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by bluGill 1843 days ago
I found facebook became more valuable to me once I decided I would only post about things I want my friends to know. That is pictures of my kid's new bike, or a video of the baby babbling. Facebook does a very good job of ensuring my close friends and family keep up with the cute little things in life.

I'm still working on getting out of all the groups that waste space. Sadly many useful things have moved to facebook, and while good for facebook (more ads), other forums function better for keeping up with my hobbies - except for the lack of people checking them.
2 comments
asciident 1843 days ago
I wish there was a way to turn off "external content", and only view content created by your friends. If my friend has an opinion about something (even if political, or a social issue), and they post it, I'm interested in reading. But I don't care if they are just posting a link to content that some stranger wrote, or a meme that someone else is spreading. It seems like social media has intentionally blurred the lines between "posting your content" vs "spreading someone else's content".
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wussboy 1843 days ago
Interesting. I had the opposite experience to this. Even though all I ever wanted to know about was what was happening to my friend's kids, my feed was taken over with political and social justice outrage. Outrage sells.
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bluGill 1843 days ago
It matters what everyone clicks like on. So you need to be careful there, and also help others be careful.

There is way too much political outrage for sure. You just have to wade through it. Hopefully you can join me in spreading the facebook is about family message and get others to stop posting politics. (this is hard, it is so tempting to bait your political friends)

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Andrex 1843 days ago
> It matters what everyone clicks like on. So you need to be careful there, and also help others be careful.

The OP's title, "Don't Let Social Media Think for You," applies in this context too. Now you can't even click "Like" without being careful -- to be fair I avoid searching political topics and other sports teams on Google unless I'm incognito.

I feel like we're increasingly trapped in a box by these algorithms and the need to keep them appeased.

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