
I tried leaving Facebook – I couldn’t - CraneWorm
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/28/17293056/facebook-deletefacebook-social-network-monopoly
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CaptainZapp
"Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that
consumed previous generations."

But that's exactly the thing that makes Facebook worthless to me.

I have maybe half a dozen of _real_ friends, add a dozen of acquaintances to
this list.

It's absolutely worth my time and I value those friendships deeply enough to
invest time and energy into them.

I cannot - in seriousness - maintain "friendships" with dozens or hundreds of
"friends" and I couldn't care less what my class mates from high school did
last summer. I'm absolutely not interested in a machine, which maintains such
non-friendships for me.

Being a baby boomer this may be a generational thing, but I just don't care
for that shallowness that Facebook defines as friendship.

~~~
jms703
This. Facebook becomes what you let it. We’re humans. We have the power to
form and maintain friendships.

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sweetp
I left facebook around a month ago. It hasn't made a difference in my life.
Although it was a non-trivial amount of work to purge it from all my apps and
websites. App sales are the same - a few ppl commented that they were happy
i'd removed fb. My social life is exactly the same as it was before - now I
can easily just concern myself with what is happening in my tiny part of the
world.

~~~
TomMarius
How do you do it though? My social bubble uses Facebook (FB groups, events and
Messenger) exclusively.

~~~
newscracker
It's going to be a combination of asking people to get in touch with you over
another service and letting go of some people who aren't willing to do that.
This would also mean getting fewer updates, but depending on you, your age and
circumstances, it may not be a big deal not getting to know certain things.
You could also ask a few trusted people who continue to stay in touch to pass
on anything important from Facebook and its services.

I'd recommend Telegram because of its superior UX, though normal chats are not
end-to-end encrypted. I wouldn't recommend Signal for anything other than
voice calls (mainly because it purposely prevents backing up information, thus
preventing moving conversations from one device to another). If you prefer a
free and decentralized option, Matrix (matrix.org), with the Riot (riot.im)
client on multiple platforms, is something to try.

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randycupertino
I put facebook and instagram at about the 5th screen away from my home screen.
So if I want to load them I have to swipe past 5 other pages of apps. Went
from checking them 4x a day to about 2x a week. Much better!

~~~
newscracker
You should start using the search feature to open apps and see how easy or
difficult it makes things for you. Though I do launch apps from the home
screen, launching by search is something I use quite often so I don't have to
track or remember which page an app is on.

I don't use the app for Facebook, since a browser gives a lot more control (on
things like blocking ads, trackers, and still having messenger in the same
tab). Sometimes I use mbasic.facebook.com from the browser for a messenger-
integrated experience, but it's somewhat painful in certain ways.

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jms703
I don’t understand these kinds of articles. I left Facebook two years ago. My
mobile phone battery life has improved.

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627467
About 2 years ago I decided to "stay" on facebook on new terms: my interaction
with it was reduced to checking messenger less than once a week (I have
messenger lite installed and notifications turned off) and login into its
mobile page around once a month to check for any _important_ @mentions or
photos people may have posted of me. I also have facebook cookies blocked.
Everyone on facebook who needs to contact me urgently or more directly knows
of alternative ways to do so.

I do feel strongly that facebook as a tool has evolved to become more toxic
than beneficial. I don't think being worked up against it will solve anything
so I find that my ignoring it is way more useful in the long term and trying
to leave and having to decide what to keep, who to notify, etc. From my
perspective facebook can very well become slowly irrelevant and now one will
care.

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tomglynch
The issue here is facebook has critical mass and another site needs to gain
critical mass to unseat facebook. It's possible but difficult, especially as
facebook buys out any other social media service with large numbers of users.

Facebook knows that a competitor could pivot to replace facebook, so they
purchase the others.

~~~
NetOpWibby
The beauty of FB’s dirty laundry finally making a difference (possibly,
hopefully) is that the next big social network won’t sell to them. It’d be bad
publicity and there would be a mass exodus.

Furthermore, I think the next popular network would bill itself as being anti-
FB.

~~~
twblalock
> Furthermore, I think the next popular network would bill itself as being
> anti-FB.

They can try to claim that, but any business that stores people's photos,
personal profiles, posts, messages, etc. would have everything it needed to
become just as bad for privacy as Facebook if they wanted to. They would need
to convince people that they would not do bad things with the data. But even
if we trusted them, they could change their minds at any time, or hackers
could steal the data.

The only way to prevent such data from being stolen is to never collect it --
but a social network without that kind of data would not be very social.

~~~
NetOpWibby
The first part of your argument is true but it's missing a key reason why FB's
data collection is so troubling — they run on advertisements and use all the
user data collected to sell more of those ads.

A new social network doesn't have to be advertising-focused or based.

~~~
twblalock
I think what really disturbed people was not the ads, which are pretty
obvious, but rather the idea that Facebook shared user data with a company
that influenced the outcome of an election.

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trumped
start by turning all notifications off... as a bonus, your battery life will
extend dramatically...

~~~
Consultant32452
I just removed the app altogether and created a link to the URL on my home
screen. I really feel this is the best way to use FB for me. I don't have to
worry about it tracking my location, notifications, or any other nonsense. I
only ever used FB to share and view photos from family that doesn't live
locally, and FB is still the best platform for that due to its network effect.
Depending on your use of FB, I definitely recommend considering going app-
less. It's the way the new web was supposed to be anyways.

The only nuisance is that FB constantly nags me to install the app. Well, it
started nagging me to install the app. Then it gave up on that and suggested
the "FB Lite" app. No thanks...

~~~
brewdad
I switched to using SlimSocial. It forces me to launch an app, so I'm
consciously deciding to go to Facebook, while avoiding the notifications and
battery drain that plague the regular Facebook app. Thankfully, I don't get
the nags.

[https://f-droid.org/packages/it.rignanese.leo.slimfacebook/](https://f-droid.org/packages/it.rignanese.leo.slimfacebook/)

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majewsky
> Facebook is one step away from buying my kids their Christmas presents
> because I’m too busy to choose them.

That's actually a sorta neat business idea: If all these data krakens know
everything about my friends and family anyway, they could make gift
suggestions. I'm absolutely horrible at choosing gifts, mostly because I
despise getting gifts.

------
textmode
[deleted]

~~~
twblalock
What you suggest would be way too complicated for ordinary people to deal
with. Heck, I'm a software engineer and I wouldn't even want to do it for
myself.

Besides, I don't see how your solution would hurt Facebook any more than just
using Facebook without clicking on the ads.

The value of Facebook is that it's easy to use and almost everyone you know
has an account. Any competing solution needs to get both of those things
right.

By the way, getting those things right at the scale of Facebook requires
highly skilled people, and some of them are going to make $240k a year or more
-- why are you citing the Facebook median salary like it's a bad thing?

~~~
ams6110
> The value of Facebook is that it's easy to use and almost everyone you know
> has an account. Any competing solution needs to get both of those things
> right.

Email has those qualities. And doesn't need people making 6 figure salaries to
run it.

~~~
dboreham
Um...yes it does.

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vhudud
Why the altered headline? That makes no sense

~~~
dang
Submitted title was "I tried leaving [social network]. I couldn’t". Since the
article's title is neither misleading nor linkbait, we've changed it back to
the original, as the site guidelines ask.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

