eternally unconvinced

[infohigh]

I have come to the conclusion that I absolutely despise facebook, as a company, and am permanently quitting. In as soon as a week, I suppose. I also despise LiveJournal and am quitting that too. The reason for the delay is so that I can get a blog and such nicely rolling on my own domain/host

Comments

[infohigh]

geeklog..... seems a little heavy. Maybe I'll toy with it though.

While facebook as an application is terrible (interface, social customs, the whole "sell-your-soul-i-mean-data for a myspace-style application" thing, etc.), it's really the company that I've come to despise. All of the direction they've taken is to finding new exciting ways to exploit you -- using you as an advertisement to your friends for the products you like, and all sorts of other crap like that. I want the company to die. I didn't mind it when it was little. LiveJournal has made all sorts of stupid decisions lately, like those magical popups on all hyperlinks that "preview" the site -- WOW THAT SUCKS SO MUCH! We're being exploited, people. :-)

Also, I'm not really sold on the social network thing.

Also, don't you have to take some stats, as a psych major? Jeez, the psychologists I've met know their stats; much better than I do for some things. It's kind of awesome. And yes, psych stats education is very relevant for my purposes, and I'd be interested in whatever experience you ever have with it :D

[parudox]

Undergrad psych stats is kind of a joke, at least at UW. I don't think that's where they really learn it.

[infohigh]

Oh, how sad. Perhaps that's a problem, then?

[parudox]

Maybe. I'm actually skeptical that psychologists do know their stats all that well. (Here's a good rant.)

[infohigh]

That paper is quite excellent; thanks for the link :D

And, fine, I shall concede about psych being well-known for messing up stats a lot. But I have met some psych people who know their stats so well, I wonder where they must have learned it! Meh!

[infohigh]

err, and in deference to the rant you suggested, I don't just mean they knew how to carry out some rote statistical procedures... but actual competency in statistical reasoning.

[parudox]

Perhaps grad school? If you look up the C.V.'s of those people, I'd be curious what source you'd find.

[silverwizard]

Heavy - yes. Opensourcey usefulness - yes. I mean, sure, it's got a feature creep, but it's not too hard to cut them out. And honestly, I tend to abuse a lot of the features anyway. And it's one of the smaller ones that's directly given by Fantastico (the list of "click this done" programs my host provides, and my dad gets mad at me if I don't use).

The social network is almost the POINT of Web 2.0. Sure, I disliked Web 2.0 for the longest time, but I've been embracing it. The social network thing is only useful because it has made itself useful. People have started using them as a primary method of communicating, meaning they are achieving their purpose, if purpose is the right word. But it does mean it's hard to live without them. AND I WANT TO KILL THE FUCKING POPUP THING SERIOUSLY I SPENT AN HOUR SCANNING MY COMPUTER FOR SOME FORM OF LINUX SPYWARE BEFORE I REALIZED IT WAS A FEATURE! But yes... I really would like to see an opensource social network of independant bloggers. It would make some form of sense, in that it would allow the users to control the environment without the shit that goes down. And honestly, I think we need to make a combo of facebook and LJ in that LJ is almost pure blog and if you're silent then you're yelled at (hell, there's features to do this for you). But at the same time facebook is *not* a blog in that if you take notes, they're almost impossible to read. However, facebook has a great calander system, and the applications are cool, abused as all hell, but hey, that's the internet. The other good thing is it's ability to create subgroups.
If you're familiar with Metcalf's Law (the effectivness of a social network is equal n^3 where n is the number of members) then things like Facebook are in fact worthless by Metcalf's Law since they have members, but they have disconnected. So essentially the subgroups (networks and groups) allow users to link up because of their common interests. These things are a strength, but the effectiveness of the network is instead n^3 where n is the number of people in your groups, friends, and networks (assuming it's not one of those groups that is just attempting to get more members, like one of those annoying ass "GUINESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS APPROVED HAHAHA" groups). But yeah.

My first stats class is next term, so yeah... can't comment.

[infohigh]

*shrug* I'll have to consider multiple options for what blog engine I'll use. But yes, you do abuse a lot of the "features" in your setup :P Why does your site want me to log in? and why does it try to list events if there aren't any? etc.....lol.

As for your web2.0 rant... I'm having trouble replying to it because I think I disagree with your entire outlook on things. I wouldn't say that social networking is the "point" of web2.0, but maybe web2.0 is a made-up word to characterize, among other things, phenomena we observe in social network sites. *shrug* But anyway, you describe the "opensource social network of independent bloggers" -- like, isn't that what we already have?? If you want your own web portal then go ahead and write one. Also, you totally misstated Metcalfe's law, and it's quite controversial.

[silverwizard]

Sorry, I looked up Metcalfe's later, apparently my dad has had it wrong for years. Apologies, and it wasn't supposed to be a comprehensive view of it at all anyway.

Well, yes, but I mean, standardizing webcontent into something we can build off of. I mean, everyone using the same skeleton with more tacked on might be nice, allowing people to use standard communications. Similar to how we all use POP and SMTP on the same port on the same standard.

The internet *is* for communication and that is something we should be able to do. Also, standardizing some form of form we can all read (the login idea keeps us constant across IPs, MAC's, etc, hence why I like it/use it). I think it's a useful thing, although how to keep it going without a standard? Hmmm

The events will be used when I make one, and I will be, I abuse the system for the planning of D&D often.

[daniel_ream]

All of the direction they've taken is to finding new exciting ways to exploit you -- using you as an advertisement to your friends for the products you like, and all sorts of other crap like that.

Would you mind elaborating? I'm curious what your specific objections are.

[infohigh]

Here's one link.. but basically everything they describe here and here really bothers me. Targeted ads, etc. You'd wonder why a person like me would ever end up using a site like facebook... but lol, I didn't mind it so much when they were a smaller company, and weren't selling absolutely everything we were doing. The applications, for example, I find kinda offensive; they're always harassing me to click something by accident so they get all my data. *shrug* stuff like that.