anything, I was just speaking in general terms from my own experience being in the other side and was citing my friend's strategy.
I should have been clearer about that in my message, as I hate when people do that out of nowhere to me. Sorry.
> ... SMS and email, things everyone can use easily.
I beg to differ. I have direct personal experience of a number of people who find FB far, far easier to use than SMS or email. These are close family members in their 90s who don't know how to use email[0], and struggle to use SMSs because of sight problems and physical problems such as arthritis.
I pleased for you that you've been able to avoid people who use FB. I wish you'd grant me the courtesy of accepting that other people have a different experience from yours. I agree with you entirely that MZ is a sociopathic scumbag, but I am unwilling to lose contact with close family members, even though they literally use no communications method other than FB.
[0] Despite using FB they don't use email, because FB was set up for them by others, and they don't even know how to send or receive emails.
I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO, and my experience each and every time was a soulless one like yours. It was just a non-stop stream of people and their friends reposting shallow things they found on the Internet, inspirational quotes, and political garbage. And if people did comment, they were just brief quips - probably just enough effort to try to manipulate others to like+comment back on their own content.
Email and phone's all I need. If people can't put in the effort to remember or catch up with me, even if it's just every few months, then they're not my friend.
There are a lot of people on this thread complaining about the privacy implications of Facebook and how Mark Zuckerberg is evil. While I don't disagree with those sentiments, it's not really why I avoid Facebook. I still use a lot of things that have similar problems like Google or Reddit.
One of the most sinister things about Facebook to me is that it creates the illusion that you are close with friends or relatives when you're really mostly watching a superficial view of peoples' lives in a passive, voyeuristic way. Comments and likes make you feel connected, but they are not meaningful interaction.
When I first deleted my account and stopped using Facebook, I felt initially a lot lonelier. But was I? After more time went by, I became convinced it was all too superficial.
Interestingly, who I spent time with shifted toward other people who were either not on Facebook at all or were very unengaged with it personally (for example, one friend only uses it to promote his business).
My only partial regret with any of this is that the pandemic really scrambled this. Almost all of my friends were purely people I saw in person, with no online component to our friendship. That all got paused in 2020, and has been very hard to get back to the same level since.
> I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO
Just out of curiosity, as long as you don't mind: what was the reason (or which feature, actually) they asked you to use Facebook in those cases? I haven't needed it in 5 or 6 years and nobody I know really uses it (or nobody admits), but that might be due to my location (Germany), so I'm a bit curious what's it still good for!
The first time I used it, it was family members wanting to connect with me, and the old "everyone uses it!" argument (the same one applied to MySpace back in the day). So I made an account, commented on stuff, posted pics of my cat, but ended up deleting my account after a few months because nobody was really "connecting" with each other, plus I found friends-of-friends' posts boring.
Second time was from some new friends I had made, who argued that exchanging phone numbers and emails were old-fashioned and awkward when meeting new people, and that it was essential to have Facebook since it's easier to just say "you can just look for me on Facebook; you'll know it's me since I have XYZ in my profile pic". I saw some validity to the argument, since recently I had met and got along with a couple cute girls on a train ride, but regretted not exchanging contact details with the two of them because asking for numbers/emails felt like a slight overreach. Though if I had a FB account at the time, I thought it'd have made sense if I could've just been able to casually say something like "look up John Smith on FB if you wanna hang out sometime. See ya!".
Third time was my then-SO. She posted on Facebook a LOT, and had many hundreds of followers. She begged me to make an account for months, so I could bask in all the content she posted.
Anyway, your experience with people not using Facebook sounds on-par. Facebook is increasingly considered a "boomer" technology, especially by the younger generations. Many younger folk these days tend to keep in touch via small Discord groups, or whatever dopamine-drip privacy-nightmare app of the week is.
Interestingly I also met some cute girls and a friendly guy in a train recently and they tried to exchange Instagram handles with me. I just asked for WhatsApp and we created a little group (but then again, Germany).
I guess a SO being there would actually make me use it. I did have a Twitch account for a while because of someone I dated....... (Curiously I haven't admitted this even to my therapist, lol). On the other hand, it's Facebook so I'd probably troll them and ask for printouts of the posts.
About the boomer thing, interestingly I never really had close family using it. But everyone under 25 I know denies having it like it's some kinda plague. The ones over 25 claim they forgot their password.
Absolutely. If your relationships is dependent on a single medium of communication, and you cannot migrate it to another one, that's a weak relationship or it's only local to the medium (some people are Twitter friends, and that's fine).
I've seen that comment too. It's unclear to me why you can't just have 1:1 relationships with these relatives by calling them on the phone or visiting in person regularly. You seem locked into the concept of only being able to interact with them using this specific group chat type format.
Calling them on the phone doesn't let them share their photos with me. I can't see the new plant in their retirement village, or see the painting they just did, or check out how they've personalised their room.
Visiting in person would require a 70 to 80 hour round trip. And once in the same country, getting to see all of them is also a further multi-day journey.
I've worked on this, I've thought about it, I've considered all the alternatives I can find, and I've come to the conclusion that the only effective way to stay in touch with my relatives is to use FB. Really, I've thought about it. A lot. Really. I have.
You've read my comments, and if I haven't explained well enough for you to understand now then I guess I'm just not able to make myself understood, so I'll give up.
I think for him Facebook is a necessary evil to keep in touch with some elderly family members who are stuck on it. So that's fine. It doesn't really undermine the point that for most people the ideal solution is to not use Facebook.
This is a pretty bananas take that conflates people caring with their technology-related behavior.
Most people don't have problems with Facebook. It's useful for them, and they don't consider the bigger picture because they're not in tech and they have more important things taking up their attention.
Now you swoop in and say "Facebook is evil, and if you don't get off of it, I'll cut you out of my life!" In that scenario, you're the one who doesn't care about the relationship, not them - you're the one that won't get off your high horse. You could make a minimalistic FB profile that has no information and use it to exchange messages and reply to event invitations. But instead you demand that they change their behaviors in order to support your moral imperative. That's your prerogative, but it is ridiculous to think your relationship is pretend as a result.
Also, to be clear, you're the only one here talking about a relationship that consists of a few likes on Facebook. Everyone else is talking about a broader set of interactions, like using Messenger to chat and sharing photos with each other.
