Gransnet, Facebook and Twitter.

Dinahmo

I signed up to Facebook to gain access to my local village's page to find out about activities, services etc in and around the neighbourhood. Various friends are on it and I'm amazed at how regularly they post stuff, often very trivial. One acquaintance regularly posts the results from her weekly art class.

I get fed up with the number of emails that I receive telling me that there is something that I should see from someone that I know. I haven't posted anything myself.

If people are posting stuff you're bored seeing, then you can stop following them. It then doesn't show up on your timeline but they are still your friend. And if you don't like getting emails from Facebook you can turn them off.

Perhaps your friend is proud of her art and wants people to see it.

That's the difference with GN and Facebook, I think. With FB you can control what you see. With GN, you get what you're given.

I get fed up with the number of emails that I receive telling me that there is something that I should see from someone that I know. I haven't posted anything myself.

You must have opted into getting those emails, though.

FB can be very private, or as open as you want it to be. I only have 'friends' I know, and who also post. I wouldn't stay FB friends with people who read my posts but don't contribute anything - what's the point?

My posts can only be seen by those people, unless I have tagged people (and I only do that if I am happy for the post to go wider). If anyone tags me, I have to approve the post before it goes onto my timeline, so what's on there is only things that I have allowed or posted myself.

I get no notifications unless I am logged in, and they take the form of a number on the top right corner, so I can choose whether or not to open them - no emails, no 'dings', no communications that I haven't asked for, and I only allow friend requests from friends of people who are already my 'FB friends'. My personal details (eg DOB) can only be seen by me, and I don't complete personal details about marital status or educational institutions attended, as people I want to know those things already do.

If people want the world to know about their lives they can set things up that way, but it's by no means required. Anyone who knows your name can possibly find you on FB, particularly if you are called something like Anastasia-Louisa Ponsonby-Smythe - it's less likely if you are a Mary Smith - but if, like me, you have everything locked down they will only see your profile picture. Mine is a stock image of something that interests me, not a picture of me. Who do people think will want to go to great lengths to track them down anyway?

When I was teaching, staffwere warned to be careful what they posted on Facebook, etc, especially when applying for posts. They were checked.

One teacher I knew was sacked for gross misconduct, struck off the teaching register and ended up in court for her posts on social media.

What a foolish woman!

Yes, there are those who post very unwise photos (and other things), and don't lock their profiles right down.

That's not the fault of social media though - it's because a lot of people don't use them sensibly.

I am always surprised when I see photos of grandchildren on GN. Have the parents given permission? My son would be raging if I posted such photos and rightly so. Are people so naive and unaware that these photos can be manipulated by unscrupulous people?

I spent the whole of my career teaching pupils and advising staff not to post identifiable pictures of pupils on social media. Any photos on our school website had to be back or side views and pupils were never identified by name.
Sad, but necessary.

I use facebook for the looking at friend's photos of their cats/dogs/etc and I have used marketplace a bit but you even get 'odd' posts on there. I have a twitter account but don't really use it as I don't really understand it and I waste enough time time online as it is.

I use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and past students abroad. Also my own gd as this is. The media they use , I also belong to a few interest groups. GN is great for a gossip, support when things are bad, and a healthy debate.

I find FB very useful, and can't understand the pride some have in not being on it. The local hub is very useful for reporting flooding on our roads out of the village, lost cats, selling stuff, and I too am on a few interest groups. Yes, there are a few bonkers posters, a few malicious posters, but they are easily spotted and disproved, unlike the MSM with their biased editorials, front pages, which many, sadly, take as some kind of gospel. I also read twitter, and it is a great source of up to date information. I select who I follow, and find that reporters such as Peston use it a lot, it is a good way of reading succinct, up to date reports and opinions. GN is what it is, an interest group in that we are all within roughly the same demographic. I certainly have more trust in what I read on twitter than what I would read in the MSM, assuming I bothered to buy a newspaper!

GN is what it is, an interest group in that we are all within roughly the same demographic.
It's just a chat forum, not the true gospel of all world news

Germanshepherdsmum

Oh dear - my only online presence is GN. If you were to google my name you wouldn’t find me now I’m retired.

But if you're applying to join a Facebook group, you'll probably have a profile, some existing friends and a record of posts you've made or responded to. I'm wary of people who have none of those because it looks as though they've created an ID just to join my group.

I recently received a request from somebody called Misty McMuffin from Texas. She had made very few posts, but had a lot of male friends. Her profile picture looked like Jennifer Arcuri's twin sister. I declined her request and she hasn't contacted me to appeal.

Marydoll

When I was teaching, staffwere warned to be careful what they posted on Facebook, etc, especially when applying for posts. They were checked.

One teacher I knew was sacked for gross misconduct, struck off the teaching register and ended up in court for her posts on social media.

What a foolish woman!

Ooh exciting ! What lovely gossip that must have led to !!

Actually, it was awful. A young woman, after all that study and hard work, losing her job, never able to teach again. Her family were devastated.
We her colleagues, had to contend with the fall out.

I am in a few specialist groups on facebook and I find them to be quite sexist towards women but I find quite a lot f men's comments on facebook sexist and in RL if I am honest

I used to work with someone who was sacked after telling his mates on FB that he had taken a day off sick so he could go to the races. Don't know if he didn't set his privacy properly or someone at work dobbed him in or what. When he got to work the next day he was called in and told to leave the premises.

I use FB for groups and some family stuff. Most family stuff is via WhatsApp. I also use Twitter mostly because I find firms respond more quickly to requests or complaints that are put on line.
The main differences between being unkind or spreading misinformation on the internet, whether GN, FB, Twitter et al, and gossiping over the garden fence is that you knew who had given you the misinformation and you knew that you and the listener knew who spread the bad feeling over the fence.
Even on FB, and definitely on T or GN, people hide behind pseudonyms so can be as untruthful or nasty as they like whilst still showing a different face in public.

nanna8

I preferred the previous incarnation, not so aggressive and more reasonable. And not such an obvious troll.

Yes....even worse than before.....

What have I missed?

DiscoDancer1975

nanna8

I preferred the previous incarnation, not so aggressive and more reasonable. And not such an obvious troll.

Yes....even worse than before.....

Would you like to share who you think the troll is? Remembering that calling people trolls gets you deleted from GN?

Mmmmm. Good point. No, I would never divulge. My lips are sealed.

Maybe I'll just report you anyway then, just to be on the safe side?

volver

DiscoDancer1975

nanna8

I preferred the previous incarnation, not so aggressive and more reasonable. And not such an obvious troll.

Yes....even worse than before.....

Would you like to share who you think the troll is? Remembering that calling people trolls gets you deleted from GN?

This only leads to more speculation and perhaps people may wrongly suspected. ??

volver

Maybe I'll just report you anyway then, just to be on the safe side?

Ok....

Nah, don't worry. Got my big girl pants on.

volver

Nah, don't worry. Got my big girl pants on.

I wasn’t worried...you go ahead if you feel that’s what you should do.

Germanshepherdsmum

What have I missed?

No idea, but my interest is piqued now too.