Same here.
My wife bugged me for a long time to join up, but I couldn't see the point of it, and she couldn't explain it to me. She eventually convinced me that it was a great way for us to stay in touch with our extended family back home, so I relented and did it.
Being the naturally suspicious type, I kept my profile information to a bare minimum, and soon learned how to limit who could 'see' me.
Didn't take long for me to begin seeing what my friends and family back home thought about national and world events. Quite a few of them quickly figured out where I was coming from, too.
After the predictable fireworks of the 2008 election, I chose to ignore the feed on my home page, and now only participate in secret groups, among like minded individuals - if at all.
For the last couple of years, I only use Face book to stay connected with Freepers when FR is down.
I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the following story from co-workers over the years. Each time I heard the story, there were minor variations but it was essentially always the same story. I honestly believe that non of my co-workers actually experienced the events but heard it at their synagogue and made it their own.
The story always starts out with not being seated quickly at a cracker barrel or some chain restaurant in the south and after finally getting seated and waited upon, they receive slow and poor service while all the folks around them could be heard whispering about the Jews over there at that table until they finally couldn’t stand it any-more, started hearing banjo’s and ran all the way to the car and fled from the hostile clientèle with images of Ned Beatty in the movie Deiverence running through there furtive imaginations.
I finally confronted one of my co-workers and asked him, “Did that really happen to you, or are you just repeating a story you heard? I said, “that’s got to be at least the 20th variation of that story I’ve heard”. He admitted that it didn’t really happen but that it happened to his friend! I worked with a lot of Jewish guys in my chosen career field.
When facebook started out, it was pretty much a bunch of teenagers behaving poorly. When adults started using it it started to lose favour with the kids and the worst abuses disappeared as teenagers left for other forums. Most people however still see it as a means of keeping in touch with friend and family members but over the years there have been thousands of face book groups/pages created for special interests. Just to illustrate my point here is one that is a mostly not political and a passion of mine. The National parks.
https://www.facebook.com/YosemiteNPS/?ref=py_c
Every park has a page and lists weather reports, park conditions, beautiful photgraphs, special interest stories etc.
Another passion of mine is the Civil War and Military history and Veterans affairs. There are tons of groups like that. If you click on the adds that are not in your political sphere and check not interested or stop showing me this you stop seeing the adds you don’t like and get adds from more personally agreeable groups politically/socially etc.
I have liked and joined hundreds of groups and get feeds from each of them about upcoming events. One of my favourite groups informed me of its annual beer tasting and rye whiskey tasting and dinning experience at Mount Vernon. Yes that Mount Vernon. I Would have never heard of it without facebook. I don’t drink but the dinner is special at a taste won’t kill me. ;)
You can join facebook. Put your settings to private, make no friends and follow almost anything. - the opensource foundation, computer clubs, Civil war society clubs and civil war re-enactors, civil war battlefields, World War I and II historical groups, The National Archives, National park service, online courses from major educational institutions, the list is endless.
Most people just are to timid to explore and are told or shown what something is from somebody else who only knows a limited subset of the softwares capabilites and they then explore no further, fleeing to the safety of what they know and tell all there friends how awful it was with out ever having been there.
Conservative users using facebook for legit purposes, like for commercial customers, groups etc or special interest groups can up vote advertisers they like and reject those they don’t like and can actually influence facebooks directions. The place has become far less of a playground. Even though the playground is still there for those who like that kind of crap.
It’s sort of like the religion forum on Freerepublic, I’d rather have a root canal than listen/read them repeat and insult themselves over and over on sola-scripture, sola-fida, mackeral snappers, pope this, demon possessed that ad-nauseam.
I say, “To each his own” but you got to explore what’s there and reject only those parts you don’t like which could be the whole thing. But most people don’t have the computer skill to know how to explore whatss there.
It’s not just friends and family pissing each other off with there political or religious views nor is it exclusively left leaning groups.