Anyone else on the spectrum not able to cope with Facebook?

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I don't do facebook or anything else except Linked-in.

I find it intrusive and turns people into the product. Think of it this way, nothing is free. They are making money by algorithming everybody into a commodity.

An example of this type of overreach was last week when I was filling out job applications. Three of them wanted me to sign into one of several of my (Potential) accounts. So, I chose linked in. They didn't want my resume or access to my profile/work history. Noooo, they wanted everything including access to all my connections.

I found THAT to be very intrusive. Those are people that I know and respect. I'm not turning over their contact information without their permission.

do you know how they decide what a "real name" is??

Internet giants like Google and Facebook know almost everything about their users. A pretty scary thought, if you have regard for privacy like I do.

^ scary.

it opens up a portal to people whose personal life developments i'd like to be ignorant of.

and i acted like an idiot then.

I don't have a problem with Facebook, but I use it less and less. Mostly to see what's going on in other people's lives, who live far away and that I don't talk to on the phone (pretty much everyone then ...). Occasionally I'll write something myself, or post a picture. But I actually use Facebook for work, I manage a Facebook Page for a company. When I started that job it became a special interest for a while, and I read a lot about the psychology behind social media, what NOT to use it for etc. When I first joined Facebook I used it far too much and shared too much, so when they introduced Timeline I made sure to delete pretty much everything. I know, nothing is ever really deleted from the internet, but certainly from the view of most people.

I go on facebook everyday, but I only actively talk to two people. Social expectations are exhausting so I shy away from group chats.
I go on social media often to make and talk to friends, but that's until I realize how difficult it is, and then I leave.
edit: I also hate exposure, so that's another reason I don't stay long.

Yes, Facebook is a pariah in my life, not that I am in any real way active there. I have Facebook primarily for a few family members and old friends who I no longer live near.

Overall, I cannot stand Facebook. It overwhelms my senses with the non-stop updating of what amounts to ego-driven, trivial garbage.

Sometimes I feel this way about the Internet. I love the Internet but I feel it is also overwhelming. I wish sometimes I could just limit my use of it for: reading the news, doing research and/or playing video games.

It seems though that everything on the internet is geared to turning the consumer into the product. They track every aspect of your online activity and then solely target what THEY think you want. Here is an example. I searched on Google one day just to find a Papa John's close to me. For two months, I received nothing but Pizza ads and such on every thing I searched until I cleared my prowser history and didn't respond to anything for a while.

While targeting an audience is one thing, but I also noticed if affected the news I would see on regular sites like yahoo. Instead of having the freedom to just find cool stuff, it's all directed towards searches and then trying to keep selling you the same thing over and over.

I looked up a bed once. Ummm, that is not a quick/disposable item. When you've bought one, you really don't need to keep buying them. Yet, I kept getting bed ads in all my searches.

The thing that was supposed to free us is becoming the new tool to enslave us in a different way.

Companies are now suspicious of you do not have social accounts. They want all the information from your social accounts as if you are handing your friends and/or colleagues over for more tracking.

I find it all to much worse than 1984. It is much more subtle and insidious. Or, I am just a paranoid idiot.

But, it really disturbs me in many ways.

No, you're not a paranoid idiot. These are genuine, serious concerns. It's one of the reasons why I'm not on Facebook and stopped using Google. I'm not sure it's possible to not be tracked at all, but you can keep it to the bare minimum.

You only have to look at the CEOs of Facebook, Google, Amazon etc to understand what they're doing. They make my flesh creep.

Oh, come now. It's not like Facebook or Google would benefit from collusion with the NSA, especially after 9/11. I mean, that would be like saying the same of such patriotic corporations as I dunno, McDonnell Douglas or Lockheed Martin - like claiming they were in cahoots with the CIA during the Cold War! I've been told the free hand of capitalism would never support such a thing. Besides, what would the NSA possibly want with a corporation like Google that already has massive, obvious datacenters geographically scattered across the world and tied into nearly every main trunk of the Internet?
(yeah, that was sarcasm or at the least, being facetious)
The question is, 'who is benefiting most and who is actually in control of how the data is used'?

If whoever is monitoring the site determines that a name does not seem 'real' enough for a human (i.e. Pink Fairy Princess), they will require you to change it, and then, if you insist this is your name, they will require identification (driver's license or photo id from a government agency- like DMV or your passport). It happened to an an acquaintance who had an unusual name (food, flower, and color in her name).

On a more positive note, this was *supposedly* instituted along with Facebook's new determination to identify bullying, stalking, and suicidal people and have authorities alerted to the relevant situations. This happened after a teen attempted/committed suicide despite blatant statements regarding their desire to.

It hasn't bothered me because I have never generally disguised my name. I don't know that many people, and don't have a life (or credit history) for anyone to want.

Sorry, busy day, just got back here.

I use Facebook a lot. A couple of times I have found myself becoming depressed because of it and threatened to delete my account, but I'm glad I didn't because I probably would regret it.

I've been on it since 2011 but I only have 78 friends on my friends list. These are mostly people who I know, and just one or two who I don't know but have on there anyway. I have no idea how other people get hundreds and hundreds of friends on their's, because surely they can't know all those people personally, but whenever I've tried to send a friend request to a mutual friend, or somebody I know or used to know a lot, or even relatives of mine, I've often got rejected and they've set it so that they can't receive any friend requests from me (I know that because I've noticed that the ''add friend'' button on their timeline page has disappeared). But these people have, like, 500 Facebook friends and look like they don't speak to half of those people. It's upsetting when you know someone in person (but you don't see that often) and you know lots of people that know that person, and that person has all of them on their friends list but seem to decline you for some reason. That sort of thing I take personally. I don't like to just ask because it sounds a bit petty. Usually people don't just ask you why you're not adding them on Facebook.

Last edited by Joe90 on 16 Nov 2015, 4:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have a Facebook, and I get really annoyed with things like people changing their pictures to the French flag, bragging, excessive selfies, and "likes". It is as if everybody thinks they are a celebrity. I have gotten in trouble for not "liking" something. I do not wish people happy birthday on Facebook, and it is hard for me to keep my mouth shut when people spread political crap that is obviously false.

Sometimes popular people on Facebook make me feel depressed. My boyfriend's daughter is very popular, but she's a lovely girl at the same time, so I have her as a friend on my Facebook and I am interested to see what she puts and everything. But whatever she posts, she automatically gets at least 1 like (but often more), and comments too. Like once she put that she's watching a film (she put the name of the film), and after about 10 minutes she already had 4 likes for that. But at the same time I happened to have also posted a film I was watching (the film was rather mainstream and popular), but I didn't get any likes.

Sometimes I would love to know what it's like to be popular.

I certainly can't cope with facebook... it exaggerates other people's social life and makes me jealous of them, and makes me disappointed when no one likes my post, no one adds me, or people add me and then never respond, or even block me after adding me...

I use Facebook to communicate with less than a small handful of people and to occasionally post in groups for a book series and video game I'm interested in. I have 80-90 "friends" (mostly from high school) that I rarely interact with. I'm not interested enough in what they post to be envious of them. I don't feel any social pressure from Facebook because I'm not really any more social there than I am in real life.