How Facebook works

[Plu]

I'm considering this "required knowledge" for anyone who uses Facebook.

[youtube:3u8lpgfv]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g[/youtube:3u8lpgfv]

I'll give you a cookie if you already understood these things from your own use. It took me a few weeks of use to figure it out, but I have no idea if the rest of the world is aware of it too. Nor of the implications of this. Because you should rightfully consider this pretty scary.

[Jason78]

I could have told you that :D  Facebook is a business after all.

[josephpalazzo]

No surprise here. The day Facebook went public is the day I discontinued my account.

[SGOS]

I certainly didn't have the knowledge presented in the link, but I dumped facebook a year ago, partly because of an intuitive sense I had about it.  From what I think I know about Mark Zuckerberg, he seems to be a self serving entrepreneur without a sense of ethics.  I'd been hearing a lot of rumors about him playing fast and loose with personal information, but that was not all that turned me off.  I don't know much about the accuracy of Hollywood's The Social Network, but if they got 20% of it right, Zukerberg is not the kind of person I want to allow into any part of my life.

Then of course, most of what's on facebook had little interest for me.  I don't care what friends of my friends are thinking or what they ate for breakfast, and I have no idea why I should care.  Shit was turning up on my home page from people I didn't know.  WTF??

[Poison Tree]

My primarily action on facebook is to comment on ridiculous posts by my religious right friends--exhausting--and I suppose that action is causing facebook to fill my feed with more ridiculous religious right posts. I've been certain for a while that facebook--and google sorting search results based on which sites you visit, and the internet in general--is helping to create echo chambers where no one ever hears contrary voices and can gradually grow more polarized from the other echo chambers.

[Sal1981]

Well, admittedly, I did use Facebook a tad, just not as much as an ½ hour every day, and this comes as an eye-opener for me, at least. I never thought about FB filtering content, since I didn't want to be bloated with stuff I've kept my friends around 60 people for the last few years. I only add people I know, so.

[Jutter]

I don't use Facebook to reach people, but because it often allows me to avoid having to create yet another account on yet another website. Just click the "log-in-with-facebook" button.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

Seldom use it & don't log in anywhere with it,  but we need a "like" aka "fuck off" button thst cancels fb accounts automatically.   =D>

[Lao Tou]

OK, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I DO have a religion, and it is Facebook. Once a week, rain or shine, no matter what other pressing issues confront me, I put on my Sunday best and log in to catch up on my friends. Every three or four months I post something, in case any of my friends has trouble sleeping and needs the extra kick into z-land.

OK, so I'm a bad Facebookian, and I don't actually go every week. Who has time? It is written that HE (Z the father) will forgive. As long as you accept him into your personal life (really, just friend him already) and really TRY to be good, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

C'mon, guys. Just because I'm an atheist doesn't mean I have to give up ALL religion, does it?

HEY. Put down that ban hammer! What's a little apostasy among virtual friends?