Bitcoin Forum

There was a Bitcoin group on Facebook that I no longer see in my list of groups, and no longer see any status updates from.

When I search for Bitcoin, I see about 50 organizations, users and pages but all have too few members to be the group I remember seeing before.

One of the most active participants was "Satoshi Nakamoto" (yes, likely it was not the real Satoshi) -- and when I search for that Facebook user I see no less than 20 other Satoshi Nakamotos but not the one with the avatar I remember seeing before.

Did Facebook take down the Bitcoin group and freeze some user accounts?

OK...I've been into computers since way before there was even such a thing as email via the fidonet backbone...  and I still don't get the hype about facebook...am I really missing something?   ... cuz I still haven't joined.

Facebook has become quite anal about the difference between 'groups,' 'pages' and 'profiles'. Make the wrong one and you get deleted.

The only Facebook page I'm aware of is http://www.facebook.com/bitcoins

I use it as a collaboration-with-my-friends tool.

Facebook... yeah might have a hint of hype for me. But a good tool for sharing information with friends.

Hmm ... that is a Facebook page, and what i had seen before was a Facebook group.  But some of the posts on that page look familiar, except with this there is no Satoshi Nakamoto who was the name that had made many of the posts.  So, I've no idea.  

I wonder what happened.

This will work though.  Thanks!

Facebook has been going around and deleting all groups that are "too big" to be groups of mutual friends. I think technically they are migrating them to the "new format" and dropping all the members. So maybe that's what happened to it.

Me neither.

Here is the bitcoin group, showing currently 4180+ members

http://www.facebook.com/bitcoins (http://www.facebook.com/bitcoins)

But that isn't a Facebook group.  It is a Facebook page.  It has 4180+ people who "like" the page, but a page has no "members".  

I've since found out what liikely happened.  Nearly a year ago Facebook introduced "new groups" for connecting smaller groups of people who you know.  For businesses (which "Bitcoin" likely falls under), they want Facebook pages to be used instead of Facebook groups.
 - http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150249514781340

The old groups all got closed and no longer show up in any searches -- instead you need to have a link to it (or know the URL) if you are not already a member.  If you've left the group (which I must have done, somehow), having a link to it is the only way to get back in.

Additionally, I've since read that there have been rivalries between groups and reporting the group as "scam" enough times would cause it to disappear.  Though the Bitcoin "not a fan" club could have done that, a more likely explanation is tht the group I'm thinking of is still there, just that I'm no longer a member and can't see it in the search results.

Perhaps Google plus might be a good alternative? I used to use Facebook before they started to make unannounced interface changes and horrible privacy-leaking tweaks. Too much fail, I moved on. I don't have a google plus invite or I would - but I'm sure someone here can do so.

You are not alone, although I've never been to Second Life either =)

Oh yes, you're missing out on a lot. I was slow to join Facebook too because I don't get the hype (ditto friendster, twitter and myspace). Then somebody pointed how it could be used for stalking people, monitoring activities of people you suspect are up to no good (like your boyfriend claiming he's at work then checks in or tag another friend in a mall), getting pictures of indiscreet girls and boys, exposing yourself to the world and Facebook's intentionally inept privacy controls and... lemme think a while more on what else is there ;)

not to mention they log everything you ever said in their database.  wouldn't be suprised if they send info on ppl to the FBI.

I am immune to facebook as well. Am also a pre-internet computer enthusiast.

Even without that, I find Facebook's privacy policies and conduct rather unacceptable. Which is probably why I put no real info in my profile and do almost nothing on Facebook unless pestered by people or for work purposes.

I hang out in this Bitcoin group, and a "Satoshi Nakamoto" posts there not infrequently...

http://www.facebook.com/groups/136003253120130

You aren't. I deleted my Facebook a couple of years ago. I'm not trying to be "too cool for Facebook" or anything, but I just don't see why I should care about how bored everyone says they are. If they aren't good enough friends to talk to on the phone every once in a while, I don't why I'd want to know what movies they like. Maybe this is the wrong attitude though, as networking is pretty important for job opportunities, etc.

I tried to sell a Bitcoin on Trademe  (NZ's eBay). It got taken down.
I'm fairly sure they did not know what it was.

I hope you are aware that your lamebook profile is still there...

Just try to login to it and you'll see it magically appearing from the bottomless pit that lamebook servers are.

I guess CIA must pay them well so they never delete your accounts. They just put them dormant.

That's the main reason i only use lamebook as a work/marketing tool and using completely fake personal information.

I guess I find Facecrack lame because back in the day, I used to run my own dial-up BBS...ahh...those were the days.  Anyone remember Legend of the Red Dragon http://lord.lordlegacy.com/ (http://lord.lordlegacy.com/)?   

And it was always local people who would hook up because long distance charges were expensive.   There were about 20 BBSs in my town and we were all posted on a shared list that was distributed to every computer store in town. 

Then one day the internet came to town and IT RUINED EVERYTHING!

If my memory serves, there was something about Barak's mother in that BBS game :D

Actually I don't think it's just Facebook.  Most places I worked at or worked for, never delete user/transaction data. It's almost always marked as deleted and/or shifted to an archive or readonly server, but always retrievable if needed :D

Here's another early 80's computer enthusiast who never had a facebook account.(1)  I didn't see much point, and increasingly I am sensitive about identity.

I've heard that Facebook has some creepy thing that facial recognition deal going and they will show a user a picture and ask them to pin a name to it.  That is downright alarming to me.  As I told my friends at work, one of the very few things that would induce me to beat somebody up would be if they pinned my name to a photo.

(1)  A heard or read somewhere that Facebook has pre-created nodes for every individual on earth and they just fill them out with whatever info they can get.  When one activates or de-activates an account, it just flips a bit.

Disclaimer:  I do not know with certainty any of the things I have mentioned about FB.

Facebook is indeed doing facial recognition crap. Though it asks you to confirm that it guessed your "friend" correctly in the picture.

As far as I know, Facebook is not creating accounts for anyone who has never signed up for the service.

Interesting.  That is probably a better method for obtaining a clean facial recognition database.

As a non-FB-user, It will be very interesting (and _very_ alarming) if anyone happens to see my photo in one of their little 'is this your friend' games and I'll be asking about it.

LOL, And I thought that I am the only one 'not getting' Facebook.

Not sure about this, since I don't use Facebook extensively, but that was pretty much the same thing I told my friends about tagging me in a photo. Although I've set my settings not to allow these, Facebook had proven itself in the past to blithely ignore these settings or allowing access control bypass, whether out of pure incompetency or intent.

Gosh this is an excellent quote!  Everybody is quoting it and replying.  I wish I could say something half as quoted.

When I was a boy, I told people there were two things I wanted when I grew up: a computer and a nuclear reactor.  They seemed equally absurd and foreign to adults.   I never got my reactor of course, though I operated one in the Navy long before I owned a computer.

Instead of facebook, I like forum sites like this.  There are many, many forum sites with very active discussions on a wealth of topics.  But when mention forum sites to someone in love with facebook, I usually get a blank look.  Odd.

Getting seriously off-topic but I think this is an technology adoption generation gap (there probably is some formal academic term somewhere). The early early pioneers got into it from a very technical background e.g. 2400 baud modem BBS. This group + the university people would also adopted newsgroups and IRC, which then became popular with the early Internet users with the bloom of the HTTP-based Web. The online forumers became popular as access didn't require a separate client or learning how to connect with some new program (irc client) and are usually dedicated to a special subject hence the depth of discussion.

Finally even the technology laggards got into social networking through things like myspace and facebook because these inherently motivate people to get other people involved. Since that attracts just about everybody's grandparents and pets, the depth of discussion dwindle rapidly. Hence I'll think these people are the ones you get blank looks from, they are so in love with Facebook because that's probably the first major internet community they got into and didn't know anything before that.

Going by the means of N-to-N social communications, we have Gen BBS, Gen IRC, Gen Forum, Gen MFT (myspace, facebook, twitter)

I'm rambling :D

yes i remember LORD and running up crazy telephone bills back in the early 90s.....

but facebook? i think you DO need it these days to find out about social events etc, but i have <30 friends/family added and im intending to keep it that way :D

good post OP

and voilet? or her haggard you get bit by

You have to have friends to enjoy facebook, just a computer isn't good enough

not to argue on that photo above, but OP wtf

You can send them an email and have them remove your account for good. I believe Lifehacker wrote an article detailing the process.

This sounds like...
"...we provide a service to keep your wallet safe for you, there's no need to encrypt it. Despite being a documented asshole and being sued for stealing people's ideas, you can trust me and my company that I'll delete your private key from my database when you email me to. You can even test that your private key can no longer be found from the public front end..." ;)

Another oldschool geek here ;) I think others have already listed the sensible reasons for staying out of FB, such as privacy concerns. I also feel there are vague, emotional reasons, such as maintaining a divide between us and the non-geeks. For example, people used to sneer at geeks who were doing fun stuff online, say 10-20 years ago, but now the same people are doing the same things on FB.

There is also the general annoyance of FB as the overly hyped phenomenon that everyone should join just because everyone else does. It's like seeing McDonalds ads everywhere, which doesn't exactly increase my chances of ever wanting to eat there.

Keep drinking the kool-aid, dude... ::)

Here's another one on FB:  http://www.facebook.com/bitcoinz

Facebook seems to have a rather strange idea of what open means... it claims to be an open group, yet there seems not to be a join button, instead there is an ask to join button and seemingly no information about who it is that one would be asking nor a "send query regadring policies of person or persons controlling who ets to join" etc etc etc. In other words it looks like a closed group with closed managers-and-roles list and closed policy...

-MarkM-

Nothing new here, Facebook all along has strange ideas about privacy and access control... :D