Why I hardly use Facebook anymore and prefer to spend my time and money on Steemit

thecryptofiend (74)in #steemit • 8 years ago (edited)

Introduction

I'm going to make this a short post (for me at least lol) so that people don't have trouble getting to the end.

I've had a few friends ask me (on the rare occasions I actually see them in real life nowadays) why I don't use Facebook as much as I used to. I thought it would be useful to go through some of he reasons why:

Facebook is a time sink and I rarely if ever feel I have gained anything from it

It is easy to spend hours going through your Facebook feed looking at a load of vacuous populist guff which is interesting at the time but ultimately brings me no benefit.

Contrary to many of the thoughtful posts I read on Steemit, on FB I learn nothing new from what I see.

If anything it just makes me feel bad in some respects because of the next point:

Facebook is an exercise in false conformist vanity

Everybody is posting selfies of themselves having a "self- proclaimed" wonderful time. I don't know about everyone else but generally when I am having a wonderful time I am so in the moment that I don't really think about get my mobile phone out and posting it in my Facebook timeline.

People discuss the minutiae of their daily lives yet it all seems to me to be a false attempt at trying to fit in and convince other people that they are living a great life.

The more somebody needs to post all this up the more I get the sense that they are trying to compensate for something which isn't actually there.

Further if you are so insecure that you need approval from other people for just going about your mundane activities I'm not sure I want to follow you.

Whilst I'm sure we will eventually get this sort of thing on Steemit too, it is for the time being significantly less of a problem.

Facebook manipulates us, our friends and our families for it's own ends

As time has gone on FB has seemed to become more and more manipulative in the way it deals with us as a means to serve it's own interests.

Many of us would have read with some degree of unease how they openly admitted to using us in psychological experiments in 2014.

Any medical professional doing similar experiments would need some kind of ethical approval to do this.

Since FB is an online social media platform it seems it has impunity to do what it likes - particularly since it is a mulitbillion dollar mega corporation now.

We have also heard about FB's extensive censorship and biases. The examples are too many to list. The fact is that none of us can really be sure what exactly they are doing behind the scenes and what motivations (political or otherwise) they have.

I simply don't trust them to have any concern for our best interests as customers.

Whilst Steemit has it's problems and communication is one of them I don't get the same feelings of manipulation here.

Hopefully this will not change when Steemit gets bigger. When I first started on FB it was quite different too.

Facebook takes from us but gives little back in return

I have heard many people say that FB is great because it gives you a place to share your information and stay in touch with people for free.

Only it isn't free. FB uses our information and our posts to make money. That is why it exists.

The vast majority of people I know don't seem to understand that or they don't care.

FB is not some charitable organisation. It makes money from all of us and we do most of the work for them.

There is no crime in that. I just expect something more in return because I value my time and effort more.

- Which brings us to my next point:

Facebook has been making it harder to promote work without paying them

If you try to use Facebook for promoting anything such as your own photography page (as in my case) or any other kind of endeavour that you have then you will have to pay to get any visibility on it.

I don't actually have a problem with that in itself.

My problem is that many of us were attracted to posting on FB originally because that WAS not the case.

It was only once enough people had started using this feature that they changed the rules and basically made it so that only businesses and people who were sufficiently wealthy could get their photography and similar pages any visibility at all.

Changing the rules after the fact seems distinctly unfair.

I saw my views and comments plummet whilst all the time having FB pester me to pay frankly insane sums of money to get more views.

This is because FB made it so that only a certain proportion of your "fans" and "friends" would actually see the posts you make - something that they constantly tinker with in a way that makes them maximum money.

Don't get me wrong - I understand a business needs to make money but there is fine line between making money and alienating the people that you are using to do it.

Even if I only get a few cents for a post on Steemit it is more than I have ever got on FB.

Further when Steemit introduced the promotion feature they didn't devalue or hide the other posts in favour of it (which is basically what FB did).

Obviously this could change but I hope that the Steemit team pay heed to this. Don't repeat the mistakes of your biggest competitor.

I get very little actual engagement or connection on Facebook

In the short time I have been on Steemit I have had more in depth and rewarding discussions than I have had in almost a decade of being on FB.

For the people I actually know in real life on FB I tend to talk to them in multiple other ways - FB messaging is just one of them and is purely out of convenience.

If it disappeared it would make little difference to these relationships.

Although I constantly get new "friends" on FB these are not people I get to know at all.

I rarely if ever have any kind of conversation with them - even if they do message me.

People friend you and become part of your feed on FB but it is a very one way kind of communication and to be honest that's all it can be with the degree of superficiality that the site engenders.

Contrast that with Steemit where I have gotten into deep discussions on a variety of topics which I never even see anywhere on FB.

In the same way that I don't feel any financial incentive to post on FB even more importantly there is little psychological or social incentive to do it anymore either.

There just seems little point given the lack of reward.

In summary: I don't trust Facebook anymore

All of the above points get to the heart of the matter which is that I no longer trust Facebook. Since even before I knew about Steemit I had significantly reduced my use of FB in my general day to day life.

Now that I can use Steemit I need it even less.

That is not to say that Steemit is without problems, it's just that in the balance of things it is (for me at least) a much more rewarding and trustworthy platform.

That could change though - FB was quite different in the early days too. The Steemit team need to stay cognisant of this.

There was a time when Myspace was at the top of tree and Facebook was the young upstart.

We as a community need to stay vigilant and ensure that Steemit does all it can to be inviting and valuable to users (both new and old).

The one guarantee in these kinds of things is that if you don't look after your users then someone else will come along and take them off your hands.

Obligatory Kitten Shot

Your reward for reading (for those who are interested there is a personal update on me below this):

Update for My Followers

For all those who have been asking my left eye is much better. It still gets tired and out of focus quite quickly but I was advised by the eye doctor to expect that for several months at least. In the meantime I am very much used to using my good eye when that happens. I have a follow up appointment at the eye clinic this week which I expect to be unremarkable.

In other news I have broken my last target of getting to 8000SP. Thank you to everyone who has followed me and voted for me and helped me to reach my goal. I have a new target of 12,000 SP now which I think will take longer to reach as I don't have as much BTC to power up with.

As always I will continue to strive to be a good member of the community and support Steemit in any way I can.

If you like my work and aren't already please follow me and check out my blog (I mainly discuss photography but I do other topics like this too) - @thecryptofiend

I have also created a new channel in the chat dedicated to photography of people/portraits called "Photography-portraits-people". Please check it out and post your photos there.

Image Credits: All images are stock photos. First image of Facebook logos is from my personal Istockphoto account. All other images are from my personal Thinkstock account.

My Previous Photography Posts and Tutorials:

#facebook #life #writing #steemsquad

8 years ago in #steemit by thecryptofiend (74)

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beanyy (32) 7 years ago

FB users are giving FB precious data with no rewards. It's insane to think how much money they are making just from tracking what is searched or what users click on. Selling this data is probably gold. FB isn't the only one of course. Things will hopefully change when people start realizing their data is worth something. Their searches are worth something.