Tag: facebook

2025 Social Media Check In

Posted on

Last year, I wrote about where I was spending time online and how I was feeling about it. Most days, I’m just not that interested in what strangers have to say about sports, tech, or whatever else is trending. Still, I haven’t quit completely. Here’s where things stand today:

Bluesky is probably my favorite platform at the moment. The vibes are okay, especially during football and soccer seasons. I find myself checking in a few times a week, more often during Liverpool, Atlanta United or Buccaneers games. That said, my use is artificially limited right now because I’m mostly stuck with the PWA on desktop. I’m really looking forward to Phoenix, a new Bluesky client from the team behind Ivory. Once that drops, I imagine I’ll be on the platform more regularly.

Mastodon is still solid. The community there is thoughtful and kind, but I just don’t think to check it very often. It’s just a bit too homogenous for me. I have, however, continued to subscribe to Ivory even though I barely use it. That’s mostly out of respect for the developers. At some point I’ll probably cancel, but I haven’t quite talked myself into it yet.

Every once in a while, I’ll fire up Threads but it feels less like a social media app and more of an algorithmic firehose of content that Meta thinks I might like.

Instagram is a familiar trap. I go through cycles of installing it, getting sucked in, then deleting it again. It’s too addictive and not particularly rewarding (other than the dog videos).

Facebook continues to be the worst. I deleted my account years ago, but had to create a new one recently because my son’s Boy Scout troop uses it for communication. I’ve done my best to keep the new profile barren — no friends, no interests, no algorithm — and I’d love to delete it again as soon as I can.

In terms of actual usage, I’ve got a 30-minute screen time limit set on my phone and I honestly can’t remember the last time I hit it. Most of my social browsing happens on my computer in between other tasks, which helps keep things in check.

Both Bluesky and Mastodon still feel relatively healthy. The sentiment is mostly positive and the stakes are low, which is nice. But I still catch myself wondering: what’s the actual value here?

Unfriending Facebook

Posted on

So, I finally deleted my Facebook account. This was something I’ve been batting around for what seems like years, but after about 6 months of having my account deactivated, I pressed the button earlier today and it felt good. So, why did I pull the plug?

In my opinion, Facebook is bad for our society and I didn’t feel comfortable remaining on the site any longer. My departure probably won’t keep Mr. Zuckerberg awake at night but getting out of that ecosystem makes me feel better, and it’s far more productive than scrolling through misinformation, arguments and conspiracy theories every day. Groups of Americans have always disagreed and argued about politics but typically you’d find ways to discuss issues or focus on things that you mutually wanted to discuss. Now people shout their craziest beliefs into the void with no regard for what it might cause or who might read it, all the while demonizing people who don’t agree with them. Fun fact: folks agree on far more than we think we do, but our time on social media pushes us further into camps while demonizing those who are different than we are on the edges.

There’s little we can do to change folks minds on social platforms that feed people more and more polarized and inflammatory content, but by leaving we might be able to further marginalize Facebook as a place people want to spend their time. It’s important to think about what you put in and what you get out of a site like Facebook or Twitter and what it’s doing to our society and relationships. We’ll all land at different conclusions there and that’s fine, but hopefully you’re using it because it makes you happy and is the best way to connect with friends. But honestly, I doubt that’s happening.

About 6 months ago, I deactivated my Facebook account. I wanted to take stock of what things I’d be missing before dramatically pressing the delete button, so I did a quick audit of what I’d be missing out on:

  • Facebook Messenger. I scanned the conversations I’d had on the messenger app in the past 6 months and I had everyone’s phone number with the exception of one. I messaged that person and let them know I’d be leaving and exchanged numbers. Easy.
  • My neighborhood Facebook group. While 99% of it is folks complaining or arguing, there are some occasional announcements or useful tidbits that emerge from the neighborhood group. That said, I was spending less than a few minutes a week looking at those posts and usually had a lesser opinion of my neighbors than I did going in. I’ll take the risk here. Plus, I can always ask my wife to post on there if need be!
  • Staying connected with friends and seeing their posts. I wasn’t really looking at those anyway, so things won’t be any different than they were before. I’ll just try harder to reach out to folks via other methods like text, FaceTime etc.
  • The traffic Facebook sends to my site via the (now closed) Facebook page for this site. Since shutting that page down, I’ve seen about a 15% drop in traffic. I’ll live without it.

The one thing I didn’t mention above was Instagram. I still maintain an account there for now and the reason is that I view Instagram as a generally positive place that doesn’t have many of the same echo chamber & argumentative problems that Facebook has. That said, they have the same leadership and it’s entirely possible I’ll have to revisit that decision if (when?) they make changes that turn that place into a cesspool of humanity as well.

I’m hopeful that over time we can continue to move to smaller-scale sharing of content with family and friends. Things like iCloud photo sharing, text message groups and Slack groups bring me much more happiness than social media ever has. Even if you do stay on Facebook, I’d encourage you to unfollow brands™, political news sites, meme accounts and the like. You’ll be a lot happier if you do.

Rebuilding our tech stack for the new Facebook.com

Posted on

From Facebook Engineering Blog:

When we thought about how we would build a new web app — one designed for today’s browsers, with the features people expect from Facebook — we realized that our existing tech stack wasn’t able to support the app-like feel and performance we needed. A complete rewrite is extremely rare, but in this case, since so much has changed on the web over the course of the past decade, we knew it was the only way we’d be able to achieve our goals for performance and sustainable future growth. Today, we’re sharing the lessons we’ve learned while rearchitecting Facebook.com, using React (a declarative JavaScript library for building user interfaces) and Relay (a GraphQL client for React).

Tons of great nuggets in here, and a lot that I can relate to in what’s we’ve been up to at my job.

Facebook reduced their CSS by 80%, added code splitting and added code budgets to help deliver what’s needed only when it’s needed. They also moved to GraphQL to modernize their data fetching.

It’s a shame Facebook makes products that are so terrible for society, because they really do build world-class software.

Google’s Search Algorithm Could Steal the Presidency

Posted on

Wired writes about how Google’s Search Algorithm Could Steal the Presidency:

The thing is, though, even though it’s tempting to think of algorithms as the very definition of objective, they’re not. “It’s not really possible to have a completely neutral algorithm,” says Jonathan Bright, a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute who studies elections. “I don’t think there’s anyone in Google or Facebook or anywhere else who’s trying to tweak an election. But it’s something these organizations have always struggled with.” Algorithms reflect the values and worldview of the programmers. That’s what an algorithm is, fundamentally. “Do they want to make a good effort to make sure they influence evenly across Democrats and Republicans? Or do they just let the algorithm take its course?” Bright asks.

Scary to think about the implications – intentional or not – of skewed search result data. Ultimately, people are building these algorithms and even if their intent is truly ‘good’, the possibility of pushing people one way or another is real. On a somewhat related note, there was a good Atlantic article last fall about a similar concern with Facebook.