[jkmcf]

If you never comment on each other's posts, then you aren't interacting. However, it is a great way to "keep appraised" of how people are doing.

There are a ton of people I've met throughout my life and around the world, but only a handful with whom I want to interact regularly. FB, annoying as it is, at least let's me know if they are doing ok.

[wccrawford]

"apprised", not "appraised".

[sshine]

> FB, annoying as it is, at least let's me know if they are doing ok.

For some arbitrary definition of they. I've had a father of a childhood friend die and I didn't notice for two years. But that weird Australian friend of my former roommate that I helped through public transport from the airport last year? I get her drunk pictures. They didn't even like each other.

[jsjohnst]

If you don’t like what you’re seeing, click the “hide stuff like this” option. I used to complain at end, then a friend forced me to use that feature and I rarely see something I don’t care about now (but still miss stuff I do care about as I don’t check FB that often).

[sshine]

> click the “hide stuff like this” option

I've clicked that button for plenty of sponsored links and hit "unfollow" for people I no longer seek input from. But there are hundreds more where they came from.

This is perhaps viable, like transparently maintaining multiple sets of subscribers to different types of posts is an option. Although the mental overhead of maintaining these sets, and the risk of addressing the wrong crowd, are both too big for me.

My current method of keeping an address book in a spreadsheet, and an active, short list of people that I wish to see, has, however, beat social media when it comes to intimacy and not wasting time.

[chmod775]

Billions of dollars invested into machine learning and online tracking, and still I have to manually tell the thing about my interests.

[jsjohnst]

> online tracking

Do the websites you visit define who you are (with zero context on why you visited it)? Do all the friends you have provide clear signal to what you want?

I don’t care how much $$$ is poured into ML, garbage in will always be garbage out. Something has to feed the model and if it’s all passive clicks with no strong signals from you, you get crappy results generally.

[jononor]

Those billions are focused on the company interests, not yours.

[IntronExon]

It lets you know how they say they’re doing, and nothing else. If they have a bot updating their status, maybe not even that much.

[baby]

If you message them you can know

[IntronExon]

If you’re relying on active messaging, why bother with FB?

[stordoff]

For me, it's basically network effects - FB is already set up, I can find people quickly (I don't have alternative contact details for some people), I know the recipients active use FB so will see it, and it's easier to send long messages on PC rather than a mobile device.

I also tend to need to message people at odd hours, and a Facebook notification feels less intrusive/urgent than, e.g., an SMS.

[baby]

Because that's the only reliable way I can message my friends. I'm not sure what else would work, people change/lose numbers all the time. Email is the worst. Not really much solutions out there if you want to keep in touch with your friends.

I personally mostly use messenger.com, rarely use the news feed anymore.

[salvar]

Because everybody else is using FB for messaging? Network effect is a real thing.