I have severely dialed back my FB use..I don't post photos of real people much and then only with their permission.

I had a bad experience some months back and backed off....I have seriously considered signing off, however...

I find some folks, family, use FB exclusively for
any sort of interaction or contact....I do have a cell phone, an email, yet FB seems to be the only way they interact with me..

So..do I just go dark on FB and just check in? (this is what I am doing now, in reality). I do post now an then for "proof of life" for of things or just to send photos to my Mom more easily)

How has your FB use changed?

I've kinda naturally been backing off, in that I started using Twitter and I like it better for some things. My family is all on Facebook, though, and I use Messenger to talk to them, especially the grandkids. I doubt I will leave it totally in terms of social use.

Also, I have a small but not insignificant following on my author page, which I've been neglecting since I started using FB less. I don't want to leave those people behind, but I can't count on reaching more than a couple hundred of them with any one post, and FB won't tell me who I reach, so it may be the same 200 folks every time. I can reach more if I pay for an ad, but it's been several months since I've done that, as I don't want to give FB yet more money.

I don't know if I'll go back to using FB ads, but Twitter ads do exactly nothing. FB ads do something, but it's doubtful whether they even pay for themselves, as FB won't give me enough information to advertise intelligently. It is certain that those ads are not making me rich. But I worry about stopping all social media advertising, because it seems to be the only way to get the books out there, now that traditional media has throttled back reviews so severely.

I'm relatively tech-savvy for a word person, but I just cannot figure out a way to get social media to do the things others claim it can do, business-wise. Yet I don't think it's wise to leave it behind. The tech companies have us all by the throat. Give them our attention and our information, or lose contact with our families and tank our businesses.

I am a member of a few FB groups - 2 international piano techs, a local neighborhood mostly "good news" / info requests, and a couple of restaurant or food groups.

I would bet this drives my feed to look a bit different than most! We see family and close friends posts there as well.

I've "snoozed" and unfriended a number of people over the years, and just scroll on by topic I may not want to engage with discussion. (might be the hardest lesson - not to feed trolls...)

As much as I hate FB, I need to have some engagement there. Apart from a few family members, it is an important place in my music community. Where I used to find out about important local concerts and music news via email blasts, a lot of those people are now using FB posts. I don’t have an “artist page” there, but often think I should.

I do spend too much time scroll through the news feed. I set a daily time limit on that and regularly blow through it.

The more we learn about FB the more there is to detest.

I also have a lot of work-related contacts and groups through FB. I keep up with developments in Japan, "youth slang" (just saying that makes me sound old!) etc.

And I also use FB to keep in touch with people all over the world who I otherwise would never see or hear of.

At the same time, I now have way more work-contacts on FB than I am comfortable with, and as a result, I myself don't post nearly as often as I used to. And when I do, I often tweak the settings so that, for example, my chair doesn't see the post or something like that. I feel sort of hyper-aware of the possibility of being judged or something, and that's not fun.

This is all separate from the problems with FB as an organization that the world is now learning more about....

But what is the alternative? I want to see photos of my niece, here what's happening in Japan etc. etc.

As MA said,

quote:

The tech companies have us all by the throat.

I mostly use it to do my own research, about things like this so-called “pandemic’…

My FB use hasn't changed in years. I don't use it. Period.


Six years ago I took a course to get an ESL teaching certificate. The instructor said that everyone needs to use FB. I said that I don't. He said that that's how people communicate in the ESL teaching community. I said that I don't and I won't. He suddenly made it a class requirement. I told him I thought that was pretty poopy and that I had serious concerns about their privacy and monetization of personal information. He told me that if I didn't get on FB, I would fail the class.

I set up an account with a bogus name and e-mail address. The profile picture was my cat that had died ten years earlier. I immediately went into the settings and turned off everything that could be turned off. I only used it for sending messages to the people in my project group. As soon as the class ended, I deleted everything I could and changed the password to gibberish.


I had one other brief encounter with FB. A year before my mother died, she created an FB account. She had connected with two relatives and one friend from high school. She had all her passwords in a post-it note next to her computer. I logged on to her FB account and posted that she had died. One person replied with "May God have mercy on her soul." I don't know if God follows FB. Might have to ask Zuck that.


FB has not only been complicit in the shenanigans over the last few elections (Cambridge Analytica, for instance), has been a platform for mountains of disinformation with a lot of it coming from Eastern Europe and outfits like the "Internet Research Agency", more importantly, FB and Zuck have made billions of dollars hosting the destruction of Western democracy.

If we believe that Citizens United proved that a corporation is a person, then we should be able to hold a corporation accountable for treason.

Not to mention being a willing host of content advocating violence, antisemitism and every other flavor a hate imaginable, kiddie porn, and God knows what else is swimming in that cesspool.


The only thing that will clean it up, or better, put it out of business, is mass boycott. Sadly, I don't see that happening.

quote:

He told me that if I didn't get on FB, I would fail the class.

(A slight thread drift, but) I really hate it when a teacher turns *sshole and goes on a power trip.

Unless the class is *about* FB, there's no reason to make using it a requirement for everyone.

I haven’t changed anything. I am a regular facebook user. I am pretty careful with what I post, and I snooze people that post lots of political stuff. I use it to keep up with friends and family. I also manage the gallery’s facebook page. And I use instagram regularly - it’s all about my studio and artwork and paint and pigment making.

I’m in Mary Anna’s boat. I use FB a lot for my knitting business. I don’t pay for ads, though. And my IG account is linked to it, so pictures post in both places if I want them to. I think IG holds the larger of my audiences, as far as engagement goes.

I do think social media is necessary for running a small biz, so there we are.

I don’t post overly personal things, even on my personal account.

Jodi, your IG feed is wonderful.

AdagioM - thank you. ♥️

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:

quote:

He told me that if I didn't get on FB, I would fail the class.

(A slight thread drift, but) I really hate it when a teacher turns *sshole and goes on a power trip.

Unless the class is *about* FB, there's no reason to make using it a requirement for everyone.

[further drift]This guy went on a few power trips or at least had ways to really rub people the wrong way.

I had taken week 1 of the 4-week course several months earlier with a different instructor. So, I joined this guy's course at the beginning of week 2. There were a couple things (like checking my phone every couple hours) that he insisted he had clearly forbidden and I knew better. When I explained during the next break that he may have explained that in week 1 and clearly, I just showed up in week 2, maybe he hadn't effectively conveyed that to me. He grunted that I was responsible for finding out and following his classroom rules.

Also, he had taught English in Japan for a couple decades and had fairly recently come back to the US. He frequently condemned things (like resting my foot on the crossbar of a chair while standing) because they were uncouth in Japan. I told him a few times that we are not in Japan, we are in the US. He got very annoyed that I was challenging his authority as the head of the classroom (I'm guessing that's another thing he picked up in Japan (maybe? does that sound right?)).

I also challenged him on a few points of grammar. He insisted he was right, and whatever I found on the internet to back up my understanding was incorrect. He always fell back to the position that when you are teaching ESL, perfect grammar is not important, and (I really hated this) the only grammar you need to know is what you are teaching in the current lesson.

Oddly, this guy seemed to be the most highly regarded instructor at the ESL Teacher school. I thought the other instructor I had was much much better.

There was one woman who came in late two days because her neighbor had blocked her car in. She was getting the work done and doing it well, but she was late by nearly an hour twice. He drove her to tears telling her that if she was even one minute late again he'd boot her out of the course.

In the end, he gave everyone an A, even the two people who had done very poorly throughout the class and on their final projects. Maybe that's why he was well-regarded.[/further drift]

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:
I’m in Mary Anna’s boat.

For a split second I read that as "I am Mary Anna's bot," which, given the subject matter and the medium we are on, is quite funny.

quote:

Originally posted by Axtremus:

quote:

Originally posted by AdagioM:
I’m in Mary Anna’s boat.

For a split second I read that as "I am Mary Anna's bot," which, given the subject matter and the medium we are on, is quite funny.

Shhhhh. Only you have the special glasses that can read it correctly!

The Facebook Papers.

https://www.theatlantic.com/id...n-zuckerberg/620478/