Of course they did, but it wasn't easy to keep in contact or up-to-date with aspects of many lives, people you have an interest in for one good reason or another. We live in a complex, busy and turbulent world.

In some regards Facebook etc are just another benefit of technology, so like all advances there is always good and bad sides.

One of the bad sides of Facebook is too many folk relying on it for their news, and the biased slant that gets served up.

Another bad aspect is folk reducing actual real world face-to-face contact, but that has been happening to some degree since the advent of email.

One of the most, if not the most important, things in this world is Communication. It is where many aspects of our lives work out well or don't. So anything that improves communication and sense of community, are to be applauded. The real problem with Facebook, biggest problem outside of some behavior (only encouraged by some anonymity) and news bias limitations, is the hooks commercial interests have in it.

So surely you are not suggesting we go back to the Dark Ages.

There are good and bad sides to anonymity, so one needs to be careful with what type of anonymity.

If you don't want to be found on Facebook, you can adjust your settings to make that so, last I checked anyway. Of course, it is also down to what your friends have set too. It is pretty hard to be completely anonymous. There are also many people on Facebook who don't even have a Facebook account, maybe their images and any discussions about them, perhaps even where they live, what they do etc, if hopefully not too specific a mention. None of us can really avoid Facebook, which is why it needs to be decoupled from the things I mentioned in an earlier post above.

One needs to be accountable for what they post on Facebook, but on the other side of the coin, what you say should not be set in concrete for all time ... we all make mistakes or errors of judgment. Privacy and Security concerns are paramount though, along with freedom from Hate Speech and bullying.

Social Media is not an easy beast to tame properly, that's for sure. However we need to keep grappling with the problems, because there is no turning back the clock.

Well, with traditional media, you can certainly complain about imperfect journalistic integrity because there is something to complain about.

With fake news on Facebook... there is not a whole lot to talk about (unless you like to comment the quality of something that simply isn't there).

Pre-covid, I wasn't aware of it that much, but during covid, one of my friends started posting all kinds of videos and articles on Facebook from "sources" I never heard of before with "experts" I never heard of before either and whose search on Google returned either crickets or a whole bunch of scandals involving various conflicts of interest.

You can't possibly compare such a farce to traditional media (at least not in North America or most of Europe I presume)

Sure, things wax and wane, but that doesn't make it any less worrisome when you happen to be in a waning phase and it certainly doesn't mean you should offer no resistance to it.

Bring back MySpace and Diggit

Why just stop at the button ?. It's not like the rest of it is of much benefit or use to human-kind, save for the companies raking it in like farmers at a livestock market...

I think a social network that allows people to keep track of loved ones they can't see regularly for various reasons or reconnect with people they have lost touch with makes a lot of sense.

The problem is not the base product, it is the base product combined with Facebook's operating model of maximizing clicks and time users spend on the site while avoiding any significant human moderation requirements (ie, "we are a platform, not a media company"), because profits wouldn't be as good then.

Fark and SomethingAwful.

Probably not a good idea to bring that topic up at all, especially the controversy surrounding it. All it's going to do is serve up political dissent and get this thread modded. We get it, there is a lot of BS clickbait news there. I am a former music journalist, I can tell you how low they've dipped in terms of professionalism with artists. I just don't feel there's any need to go into the pandemic and the politics surrounding it in this forum - we get it, mate.

Fair enough, though I think at this point, the weaponization of Facebook with fake news is not that controversial a topic (I believe that both sides of the political isle can agree on this problem at least).

If we get into the specifics of what the content of the fake news are (which I deliberately avoided), it could get political, but if we remain on the surface and avoid getting into the specifics of fake news, it is rather factual actually.

The mention of the covid timeline was actually alluding to my own personal experience concerning when I was made concretely aware of the problem (I don't spend that much time on Facebook, but that was hard not to notice, especially coming from a friend).

My boyo let's go

Welcome to almost 20 years ago. People that used it were happily throwing their privacy away in exchange for large numbers of emotes. Who knew free things aren't free? HURRR... :B The users didn't care because they didn't want to miss out on what almost everyone else was doing.

Facebook is trash and so are a lot of its users. The same goes for Twitter, Instagram, and the rest.

I joined and quit it with 2 weeks in between. Had to create a account to follow Sonly Onlie, so we would get a Yoda Bubbly Head in SWG.
After that it was useless.


However ... sadly in my area most 2nd hand trades are being made through facebook, so I may have to create a account at some point, can't access the market.
But I got a solution for that as well. My company always encourages us to create social media accounts, so I will most likely create one with their email adress :P
This way I can read offers.