I agree on the paypal thing.
I don’t encourage any whatsapp texts business-wise (I keep my number private in fact) - it’s not to provide yet another way to text me, instagram etc, I only offer it via a link as an accessibility option for voicenotes 
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This is genuinely an interesting concept to me.
I think it’s the chaotic informality of it. And businesses willingly using that to create/administer a transaction that just totally foxes me.
If I’m ordering something, I want some sort of online order form process that railroads things. So that I can be sure that I’m ordering within the bounds of what’s on offer. Also so that there’s a proper feedback loop. Also, from the POV of the business, it must be wildly inefficient dealing with orders in the form of random freeform text messenges. Otherwise, it’s another texting conversation I’ve got to negotiate.
Yeah agreed it’s probably inefficient for them but I like that it seems a bit more personal - like I’m chatting to them as if I was ordering in person and I can ask for a collection ETA that will be accurate.
Main reason is that it avoids the fees from the takeaway websites though.
The degree to which they can make an accurate shadow profile of people without those people even knowing is one of the bleakest things about Facebook. They can gather information on you based on what people you worked with unwittingly shared, and use it to create “you” based on that, from browser data and stuff like that, and it’s generally ghoulishly accurate. Just kinda terrifying, albeit somewhat (I think?) mitigated by GDPR.
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I do indeed!
Maybe it looks like that if you’re not signed in, but no, it’s an in-browser chat client that’s not quite as good as WhatsApp on Slack, but not far off.
Ah
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Don’t get me started on read receipts, I despise them.
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I posted about my good brain tumour news and have received 160+ likes in a day so my age group are still using it in some sense!
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Paidinfull is:
reminiscing about Facebook on a music forum
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Two things about FB for me right now.
First: Fuck loads of adverts, moreso than usual. I wonder if maybe people dropped out of Twitter and they’ve started spending more budget there. Either way, it’s annoying how much clicking you have to do (Hide → irrelevant → Hide all from…) for each one.
Second: These blocks of suggested ‘Reels’ that come up a lot. At first I assumed these would just be Instagram reels but I’ve clicked a few and now I’m fascinated by what the point is. Who’s making them? Seemingly people who know that TikTok and Instagram exist and who’ve fallen down some strange hole between the two, making videos of pets that are charmless or videos about ‘things’ that make no sense at all, which I would expect to be driving traffic somewhere via annoyance but they’re not those pages where you catch your friends arguing about how many 1s there are visible, it’s just someone…
Songkick or Bandcamp, maybe?
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god i miss real flyers (and people promoting shows in general and not just creating an event and leaving it on there) 
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I used to use Facebook all the time as well and have managed fine without it since leaving. Here is what works for me:
- Songkick - this free app is brilliant. It will continuously scan your Apple Music/Spotify library (or you can add bands manually), and anytime gigs are announced for these bands you’ll get a notification. You can set it up as a push notification and/or an email. It’s extensive too - nearly every gig I go to is flagged there. Crucially, it’ll notify you before tickets go on sale so you can prepare.
- Dice - You may have used it before for buying tickets but it’s handy (more so in London/major cities I’ve found). Less effective than Songkick, but every now and again I’ll flick through my “Just for Otto” section on the homepage of the app. Unfortunately it doesn’t scan your library so you have to follow artists manually.
- Instagram - this is the only social media app I have and although I do use it a little for that, it’s most useful when I follow local promoters. Most promoters I’m aware of will push stuff on Insta, and stage times are often posted in their stories too which is handy. Obviously following artists themselves helps as well. If Instagram really doesn’t appeal, I recommend trying this out with an anonymous account that you never post on.
The above stuff has really helped. It’s quite rare that I miss out on stuff - can’t remember the last time that happened.
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Just an endless stream of recommended groups/pages, now - basically no-one using it to post any updates now, just groups/pages. (Appreciate that this’ll vary depending on your age and how many contacts you have.)
Well done Zuckerberg, you re-invented Friends Reunited and turned it into a weird hybrid of Yahoo Groups and Gumtree. And it outlasted your reinvention of Second Life. Genius!