[smspence]

That doesn't sound accurate to me...

You're not always talking to everybody. On Facebook you can create friend lists, and then post things that are only visible to the people in the chosen list, in the same way that you can share things with only certain "Circles" on Google+. For example, I have different lists for "Close Friends", "Family", "Work Friends", "Random Acquaintances", etc. If I choose, I can share a post with only my "close friends" list, and none of my family or work friends will see it.

This problem has been solved already. On Google+ the concept is called "Circles". On Facebook, they call them "Friends Lists". Why does everyone on HN praise Google+ Circles, but ignore or hate the Facebook Friends Lists feature?

[neilk]

I am a fairly savvy computer user, and I use Facebook lists. I always have trouble figuring out who is in what list and which list I'm talking to, and how to add and remove people from that list.

Facebook has proved over and over that their priorities are about public sharing, and even to make more things public that previously were private. In part this might be Zuckerberg's vision that sharing almost everything is the future. But as a business they are also incentivized to make sharing effortless, to encourage people to put data on Facebook without thought.

Any thought to privacy is always a little bit of friction. So it's always de-emphasized, if not actually buried.

[dirkgently]

Can you limit your feed to default to only certain lists?

Can you remove all the promoted content (aka crap)?

Is it easy to see who you are really sharing with even after creating list?

Can you prevent one list from knowing what you liked or commented on other lists?

You most likely haven't used G+ to really know the difference. FB lists are anything but G+ Circles.