[Closed] Facebook - do you still use it?

I use it about once every month or two. Most often I end up costing people's grammar and spelling (your/you're, two/to, etc), leaving snide remarks about people's achievements ("I ran 3km today" "for(sic) days into Stoptober!" or "I've lost the pounds!"..... Really well-f-ing done. Your levels of self control are beyond belief, shame your level of indulgence has exceeded it for the past twelve years....) or calling people out for being racist.

Then two days later I get to read all the private messages where my sister or my cousin's call me derogatory terms rhyming with 'brick' or 'runt' for calling people out.

I find it a good to for filtering out those people with whom I would like to genuinely keep in contact with.

In the last week Facebook has...
Reminded my one of my local pubs was open Wednesday so I caught up with some friends there
Kept me up to date with a bunch of friends around the world
Communicated route changes to the enduro I'm doing Sunday and published the start list
Connected me with some of the guys I rode with on the weekend so I can share the pics and vids
And plenty more, like any tool the power is with the user.

Yes, I use it- pretty much how molgrips, aracer and jekkyl describe.
It's a good way of keeping in touch in these days of long working hours and everyone apparently either rushing around being busy or watching box sets, when most folk aren't into having you drop round unannounced for a brew. You have to put some effort into making it good.
Unfortunately I think email is becoming unusable, I have 17,000 emails in my inbox and it's out of control. I don't use Instagram or Twitter, and as already mentioned above, LinkedIn is becoming purely for lazy recruiters to spam everyone with poorly written, poorly targeted mass messaging.

All the time.

Keeping up to date with friends scattered around the world.

This. If you still live in the village you were born, prob'ly you can easily keep up with friends by bumping into them at the pub, WI cake stall or whatever. Otherwise fb helps.

Yeah, a bit reluctantly though.

I shut my account for knocking on three years but reopened it just over a year ago after my parents died and I realised the only practical way of keeping up with my wonderful nieces and friends that I'd increasingly been out of touch with. Yeah, and those friends that have moved even further away than I have.

I refuse to have it on my phone though, or have any notifications active.

Oh, I also get to chat with ScotRoutes (eat yer heart out suckers) which is nice 😉

hateful piece of software

never going to be on it

the wife uses it but can't actually explain why. When she is sucked into the digital world her eyes glaze over and the real world (i.e. the kids and me) cease to exist. She is grumpy as hell when she is forced to come up for air

Use it every day, very handy for keeping in touch with people.

Sure there's a lot of crap posted but if the crap threshold gets too high from certain individuals then they can be blocked/ignored.

Like exploring the tech too, created a Facebook messenger bot over the w/e as a work proof of concept.

...which was nice...

stopped 7 months ago as it was just getting to be a habit

same with Twitter

I still instagram though

I can't believe some people don't like WhatsApp. Much better than txt. Encrypted, possible to call, possible to set up groups much better than SMS.

Yep still use it quite a lot.

Lots of clubs/events/groups have facebook pages that don't have a website because then they don't need a webmaster to deal with it, just an admin.

Slowly culling friends I've not seen since school and have no real interest.

I deactivated my FB account about a month a go; too many ‘friends’ still moaning about Brexit, or other talked to death topics.

Deleted strava off phone too; too many people putting pretend rides like Zwift on there, or uploading their walk with dog/wife/kids on there ... how interesting do think it’s gonna be??

Instagram I am now contemplating getting shot of too ...

Never done Twitter.

WhatsApp keeps me in touch with friends if I don’t see them often.

stopped 7 months ago as it was just getting to be a habit

same with Twitter

I still instagram though

Binned it about a year ago, don't miss it at all

You ok Hun ??

+1 Jamie, its become a proxy for identifying idiots though, so it has its uses

alpin - Member
Most often I end up costing people's grammar and spelling (your/you're, two/to, etc),

🙂 I spotted that as well and had a chuckle.

Well... if we’re expanding out into Twitter and Instagram then I’ll update.

FB you know of, Twitter I finally created an account November last year.. for what reason I’ve yet to quantify. So I sought some interesting folks out to see what was going on and most of it was promotional guff, but that’s fine because I didn’t know one of my all time favourite artists was touring .. so I went to see him.
But then as the day wore on it seemed just a random set of gossip data, no real cohesion to conversations or themes and intermittent political bullshite. And I stopped using that S&M tool in March.

Instagram I like though. I post pics, have a few followers now. Some folks have an excellent creative eye, some folks have an over absorbing self click bait selfie self.. but it’s kinda what it’s all about. There are some fabulous photos on there, some absolutely amazing graphic artists and I find it’s a tool for them to show off thier work. I just post pics that interest me or something I’ve been involved in, some of my bike shots, some surf shots, some running too. I’m hating the intrusion of adverts posted as “posts” and I hate the banal videos of dick heads pulling wheelies on motorbikes or crashing( quite why I see this guff is beyond me because if the feed is tailored to stuff I like then they’ve got some algorithms crossed with some motorbike nutcase)
I even like the rather odd photos of girls posting shots of thier legs and shoes on beaches or tiles and such, I find that quite weird so I must have a perversion that i didn’t know existed. I’ve never contacted anyone through it, didn’t know you could and no one has contacted me through it either.. oh, I love using filters on my photos, I love to obliterate them to see what I can achieve.. no doubt this annoys some folks because I love the tags #nofilter posted on thier shots... it makes me laugh, like I care that they think thier so “worthy”.. anyway, it’s a fun S&M tool for self image flagellation.

I don't even own a smart phone, so FB and all that sort of stuff isn't for me.

There does seem to be a gulf between old gits like me and younger people who walk around with their face in a phone.

I went to the Red Bull Hardline event a while ago and laughed at everyone one watching it via their smartphone as they filmed it. I imagine they will post that crap vid on their FB page as a sort of show off thing.

Seems FB is mostly about pretending to people you sort of know that your life is amazing. Its almost like a mental illness.

To follow mtb related stuff yes. To comment on what someone I barely know had for tea, no.
Dont see the point in twitter or instagram though.

Instagram is the worst and I hate it with a passion you can only dream of

I use facebook, twitter and instagram :).

I mostly use facebook for the chat facility but it's also handy for organising trips and for sale/swap groups etc...

Twitter I use as it throws all sorts of interesting stuff my way (so does facebook to a lesser extent) and I partially use it as a modern day RSS feed aggregator (is that a word?). I follow things like reuters news, new scientist, anything/anyone else I think are interesting.

Instagram I only recently got into. I like looking at the pretty pictures and now use it for my photo a day as it's easier to post on than my blog is.

I took a break from this place for much of this year due to the amount of bile etc... in quite a few threads. I don't experience that in the way that I use other social media unless I expose myself to it on purpose. I guess that in a way on other platforms I choose the content I see, on here anyone can post things that everyone sees (obviously I can not click certain threads).

slowly started blocking more and more people on FB including family members as I grew increasingly sick of their bullshit lives. decided it was time to stop, it was becoming frustrating. It had zero value in social interaction with distant friends. Indy Ref was the turning point for me- what was once frivolous became bitter and acrimonious. Instagram i enjoy because i can keep it focused to my interests. Twitter valuable to react with services and news outlets.

Not on (and have never even visited the websites of) FB, Instagram, Whatsapp. Never did the Friends Reunited, Bebo, etc. stuff either.

I'm "on" Twitter, well I'm a registered user but haven't visited the site/used the app for well over a year. (I joined when my wife was doing LEJOG as a way of checking progress.) A mixture of losing interest and having got to the point where I followed enough people (not really that many, less than 100) that I would have needed to spend several hours a day keeping current with what appeared in my feed. Once I gave up doing that there seemed less and less point to keep up to date and my usage just tailed off.

I saw an analysis of FB that came up with a figure of around 50% of a typical page's content being adverts or sponsored posts and features. Obviously since I don't visit the site I've no way of proving that one way or another. Add to that 50% whatever proportion of posts are tosh, the "this is what I had for breakfast" sort of thing and what you are actually interested in is a small amount. This tallies with conversations with club mates and others on FB: after the "Why aren't you on FB?" type questions invariably they'll say something along the lines of "you have to filter out loads of crap". Really selling it to me!

I've a landline, mobile phone and email so if someone wants to contact me or vice-versa then it's easy to do so. If they haven't felt the need to contact me then adding FB or Messenger, etc. to the list isn't going to change things once the novelty wears off.

I use it loads, it's become a sort of Newsfeed aggregator. 95% of the stuff I look at isn't from friends, mainly news / technology links.

I also post photos on it whenever I shoot a local hockey match and they get a lot of traction from the teams and their clubs.

Made a conscious decision to stop using it about a year ago.

However the local running club use it to post infinity on training / races etc which is very useful. It’s more of a message board and not a ‘look at me’ thing

Anyhow it’s only middle aged folk that use it anyhow kids don’t use it apparently

Anyhow it’s only middle aged folk that use it anyhow kids don’t use it apparently

So I've heard. No idea what young people use...

I use facebook in fits and starts. I mostly post articles I am interested in, or personal/family pics for the enjoyment of family and friends abroad. I still have cousins in Canada, for example, and other relatives that do not live in the UK.

But I never found it addictive. I can really take it or leave it. Now food, on the other hand... 🙁

When she is sucked into the digital world her eyes glaze over and the real world (i.e. the kids and me) cease to exist.

That's not Facebook's fault, that's your wife's fault.

It's like booze - you can enjoy a nice craft beer or two with friends once a week, or you can be an alcoholic. Or anywhere in between.

They(social media co’s) do spend a very large amount of money coming up with new and cunning ways to suck you in though.

Its a problem IMO not a sign of personal weakness.

I saw an analysis of FB that came up with a figure of around 50% of a typical page's content being adverts or sponsored posts and features

Snapchat.. now there’s an S&M tool for seeing what your kids are posting... 😆

They use various, depends on what type of parental control you feel you need but here is a list (in no order) that da Yoof Use Innit Blud.

Kik
GroupMe
WhatsApp
Musical.ly
Tumblr
Instagram
Houseparty
Live.ly
Live.Me
YouNow
Snapchat (mentioned)
Whisper
Monkey (mostly dating for teenagers)
MeetMe (dating again)
Omegle (uses other chat feeds to align teenagers with each other, mostly dating)
Yellow (sex/dating/porn for teenagers)

Now your all in a sweat, I’ll leave you to scan your teenagers (and under)’s phones 😆

Just going through my activity log on FB. The crap posted was overwhelming and thats just October.

Deleted virtuality everything now back to 2010. Thankfully I did'nt post much in that period.

About to logout, probably on the 31st being the last day of Inktober.

In my 15minute thought period, I think I will scrap Facebook by the end of the day for inane drival use.

PS I'm OK Huns 😉

Nah, gave up on FB this year, just too much junk, even when I had filtered out a lot of the unwanted stuff. Yes, it's good for keeping in contact with scattered friends, but the phone still works.

Twitter I ditched a couple of years ago. Just couldn't give enough of a damn.

I use Instagram for posting photos, but actually falling out of love with that too. It's just not that good, so I'll probably end up deleting that too, and concentrate on building a decent portfolio of my photos on a proper website.

EDIT : For the record, I actually feel a lot better and happier for deleting a lot of social media. I finally realised how much of a crap distraction it was in my life, and was really just killing time that could be much better spent.

Colin, like I said it was an/one analysis and since I don't go on FB I'm unable to confirm one way or the other. You're probably right, most people will just go with the defaults and not keep on top of the ever changing rules/exceptions/conditions to manage things properly.

Reading various tech news items, every "feature" that FB et al. come up with are just the things that keep me from joining.

@trailofdestruction
Thats what I'm planning as well.

But keeping the FB business part going, and never post as an individual. Well try anyway 🙂

Yes, it's good for keeping in contact with scattered friends, but the phone still works.

Facebook is a totally different thing to a phone call.

I doubt my mate would have phoned me to tell me his kid did a great drawing in school yesterday, but I saw it (and the drawing) on FB and it was nice to see and made me smile. It's as if I'd popped round and seen it on the fridge, except they are at the other end of the country so that's hard.

Likewise my sister in law in the USA wouldn't have called me to say they went for a walk to the park and saw some lovely autumn colours, but she did post it to Facebook and I got to see pics and exchange a few words about it.

[quote=metalheart ]I refuse to have it on my phone though

That's a good point - on my phone I have to go via the browser as my phone broke and the FB app crashes it. Which means I hardly use FB on my phone when out and about, and I don't miss it that much.

However whilst it is refreshing in a way, it's also a real pain sometimes. I didn't mention before exactly how I use it (I've no idea how vicky knows - I'm now wondering if she's one of my FB friends I've never met 😉 ) but for several of the reasons mentioned above - a lot (most?) of my friends live nowhere near me and I haven't seen them for years, to chat about special interest stuff where the only people I know are those I've met through FB (hence FB friends I've never met in RL) and because several groups I belong to in RL organise lots their stuff on FB. Sometimes it's a pain not to get notifications when somebody posts a reply on an event I'm on my way to.

I use it a lot - but then it's more for professional use.

I find it very effective, the mix of media is excellent.

I filter out a lot of the shite from all but a few friends.

It's realitively easy to cut down on the spam by being selective with who you follow & using browser add-ons so the like of FB, Twitter etc can't track & target you.

Well done for dealing with your problem OP.

The comparison with booze is a good one IMO, it's great in moderation but you might have an issue if you're hitting it before breakfast every day.

I doubt my mate would have phoned me to tell me his kid did a great drawing in school yesterday, but I saw it (and the drawing) on FB and it was nice to see and made me smile. It's as if I'd popped round and seen it on the fridge, except they are at the other end of the country so that's hard.

Likewise my sister in law in the USA wouldn't have called me to say they went for a walk to the park and saw some lovely autumn colours, but she did post it to Facebook and I got to see pics and exchange a few words about it.

Sums it up perfectly. It might be digital but it's still human contact with people you actually know. Bit odd to swear off FB but post prolifically on here, where you probably only know a few people.

For the record, I actually feel a lot better and happier for deleting a lot of social media. I finally realised how much of a crap distraction it was in my life, and was really just killing time that could be much better spent.

^^^^^ This +1 ^^^^^

Crossover - I think I might add Ling to my Facebook feed 😆

The other thing to remember about Facebook is that it is a content aggregator not a content generator. You don't simply read it, like you do BBC News, you *use* it to get the content you want to see - usually that produced by the people about whom you care. If you don't like the content, change it. You wouldn't turn the telly on, leave it on QVC and then complain that telly is shite - you'd turn over to something you want to watch. You wouldn't walk into a pub, sit in the corner on your own for half an hour then walk out deciding pubs are rubbish. The pub experience depends on the company.

Likewise if you just log into FB and expect to be entertained you won't be.

'Use it', no. 'Look at it', yes.
I don't post much & comment little. I really can't believe how much shite people share/comment on though. 'If you think your English is good, type a word beginning & ending with 'T'. 🙄

I use it regularly.. yet I have friends who get really annoyed that I use it. They often proclaim in derogatory tones that they're 'Not on facebook.. Never have been'.

They prob did the same about mobile phones and the internet 10 years ago..

They're usually the same guys who complain that they miss rides etc as they never get to find out about them :/

Instagram is the worst and I hate it with a passion you can only dream of

Really? I choose the users I want to follow, whose pictures I enjoy looking at. I post pictures so others can enjoy mine (if they're that way inclined). Sometimes people see my photos and ask me to take photos of them, so they find a photographer and I find a model. Not sure I see something to hate in all that.

Given the number of I'd rather ride on my own, I hate people, people annoy me threads I can see why Social Media may have less traction here...