Facebook is really not built to facilitate intelligent conversation, is it?

[randomness]

There's a conversation going on in a Facebook group I'm in that may someday become my personal Exhibit A for why Facebook is a terrible place to have any kind of substantive, meaningful conversation.

I'm not linking to it now because I don't need an Exhibit A at the moment. Moreover, pointing large numbers of people at the conversation who have no connection to the group will probably not be helpful.

Comments

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

The lack of simple quoting and threading is definitely a problem.

On the other hand, it may be that the Internt, or Earth, both suffer from similar problems...

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Still better than Twitter.

[cos]

I was having the same thought while reading parts of what I think is the same conversation you're talking about. People should come back to LJ!

[digitalemur.livejournal.com]

The thing that's pissing me off about Facebook these days is that every so often someone posts something with an image that's triggering, and Facebook doesn't exactly slice things for great control over that if the OP didn't suppress the graphic image. I just unfollowed someone today because HOLY SHIT STOP IT PLEASE.

Ironically, the person had been griping a day or two before about how affected they are by the kinds of advertising ASPCA does, and then this? This was WORSE. I _hope_ they hadn't _realized_ how graphic an image they were sharing, but either way AUGH NO NO HIDE HIDE NO.

Sorry, this is off topic, it was just crazy upsetting.

[gingicat]

It reminds me a great deal of Usenet. This is nice when one is trying to resurrect alt.callahans, but not so much in this instance. (Then again, the Callahanians seem to be avoiding WORMS posts this time around.)

[jbsegal.livejournal.com]

Comment threading is required for good conversation.

[drwex]

In other news, round objects are still round.

To be a bit more serious, Facebook's revenue model is built around ads and page views. Things that cause people to make short replies and repeatedly load pages play into their revenue model. Long, thoughtful writing is contrary to that model.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Certainly I've heard nothing to suggest that Facebook is trying to be a useful platform for quality conversations. Mostly it seems to be to support ADD socializing of high-school students.

[st-rev.livejournal.com]

I find the quality of discussion on Twitter to be extremely high, despite the incredible barriers Twitter presents to it.

[colinmac.livejournal.com]

Yep, I've switched back to LJ (though I'm still crap about posting regularly). Not a lot of folks still here, but there's a high proportion of old friends I care about.