Facebook

[mmegaera]

Obviously I am an utter newbie there (I've had an account for a while, but just started using it this week), and am used to LJ/DW, where my account is my living room and I can tell people I don't appreciate them being rude to me here, but does one's Facebook wall not work that way? How does one deal with someone on one's FL who decides to be a troll about something one has posted, when the rest of the time they seem to be fairly decent? (this is a fellow Bujold listee -- or, rather, he's a former Bujold listee -- and he's on the Bujold Facebook group).

Is the only option simply to defriend them once and for all? Throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Is there a tutorial out there for how to work Facebook on a social rather than technical level? That will teach me how to keep people from being ugly to me on my own wall? Because if there isn't I suspect that's going to be the end of my personal social interaction there. If I can't avoid people being rude directly at me there the way I can here, then I'm not comfortable there. And "just don't interact back" is not an option. I am not a doormat and refuse to become one.

Comments

[annathepiper]

The same principle of "this is my space, so you can't be a jerk to me" applies just as much on Facebook as it does on LJ. If it were me, I'd tell this person that they're being a problem and why, and that you're no longer comfortable with the conversation. And that if they continue to be a problem, you don't want them answering your posts.

You can defriend the person, but that's not your only option. You can also block them. You can delete that specific conversation off your wall and refuse to deal with it any further. Or you can set the filter on it to just be you so nobody else can access it anymore.

[mmegaera]

I tried telling him not to rant in my living room earlier today and got ranted at again, so I went ahead and defriended him because I didn't know the other options existed. What's the difference between defriending and blocking? And how does one block someone? Does it do more than just defriending?

I suspect I'm going to have to drop out of a group that we both belong to as well, though. Unless the blocking solves that problem for me. I vastly prefer email lists for groups -- I can killfile individual people so they can't ruin a group for me. Can I do that on Facebook, too?

But right now I'm about as soured on Facebook as I became on Goodreads a while back. I'll still use it to cross-post my blog posts, but I don't know how much good that's going to do me if I'm not there actively developing a friendslist.

At least people who prefer to get announcements via Facebook will still be able to do it that way. Not that I've got more than two or three people hanging on my pearls of wisdom, anyway [wry g].

[annathepiper]

If you defriend a person, what that will do is deny them access to anything you haven't made publicly viewable on your wall. If you default to public posting, they can still see what you post if they're subscribed to your updates, or if they go to your wall directly. They wouldn't however be able to see what you post if you default to posting things only your friends can view. It's the equivalent of whether or not your LJ is Friends-Only.

If you _block_ a person on Facebook, though, that's a bit more hardcore. It automatically unfriends them if you had them friended, but it also prevents them from starting conversations with you, and it denies them access to things that you post. It's like banning somebody on your LJ.

I've only had to block a couple of people before, so I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure it would include you not having to deal with them if they happened to be on the same group you are.

I wouldn't necessarily worry about developing a friendslist, though. Much depends on what you want to actually use Facebook for. If you want to be there to promote your discoverability as a writer (which is a useful thing to think about), it's worth it to have some public, active presence there, even if it's just 'here are links to things I post on my blog, and here are regular announcements about my projects'.

Above and beyond that how much you interact with the rest of Facebook is entirely up to you. I tend to limit how many people on Facebook I actively pay attention to, and how many groups. It keeps it sane and manageable for me. I pay active attention to updates from various musicians and bands I'm interested in, and I have a personal list of the friends whose updates I want to read, and that's about it.

[thnidu]

Facebook can be a real pain to figure out, the more so as they keep changing their rules. I don't really trust them.

On the other hand, or maybe it's the same hand, I'm not sure how much I trust Google these days either with all the "one account for everything Google" and Google including more and more … and more… and more…

[mmegaera]

Thanks, Anna. You are a fount of information, and continually amaze me with your knowledge [g].

How does one block a person on FB? Is it a complicated process? Because I think I'd feel a lot more comfortable there if I didn't have to deal with this fellow. ETA: Never mind. I figured out the blocking process. What I didn't figure out is how to tell which of the half dozen people with this fellow's name is the correct person, since I don't have his email address and, so far as I know, I don't have any way of getting hold of it. I suppose I can just block all of them...

If you want to be there to promote your discoverability as a writer (which is a useful thing to think about), it's worth it to have some public, active presence there, even if it's just 'here are links to things I post on my blog, and here are regular announcements about my projects'.

That's exactly what I've been doing with it up till about a week ago, when I decided to see what's going on over there. I think that's what I'm going to go back to. So blocking the guy may be overkill, but it still would make me feel better.

What I wish is that the people I'd like to stay in touch with would quit abandoning LJ/DW for that place [sigh].

[mmegaera]

If there's one thing I've learned in the last ten years since I first dipped my toe into LJ (my first social media site), it's that the folks who run social media sites (any social media site) aren't to be trusted. With much of anything.

It's why I still vastly prefer email lists for my online socializing. But they appear to be turning into dinosaurs, alas.

[annathepiper]

Yeah, exactly. Waiting for a different social network to take over from Facebook kind of assumes that a Facebook replacement won't have its own issues, and Google definitely has their share of issues.

[thnidu]

AAMOF, experience suggests that any soc.netwk will have its issues.

[annathepiper]

Yes, exactly!

[annathepiper]

You're very welcome!

Re: blocking somebody on Facebook--nope, not difficult. And ah okay good you found it.

Re: people bailing on LJ/DW for Facebook--yeah, a lot of the people I've historically talked to have done that, too. I've had to remind myself that for a lot of folks social networks answer their needs better than blogging platforms like LJ/DW do. Particularly for folks like, say, the non-techie members of my family.

But dammit, they're going to have to pry LJ and DW out of my fingers if they want 'em. ;)

[mmegaera]

I'm glad I'm not the only person who feels that way about LJ/DW. What I like about them is that they're a nice hybrid between blogging and "regular" social networks -- more connected than true blogging, and less -- I don't know what to call it, but easier to have a meaningful conversation on -- than Facebook or Twitter. Facebook (I haven't been able to figure Twitter out at all so I just cross-post there to have a presence) just mostly seems to be a bunch of people 'liking' other people's silly photos, which aren't even their own photos but copied from someone else's wall. No real conversations at all.

I just want everyone else I want to stay in touch with to feel the same way [wry g].

[annathepiper]

Twitter is very, very transitory, yeah. Dara likes to think of it as one great big IM conversation, and that's about what I think about it--but one that you can wander into and out of as you like. I don't even try to keep up with everybody I follow on Twitter. I'll glance at Twitter every so often, maybe in particular a couple of accounts of interest. But it moves too fast for me to pay regular attention to it.

Facebook's easier since I can at least subscribe to updates from pages of authors or bands or singers I like, so I can read those at my leisure. And Facebook's better about letting you organize the people you follow into groups, so you can target the specific people you want to keep track of. (I make liberal use of lists, for example--and I tend to pay more attention to the people in my lists than to my main news feed, since Facebook's not quite as annoying in rearranging the output of stuff on your lists.)

On the other hand, Facebook's got a long history of not showing your own output to people, if you're running a page. So. >:|

I do actual regular status updates to Facebook and Google+ both--stuff that's long enough to be at least a little interesting, but not long enough for a blog post. I do shorter versions of the same for Twitter. But by and large I consider all of them mostly write-only media.

I've been known to have decent conversations on all three of those sites, but nothing as indepth as on LJ or DW. Or as easy to keep track of.

[mmegaera]

I didn't know I could organize Facebook into groups. That might make things easier in the long run.

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've IM'd [g], and those times were because the person on the other end insisted on that method of communication and I really needed to communicate with them. Unless getting technical help via "live chat" counts. Then it might take both hands. I've not liked it, at any rate. I despise typing conversations in realtime. It's the worst of both worlds. So that may explain my aversion to Twitter.

So what you post to Facebook and Google+ is different from what you post on your blog? I've just been mirroring my blog posts. Do you really think it's better to spend the extra time?

Interesting stuff, at any rate. Good to get another perspective, although I'm still kicking and screaming as I'm dragged away from LJ/DW [g].

[annathepiper]

Facebook differentiates between "lists" and "groups", so that's an important thing to keep in mind. You said you were on a Bujold group there, yes?

And yeah, I find the "lists" functionality there very helpful.

I actually also mirror my blog posts out to the social networks but I also post updates there that I don't post to the blog. Partly just because when I'm at work, posting amusing things to the social networks is a way to occupy myself while I'm also running or writing test code at the same time. And on Facebook in particular I like to periodically post things in French, just because I've got several Francophones following me there and every so often they give me pointers on how to improve my French.

And if there's something I need to get out IMMEDIATELY the social networks tend to be a faster way to do that. Say, if we have a power outage and our servers go down. We host other resources besides just my and Dara's website, so we need to tell people fast if a power outage takes us out.

[mmegaera]

Ah. Okay. I found the instructions on how to create lists, but I can't figure out how to follow them (they say to find the friends section, fine, then they say to click on "more" but there is no "more" to click on [wry g]). This is extremely typical of me and Facebook. I find the interface basically unusable.

Can't figure out how to get rid of the big gray box with the two white circles that happens whenever I cross-post from my blog, either [wry g]. I'm told it needs an author picture, but I can't figure out how to add one, either. It only happens when I'm cross-posting, not posting directly.

I wish I wasn't such a social media putz, but I am. I try to learn...

[annathepiper]

When I look at my Facebook timeline, I can see my lists in the left-hand sidebar, under "FRIENDS", yeah. The "More" to click on pops up if you hover your pointer over the word "FRIENDS", or anything else that appears under that header.

And yeah, when I cross-post, I have somewhat random results with pics, too. Right now stuff I cross-post seems to have hooked onto Vengeance of the Hunter's cover, and I suppose I can live with that. ;)

[mmegaera]

Ahhh... Found it at last. Thank you.

Well, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one who has Issues with cross-posted pics. Although all mine are blank, alas. Seems like Facebook would want their users to be able to assign a pic to all cross-posted posts. Or to not put anything if there isn't a pic. Anything but that butt-ugly gray spot. Oh, well.