I'm finally free of the shackles of Facebook's enslavement upon me!!

Representatives of FP (undetermined acronym) have the legal jurisdiction to force you to use Facebook? Sounds unlikely at best.

 

I totally agree

 

I totally agree.

Unfortunately, it is not you or me who decide what form of communication our friends/acquaintances use; sometimes you need to use what they are using in order to reach them, sometimes it's the other way around.

 

Too true unfortunately. To remind ourselves that online, two way communication is inevitable, is like saying the sky is blue. Nevertheless this undoubtedly gives the Internet giants who want to spy on us a big head start in doing just that. Moreover, even those who have intellectual smarts of whatever degree, dont necessarily want to go through what is required to lock down their systems to get security/anonymity/privacy how much less the ordinary person?

 

How I was able to break free of Facebook's "enslavement"?

I just found other sites I could post and browse on, such as this. I am not obsessed with knowing every detail of my friends' lives. I still use Facebook once every couple of days to check up on important events I could/have to attend to. But overall I'm using Facebook less than before, because I'm

a) too busy with IRL stuff
b) I'm getting a bit bored of the site (I use to be obsessed with the site)
c) I''m spending more time on other sites, which are as time consuming as Facebook.

Now Facebook is less capable of collecting data on me, especially since I use a browser dedicated to Facebook that is separate from all of my other browsing activities. Facebook has its uses. I just don't use it nearly as much as I use to.

That's all

ComputersRock.

 

Strange? All of my Friends on Facebook are my friends. As a Facebook user I control who is friend who is not. No strangers, no stalkers on my Friends List.

 

Then you're using Facebook the right way I think. I still prefer to meet physically whenever possible though.

 

Well it would be nice to meet all of my friends in person, but distance precludes that. All of my Facebook friends I have know before Facebook. Most of them I have known in the flesh, a couple I've know over the years via other none Facebook sources (and not other social network sources either)· Not one of them is a friend via Facebook; that will never happen, I don't make Friends on Facebook.

 

I've never had an FB account, never wanted one. I don't feel like I've missed anything.

 

I always find it disconcerting how the majority of the people who have no interest whatsoever in even trying to open a new FB account to experience what it is like, usually have a priori statements such as 'a waste of my valuable time', 'childish', 'nothing positive can come out of it' etc...

But then some of these people find it absolutely enthralling and gratifying to waste some of their valuable time engaging in computer games for hours on end... Sometimes even spending thousands of dollars to buy machines suitable for gaming. Well to each his own, however I can assure you that even FB like all things in life, has interesting and trivial aspects, popularity doesn't always imply a bad product.

 

disconcerting Huh?

You dont need to join FB to see its a massive waste of time, and thats not all it is... Looks like the majority you speak of are right in this case. FB is a health hazard in more ways than one, in fact I cant see why I would even want to bother to try it out, considering the many and varied sources of whats bad about it.

That said, shouldn't the primary focus be on privacy and security?

 

You just confirm what I was saying...

 

It probably isn't that simple. With games, you entertain yourself. Facebook? If you have a business you can use it to promote your products. And some users can get some special offers if they have a Facebook account. Aside from that, I don't know what else you can do with it. I don't find clicking the like button to be amusing at all.

I agree that Facebook has its own use when used properly. But so many people use it for irresponsible activities.

 

Facebook is also entertainment, what's wrong in exchanging opinions with friends about various topics?

Well I'm afraid there are lots of things that can come up from a pool of friends who might have common interests. I like art, photography, some aspects of politics, secret societies (computer security as well, that's why I joined Wilders!), and since joining Facebook I've had a great time checking out links about documents, historical videos, critical articles supplied by friends who share my interests... What's wrong with that? Wasting my time? On the contrary my general knowledge has expanded a lot in terms of feedback from other people.

I agree there are frivolous and trivial activities as well, but one can ignore them, after all one can focus only in one's circle of friends. A general misconception about FB, is about what information is public: if one wishes, only the name and date of joining FB might be available to the public, anything else can be hidden in various degrees even to friends. For example, I don't wish any one of my friends to know who my other friends are, it can be done. It is probably the only problem joining FB, one has to learn how privacy can be controlled and it isn't really intuitive.

 

Your data might not be public, but I can guarantee Facebook and the government(s) will make careful use of it.

It's not that I don't agree with your points, but everything posted on Facebook is treated as public knowledge for me. It still definitely has its uses, and I intend to capitalize that.

 

What's right in exchanging opinions with everyone yells "SHUT UP!" to the people who disagree with them and being so dishonorable? Games are still better if you want to be entertained.

If you found the good side of Facebook and you like it, then good for you. But to me, it's mostly used for the people to spread nonsense. No, I'm not blaming the technology, I blame the Facebook itself because they can do better about the comments posted in their service.

 

Could you clarify this? What exactly can Facebook do better about comments posted in their service? What sort of comments are you referring too. Just wondering.

 

Ooops sorry, my typo I meant FB of course.

If it were true then that would have been one helluva law suit and would have set me up for life.

As it is I`ve never used it nor would have any desire to do so but I think tht OP should`nt get to paranoid about it. It`s all just a lot old nonsense anyway.

 

Sure.

Get moderators or something to watch over the comments so they won't go too wild.

Y'know, sexist and racist jokes, making fun of certain tragedies, religion and political trolls, blaming anyone they like, making communities/groups to hate someone or something, ad hominem comments, frauds, possessive lovers, lies, shameless self promotions, and other retarded stuff. It's not exclusive to Facebook though. Other social networking services without explicit guidelines which are not being enforced also share the same madness.

 

Thanks, you may have left out somethings.

A pretty daunting task, if not impossible to control all of that. You right it's not just Facebook, it's the Internet. You can find all of what you have said on the Internet.

 

True, but there are some ways to at least reduce it to a considerable scale. I don't know if this is possible, but censorship to certain keywords might help. Moderators or policy enforcers also help, though they need properly structured and clearly informed rules to use their services. I mean c'mon, they can delete/mute videos on YouTube due to copyright issues, why couldn't they remove comments which contain jokes about incidents on Facebook or Twitter or YouTube or whatever?

 

Oh definitely! Two photographs (one of the Berlin wall in 1989 and one of an American military installation that no longer exists) have been silently deleted without any notice from my account. There was no political intentions whatsoever from my part, and at first I was shocked, but on second thought it is a private network and they probably have filters for contents.

Notwithstanding the above, private information is not available to the public (intended as other FB accounts) if I decide that only my friends are allowed.

Well I don't know what kind of experiences you might have had, if any, but my circle of friends are respectable people with real names whom I have known in person throughout my life. They wouldn't be my friends if they were dishonorable, would they?

Perhaps you are referring to accounts who publish all information "public", in which case I can imagine one might attract all sorts of weirdos... That's not my case.

This is highly debatable. I'm not a gamer but I don't criticize people who are. It is a different topic altogether, my initial reference to games was about allocating time to any activity. Entertainment is too subjective to make comparaisons.

 

Facebook My Space forums in general everything we type is recorded somewhere. A hard drive memory virtual enviornments all of it. Myself I'm more concerned about what i say to anyone anywhere anytime, that information its being recoreded as well. If what i say and do is O.k. with my maker then its O.k. with me. Hope that's not to far afield guys, that's just the way i feel..

 

As I said, if you can make a good use of it, then good for you. Most people can't, however.

True, which I simply stated that games are the better choice for entertainment in my personal point of view.