I do find it ironic that it’s a bunch of middle-aged men discussing Facebook use.

My teenage daughters and their generation wouldn’t be seen dead on it

So what you’re saying is it’s a dying platform only used by old, out-of-touch people? Sounds about right.

Why do we need the internet

The thing is… Facebook makes its money from breaking the openness of the WWW… which is fair enough… but we should have our eyes wide open to that. The OP seems to just be saying not to run your business or club as if everyone must use Facebook to engage with you. Which seems sensible… and… open.

giving up FB like they’ve kicked a crack habit

lots of social media is designed to fire up the same part of your brain as crack does, so for lots of folk, it’s exactly the same

So what you’re saying is it’s a dying platform only used by old, out-of-touch people? Sounds about right

That’s exactly what I’m saying. Well this is a funny old day, isn’t it? Me and you agreeing on something? 😉

When I analyse the FB stats of my advertising, virtually nobody under 35 engages with any of it, so I don’t bother with them any more.

I suspect that’s because as you go down the age groups a smaller and smaller percentage of people use it.

Or maybe younger people just think what I do is shit? Who knows? Probably a bit of both

Much better to aim it at pensioners, not least because they’re the only people who’ve got any money 😂

when you consider 80% of the people on Facebook (a low estimate) are going to be gullible and not too bright which is where the problem with it starts.

It’s the same in the real world and always was.
Door to door salesmen, snake oil, hair restoring tonic etc.
This is the same but on t’internet.

Its FAR easier to advertise stuff on Facebook marketplace than on the stw classifieds.

Let’s put this bullshit to bed once and for all, shall we?

“LOOK AT ME, I DON’T USE FACEBOOK!!”

Well done, have a biscuit.

“FACEBOOK IS TOXIC, USE TWITTER!”

People are toxic, exercise some quality control in your choice of social circles rather than blaming the medium.

“TWITTER IS TOXIC, USE FACEBOOK!”

People are toxic, exercise some quality control in your choice of social circles rather than blaming the medium.

“ALL SOCIAL MEDIA IS TOXIC!”

… he said, with no concept of irony, on a social media platform.

“I STILL DON’T USE FACEBOOK, WHY AREN’T YOU PAYING ME ANY ATTENTION?!”

If you crave validation that badly for things you don’t do maybe you should consider creating an account on social media somewhere.

Personally, I don’t use the main feed anymore nor does any of my friends but groups are useful but aren’t a replacement for a good forum. Any post with lots of replies is so hard to read on FB and it automaticaaly collapses if you swipe down the list too many times.
However, for business FB and more so Instagram is very useful for attracting new customers organically and staying in touch with existing ones and industry friends and trends. Occasionally I do a search that takes me outside the cycling-related stuff and it’s awful vacuous drivel but it’s easy to lockdown it down to what you’re interested in. I’ve tried SEO optimisation, and google ads but they don’t give you the results for the same effort or financial outlay. Would I run the who business of FB or Instagram – no way but they are very effective tools if used correctly.

exercise some quality control in your choice of social circles rather than blaming the medium

cougar, I get the sentiment, but lots of social media sites aren’t honest brokers. Whereas they pretend to be a “blank sheet of paper” They have dedicated themselves (consciously or otherwise) to extracting data, and using it to maximise profits, often without the knowledge or consent (whether folk could give consent to the huge complex web of interconnected services in any meaningful way is probably for another debate) of their users.

it needs to be regulated to stop us from harming ourselves, like drugs and cars and ciggies have been simply because they continue to act like one thing but are in fact something else completely different

Not using FB is the new “I don’t have a TV” 🤣

Not using FB is the new “I don’t have a TV” 🤣

+ I grow my own jeans on my organic allotment

lots of social media sites aren’t honest brokers.

Perhaps. But that’s not the complaint, or certainly not the most common complaint. People are complaining about the content and about other users, and they only have themselves to blame for that.

It’s like wading into the middle of a discussion about, to randomly pick a random example totally at random, pocket knives and bleating on that you don’t like knives and don’t understand why anyone would want to carry one. Like, why are you even reading this in the first place then? People are weird.

Must be Thursday. I never did quite the the hang of Thursdays.

I joined because of groups but have since deleted my history and Facebook account.

I realized that I had amalgamated many of my interests onto one platform. Facebook and its analysts are easily able to see how you interact with their platform and this kind of profiling doesn’t sit easy with me. Plus Facebook would change the locations of certain settings and obfuscate my ability to hide certain aspects of my profile and then I realized nothing I did on there was as private as I was hoping. I believe privacy being a human right and I also prefer to compartmentalize certain aspects of my life. That’s when I realized Facebook was really going against my principles.

With regards to advertising ones services Facebook can be a pit of cheap skates that don’t want to pay a reasonable rate. Not sure if they were genuine users or fake profiles with an agenda.

I believe in trying to be as technologically self sufficient as possible. It’s not easy as technology and self sufficiency is a contradiction in terms I think. However, creating a WordPress website with the option to self host and then manipulating the SEO to increase the search rankings, then posting flyers through doors and local paper advertisements are alternatives to Facebook. Far more satisfying having achieved it and looks more professional too.

Facebook, Instagram, Whatsapp, etc. There are plenty of alternatives to these out there but one has to compromise on the social aspects for now as people will only go where everyone else is and love the convenience and lack of administration that the conglomerates provide. Perhaps one day setting up privacy friendly (as in not sharing all your data with private companies), distributed services will be easier. But for now it’s only really for nerds like me.

Alternativeto.com is a good website that has alternative software to the more well known platforms that people can use. I usually search for open source software and have to say I’ve always found something that I can use. Jitsi is an alternative to Whatsapp for example but whether you can persuade your friends to use these services is another matter.

Yeah I sacked it off years ago when I realised I’d hidden almost all of my ‘friends’ posts and havent missed it at all.

If a business cant engage with me without facebook I’m not interested.

so any businesses that have no online presence apart from Facebook won’t get any business from me.

The thing is, they don’t want it. Because it will generate less profit than all the business they currently get.

It’s no different to a real shop in a back street, that is always busy and doing really well.
They aren’t going to move to an expensive high street location and make less profit just so a few extra people will notice them.

We have a shop website. There is no way on earth that I would be able to alter its content.

Either whoever requested the site did a bad job setting the requirements or whoever built the site did a bad job with it. Plenty of options for creating a site thats easy to update for nontechnical end users.

People are complaining about the content and about other users, and they only have themselves to blame for that.

Not necessarily. It will also depend on what the provider is choosing to push to people. If someone so much as glances at the rabbit hole they can then end up being pushed further down it by the choice of what is being pushed to them.

It’s like wading into the middle of a discussion about, to randomly pick a random example totally at random, pocket knives and bleating on that you don’t like knives and don’t understand why anyone would want to carry one. Like, why are you even reading this in the first place then? People are weird.

It’s more like going to a pub, and continually overhearing conversations where people are loud, ignorant, angry, racist shitheads – eventually you think maybe this pub isn’t for you.

Sure you can talk louder to drown them out, or go to a different room in the pub, but I’d rather go to a different pub, or not go to the pub at all.

Then you find out the owner of the pub is selling your credit card details and hosting far-right rallies.

“ALL SOCIAL MEDIA IS TOXIC!”

… he said, with no concept of irony, on a social media platform.

This is the only social media I use and I consider it to be the least toxic option that interests me/is sometimes useful. It still has it’s drawbacks too.

Your argument seems to be that you must embrace all forms of social media without comment or criticism, or use none of them ever. Seems reasonable.

some quality control in your choice of social circles rather than blaming the medium

This is like saying that cars don’t kill people, drivers do. It is absolutely true, but that doesn’t mean that car manufacturers shouldn’t be pushed towards designing safer cars, nor that those pointing out that they can and should be made safer are just moaning ninnies. And, getting this analogy back to the OP… it doesn’t mean that those calling for companies and clubs not to assume everyone ones wants to drive to engage with them aren’t making a valid point.

It’s more like going to a pub, and continually overhearing conversations where people are loud, ignorant, angry, racist shitheads

except you have a magic wand, which removes anybody you don’t like from the pub instantly and permanently, leaving only considerate, polite, friendly, helpful, interesting people

Hey, there’s always Parler…

It’s more like going to a pub, and continually overhearing conversations where people are loud, ignorant, angry, racist shitheads – eventually you think maybe this pub isn’t for you.

Sure you can talk louder to drown them out, or go to a different room in the pub, but I’d rather go to a different pub, or not go to the pub at all.

Then you find out the owner of the pub is selling your credit card details and hosting far-right rallies.

It’s rather that the landlord has worked out that the angry folk drink twice as much and visit more often.

The argument that you can build your own nice corner of facebook completely ignores that you share a country with all these other people that are getting radicalised in their facebook bubbles. You can ignore these people by blocking them on facebook but you can’t avoid them in the real world, especially when they turn up at the polls.

It’s more like going to a pub, and continually overhearing conversations where people are loud, ignorant, angry, racist shitheads – eventually you think maybe this pub isn’t for you.

I think this is an issue when you want to hear about local news or events and realize the local town/village group is run by a company that has an agenda.

If The Daily Telegraph or The Daily Mail ran your local town group for instance then surely that’s wrong. Yet new people to the town are drawn to the group that has the largest number of members thinking this group is the one to hear the local news but in actual fact it’s run by a particular party biased group, an online news source owned by a trust with unknown interests or one that’s affiliated to property developers. That’s an issue. It becomes a propaganda machine.

Especially detrimental to the local environment when locals that don’t share a particular view post and are then banned from the group or shot down en masse by profiles (I’ll call them profiles as it’s not always certain that they’re genuine individuals).

Many people who would have joined (new residents to the town perhaps) would not necessarily be aware of the biases of a particular group and they do exist especially where local groups are concerned.

It is possible to create a “nice” corner of facebook for yourself. For you that might be loads of bike and woodwork stuff, for someone else it’s knitting and for someone else it’s brexit and for the next person it’s all ER groups. Everyone’s happy except we are all experiencing an increasingly divergent view of reality where we can’t agree on any basic facts anymore. The impact on social cohesion seems fairly apparent.

^^

I think this is an issue when you want to hear about local news or events and realize the local town/village group is run by a company that has an agenda.

If The Daily Telegraph or The Daily Mail ran your local town group for instance then surely that’s wrong. Yet new people to the town are drawn to the group that has the largest number of members thinking this group is the one to hear the local news but in actual fact it’s run by a particular party biased group, an online news source owned by a trust with unknown interests or one that’s affiliated to property developers. That’s an issue. It becomes a propaganda machine.

Also true… and perhaps really the whole thing is like that but it’s easier to see on the local group and as the scope gets bigger it’s less recognisable?

The argument that you can build your own nice corner of facebook completely ignores that you share a country with all these other people that are getting radicalised in their facebook bubbles. You can ignore these people by blocking them on facebook but you can’t avoid them in the real world, especially when they turn up at the polls.

frighteningly true

Could I raise a practical question at this point?

I’ve spotted a business opportunity and I’m going to get some t-shirts printed with ‘I’ve deleted my Facebook account’ and a big Facebook thumbs up symbol on the front.

Where would you suggest I advertise them?

Is that a stealth ad?

You’re not as original or funny as you think you are your social media bubble has made you believe.

https://www.redbubble.com/i/kids-t-shirt/Facebook-Deleted-Thumbs-Down-Social-Network-Social-Media-Cambridge-Analytica-Private-Infomation-Abused-Data-T-Shirt-by-prezziefactory/30918979.MZ153

Can I ask where you happened across them?

The seller of the shirt uses Facebook (obviously)

https://m.facebook.com/Redbubble

I stopped using Fb around three years ago, at about the same time my g/f moved in with me. We got back in touch after roughly twenty years via Fb…
I’ve not deleted it, and I still use the message side to keep in touch with some close friends, but I got so fed up with so much of the bullshit that gets posted, and I couldn’t justify the time spent there.

It can be a good thing for businesses and their customers. My local leisure centre/gym had to close for a few days due to staff shortage. They put that out on FB and it popped up on my feed. Had they not done so I would have walked 2 miles there that day not knowing. I don’t check the website of every business I might want to visit every single day, but I do look at FB most days

I use it. It knows I’m a sexual deviant into knives, bikes and VW Transporters.

There are bigger criminals in the world. Most of them run countries.

*shrugs* and wanders off to check FB

Sounds to me like you’re currently the guy who just has a few lines of bugle through the day but it’s not a problem, no no.

Yes that’s exactly like it is 🙄

Sound to me like you’re the guy who likes to project.

I used my Facebook account today. (This is a Christmas story)

Letterbox goes bang bang. It’s my post lady, dropping parcels on the doorstep. One is my son’s late ordered pressie (hydration pack, ordered 2 days ago from SportPursuit, nice one SP!) and another small bundle. I’m just about to open the small bundle when I notice the “To” name isn’t mine. And the package has come from Canada.
I look up the sender’s name on Facebook, there she is in Ontario, Canada! Send her a message, saying I’ve got something she sent to my address, if she can give me the right one I’ll post it on.
About 2 hours ago, letterbox goes bang bang again. Bloke there “hi I’m from no. 14…!” “Ah, the parcel!” hand it over. Thanks to Facebook, a Canadian hasn’t wasted $22 postage and a kid gets their internationally sent Christmas pressie. Nice eh!

Sounds like you should get to know your neighbours a bit more and spend less time on Facebook (runs away and hides………..)

Meant entirely in jest btw, that was far too good of an opportunity to pass on lobbing stones from my lofty position above your greenhouse.

I’m another of those sorts that annoy cougar, never had Facebook nor Instagram/social media, yet I often feel the need to mention this using a pseudonym on a web forum which is arguably a form of social media no matter how it can be posited, no way of squaring that one. I think of social media as a logarithmic scale, the initial immersive steps are relatively benign and rewarding but as you interact into the experience the algorithm will build a perfectly formed avatar of your wants,needs,likes,dislikes,indifference and serve it up to whoever wants, I could go on and on but I figure you get what I’m trying to get across (Needless to say i started early on a whisky Xmas pressie and as I’m now even boring myself I’ll wrap it up in half hearted effort at trying to get my point across before I lose interest). This avatar is packaged up and sold to any bidder with zero accountability which is is now where we are with social media, i don’t like how the experiment has turned out, they have evolved from their initial altruistic inception to the now “all powerful OZ” with immense societal and governmental ramifications that have the ability to change the fabric of society for the worse.

I’m bored so I’ll shut up and post without reading it through to see if it makes any sense whatsoever and my glass is empty so I need a refill (glenfarclas 15yr old btw)

Merry Xmas all btw…..

As someone who struggles in social situations at the best of times I find FB detrimental to my mental wellbeing. Except it’s more difficult to avoid if you’re on it…

I’ve sacked it off a couple times (think previously it was 2.5-3 years and only really rejoined to keep in touch with my US based family after my parents died).

I deleted it off my phone when I got fed up getting FB messages to tell me I’d hadnt checked FB in a while… I then found it easier when I changed the default language to Español (which FB kept changing back to English) as that helped as I didn’t understand half the stuff being how I don’t speak Spanish…

So I sacked it off again (been well over a year since I shut it down). It just doesn’t work for me. I’m genuinely happier off it.

However I did join IG which I find much more useable with its more limited interaction.

With the almost obligatory WhatsApp groups set up post Covid unleashing I keep in contact with my family and have even less need for FB. I should just delete my dormant account all together.

Oh, I haven’t had a tv for over a decade so I guess I’m just ‘one of those people’… 🤪😂

It can be a good thing for businesses and their customers. My local leisure centre/gym had to close for a few days due to staff shortage. They put that out on FB and it popped up on my feed. Had they not done so I would have walked 2 miles there that day not knowing. I don’t check the website of every business I might want to visit every single day, but I do look at FB most days

How do you quantify the price you pay for that though?

i.e.

This avatar is packaged up and sold to any bidder with zero accountability

Myself and a few other parents sat in a field for an hour or so after having dragged gazebo’s and all sorts for the school fete… after something like an hour OH rang the head.. “didn’t you see FB?”

Personally I find it very rude that people are asked to donate time and goods, turn up but it’s too much trouble to call them or send a text.

And that, like most of the other complaints, is a problem with people not with Facebook.

I’m another of those sorts that annoy cougar,

It doesn’t annoy me, I just find it an odd thing to be virtue-signalling over. Or even just “things you don’t do” generally. I don’t play rugby for instance, but I don’t then find a compelling need to hang around in rugby threads shouting about it. It’s weird.

And sure, Facebook as an organisation has its insidious side and that’s a perfectly valid concern. But it’s not responsible for the content your friends post, if your friends are reposting racist propaganda then what you need there is less racist friends.

In a serendipitous happenstance John Darko has just posted a critique of social media that appears to fit in with what I was crudely attempting to put across in my post above, worth a read if you can spare 5 mins

John Darko and the Ego-Boner

I just find it an odd thing to be virtue-signalling over.

Asking companies and clubs not to assume everyone uses Facebook is not “virtue signalling” any more than asking them not to assume that everyone drives a car is “virtue signalling”.