I upvoted this post, but I would have strong upvoted it if instead of presenting a one-sided case with a call to action, it had laid out the situation in a way that acknowledged why people might want to block in the first case.
I think mental health is a sufficiently good reason to block people most of the time, but it does mean that people who do lots of blocking can’t easily participate in important “Town Hall” FB discussions without distorting the conversation. This seems like a Rock/Hard Place problem. I think there are probably technical solutions, and probably this is situation we should solve by Eliminating Scarcity rather than fighting over tradeoffs.
I think Facebook is actually pretty good for community discussions – FB has just actually optimized itself fairly well to be a social hub for extended social circles. It seems to be the place where, by default, community Town Hall stuff at least in my own social scenes is likely to remain for the foreseeable future.
As I understand the mechanics, people who block a lot of people are equal to people who have been blocked by a lot of people, in terms of what they can see in such a discussion.
but it does mean that people who do lots of blocking can’t easily participate in important “Town Hall” FB discussions without distorting the conversation. This seems like a Rock/Hard Place problem.
Hard place: leave Facebook for “Town Hall” discussions, so conversation isn’t distorted by bad FB tools. (For people who love using FB, this may have the benefit of incentivizing FB fixes the tools—whatever that means.)
ETA: also see this comment on what the incentives might be right now.
This sure is a potential solution, and I think “leave FB en masse” is part of the longterm set of tools I want to be considering. But it’s not going to solve the problems of people who are already using Facebook as their de-facto community hub, and I think it’s quite hard to “leave FB” in a way that actually makes your situation net-positive, due to inherent constraints on who-is-likely-to-build-a-good alternative, and how they get funding.
I’m not suggesting “leave FB en mass”. Just that groups switch for meetings where it’s important that these FB tools don’t scramble things, or communities where the problem has gotten really bad.
I upvoted this post, but I would have strong upvoted it if instead of presenting a one-sided case with a call to action, it had laid out the situation in a way that acknowledged why people might want to block in the first case.
I think mental health is a sufficiently good reason to block people most of the time, but it does mean that people who do lots of blocking can’t easily participate in important “Town Hall” FB discussions without distorting the conversation. This seems like a Rock/Hard Place problem. I think there are probably technical solutions, and probably this is situation we should solve by Eliminating Scarcity rather than fighting over tradeoffs.
I think Facebook is actually pretty good for community discussions – FB has just actually optimized itself fairly well to be a social hub for extended social circles. It seems to be the place where, by default, community Town Hall stuff at least in my own social scenes is likely to remain for the foreseeable future.
As I understand the mechanics, people who block a lot of people are equal to people who have been blocked by a lot of people, in terms of what they can see in such a discussion.
Hard place: leave Facebook for “Town Hall” discussions, so conversation isn’t distorted by bad FB tools. (For people who love using FB, this may have the benefit of incentivizing FB fixes the tools—whatever that means.)
ETA: also see this comment on what the incentives might be right now.
This sure is a potential solution, and I think “leave FB en masse” is part of the longterm set of tools I want to be considering. But it’s not going to solve the problems of people who are already using Facebook as their de-facto community hub, and I think it’s quite hard to “leave FB” in a way that actually makes your situation net-positive, due to inherent constraints on who-is-likely-to-build-a-good alternative, and how they get funding.
I’m not suggesting “leave FB en mass”. Just that groups switch for meetings where it’s important that these FB tools don’t scramble things, or communities where the problem has gotten really bad.