Facebook Friends

What is Facebook?

The algorithm shows you the people with whom you interact most often. Why delete people? Seems like a lor of trouble for a dying platform. It's mostly Maga bot trolls anymore. It's on the way out.

Wouldn’t Facebook be a more appropriate site to pose this question?

[quote] It's on the way out.

yay...

[quote] In Palo Alto, California, Zuckerberg has splurged over $110 million on properties since 2011 — and created a compound of 11 properties by purchasing adjoining houses.

[quote] Should I just delete them altogether or keep them in case I need to contact them in the future?

Wipe them out - all of them.

A lady always punches before she deletes.

Positive anymore.

Are they really your friends...?

[quote] ProPublica identified 95 Facebook pages that regularly post made-up headlines designed to draw engagement — and, often, stoke political divisions. The pages, most of which are managed by people overseas, have a total of more than 7.7M followers.

Op here-

I’m trying actively to reduce my Facebook friends to those with whom I’m closest—family and friends.

The ones I havent engaged with are people I went to school with or met here and there, like my annual Ptown visits. I guess keeping them on my list isn’t affected anyone adversely, but I honestly don’t care about the lives of most.

This thread reminds me of this oh so true cartoon.

Clean house OP.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a post from an actual person in my Facebook feed. It’s all ads.

A large % of people who were Facebook users at its peak, 2010-2015, are no longer using it much if at all. In my experience this is even more true for Millennials (people now in their 30s thru mid 40s)

Most people post very boring shit. I check in every so often to see posts from groups I belong to, mainly focused on history, aeronautics, and trains.

I go through my list at the start of each year (week of New Year's) and delete the ones who have fallen off the radar, or I know I'll most likely never need to contact again. This started in 2021 during the pandemic, and glad I've done it. For those whom I've deleted, I don't think anyone has ever noticed. It's just one of those rituals I have to kick off the year and do a 'clean sweep' to bring 'new people' into my life for the coming year.

Facebook is dead. It's just that it doesn't know it yet. Three years ago my last post was a photo of my dog with life dates. I had not posted for more than two years prior to that.

It's the same with most if my friends, at most they post a couple things a year - or nothing for years. None were ever frequent posters, and over time they gravitated to other forms of social media and with few exceptions to relatively rare personals, especially of any personal content.

I keep FB mostly as it's a source for some notices and events and posts of organizations that don't show up elsewhere, and for a few friends who -- strange as it seems to me-- stopped learning new tricks after Facebook and for who FB Messenger is a preferred means of communication.

Do people still post long gossipy series of posts about their families or personal tribulations? Likely so, but surely in diminished numbers? I think I had about 300 "friends" some of whom I never met but we shared common interests or some connection. That number has dropped by fully a third, and I would say that 2/3 of the surviving number have --like me-- not posted anything in a year or two or more.

FB seems desperately to be searching for some purpose to help it maintain some relevance and utility. At present it's just an old misshapen sweater at the back of the least used drawer in a closet.

Off topic, but I will post this anyway. When I go to Facebook on my iPad, there is a list of “contacts” all the way to my right and it shows who is online. Last week, someone who has been dead for years was first on the list and has remained there for a week. Can anyone explain this? I wish dead people’s profiles could be deleted.

Facebook birthdays are just the best!

R4 Zuckerberg is rich because of Instagram. Facebook is dying.

I really don't get people who turn up their nose at FB but are rampant Insta users. What do they think is the difference?

R20: To my eye, FB is opinion and chat and news or news-adjacent info, sharing stupid memes and opinions with family and friends and Facebook friends.

IG could be any of those things, it could be annoying as fuck influencers building brand. Above all, it's visual. It can also be what you want of it. I follow specific subjects related to art and history and geography and find like-minded people with the same interests who simply share images with a bit of identifying info and no further commentary.

Instagram can be as horrible as you think it can be, or as good as you imagine if you are diligent about scrutinizing your feed - just as you would a Google News or other news feed.

Wati what is this facebook you are all talking about? I use MySpace.

Does he have “a” MySpace?

At the very least take FB off your phone.

I created a fake account so I could join my neighborhood group and follow nearby shops I like. I deleted my real profile. If people really want to contact me, they can try to find me in real life-- I use DeleteMe to remove myself from public databases.

I just post memes on my Facebook page. I’m sure all my “friends” have put me on ignore

Does r17 involve a haunting?

Go to each friend’s website page. If they haven’t posted anything in years, they’re not using Facebook—so delete

I've made an effort to share 'cartoon shorts' on my FB page each day (mostly old Looney Tunes) to make any of my friends who still follow me have a laugh to get their day started. Nothing political from me, and hardly any 'news' or 'updates' about me.

I remember when FB first started, and friends in their 20s back then would post the most cryptic messages to gain attention, such as:

"OMG, I can't believe I spent the whole night in the ER clinging to life."

This would generate dozens of responses from FB friends of "OMG, what happened ?" , "Are you OK?", "Tell us what happened!", etc. and there would be no follow-up from the one who posted the message.

It was then I realized FB was being populated by very needy people seeking attention in life - and this was perfect for them. I wasn't wrong.

One that parents use a lot is begging for prayers for their child who is in the hospital. One went as far as to show his little league team all in a hugging prayer circle and crying for him. Guess what it is always for? Getting their TONSILS REMOVED.

I’m married to an often-outspoken liberal Jew who’s occasionally in mainstream media and is seemingly connected to half of everyone, and I’ve had to step off Facebook in the fallout from Israel/Palestine since Oct 2023. I once saw him get assailed as a traitor to Israel and as a Hamas sympathizer all in the same comments thread. It’s layers and layers of exhausting and futile. And you get the sense that the normals who have enough to contend with in daily life have all pretty much left the building, and this small histrionic, needy, dysregulated, attention-seeking garbage heap that doesn’t represent the general population at all, is what’s left.