I had been doing that for a few weeks now, but I don't agree with Facebook anymore and by passively using their products I am telling them that their actions are ok.
By deleting completely and going to alternatives, that's how we tell them it's not ok.
Did it 4 years ago. Saved a backup of my data, deactivated, and then completely deleted. Yes there will always be a reason to have facebook around, but 4 years on, missing out on all those little reasons people use to defend facebook didn't end up materializing in any meaningful inconvenience or obstacle to living without it.
Yup, exactly what I am doing. I posted that I am deleting my account in 30 days, and linked my SpaceHey profile for people to sign up there and friend request me if they want to stay connected on social media.
Got a backup being generated right now by Facebook of all my data, and will be permanently deleting it after that.
I used to do this, precisely because I feared losing my Facebook contacts. Messenger is very efficient & light, but once I realized how much I used other (although heavier) mssg apps instead, I saw no need for anything else. Mssg app for international family and friends, SMS for local, LinkedIn, Slack, Skype for work.
There are so many app alternatives out there (that are as well built technically) that you don’t need to rely on anything from Facebook's ecosystem anymore. Give it a try, no disappointments
Yeah same, it's pretty nice that like Messenger app and their site Messenger.com exists to just totally avoid the feed and everything aspect of Facebook.
If you want to keep the 'events' capability but remove your newsfeed then it's possible to write a bot that unsubscribes from all of your friends. This also works well for LinkedIn I find.
After losing control of my Yahoo email after trying to delete it, I have learned that it’s not smart to give up control of something that has your identity.
I never use facebook, but I will never delete it. I don’t trust facebook.
When society views Facebook as part of your identity you're forced to also keep it. It's not always possible for individuals to reject it.
You end up with this self-feeding cycle of people keeping facebook around because they have to. Eventually what ends up happening is an alternative comes along and people essentially forget about the platform that it just shuts down and collapses on itself. We're slowly inching towards that final outcome.
Hard disagree. Facebook only has legitimacy if you personally agree it does. The minute you walk away, it loses all legitimacy. Same for LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. etc. There is no sense in which society at large using the product creates any degree of legitimacy for important functions like identity management. Precisely zero.
When I was younger, a friend created a Facebook account in my name as a joke. My facebook-using parents found it and became very panicked that someone was stealing my identity.
I now have a minimal facebook account that I log in twice a year to keep a current photo. It's like how businesses have to squat their own domain names on TLDs they don't use.
Some years ago my daughter set up a fake account with my name and friended a bunch of people from my old high school. When I found out I changed the password and have ignored it since.
I now have a real account just for my gaming group and my old account occasionally pops up in my suggested friends list.
I'm curious if you could go more into the unpleasantness someone could do with an abandoned phone number. I inherited my mom's phone number years ago and recently had to dump it when I swapped my data plan. It honestly feels like the best thing that ever happened to me b/c I used to get daily spam calls and since getting the new number have gotten maybe 1 spam call total in the past two years, so had planned to change my number more frequently going forward.
In case anyone doesn't want to give up a number, but doesn't necessarily need it, you can also park the phone number at a VOIP provider for about $1/month.
Once you release your id back into the pool, a criminal can commandeer it to attack your other accounts . It could be used for phishing through your network or resetting your other accounts
Keep the account . If you are worried about discipline , reset the password to a random password and lock it in a safe
That’s a terribly generalized advice. At least in the EU companies are obliged to delete your data (I don’t know about the US). Of course whether they delete it is another matter but that would be a violation of GDPR.
When you have to sanitize your environment like your are in a Level 4 Biohazard research facility, then maybe the thing you are trying to use just isn't worth it.
Apologizes if you are having trouble getting to the site, An has been receiving a massive influx of users over the past few days so it can be slow at times.
Ha, I love it. I have two opinions that fall into that category. One is that people shouldn't own pets. Least of all sapient creatures like dogs. I'd wager that will become a common point of view a century or two after I'm gone.
The other one (relevant to this thread) is that Facebook is a great product and people only hate it now because it's a such a horrendously efficient mirror of the ugliness of humanity.
> One is that people shouldn't own pets. Least of all sapient creatures like dogs. I'd wager that will become a common point of view a century or two after I'm gone.
Considering that cats 1) have been human companions since the ancient Egyptian days, when the penalty of killing a cat was death, 2) ONLY became human companions of their own volition after their utility in eradicating mice and rats was recognized (note that until a few decades ago, pets were kept outdoors most of the time)... I really, REALLY doubt this prediction tremendously LOL.
Also, you have entirely obviously never had a cat. (I've had both dogs and cats. Cats are more interesting. Dogs are like permanent 3 year old boys.)
Slavery was normal in egypt too. We're only like 150 years past that being normal. Dogs were useful in ancient times as well. They warned of predators and could protect cattle. Not really relevant anymore. Most modern pets are genetically engineered for centuries to be cute and docile and completely dependent on humans.
>I have to admit, in times of Corona, without parties and concerts, the value of Facebook has sunken drastically
Huh? For many people it's exactly the opposite. The value of Facebook was in casual chat, posting, etc, to connect with friends and random followers in the age of Corona.
They specifically say "My main activity was to stay up to date on events". Which seems to be a significant portion of FB users - Events seem to be/have been its most important feature for a lot of people. As someone who has never once used that feature, that was a surprising thing to learn for me.
I've gained too much from different Facebook groups (when living abroad for example) and get too much value from important social connections (seeing friend's photos of their kids, for example, or chatting with my one uncle who only uses Messenger) to just ditch Facebook. I don't "use" it very much, but deleting it all together would have a big negative impact on me and I fail to see I what way I would gain.
I would encourage people to delete Twitter first, and then (probably) Instagram. You can absolutely use FB productively. I have been using FB just to use specific nature and fitness realted groups. But Twitter is probably the most toxic mainstream social media and almost impossible to use without lowering yourself into the Twitter cesspool. At least I was not able to use Twitter productively.
I’ve become throughly convinced that the only way to dethrone Facebook is by creating the Next Big Thing and being crazy (and well-funded) enough to reject any acquisitions on the way up. “Delete your Facebook” social movements are doomed from the start.
Social trends seem to come in waves, and people get bored quickly. I wouldn’t be surprised if the world tires of today’s brand of social media in a decade or two. The Facebook Killer will thus be something completely different, not merely a better or more ethical version of contemporary social media.
They're fundamentally different, though. Tiktok is much more viable as a read-only, addictive content thing; but I never added people I knew on there during my month-long soujourn to discover what it was all about, nor did I feel any need to comment.
Because fb was all of those things? If people were more honest with themselves about what fb does for them and a healthy alternative like WhatsApp comes out that appeals to Americans, we'll be on our way. The Next Big Thing is never planned, it just happens.
People want crazy profits for their crazy funding. I think a more viable solution is legislation to force data to be open. It’s a complex thing to do however.
Probably so. The part of the population that reacts in any way to "delete your account" is probably 0.25% - FB knows that, too. Fine if every other month a #deletefb campaign comes around, the MAU is a harder fact.
The next big thing must flush you with probably an order or so more dopamine - maybe some free artificial/AR world with hundreds of new cool friends who aren't real but make you feel better. That would be so 2020s!
I would love in some alternate timeline for someone to create a website called deletefacebook.com or something similar that allows people to create a profile and make posts about why they don't use facebook that becomes so large it replaces facebook itself. (obviously using facebook in the domain is ripe for getting it taken down, but you get the idea)
I haven't used Facebook in almost a decade and I haven't missed it for a second. I sometimes ask friends and family why they use it and the answer is always either "I don't know" or "to keep track of friends and family" (AKA: a glorified contact list). Many of them talk about getting rid of it, but few ever follow through.
People love to speculate about "Facebook Killers", but what is there to even kill? Facebook doesn't offer people a useful service. It's just familiar and ubiquitous, so it exists in perpetuity.
> The Facebook Killer will thus be something completely different, not merely a better or more ethical version of contemporary social media.
Then it's not a "Facebook Killer", is it? It would just be another social media platform added to the pile. Just another Twitter, Snapchat, TicTok, etc.
I had in mind more of a societal shift that makes FB/IG/etc. deeply uncool. Maybe living a super secretive life, never sharing anything, becomes the counterculture of the 2040s.
I just can’t imagine young people (main drivers of social media) are going to be happy with circa 2005 social media forever.
If I were an angel I'd be piling money into personal servers and open sourced self hosted software following the "commoditize the complement" strategy.
I don't see how any of the problems with facebook are due to any specific aspect of how they operate. It's the nature of any social network. Is there actually less garbage on Insta or Twitter or YouTube? The problem we people feeling compelled to post nonsense, to obsess over status, to be anxious about social inclusion and the free flow of disinformation. Happens everywhere.
How do you define the "nature of a social network?" Is it simply a place where one can connect digitally through a persistent profile? The social networks today are much more than that and heavily rely on algorithms to broadcast information. I think that is the main difference. We can have a social network that is much more static and probably less addicting, attractive, filled with ads, etc, if you skip the algorithmic feed. It may decrease the negative points you called out.
TikTok is actually a great example of this, and it already exists! “But I don’t like TikTok, therefore it’s not a Facebook replacement!” you may be tempted to retort with, but the parent comment said it exactly— it’s something completely different.
I am 28 and none of my peers is using FB anymore. I have some older friends that do their yearly christmas party invite on FB and some people who chat with me on FB messenger. There primarily are ads, spam, people posting commercial content and people congratulating each other for their birthdays. Is facebook this dead for anyone else?
Do Snapchat, Whatsapp, whatever else have scheduling features? I have friends that use FB to schedule events and send invites out. And various groups I'm in use the scheduling feature to set event times, etc.
One group I'm in, entirely devoted to online games, has switched to Discord. But there is a 0% chance Discord will be adopted by the rest of the groups/friends that use FB event scheduling and messaging.
Most of my friends group primarily uses Discord these days. It isn't a full throated replacement for Facebook b/c the server isn't full of anonymous randos, but I don't think most of us want that anyways.
I use instagram because several of my friends are amazing photographers and I like their photo diary uploads, others are graphic artists who often release their work in progress on the platform. I quit facebook because it stopped serving any useful purpose to how I consume content from actual friends and in general became rather boring.
No, your scenario suggests you migrated platforms because one stopped being useful and one was more useful, which is just a clear example of network effects, and sensible.
It would be silly if your reason for quitting FB was because you were opposed to them, and then you ran onto IG anyway. Sort of silly when that happens.
I have a niece who posts photos more to Instagram than to the family group chat (2/3 iPhone, 1/3 Android).
I don't have any Facebook apps on my phone, tablet, or computer. I use Instagram and Facebook with Firefox with them locked to a Facebook container. For Instagram, I use User/Agent Switcher to tell it that I'm on an iPad using Safari. It works well except that Facebook won't let me set up two-factor authentication and asks me every time to download the app.
Every once in a while Facebook asks me to join the Facebook and Instagram accounts and I refuse to do so. I assume that they're combining the data anyway. But Facebook does let me use a security key as 2FA and I don't want to lose that.
The major downside is that I can't post to Instagram. But that would bother me more if I were a better photographer or my kids were younger than teenagers.
I also use Fluff-Busting Purity (formerly Facebook Purity) and two kinds of ad-blockers (AdGuard DNS on the router, uBlock Origin in the browser).
I mean, they're different products. There are good reasons for quitting the Facebook social network product which are separate from reasons for quitting all Facebook-owned products.
Almost same for me. People on my network are all relatives +40 years old who share news, political images/memes, and lost dog announcements. Young people dont use it anymore, maybe only for events (not one this year).
I’m 2 years older than you, and I’d say in my friends group, Facebook is still moderately active, with the more social people posting daily still. But it’s also active for my (very large) family, with a lot of my aunts and uncles being on the platform and engaged.
Although the instagram platform is more active than ever for browsing chatting and comments, the individuals aren't posting often and the individual activity has shifted to TikTok.
People used to post images every day on Instagram, that's down to like once a year maybe amongst my friends in their 20s and younger.
With the ephemeral stories being common-ish.
And it seems like most of the viral stories/reels/IGTV are just resyndicated from TikTok.
Meme/activist/comedian/lifestyle brand accounts are like all the static post activity. Which is a lot of activity and growing, but I don't think it is fulfilling the "social network" itch that people think it is, the itch where people have just gotten used to seeing a feed/stream of their friends over the last 15 years. I think that has moved on elsewhere.
At this point I feel like instagram is only popular because there is a generation who can't/won't read anymore.
We are slowly turning into degenerates. Maybe Idiocracy was right after all.
My thoughts exactly. I have literally asked my friends list on facebook to write more - in whichever language they're comfortable with, rather than just posting images of their food or the artificial and inflated display of how rich and happy they are. It's pretty sad, but to each his own, I guess.
I wouldn't say that it is a generation that can't read, rather I would word it as a generation that cannot write. The death of long-form text in user-created content on the web came largely from people starting to use their mobile phone as their primary device. A touch keyboard just isn’t as inviting a tool for expressing thoughts at length as a computer keyboard.
My take is that FB lost its value when it started to become taken over by content that wasn't part of its initial offerings. Instead of photos and personal posts, we mostly see news, political posts, ads, pages, groups, etc. It starts to become more like an aggregator of things we did not initially intend to follow, but we've chosen to follow bit-by-bit - maybe that speaks to the design of Facebook leading us down that road.
Instagram was better for the longest time. I noticed a trend of friends using Facebook for events and nothing else, but they were still posting personal content on Instagram. But during this presidency, with everyone being politically charged and angry all the time, I noticed people were posting political content to leverage their Instagram followers, and now that too is overwhelmed by it.
All that said, Twitter comes off to me as the biggest cesspool. Its entire format is built around short hot takes, sniping at others, "virality", and other societal dark patterns. Reddit is almost at the same degree of cesspoolery with their new designs. Both are also a lot more of an echo chamber than Facebook for me, although I do like that you can use them anonymously (without a real name). Personally, I really can't see why all this hatred is directed at Facebook when Twitter and Reddit are around.
But this isn't a binary choice either. I do get the sense that society would be better off if everyone disengaged and de-escalated from social media in general. It's just hard because it's an effective way to spread one's (political) ideas and gain exposure, and so it's a bit like asking for mutual disarmament.
> Personally, I really can't see why all this hatred is directed at Facebook when Twitter and Reddit are around. But this isn't a binary choice either.
Can't speak for anyone else, but as OP my post isn't about deleting Facebook because social media is rampant cesspool of dopamine hits. But because Facebook, Inc is an evil company and we shouldn't use their products.
> But because Facebook, Inc is an evil company and we shouldn't use their products.
Sincere question: what do you mean by this? I don't perceive them as "evil". That comes off as a vague and subjective accusation. What specifically are you referring to? What makes them worse than other organizations?
Facebook has shadow accounts, so even if you don't even have an account on Facebook, they know exactly who you are, where you live, what you browse on the web, who your friends are, what you buy and where you buy it from, what illnesses you've been looking up on WebMD, who your health insurance is with, and so much more.
Twitter and Reddit aren't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.
This is typical for every company to the extent that they have the data to do it. Reddit for example, can personalize your feed without needing an account, because they are able to track your behavior based on IP address. Google does the same thing across all their properties, such as YouTube, and arguably their presence is more pervasive than Facebook's.
I have one friend whose wife posts pictures of their infant son on Facebook, other than that yeah, my Facebook account is basically just there so I can use Messenger to talk to mom, sister, and a couple friends who are only there b/c of their friends.
I've been very inactive, in the older age range. That's a big shift. It was driven by the move to just constant clickbait controversy / political shares in news feed and other factors. Way back in feb I made a post suggesting masks might be a low cost / useful way to reduce spread of covid, that was attacked by everyone as not recommended and that they don't work, and so I just gave up on facebook at that point.
I still have the account. But have not logged in in months. There is one or two people who that is the only way I can contact them at all. I have been backing away from it for about 3-4 years now. My wife blew away her account 5-6 years ago. It was mostly a nice way to reminisce about old friendships, atfirst. But then you quickly remembered why they are no longer current friends.
I figured out that Facebook itself is not awful. It may be in many ways, but it is my 'friends' who drove me away. When I was around them they seemed semi normal. But put them behind a keyboard and the truth came out of what they were and how they really thought about me and my beliefs. Their inner keyboard warrior came out. They were not real friends but 'friends' of proximity. I had confused friendly with friends.
> They were not real friends but 'friends' of proximity. I had confused friendly with friends.
I had similar feelings before I left Facebook. This sort of thing even irked me back in high school, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.
Every time it was my birthday, my timeline (or "wall" as I think it's known on FB) was inundated with Birthday wishes and greetings. Most of these greetings and wishes came from people who very rarely, if ever, talked to me on FB and oftentimes, never talked to me in real life (Usually my "true" friends would send me a direct message and wish me a Happy Birthday), and these people most certainly wouldn't know when my birthday was if Facebook hadn't reminded them.
It all just seemed so disingenuous, fake, and at the risk of exaggerating, inhuman. It all felt so joyless and disconnected. Before I left FB, I simply got to the point where I wouldn't comment, like, or interact with these birthday wishes in any way. Eventually, the amount of birthday wishes I received became less and less. Thinking about it now, I probably should've just removed my birthday from Facebook.
Regardless, I'm happier without Facebook and I certainly don't miss it.
> Way back in feb I made a post suggesting masks might be a low cost / useful way to reduce spread of covid, that was attacked by everyone as not recommended and that they don't work
Was this back when the CDC guidelines were saying the same? I can't fault lay people for placing faith in the words of supposed science/data-driven institutions (if that was what was happening rather than people spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories).
I'm 36 and it has nearly 0 value for me. I still use FB messenger to talk to a lot of my friends from around the world, but outside of that I'd say I haven't actually looked at my Facebook feed in months. I don't see how FB hasn't tanked yet.
I quit it about a year ago and I cannot even remember what it was like having an account, it just seems so strange that this would be such an important part of their online life.
Everybody I know is on Whatsapp/Signal, so I really don't feel like I'm missing anything.
I wish I could say this. It seems the US is the only country where everyone wants to continue using SMS/iMessage for everything. It's literally the only way to communicate with most of my American friends.
> It seems the US is the only country where everyone wants to continue using SMS/iMessage for everything.
I use Whatsapp regularly and it still can't hold a candle to iMessage. I blame Android adoption, and the fact that Google never built an iMessage competitor so they are stuck with 20 year old SMS.
The last three weeks I’ve slowly been moving all of my friends and group chats onto Signal (from WhatsApp, which is about to be a huge privacy disaster. If it’s not already...)
Most non-nerd friends just do what they’re told and love the idea of “Signal is WhatsApp but Zuck isn’t reading your messages”.
Same, and in addition, everyone I know has since moved to Instagram. I think what Google+ wanted to do with "circles", Twitter and Instagram did it more elegantly with "follows".
Reading between the lines of this presentation at f8 [0], I think, even Zuck's resigned to the fact that Facebook the company is now all about WhatsApp and Instagram.
The more I think about the WhatsApp deal, the less it makes sense for Jan and Brian to have cashed out. It could have been a different world had they not.
No teenager uses discord as their only social app. It is a supplementary chat app for gaming, chatting with friends and anime. Most are on Instagram or twitter, very few on Facebook.
I'm 23 and I use it for memes, groups (photography, cars), local events, and keeping up with some of my less 'close' family members (as in, it's the only reasonable means I have of contacting them). I occasionally post some of my photography projects so my grandparents can see them. FB Marketplace is leagues better than Craigslist and I have sold several items on it. Don't get me wrong, I hate facebook, but if used moderately/correctly, it isn't terrible. It's definitely not my preferred social network, nor is it by any of my peers the same age as me.
Yeah, of course, the data is what you pay with. But it's sure as hell nicer than seeing an advert every few swipes, constant notifications asking you to pay for expensive tiers of memberships etc. etc.
I am OLD - I had FB when it was a private, university-only, and people were giving out their dorm buildings and rooms.
My FB was becoming a ghost town 5 years ago, so I stopped using it, then deleted my "real" profile. I maintain a shell account now for Marketplace, Groups, and Messenger. I have the "light" apps on my phone with all requested permissions denied.
Marketplace SUCKS from a usability perspective, but it's become equally as active than CL in my area.
Groups are a goldmine of information - my neighborhood has one that is active, I have an active one for my model vehicle, and there are B/S/T groups that are nice, as well. Groups have effectively killed the old Forums/Bulletin Boards.
Messenger is required if you want to buy/sell, etc. I don't use it for anything useful.
One thing I don't see mentioned much here is the local or topic/interest facebook groups.
I have a house in a remote community where it's hard to find contractors and the like. The local FB group has been invaluable in finding local resources, getting to know neighbors, and alerting neighbors of local conditions. The alternatives are basically Nextdoor and craigslist which suffer from network effects among other things.
Of course people use the group as a soap-box or meme/clickbait sprayer at times, but the mods do a pretty good job such that there are very few wortwhile "forked" groups.
Similar applies for a few other interest groups I'm in. Groups.io is starting to eat their lunch on that, and reddit is gaining steam in the mainstream, but again network effects are strong.
When using an app container and limiting engagement with clickbait content, there is still some human value in participating on facebook in these very limited ways.
Deleted FB, Insta and Snap a little over four years ago... It was revealing how many friends I actually had compared to how many I thought I had. Surprising as well how much I don't miss it.
Social networks love to throw around the term "friend" as though all the kinds of relationships it denotes are the same. Clearly, it isn't.
There are people I know from mailing lists and newsgroups and fora who are my acquaintances, even though we've never met in meatspace. I have cried over their deaths and been happy at news of their joys.
There are people I remember from tens of years and thousands of miles away, whom I hear from more regularly because of social media networks. That's nice. It's low effort for me, it's low effort for them, and we all get more out of it than we put in.
If what you mean by the word "friend" is, someone who will answer your call in the middle of the night and bring over a shovel and a tarp -- I have only a few of those. Those relationships take more work, and are not fully sustained by social media, though they may be partially supported by it.
Your mention of mailing lists/fora/newsgroups made me wonder about how easy it is for people today to forge those same (non-"friends", but still) close relationships with strangers today. I definitely remember those close bonds with other internet users in the 1990s and early millennium.
However, today due to everyone moving to Facebook and other content silos with a mobile app, independent website forums are severely hollowing out. On some of the forums about various hobbies that I follow, the most active posters left are often extremely curmudgeonly elderly people, and if they hail from very polarized countries they are quick to descend into political rants to the point that they do little on-topic posting. Facebook isn’t a satisfying place for friendship due to the feeds and algorithms, and independent forums can now be high-stress environments. Consequently, the internet feels like a more lonely place than before.
People being people, they can use any medium they can find to make acquaintances.
Tools being tools, some of them are better than others.
Here's a list of subjects that I know people have bonded over:
- fandom of specific works
- generic fandom
- fish aquaria
- genre literature
- a period of history
- games (video, board, role-playing, LARP...)
- sports
- watches
- cars
- appliance repair
- carpentry
You need strict enough moderation that firefights and trolls are quashed immediately, and loose enough moderation that the occasional side-conversation or on-topic rant is allowed through. Proper threading and the ability to know what you've already seen and what is new: those are also necessary.
I feel that your optimism is unfounded. The specific kinds of fora you say are necessary, are a dying breed. They simply aren't as available to an internet user as before the rise of walled silos. Even where a forum is available or a user has the technical skills to put up his own forum, that forum is nothing without people other than yourself congregating there, and they have mainly left forever for the walled gardens.
Deleted FB long ago enough now that I can't remember when exactly it was, but what I do remember is exactly zero of the people who I talked to primarily on Facebook contacted me any other way despite asking for contact details.
Not only do I not miss it, I'm actively hostile towards Facebook for the damage it does to the idea of friendship.
My first wake up call came from Trump winning the 2016 election, 2nd from Cambridge Analytica. 3rd, The Social Dilemma put the nail in the coffin.
I just could not see myself contributing directly or indirectly to these externalities. The costs outweighed the benefits (if any at all)
PS: I know this post might be marketing for you, but ultimately all social networks will become polluted as long as they encourage the weaknesses/dark sides of human nature. I don’t see Spacehey being any different.
35 here. Facebook never had any significant value for myself or anyone I've talked about it. Some use or had used it as a public blog, some use it to connect to businesses or artists, in the past it was used for second-hand meme reposts, but that's about it, I think.
So, whenever someone makes a fuss about that huge importance of deleting Facebook and how supposedly hard it is - I genuinely fail to understand the problem.
yes for me it is. By 2012-14 Fb was pretty popular among my peers but after that hardly anyone has updated their profiles or posted anything except for birthday wishes and life events. A few have even deleted their accounts and only use apps like Whatsapp to maintain contact with friends and family
I deleted mine several years ago, but was only using it once every few months for a few years before that. There wasn't anything there of value anymore for me. If I want to check up on someone, I call/text and have even been drug into a snapchat group.
Many times you want to connect to someone but don't know anything but their name and who they're friends with. For example, my dad (who is 75 and whose wife died this past year) is engaging with many people on FB now, and it seems good for him
I suspect most people <30 use FB for family stuff only and don't actually "hang out" there. But they do spend time on IG, so FB has their bases covered.
If you want to get out of the FB world, you need to delete FB and IG.
That's unfortunate. I do like the model Vero has created, though I would never be impacted by the sales model since I was just looking for a social network where I can keep in touch with a group of friends and family.
Unfortunately, I never been able to get people to try it.
Even so, the fidelity of access you have control over is brilliant. I can hide my content, open it up, hide it again...whenever I want and instantly.
Something to think about if anyone were to try to create a new platform.
I deleted it 8 years ago when it first became obvious what was going to happen. Have never missed it for a second and I feel a bit sorry for people who think they can't do the same.
I was a FB member for a few years and quit mostly because I wasn't actually interested in what anyone was up to. As far I could tell, FB worked perfectly fine. My breaking point was realizing that my friends and family aren't that interesting.
I'm a social networks veteran - from Friendster and early very Flickr on. By 2012 it was pretty obvious to most people working in tech that Facebook was heading in a bad direction with scant regard for users' rights or privacy. Looking back now, it was all pretty benign compared to what it has become, but there were enough indicators like the constantly changing privacy UI which, with every tweak, made it harder to protect your privacy. Add in the fact that the "Like" button started appearing on sites external to Facebook so that they could track your browsing outside of their platform and that was enough for me. At that point it is spyware.
Alternative : For those who are too much invested and tied into FB ecosystem with IG, Facebook Groups, Fan Page etc --> just limit your use of FB, consider deleting the app or blocking the website so you are limited to check it on only one platform and it will also be a reminder to limit social media.
deleted mine many years ago, only thing I feel like im missing out on is marketplace. had a much easier time selling random stuff there vs all other alternatives, but good riddance
But, with all the people I know who don't have a Facebook at this point, I'm gonna just say I have zero confidence most of their users aren't bots. I would be surprised if FB had a billion real users at this point. It should literally be close to impossible to find folks without them in western countries, statistically, but it's not. It's becoming easier and more common... or folks just lie about not having facebook for some reason (which is plausible though very weird).
I've also deactivated FB and Instagram about 2 weeks ago. I kept telling myself I was in control, but the truth is that I wasn't, somehow my brain was craving that infinite scrolling of pure trash. I feel like I've regained control over my life and I am much more productive now. As if they had managed to get me hooked and sell days of my life away for a few cents here and there. I blame myself
I was totally indifferent when I deleted Facebook. Maybe for a week after I would catch myself subconsciously opening a new tab and typing `fb.com` when I was bored before realizing what I was doing.
I held out on deleting Instagram for literal years until about 2 months ago. I finally got fed up when they overhauled the UI to focus on selling cheap and crappy goods. I always thought it provided a lot of benefit to my life because it was fun to share pictures. Turns out I didn't even care when I deleted it lol.
I think about deleting Twitter too, but it's just so darn useful for breaking news. And I could never get rid of Reddit. It is certainly an echo chamber but unless something bad happens it's basically the best website to find other hobbyists and even ask technical questions.
The best thing I ever did on Facebook was unfollow everyone, it allows me to keep in touch at my leisure, without that dopamine hit from refreshing the feed and seeing nonsense.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 264 ms ] threadBy deleting completely and going to alternatives, that's how we tell them it's not ok.
Got a backup being generated right now by Facebook of all my data, and will be permanently deleting it after that.
There are so many app alternatives out there (that are as well built technically) that you don’t need to rely on anything from Facebook's ecosystem anymore. Give it a try, no disappointments
I never use facebook, but I will never delete it. I don’t trust facebook.
You end up with this self-feeding cycle of people keeping facebook around because they have to. Eventually what ends up happening is an alternative comes along and people essentially forget about the platform that it just shuts down and collapses on itself. We're slowly inching towards that final outcome.
Facebook accounts cannot be taken that way.
I now have a minimal facebook account that I log in twice a year to keep a current photo. It's like how businesses have to squat their own domain names on TLDs they don't use.
I now have a real account just for my gaming group and my old account occasionally pops up in my suggested friends list.
In some ways for a business, not having a facebook is like not having a URL.
Keep the account . If you are worried about discipline , reset the password to a random password and lock it in a safe
Just to be able to read and post in local groups to my community. I use a special browser for it with facebook container installed.
for some handy automation of this (previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19963599)
The other one (relevant to this thread) is that Facebook is a great product and people only hate it now because it's a such a horrendously efficient mirror of the ugliness of humanity.
Considering that cats 1) have been human companions since the ancient Egyptian days, when the penalty of killing a cat was death, 2) ONLY became human companions of their own volition after their utility in eradicating mice and rats was recognized (note that until a few decades ago, pets were kept outdoors most of the time)... I really, REALLY doubt this prediction tremendously LOL.
Also, you have entirely obviously never had a cat. (I've had both dogs and cats. Cats are more interesting. Dogs are like permanent 3 year old boys.)
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/06/cats-are-an-extreme-....
10,000 years of interactions with cats, and they're just as wild, genetically, as their wild counterparts. Interesting?
https://youtu.be/mGcHNnI2mh4
My main activity was to stay up to date on events. What's happening, who goes where, etc.
Huh? For many people it's exactly the opposite. The value of Facebook was in casual chat, posting, etc, to connect with friends and random followers in the age of Corona.
My friends use WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Twitter, Instagram etc.
Social trends seem to come in waves, and people get bored quickly. I wouldn’t be surprised if the world tires of today’s brand of social media in a decade or two. The Facebook Killer will thus be something completely different, not merely a better or more ethical version of contemporary social media.
Or maybe I’m just being too optimistic.
The next big thing must flush you with probably an order or so more dopamine - maybe some free artificial/AR world with hundreds of new cool friends who aren't real but make you feel better. That would be so 2020s!
People love to speculate about "Facebook Killers", but what is there to even kill? Facebook doesn't offer people a useful service. It's just familiar and ubiquitous, so it exists in perpetuity.
> The Facebook Killer will thus be something completely different, not merely a better or more ethical version of contemporary social media.
Then it's not a "Facebook Killer", is it? It would just be another social media platform added to the pile. Just another Twitter, Snapchat, TicTok, etc.
I just can’t imagine young people (main drivers of social media) are going to be happy with circa 2005 social media forever.
Whatsapp for group communication with friends overseas.
Both of these apps don't have the BS that comes with Facebook.
If you still want to get your fix, TikTok is better platform for getting a mix of interesting content from normal people.
Aside from using Facebook messenger to chat, I don't see a good purpose for Facebook any more, maybe the groups are useful for people?
One group I'm in, entirely devoted to online games, has switched to Discord. But there is a 0% chance Discord will be adopted by the rest of the groups/friends that use FB event scheduling and messaging.
From what friends have said, FB groups features (scheduling, etc.) are what keep them on that platform, along with messenger.
Is this an equally dumbfounding use?
It would be silly if your reason for quitting FB was because you were opposed to them, and then you ran onto IG anyway. Sort of silly when that happens.
I don't have any Facebook apps on my phone, tablet, or computer. I use Instagram and Facebook with Firefox with them locked to a Facebook container. For Instagram, I use User/Agent Switcher to tell it that I'm on an iPad using Safari. It works well except that Facebook won't let me set up two-factor authentication and asks me every time to download the app.
Every once in a while Facebook asks me to join the Facebook and Instagram accounts and I refuse to do so. I assume that they're combining the data anyway. But Facebook does let me use a security key as 2FA and I don't want to lose that.
The major downside is that I can't post to Instagram. But that would bother me more if I were a better photographer or my kids were younger than teenagers.
I also use Fluff-Busting Purity (formerly Facebook Purity) and two kinds of ad-blockers (AdGuard DNS on the router, uBlock Origin in the browser).
Although the instagram platform is more active than ever for browsing chatting and comments, the individuals aren't posting often and the individual activity has shifted to TikTok.
People used to post images every day on Instagram, that's down to like once a year maybe amongst my friends in their 20s and younger.
With the ephemeral stories being common-ish.
And it seems like most of the viral stories/reels/IGTV are just resyndicated from TikTok.
Meme/activist/comedian/lifestyle brand accounts are like all the static post activity. Which is a lot of activity and growing, but I don't think it is fulfilling the "social network" itch that people think it is, the itch where people have just gotten used to seeing a feed/stream of their friends over the last 15 years. I think that has moved on elsewhere.
Instagram was better for the longest time. I noticed a trend of friends using Facebook for events and nothing else, but they were still posting personal content on Instagram. But during this presidency, with everyone being politically charged and angry all the time, I noticed people were posting political content to leverage their Instagram followers, and now that too is overwhelmed by it.
All that said, Twitter comes off to me as the biggest cesspool. Its entire format is built around short hot takes, sniping at others, "virality", and other societal dark patterns. Reddit is almost at the same degree of cesspoolery with their new designs. Both are also a lot more of an echo chamber than Facebook for me, although I do like that you can use them anonymously (without a real name). Personally, I really can't see why all this hatred is directed at Facebook when Twitter and Reddit are around.
But this isn't a binary choice either. I do get the sense that society would be better off if everyone disengaged and de-escalated from social media in general. It's just hard because it's an effective way to spread one's (political) ideas and gain exposure, and so it's a bit like asking for mutual disarmament.
Can't speak for anyone else, but as OP my post isn't about deleting Facebook because social media is rampant cesspool of dopamine hits. But because Facebook, Inc is an evil company and we shouldn't use their products.
Sincere question: what do you mean by this? I don't perceive them as "evil". That comes off as a vague and subjective accusation. What specifically are you referring to? What makes them worse than other organizations?
Twitter and Reddit aren't even playing the same game, let alone in the same league.
This is typical for every company to the extent that they have the data to do it. Reddit for example, can personalize your feed without needing an account, because they are able to track your behavior based on IP address. Google does the same thing across all their properties, such as YouTube, and arguably their presence is more pervasive than Facebook's.
I figured out that Facebook itself is not awful. It may be in many ways, but it is my 'friends' who drove me away. When I was around them they seemed semi normal. But put them behind a keyboard and the truth came out of what they were and how they really thought about me and my beliefs. Their inner keyboard warrior came out. They were not real friends but 'friends' of proximity. I had confused friendly with friends.
I had similar feelings before I left Facebook. This sort of thing even irked me back in high school, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why.
Every time it was my birthday, my timeline (or "wall" as I think it's known on FB) was inundated with Birthday wishes and greetings. Most of these greetings and wishes came from people who very rarely, if ever, talked to me on FB and oftentimes, never talked to me in real life (Usually my "true" friends would send me a direct message and wish me a Happy Birthday), and these people most certainly wouldn't know when my birthday was if Facebook hadn't reminded them.
It all just seemed so disingenuous, fake, and at the risk of exaggerating, inhuman. It all felt so joyless and disconnected. Before I left FB, I simply got to the point where I wouldn't comment, like, or interact with these birthday wishes in any way. Eventually, the amount of birthday wishes I received became less and less. Thinking about it now, I probably should've just removed my birthday from Facebook.
Regardless, I'm happier without Facebook and I certainly don't miss it.
Was this back when the CDC guidelines were saying the same? I can't fault lay people for placing faith in the words of supposed science/data-driven institutions (if that was what was happening rather than people spouting ridiculous conspiracy theories).
Everybody I know is on Whatsapp/Signal, so I really don't feel like I'm missing anything.
I wish I could say this. It seems the US is the only country where everyone wants to continue using SMS/iMessage for everything. It's literally the only way to communicate with most of my American friends.
I use Whatsapp regularly and it still can't hold a candle to iMessage. I blame Android adoption, and the fact that Google never built an iMessage competitor so they are stuck with 20 year old SMS.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
Most non-nerd friends just do what they’re told and love the idea of “Signal is WhatsApp but Zuck isn’t reading your messages”.
Same, and in addition, everyone I know has since moved to Instagram. I think what Google+ wanted to do with "circles", Twitter and Instagram did it more elegantly with "follows".
Reading between the lines of this presentation at f8 [0], I think, even Zuck's resigned to the fact that Facebook the company is now all about WhatsApp and Instagram.
The more I think about the WhatsApp deal, the less it makes sense for Jan and Brian to have cashed out. It could have been a different world had they not.
[0] https://youtu.be/U8SXVlfh5k0
There's extra financial value in knowing who is attracted to whom.
I cannot imagine just how terrible the privacy must be for people dating via Facebook.
My FB was becoming a ghost town 5 years ago, so I stopped using it, then deleted my "real" profile. I maintain a shell account now for Marketplace, Groups, and Messenger. I have the "light" apps on my phone with all requested permissions denied.
Marketplace SUCKS from a usability perspective, but it's become equally as active than CL in my area.
Groups are a goldmine of information - my neighborhood has one that is active, I have an active one for my model vehicle, and there are B/S/T groups that are nice, as well. Groups have effectively killed the old Forums/Bulletin Boards.
Messenger is required if you want to buy/sell, etc. I don't use it for anything useful.
I have a house in a remote community where it's hard to find contractors and the like. The local FB group has been invaluable in finding local resources, getting to know neighbors, and alerting neighbors of local conditions. The alternatives are basically Nextdoor and craigslist which suffer from network effects among other things.
Of course people use the group as a soap-box or meme/clickbait sprayer at times, but the mods do a pretty good job such that there are very few wortwhile "forked" groups.
Similar applies for a few other interest groups I'm in. Groups.io is starting to eat their lunch on that, and reddit is gaining steam in the mainstream, but again network effects are strong.
When using an app container and limiting engagement with clickbait content, there is still some human value in participating on facebook in these very limited ways.
There are people I know from mailing lists and newsgroups and fora who are my acquaintances, even though we've never met in meatspace. I have cried over their deaths and been happy at news of their joys.
There are people I remember from tens of years and thousands of miles away, whom I hear from more regularly because of social media networks. That's nice. It's low effort for me, it's low effort for them, and we all get more out of it than we put in.
If what you mean by the word "friend" is, someone who will answer your call in the middle of the night and bring over a shovel and a tarp -- I have only a few of those. Those relationships take more work, and are not fully sustained by social media, though they may be partially supported by it.
However, today due to everyone moving to Facebook and other content silos with a mobile app, independent website forums are severely hollowing out. On some of the forums about various hobbies that I follow, the most active posters left are often extremely curmudgeonly elderly people, and if they hail from very polarized countries they are quick to descend into political rants to the point that they do little on-topic posting. Facebook isn’t a satisfying place for friendship due to the feeds and algorithms, and independent forums can now be high-stress environments. Consequently, the internet feels like a more lonely place than before.
Tools being tools, some of them are better than others.
Here's a list of subjects that I know people have bonded over:
- fandom of specific works - generic fandom - fish aquaria - genre literature - a period of history - games (video, board, role-playing, LARP...) - sports - watches - cars - appliance repair - carpentry
You need strict enough moderation that firefights and trolls are quashed immediately, and loose enough moderation that the occasional side-conversation or on-topic rant is allowed through. Proper threading and the ability to know what you've already seen and what is new: those are also necessary.
The internet is what you make of it.
Not only do I not miss it, I'm actively hostile towards Facebook for the damage it does to the idea of friendship.
My first wake up call came from Trump winning the 2016 election, 2nd from Cambridge Analytica. 3rd, The Social Dilemma put the nail in the coffin.
I just could not see myself contributing directly or indirectly to these externalities. The costs outweighed the benefits (if any at all)
PS: I know this post might be marketing for you, but ultimately all social networks will become polluted as long as they encourage the weaknesses/dark sides of human nature. I don’t see Spacehey being any different.
So, whenever someone makes a fuss about that huge importance of deleting Facebook and how supposedly hard it is - I genuinely fail to understand the problem.
in addition there are many hobbies groups on FB that have no alternative venue other than old-style forums which suck
and finally FB marketplace has been very useful to me ,especially with this corona situation causing store closings and delays in shipping
If you want to get out of the FB world, you need to delete FB and IG.
news.ycombinator.com 127.0.0.1
or whatever the formatting should be
Unfortunately, I never been able to get people to try it.
Even so, the fidelity of access you have control over is brilliant. I can hide my content, open it up, hide it again...whenever I want and instantly.
Something to think about if anyone were to try to create a new platform.
More recently, I've had issues logging in via mobile browser so that's helped as another blocker.
I was a FB member for a few years and quit mostly because I wasn't actually interested in what anyone was up to. As far I could tell, FB worked perfectly fine. My breaking point was realizing that my friends and family aren't that interesting.
But, with all the people I know who don't have a Facebook at this point, I'm gonna just say I have zero confidence most of their users aren't bots. I would be surprised if FB had a billion real users at this point. It should literally be close to impossible to find folks without them in western countries, statistically, but it's not. It's becoming easier and more common... or folks just lie about not having facebook for some reason (which is plausible though very weird).
I held out on deleting Instagram for literal years until about 2 months ago. I finally got fed up when they overhauled the UI to focus on selling cheap and crappy goods. I always thought it provided a lot of benefit to my life because it was fun to share pictures. Turns out I didn't even care when I deleted it lol.
I think about deleting Twitter too, but it's just so darn useful for breaking news. And I could never get rid of Reddit. It is certainly an echo chamber but unless something bad happens it's basically the best website to find other hobbyists and even ask technical questions.