HN Explorer

Ask HN: Where to go after deleting Facebook?

54 points by sir_brickalot ↗ HN
Facebook for me is mainly a self updating address book. So is there any other recommended service that could possibly even import all or some of my FB data and is able to help keep in touch with my acquantances?

80 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 153 ms ] thread
mars4rp
Supreme Court ruled that illegal and if you do that, it is punishable by law as hacking!
sir_brickalot
I don't live in the US so I am not familiar with this ruling, but are you saying that I am not allowed to use my own data that Facebook handed over to me in a neat zip file containing html files, photos, friends lists, messages... everything?
frantzmiccoli
You surely are in your right to get your data, I guess there has been a misunderstanding, he was mentioning data about your contact.

European GDPR is making this data export a consumer right (it comes applicable in may). Though I haven't heard about any service enabling data loading from a Facebook export (nor a Facebook export tool).

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
cyclonetiger
If its a self updating address book, then LinkedIn would essentially serve your purposes, but one could argue that LinkedIn has the same problems that Facebook does.
dandigangi
No where! You go back to a normal life where you just live it instead of reading about other people living theirs.
starchand
Instagram
woweeeee
Instagram is still Facebook!
starchand
Really!!!! I will use WhatsApp then
fencepost
>>>Instagram

>>Instagram is still Facebook!

>Really!!!! I will use WhatsApp then

While the whoosh and snark are amusing, they may not work out well for any involved....

post_break
I use email and text message to keep in touch now. Or Telegram (funny how that has double meaning).
Treegarden
There is nothing I hate more then writing on my phone. In general I much prefer meeting someone face to face, but at least on my pc my keyboard it is much easier and faster to write a message.
icebraining
There are apps that let you send SMSs from your PC. Telegram also has a desktop version.
soziawa
Most messengers offer a desktop client.
drukenemo
Call a good friend for a coffee face to face.

I quit Facebook months ago, and guess what, no one cared. I keep contact with REAL friends far away via email or Whatsapp. For local friends I use Whatsapp and meet in person. There is no NEED for a true Facebook replacement.

But to be honest, I created a new account, with a fake name and won't add anyone to it. The goal is to track some events and key communities I like to interact with. But I've added no personal data to this account and only log on to it on a less used web browser and don't use it in my mobile. I also use the following add-ons to prevent any Facebook tracking: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and uMatrix. Probably overkilling it.

woweeeee 

  WhatsApp
You know that's still Facebook, rrriiiight?
iamjaredwalters
The data may ultimately belong to Facebook but Whatsapp is not the same as Facebook.
soziawa
But everything is made by Facebook, the only difference is branding. It's like saying that Facebook Messenger only belongs to Facebook but isn't Facebook.
sp332
True, but it does have end-to-end encryption so their ability to leak or abuse your data is a lot more limited.
black_puppydog
I doubt they'd need the word "coffee" to infer what's happening when said message gets sent. Who sends it and to whom would be just enough thank you very much...
soziawa
But they get all your location data. They'll know that you met for coffee.
sp332
Is it necessary to give them location data to use the app?
soziawa
They'll know through your IP.
vorticalbox
they will know that this IP sent this much data to that IP but not what was inside it.

Your ISP knows the same when using a web site via HTTPS. They can see you send a request to the website but not what it contained.

You could also use a VPn or TOR if you want to hide your IP.

soziawa
And they'll know who you contacted and when. That allows for a lot of things to be guessed. Especially with hundreds of thousands of messages per user available to them.

Yeah, but my ISP has to follow the local laws and I can easily switch ISPs if I dislike my current one. Try that with Facebook.

Yeah, I might use a VPN but I'd also have to force all my contacts to use one as well.

drukenemo
As said by others, there are differences. Also, I set Whatsapp to never receive my location data.

But yeah, the networking effect is real. Whatsapp is what everyone uses, so far it seems like a decent compromise based on end-to-end encryption.

Treegarden
I have many friends from Egypt, China, Brazil and other places but I live in Germany. If I visit Egypt in 2 years for some reason I want to shoot a message to my friends there to meet them for "a coffee face to face". There is no better service then facebook to enable this.
jasonkostempski
Email, text, phone call, all better messaging services than Facebook.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
pizza234
This has been discussed before; "better" != "only".

If the target is to have a contact, an email or a phone number are sufficient.

Also, it's fallacious to think that emails/phones are subject to change, while a Facebook account isn't - some people close it. Especially emails nowadays are used for a lot of services, so people stick with them for a long time, more than the past.

rinze
As has been said before: e-mail. I moved to Canada from Spain but go back from time to time, on holidays. Every time I go, I pick up the list of people I want to see and send them an e-mail. Has worked every single time.
theCricketer
While I am not a fan of Facebook myself for the all reasons recently talked about and the addicting nature of it, yes the self updating address book part is nice. Here's what I did: I got a Chrome extention[1] that unfollows all my friends. I've also unliked every Facebook Page that I used to like. This means my feed is now totally empty. When I login from anywhere there is nothing in my feed. Also I rarely ever get notifications, except when someone adds me as a friend. This way the feed is gone, there's nothing to be addicted to (feed was my main addiction), its very hard to get back because it involves re-following 100s of people which my lazy mind won't do and Facebook doesn't make any money off me (no feed, no ads). So I still get to use it as a address book.
fencepost
> [I unfollowed all my friends] [...] I still get to use it as a address book.

I'm not understanding something here. Is that an empty address book, or does FB allow you to still access the information of people you're no longer connected to? I was under the impression that the default information visible to folks not on your "Friends" list was pretty limited, which is why [Cambridge Analytica/Kogan] needed to use an app to scrape data from users' friends.

fabianhjr
> or does FB allow you to still access the information of people you're no longer connected to

Unfollowing removes someone's posts from your wall but they remain connected as friends. (You can also like a page and unfollow it)

pjc50
With this, you remain friends with them, you're just not "following" them in the RSS sense - it destroys the news feed.
TeeWEE
I wanted to remove facebook, but i can't I will lose connections to friends I met outside my home country. Its kind of the internal person-service that i can't live without currently.
icebraining
Can't you ask them for alternative contacts?
pera
You can always send them a message asking for their email addresses or phone numbers before deleting your account.
Treegarden
That's too inconvenient. The nice part about facebook is that you can forget about people, but then they post a status update that they are currently somewhere in your country and you can meet them.
Treegarden
Agreed, and if I used an alternative I would have to spend hours searching on google, trying to import "iContacts" or whatever format into whatever other format when I change my pc, phone, loose all the data, or whatever might happen.

Its like downloading your email and organizing it into sub folders instead of using gmail.

limeblack
Yes I just use the messenger app for this reason. I haven't opened the actual FB app on my phone for ages.
shortoncash
Strava became my FB substitute, oddly enough. It's the only social network I really like and wish I could spend more time on.
gnarcoregrizz
Slack and discord for daily talks with friends. Everyone else I email, call, or sms. I haven't had facebook for a few years and haven't had an issue with keeping in contact with anyone.

I want an encrypted chat service thats convenient as slack and discord.

[deleted]
(comment deleted)
sp332
A potentially messy way to use that zip file is to find the page with your contact info in a big HTML table. You can copy and paste that table from a web browser into a spreadsheet program, edit the data into a useful format, and then export it as CSV. The CSV file can be imported into a local or online mail app.

Outlook.com used to have a feature that would import your Facebook contacts directly. I can't find that feature in the current version of the site though. Yahoo.com still does have one. So you could make an account there, import your FB contacts, then export them as a CSV file.

thisisit
Mastodon? It is decentralized. So, you can create your own instance and get everyone you know added to that instance.
sp332
Or you could find a node that's run by someone you trust, or at least trust more than FB.
itshertz
Well, you could try: https://kuende.com - still not mature as a product, but not far from it

I'm part of the team, we are running a token sale somewhere around the next couple of months (https://ico.kuende.com <- easier to understand the vision from here) and planning a "paradigm shift" of social media, so to speak.

I guess, given the current drivers within traditional social media and all the associated bull*t, we might have a shot at fulfilling our vision.

dna_polymerase
It looks and feels like Instagram. Is it decentralized running on Ethereum?
itshertz
Part of it is decentralized, the challenges module. Planning to move further on decentralizing more and more of the product (during the past 3 years we developed it in a centralized manner), but its not that practical now, given the fact that we need storage, tons of micro-transactions with 0 fees for the end user.

So, yes, using Ethereum blockchain, not fully decentralzied, and we might switch to a dPOS blockchain in the near future (if EOS, SMT succeed).

kough
lol @ the ico, why would a centralized company require a blockchain?
itshertz
Indeed, that would be hilarious. What we are working on is a semi-decentralized product, with a core part (that of challenges) being on blockchain and two tokens governing the ecosystem (details about the mechanics are in the whitepaper and on the ico site)

Users can create, curate and participate in challenges. And they are incentivized to do so through gamification. For all that, they can earn tokens and keep the fun running.

arichard123
Surely the power of Facebook is in how the data they have on you can be used to influence you. That is, it's about what you are fed. You just need to be a conscientious consumer.
thrownaway954
Google! I joke, I joke.

Just send them all an email or a last FB message with your contact information. Seriously... you are not that important for 90% of the people in your FB contacts to care about. Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. the people who you really matter to will either email or call you.