Luckily all the messages started going to spam, but for some reason my email settings were a bit whack for Facebook groups (because I’m not a member of too many groups) and suddenly a few months ago I started receiving messages from two groups in particular – Exotic Jews and Jewish Technology – I went to the groups and noticed I was a member, never having joined said groups – I wondered how I became a member. Suddenly, I was a member of the personal chef network, divorced chevra and devar torah and I was pissed. If only I could block the Facebook auto group app, but I cannot and last night I decided to do something about it.
I have gone along with all of Facebooks changes with grace, most of them being better for business, but the latest “new groups” changeover kind of sucked, because the Frum Satire Fan Club with close to 2,000 members has been “archived” (will have to talk to someone who works at FB about getting it back) which means it’s gone and last night I decided to make a new group.
You may have noticed that I’m not a huge self promoter, when I first started hearing about how famous I was – I would go and try and get more hits, comment on blogs, write my info on people’s walls and so forth. I’ve gotten away from that, now I just want to write and if people want to read it, share it or talk about it – so be it. So I started this group “frum satire” last night and vowed that I would never add anyone to the actual group. The point of the group is obviously more of a Facebook presence, but it also makes it easier for people who are not FB friends with me (there are a large number of folks on Facebook who actually want to be friends with people they know in person) to see updates and news about shows – there’s nothing like getting an email about how someone didn’t know about this and this event because they aren’t friends with me on FB.
I created the group and when it asked me who I wanted as a member – I added my other back up Facebook profile and that’s it. I shared it on my main profile so whoever wants to join can, but I will not have people in my group who didn’t ask to be there. I’m hoping to start some sort of Facebook groups ethic revolution because it seems I’m not the only one who’s pissed off about this feature.
Unfortunately, this is the nature of facebook. Their motto is “if it ain’t broke, change it anyway for the sake of change.”
Also the “all the things you like are now groups if you want to list them” thing happened a while back.
Actually, they believe in iterative design in order to force more engagement on pages and in their stream through EdgeRank. That and cause you to increase the amount of available data to them.
Ah, the evil facebook strikes again!
On this we agree?
Facebook IS soul-sucking identity-thieving civilization-ending evil.
Remember, you are not Facebook’s customer.
The advertisers and data-miners are Facebook’s customers.
why not just give up on facebook then? it’s a conspiracy, isn’t it?
Ah but it’s good for traffic (close to 500 hits a day) and it’s good for getting shabbos meals and I kind of met my current lady through through FB – at least I got to stalk her through it.
“So I started this group “frum satire” last night and vowed that I would never add anyone to the actual group.”
This doesn’t stop members of the group from adding others.