
#deletefacebook - middle1
https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/19/deletefacebook/
======
40acres
It's interesting to see how many people make excuses for still using Facebook
because it makes event organizing and the like easier. I'm 26 and never used
Facebook. My friends organize group events all the time, I'm always kept in
the loop because I text my friends and ask what they are doing this weekend
and/or meet with my friends regularly enough that they let me know what's
going on. It's become well known that I don't get updates through FB so my
friends will text me invites if I haven't asked for an update.

People act as if Facebook is the only way to keep up with friends but it's
just not the case. Every phone can still receive SMS and you can _gasp_ meet
your friends personally to catch up.

Now for friends who live in distant locations you need to ask yourself: Does
Facebook status updates really make me feel more _connected_ to this person?
My answer would be no, and I accept the fact that I just wont see my friends
who live in other locations as much as I'd like, and I simply try to make it a
habit of catching up when I'm in town.

There was life before Facebook and there can be life without Facebook, stop
making excuses.

~~~
Huggernaut
> It's interesting to see how many people make excuses for still using
> Facebook because it makes event organizing and the like easier. I'm 26 and
> never used Facebook.

If you've never used it, how do you know it does not make life easier?
Similarly, it's possibly a burden (albeit small) on your friends who have to
text you in addition to organising for others.

> Now for friends who live in distant locations you need to ask yourself: Does
> Facebook status updates really make me feel more connected to this person?

For you no, for me absolutely 100%.

Additionally, there are many opportunities I have discovered through Facebook
that I likely would not have otherwise. For example, just last weekend I
happened to be flying across continents and when I checked Facebook on my
phone, I discovered a cousin I haven't seen in a while also happened to be
flying to the same city on the same day. There would have been no reason to
share this with each other, but because it was out there publicly I was able
to see and organise time for us to meet. I often see content which prompts me
to get in contact with people.

I have no doubt I can survive without Facebook (though perhaps some might
not), so for me you're arguing a strawman. For me, there is no doubt that it
_is useful_, the question is whether that offsets the myriad negative impacts.
To suggest that your experience (with admission that you've never used
Facebook) is reflective of everyone and they should "stop making excuses" is
pretty narrow.

~~~
runj__
>Similarly, it's possibly a burden (albeit small) on your friends who have to
text you in addition to organizing for others.

I really have to agree with this: using your friends as personal assistants is
not cool. Planning events can be hard work, just scheduling your own weekend
can be a hassle. That said: I do wish people used something other than
Facebook to plan events. It's just not gonna happen anytime soon.

~~~
sanderjd
I know I'm an old fogey (like half a decade older than the parent commenter!),
but I never really understand what people are talking about with this stuff.
Throughout my 20s and to the present day, my weekend was not organized by
checking for random events on Facebook, but by talking with my friends
digitally or otherwise. How that is akin to "using your friends as personal
assistants" is an absolute mystery to me. It sounds more like "using your
friends as friends", which seems pretty normal...

~~~
derefr
If you’re talking to _one_ friend, then that friend is essentially having to
route your updates on time-constraints, preferences for places to go, etc. out
to all your other friends, and route all their responses back to you. They
really do become your secretary.

Now, it _is_ possible to fan out these update messages yourself through (lots
and lots of) SMSing, but in almost every friend group I’ve been in, the
problem is that I don’t actually have contact information for everyone who I
want to meet up with.

Basically: how do you negotiate restaurants with your best mate’s new vegan
girlfriend? On Facebook, the two of you just have that conversation on the
event page. Without Facebook, you have that conversation _through_ your best
mate—or maybe not at all, and then one or the other of you gets mad about
where you end up eating.

~~~
sanderjd
Ok, I see where you're coming from, but none of this is how anything works for
me. I just say, "hey let's do something!" and my friends either say, "ok,
whatcha want to do?" or "ok, I'm doing X, you want to do that with me?" or
"shoot I can't, I'm already doing Y". Then I say either, "well I'd love to Z"
or "sure I'll join you for X" or "darn! lunch this week?". Sometimes yeah,
people don't want to go to the same restaurant or whatever, but it just gets
figured out through communication. It doesn't seem like a big deal. I'm sure
this would all work just as well on Facebook, but it works just as well off
Facebook too.

~~~
_Tev
> . I just say, "hey let's do something!"

That scales ... Poorly.

> Sometimes yeah, people don't want to go to the same restaurant or whatever,
> but it just gets figured out through communication.

Sure, solving these problems through communication is fun. Especially with 5+
people involved. Or god forbid 20+.

I wonder how many events these "i dont use facebook its worthless" people
organize. And with what frequency.

Even the crappy timeline feature has benefits - I went to awesome concert last
week with a friend that I had not met in a while. Only because I saw him
interested in it on the timeline.

Facebook sucks, but you people have no idea what its positives are, and
therefore you will not ever be able to make any real alternative ... That
sucks even more, because I would really like platform with better UI than FB.

~~~
latexr
> That scales ... Poorly.

Maybe the OP doesn’t want it to scale. Maybe they’re not interested in
frequent events with 20+ people. Maybe they prefer going to events with an
established group of friends.

Crucially, the OP made a specific point (emphasis mine):

> none of this is how anything works _for me_.

It’s not like Facebook removes the hassle of organising 20 people. It just
makes it less of a hassle. If you don’t typically go to events with that many
people, then Facebook solves no problem. Maybe you feel Facebook is necessary
for your group of friends, but it’s definitely not necessary for every group.

> you people have no idea what its positives are

I’ve used Facebook. I’m well aware what its positives are. For me they don’t
outweigh the negatives, so I deleted my account. Maybe “we people” are not
interested in “making a real alternative to Facebook”. Maybe for us the better
alternative already exists and it’s called “no Facebook”.

~~~
_Tev
> Maybe the OP doesn’t want it to scale.

Frankly, in topic about "#deletefacebook" that seems like moving goalposts.
Plenty of people enjoy those events of 5-10 people, so why so much hate on
facebook.

> Maybe they prefer going to events with an established group of friends.

I don't understand, you claim that you can't have established group of friends
with count over 20?

> It’s not like Facebook removes the hassle of organising 20 people. It just
> makes it less of a hassle.

That is funny. Organizing event for 20 people actually IS easy with Facebook,
only hassle are those "I don't want to have a Facebook account" people that
can't be just copied from previous event like everyone else.

> Maybe “we people” are not interested in “making a real alternative to
> Facebook”. Maybe for us the better alternative already exists and it’s
> called “no Facebook”.

True, sorry for the strawman. It sometimes seems to me like some people are
posturing about their superiority due to not using FB, and it gets on my
nerves.

------
jdbiggs
Hey folks, John Biggs here. I wrote this as a reaction to reason news and it
comes at the end of a slow boil. I think we can make better tools than this
one and I believe Facebook - and other social media - were originally quite
useful and have now devolved due to market pressure. I'm definitely a
hypocrite, as well. I still use most things to _broadcast_ not communicate and
that's primarily because I've spent 20 years journalizing and am used to the
constant, one-sided flow of information. That said I deleted all social apps
except for Twitter and, for some masochistic reason, LinkedIn and am ready to
tear it all out of my life step by step. It's a poison.

~~~
rconti
Why "except twitter?" I find Twitter to be 100x more toxic, 1% as useful, and
infinitely worse design.

~~~
aphextron
>Why "except twitter?" I find Twitter to be 100x more toxic, 1% as useful, and
infinitely worse design.

Twitter is all about your filter. I have mine curated to an amazing list of
intelligent thoughtful, creative people who I enjoy seeing post every day,
completely devoid of politics. As soon as you leave that bubble though, it's
an absolute nightmare.

~~~
nradov
I have yet to see anything really intelligent and thoughtful in 140 (or even
280) characters.

~~~
wutbrodo
As much as I think most of Twitter's userbase comprises one of the worst
cesspools on the Internet (yes, really), you can fit a hyperlink and short
commentary to something well worth reading within a tweet.

Its function as a personal RSS feed can still be pretty valuable, and I see no
reason why you can't be judicious with your follows and entirely avoid the
toxic majority.

I have a Twitter account that's barely more than domain squatting from the
early days of the service; at this point I follow probably five people and
have logged in a dozen times in almost a decade. But when I do, my feed is
dense with fascinating stuff. If I were to spend a little time curating, I
could probably get to a lot more volume and still keep the high quality of the
feed.

------
ibdf
Clickbait much? The writer is struggling to delete his facebook account?

"Will you delete Facebook? Probably not. Will I? I’m working on it." So much
drama.

I can help:

How to delete fb account:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368?helpref=hc_glo...](https://www.facebook.com/help/250563911970368?helpref=hc_global_nav)

You can also download your data before deleting it:
[https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992/?helpref=hc_f...](https://www.facebook.com/help/1701730696756992/?helpref=hc_fnav)

I will delete mine when you delete yours:
[https://www.facebook.com/johnbiggs](https://www.facebook.com/johnbiggs)

~~~
munificent
My understanding from the Cambridge Analytica stuff is that even if you
completely wiped every bit of data from Facebook's servers, it doesn't matter
any more. Your personal data, attached to your name, is out in the wild. For a
price, someone can buy a detailed psychological profile of you.

All of our genies are out of all our bottles. They aren't going back in.

~~~
olympus
This is somewhat true. However, if you stop adding data to your profile it
becomes stale. Since I deleted my facebook profile I moved cities, bought a
house, a different car, and have new friends in real life. My old FB profile
is probably still a good indicator of which way I'd vote in an election, but
it's useless now for targeted advertising. The only way to make that break is
to delete your profile now; slowly over time your real life will start to
change and eventually won't resemble the digital you at all.

~~~
glenneroo
> but it's useless now for targeted advertising

What makes you think this? According to another recent article about
Facebook's data collection[0] says:

> And it showed these odd patterns; that, for example, people who liked ‘I
> hate Israel’ on Facebook also tended to like Nike shoes and KitKats.

This gives me the impression that even mundane bits of information can be used
to extrapolate other connections through intelligent guessing.

[0]: [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-
whistl...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-
whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump)

------
replicatorblog
I must be part of an A/B test where I only see baby pictures from friends and
family, updates from local businesses, and videos of cool construction
equipment from TechInsider.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social channels could improve on the margin, but
realistically, the problem with social is us. Ask friends and family to go
back to sharing their unhinged political views in the form of badly punctuated
emails, as God intended. If they continue to share, unfollow.

Social media can be as polarizing or as pleasant as you make it. Foisting
blame on Facebook might feel good, but it won't solve the problem.

~~~
cryptoz
> the problem with social is us.

No. Facebook proudly does specific psychological experiments on its users.
Facebook intentionally decides that it will make some users sad or depressed,
just to see if it can. And it can. And it is proud of it. Facebook is proud
that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that they published a
paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their users fall into
a depression.

Facebook is a fucking poison. The problem is not with us. The problem is with
large scale propaganda networks and centrally-controlled social networks with
misaligned incentives. _The problem is Facebook and the core problem is the
structure and incentives of corporations in our current not-well-enough-
regulated capitalism_.

~~~
pkalinowski
That's actually very interesting, never heard of it. Can you link the paper?

Or did you just made that all up, hmm?

~~~
wongmjane
Emotional contagion through social networks

Adam D. I. Kramer, Jamie E. Guillory, Jeffrey T. Hancock

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jun 2014, 111 (24) 8788-8790;
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1320040111

[https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1320040111)

~~~
pkalinowski
Thanks. I'm aware of this report and it's definitely awful what they did and
they should be shamed for many years forward.

But there is big difference between comparing moods induced by negativity and
"Facebook is proud that it knows how to make you depressed, so much so that
they published a paper describing how they made hundreds of thousands of their
users fall into a depression."

OP statement is misleading and tabloid worthy. The goal was not to cause
depression. It lasted one week and they didn't try make someone depressed or
kill him.

------
LinuxBender
I was talked into creating a FB account by some friends a long time ago. I
found that I was losing respect for my friends, as it brought out the parts of
them I did not want to know about.

I also noticed a disturbing pattern straight away. FB was pushing these little
games at me. The questions in each of the little games were nearly identical
to the questions in psych and personality tests I was required to take in the
military. To the best of my knowledge FB does not have the clearance for this
data, so I deleted my FB account and blocked their domains.

AFAIK, I have not really missed out on anything important by not being a
member of that system.

------
thrownaway954
how about #deleteSolcialMedia?

it's not just facebook doing this. twitter, pinterest, reddit and countless
others do the same. heck... there is even a story today about google:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610088](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16610088)

and yes, i know some people will say... but that google story is about law
enforcement using warrants... which i will counter with, doesn't matter, it
shows that these companies don't care about your privacy and will fold in
"defending" it when challenged.

if you care about your privacy, don't give _any_ company, _any_ information
about you, in _any_ way.

~~~
sametmax
While I agree, there is a huge difference in impact. Facebook has more users,
reach a way bigger demographic and has access to a much, much, much broader
range of data. Not to mention is has instagram and whatsapp too.

It's two order of magnitude bigger than twitter, reddit, pinterest, etc.

The only ones that compares is Google.

But while I have no problem living without a Facebook account, living without
Google is way harder. E.g:

\- no hangout is the easiest. I hated it.

\- dropping calendar was easy. It was not that good anyway. I missed the
integration with a lot of 3rd party though.

\- I leaved gmail. It tooks years and many problems with accounts came with
it. The competitors UI are worse.

\- I tried to leave gmap. But competitors don't have street view, shop open
shedules or nearly as accurate traveling times. And waze eventually got bough
by google. Maps.me is alright for when I don't have internet, but it's nowhere
close to gmap for big cities if you have internet.

\- I tried, very hard, to quit google search. Bing. DuckDuckGo.Qwant. They are
ok. But I do hundreds of queries a day. Ok doesn't cut it. And if you are
looking for result in another language than english, forget about it.

\- now for the phone. Well, I won't go apple. Mozilla and MS are no longer
here. I tried SailOS for a year. I don't recommend it. So android is what's
left if you want a smartphone. I tried rooting, but it's dangerous, and takes
time. So now I just avoid using a google account on the phone, which is, well,
something at least. And make it extra hard to install apps.

That's a lot of trouble for so-so results.

Who else than a privacy savvy nerd is going to do a 10th of it ?

So to me, no facebook + ublock + no google account is like when I stopped
watching TV 20 years ago. It's 80/20, but for privacy instead of sanity.

However, let's all remember HN is a niche, and that most people still watch
tv, don't use add blockers and would not even have a though about personal
data.

~~~
ReverseCold
What's wrong with iOS? I use Google-Android right now, which is arguably the
worst possible choice. iOS seems to be a lot better for privacy.

~~~
sametmax
Apple was part of PRISM so I don't believe anything they do about privacy is
anything but for PR.

But as for why not iOS, it's more a choice of brand. I don't like apple
products, they restrict to much for my taste.

------
andypi
I deleted my Facebook account in 2012. Haven't missed it. Let's hope this poor
soul can finally be brave enough to find the close account button. Might not
even need to write a script to do that.

~~~
staplers
When I deactivated my account about 4 years ago, I thought it would impact my
life more than it did.

I have actually strengthened my friendships and moved quickly up in my career
as a result of deleting most social media.

Social media is like the dessert of the internet. Use it sparingly.

~~~
logfromblammo
I log on to Facebook twice a year, to let people know that I'm still alive,
and to delete older posts and tags.

My concern is that if I shut down my account completely, someone else--
possibly Facebook itself--could credibly impersonate me on the platform and
thus use the idea of me as a means to target my friends and acquaintances that
use it more frequently.

------
alkonaut
I think it's too useful a tool for managing my social network to delete. Event
planning, group chats etc are actually pretty HARD to organize without
something like it. The impressive bit is the reach. Even my non technical
friends and relatives know it.

I try to suggest people just stop giving facebook their information. Don't
share anything, don't like anything, absolutely never install "apps" or click
ads. Avoid facebook as a sign on provider to other sites. Use good privacy
tools in your browser and never hit fb "like" buttons on another site. Avoid
linking your accounts to facebook from other applications (instagram, spotify,
...).

I'd love to see a browser plugin that did all this that I could recommend to
friends and relatives. A plugin that simply made a visit to facebook
completely useless to facebook.

~~~
Zelphyr
Maybe you're in a different situation than me but I can easily round up all of
my friends with a few phone calls. "Hey Tony. I'm planning a party on the
first at 6:00pm. Would you mind letting Sue and Mark know they're invited?"
That also easily works by email and text if I insist on using technology.

Humans have been organizing into social groups and gatherings for tens of
thousands of years without the aid of technology. Why is it all of a sudden
people feel like they're incapable of socializing in any form without the
likes of Facebook?

I apologize if my candor is overly blunt, but your comment is an excuse to
continue your addiction. Nothing more.

~~~
alkonaut
I don't use it either for trivial things. But for example, we are 14 friends
from 4 different cities that have been planning a trip for a couple of months
now. Deciding where to go. Dates, Hotel choices, flight bookings etc are
discussed. People have been added along the way that weren't in to begin with.
That kind of thing that's ongoing for a long time, and has input from tons of
people is terrible to do in e.g. an email thread, and can't be done by just
getting together. Group discussions (long, persistent) like those is what I
use it for mostly.

I'd switch to anything reasonably convenient for event planing - but phone and
email just aren't replacements for all scenarios.

> Why is it all of a sudden people feel like they're incapable of socializing
> in any form without the likes of Facebook?

I never had that feeling. But I would find it inconvenient to plan a few kinds
of events. I'd create a group skype chat. Or even throw up a discourse VM. But
send a mass email to a large group asking for "so, where do we go on this
years trip?" I would not...

------
rdiddly
_" It is a cancer."_ Spoken like someone who has to spend 6 months working up
the nerve to delete his account. There's no need to get all ugly and
overstated about it, like an overgrown teenager yelling & saying nasty things
to his mom instead of moving out. Just do it and walk away.

Not that it's not a cancer. (Although it's more like obesity or type 2
diabetes, in that it's you doing it to yourself through many small bad
choices.) But if it's a cancer now, then it always was one, Captain Newsflash.

Just walk away. Yes it is that easy. You'll never see half those assholes
again and you'll be glad not to have to try to please them anymore. The rest
that you keep around, well we call those your "friends."

People far away, you're not meant to "connect" with them. They're far away.
Pull your head out of your butt and be where you are. If it was good enough
for Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull to be completely unable to converse with
somebody in New Jersey then it's good enough for me and you.

AND GET OFF MY LAWN!

~~~
8bitsrule
> But if it's a cancer now, then it always was one

I wouldn't say that. It looked pretty benign back at the beginning. And then
the noose started tightening, and tightening.... Frog slowly boiled.

~~~
rdiddly
Coloring my remarks is the fact that back in 2011, even I, at the time an
ignoramus who didn't really understand much about "tech," could see that
Facebook was a data mine and the experience was a sucky time-waster to boot.
So I jumped out of the pot / slipped out of the noose / walked out of the
room... etc.

The longer I live the more I realize that in a shitty situation the missing
ingredient to make it non-shitty is usually not technology, or information, or
time or chance or money or whatever other nuance... it's leadership. Which is
the loose-fitting name of the bin in which I would also put something like
quitting Facebook. Decision-making goes in there. Principles. Shortening the
time interval between realizing Facebook is shitty, and getting out of it.

------
athenot
> Facebook simply replaced the tools we once used to tell the world of our
> joys and sorrows and it replaced them with cheap knock-offs that make us
> less connected, not more.

This resonnates with what I've been observing. Instead of birthday card, a
call or even a text message, we now simply write a note on someone's wall,
between two out-of-context thoughts. It's the path of least resistance. Like
fast food, it takes a bit of effort to fight, until the brain hijack starts to
fade and new purposeful habits are formed (or reinstated).

Working on it but not there yet... :(

------
VikingCoder
Is there a reasonable, open-source, distributed Facebook alternative?

I presume built on top of RSS / Atom / something feeds that are available only
on authentication (so I can share with limited sets of people.)

I presume I have to keep running a server to host content. Maybe I can host
encrypted content for my friends, too? So, federated. Maybe it even makes it
easy for me to bill them, if the costs are prohibitive?

I'm pretty sure I'd want an Android App to talk to it. The Android app would
talk to all of the servers that host my friends' contents.

It doesn't let me share with "Friends of Friends" directly. My friends would
have to Reshare, I guess. And then I guess I can't interact with them.

Not sure how I want conversations to work. It'd be hard for me to offer a
server to my friends, without me having access to their social data.

Maybe everyone needs their own server?

~~~
LinuxBender
Most people won't host their own server. I am not speaking for the HN crowd.
In general, people just are not interested enough in learning how to do this
or stay on top of patches.

To answer your question though, honestly any blogging software that support
good ol' fashion RSS feeds would be fine. Your group of friends could link to
each others feeds. With a little effort, you could probably do this server
side using some fashion of RPC call. Each language has it's own way to
accomplish this.

~~~
VikingCoder
For the "stay on top of patches" thing, that's why I'm a fan of sandstorm.io.
It makes a bunch of sense to me.

And, no, I don't want to broadcast info the everyone. A blog won't cut it.

I want to restrict content to some people with authorization.

~~~
LinuxBender
For those cases, I have used software such as phpBB. Getting people to create
a login is unpopular however. Some friends and I shared things similar to what
one might find on FB. The distinct advantage was that our photos belonged to
us and FB did not have access. The advantage and disadvantage is that my
friends had to create accounts on my server. Centralized authentication
services are low friction and high risk. If we move such things to another
centralized service, it will just become the next target for snooping.

~~~
VikingCoder
I think OAuth makes some sense. So, use your Google or Facebook account to log
in, but that's it. They don't get more access to our data.

~~~
beagle3
... until they want it. And then they just give themselves an auth token and
access the data.

"Unfortunately, ", said Facebook's spokesman, "we had a bug in our system that
authorized our webcrawler to login and crawl every single phpBB or other OAuth
site. We will surely delete the data within the next year", he added while
winking at the intelligence community representatives in the crowd. -- a few
years from now.

~~~
VikingCoder
Ugh, that's evil. Yeah, that makes sense. Good thing to think about.

------
julienchastang
So far this thread has not mentioned the Cambridge Analytica scandal. I
recommend watching this clip from the PBS NewsHour:
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-data-analytics-
firm-...](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-data-analytics-firm-
allegedly-weaponized-facebook-to-swing-votes-in-2016).

To quote from the clip "Cambridge Analytica went to Facebook and said we’re
conducting academic research with this app. Facebook apparently said O.K. and
didn’t do a lot of diligence and through that, because they were able to get
sort of the direct access from the people who installed the quiz app and then
gather all the information from the friends of the people that had installed
the app and that includes likes, you know their various posts, the pages that
they subscribe to, just a ton of information. They were able to gather really
detailed profile information on 50 million Americans."

The quiz was only a ruse to obtain much more valuable information. Sure FB
recently ended their relationship with Cambridge Analytica, but they have
probably known about this for months. There's a lot of anger at FB these days
and deservedly so.

------
ashelmire
I deleted my facebook a few months ago. It's been great. I've spent a lot more
time studying new things since I did. I feel cut off from the most toxic
people I know and toxicity in general, which is also great. I still use
instagram, which has become a more negative experience lately as ads have
increased. Hoping an alternative to that pops up sometime soon - I use it now
because I have a performance hobby where it's heavily used by my friends in
the community. Never really got into any other social media. Have a LinkedIn
where I get annoyed by recruiters but don't post or do anything useful, don't
use twitter.

------
temp-dude-87844
Your adversaries can always do more harm with information than friends can do
good. This is because information "warfare" is fundamentally asymmetric: one
incident, presented a particular way and targeted to a particular group can do
great harm: someone somewhere will take offense to what you did or what you
said, if a certain actor facilitates the travel of information to paint you in
a bad light. Look no further than Twitter, whose functionality is effectively
tailor-made for this behavior.

Facebook's original purpose stems from a time of naïveté: put all your
interests and factoids about you here, where you can be yourself. As if anyone
would use any of this to market you products, target you political ads, toy
with your emotions by running A/B tests on your feed, or dox you to grief you
in real life -- right?

So you pare down your friend list, you put your best face forward on Insta,
keep your silly stuff on Snap, move your chats to WhatsApp, at which point
your Facebook is nothing more than meme reposts, a rolodex of your
acquaintances, and that one relative who always picks a fight with your
friends on your political reblogs, yet you can't delete them because you have
to see them at Thanksgiving. Your feed is 60% ads, but you don't care, because
all posts are out of order, so you can scroll down until stuff looks vaguely
familiar, then x out and return in a few hours when you're bored.

The author's points ring true, but Facebook is already past its prime,
infested by overcommercialization, and no more harmful to the average person
than the fifty thousand Google cookies they carry with them from their Android
to their browsing with Chrome, or Amazon's uncanny ability to show ads for the
exact thing you looked up from a different device yesterday. People deride the
filter bubble, but what's the alternative; your private space full of people's
stuff you can't stand?

------
gizmogwai
Oh, and don't forget to share our article using the little facebook widget at
the bottom...

~~~
Slansitartop
> Oh, and don't forget to share our article using the little facebook widget
> at the bottom...

These kind of comments add no value and rest on incorrect belief that either:

1) authors control the marketing tech stack on the major sites they write for
or

2) they can afford to sacrifice audience for their messages, etc. in order to
be hyper-picky in order to forestall internet heckles.

The truth is that neither of those things are true. Writers will write,
activists will get their messages out, and that's their job. Sometimes they
will criticize something so ubiquitous that even they can't avoid it totally,
but that doesn't make them hypocrites. In fact, criticizing bad things that
literally everyone does is the first step towards fixing those things. If
stupid insinuations of hypocrisy like yours had any value, it would be
impossible to make progress on many fronts.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
I generally agree with this point, in the same way that I think that people
are far too ready to call "hypocrisy" when the deed that is 'hypocritical' is
just a small subset of the original 'evil'.

Having said that, I also think it's worthy to highlight the impact of the
facebook sharing button, which isn't dealt with in the original article. The
point is that it's not enough to say to individuals "don't use facebook";
you're still 'at risk' if you visit a site that uses the sharer widget, even
if you don't have a facebook account.

As an aside to the aside, techcrunch has to be the first site I've encountered
that redirects you when you scroll beyond a certain point of the article, or
when you try to search in-page (unless that's a bug, of course).

------
kbuchanan
Ten years ago when Facebook was gaining momentum, I chose to stay away, and
remain so today. In recent years a new mantra has emerged: "I wish we could
live without Facebook, but that's not practical anymore." Not true. It is
practical, and infinitely more desirable.

Social media was never a meaningful way to present ourselves to the public or
interact with others.

------
master_yoda_1
I deleted Facebook 5 years ago. In earlier days technology used to increase
productivity but now technology reduces productivity, Facebook is one of the
productivity killer.

------
IanDrake
> It is creating an echo chamber

It’s more likely the author created his own echo chamber.

My Facebook friends span the political spectrum 70% liberal and the rest some
degree of conservative.

I would venture to say, 99% of political post come from my liberal friends.
Some of which I will comment on, most of the time I get responses that aren’t
logical and mostly insinuate I’m not a good person because I disagree.

For those people, I usually just remove from my feed. Not because I don’t care
for their politics, but because they only want a one way conversation.

That is how an echo chamber is created and it’s their own doing, not
Facebooks.

------
apeace
Can't help but disagree a bit with the premise that these awful properties of
Facebook are something new.

> Facebook is using us. It is actively giving away our information. It is
> creating an echo chamber in the name of connection. It surfaces the divisive
> and destroys the real reason we began using social media in the first place
> – human connection.

I think it has always been more about "broadcasting ego" than "human
connection", as the author admits two paragraphs later.

What's different today than when Facebook first launched?

While I applaud the effort to delete all your old posts and eventually the
account itself, I wish the tone of this were more "we should be ashamed we let
this happen" rather than "the good Facebook has been replaced by the evil
one".

Broadcasting your ego--in fact your entire life--and selling it to random
companies has always been _your_ choice, not something Facebook recently
started doing to you.

------
ishanjain28
I would like to share my experience here because I think it was creepy on
their part.

I only had <50 friends after 2015 on my facebook account. So, I would get
notifications 1-2 times every week, "X is new to facebook, Since he is new to
facebook, You should introduce him to more friends", Problem is,

1\. I have no clue who X is! Sometimes I found that X lived in the same city
that I lived in, Sometimes there was no visible co-relation. 2\. X was
automatically added to my friends list without my permission!

On several occassions, There were some people who were added as my friend but
I couldn't find them on my friends list. The only way I figured they were my
friends was when I received a notification and then visited their profile.

On 5-10 occassions every month, facebook will randomly send friend requests to
people I don't even know and then some day I am just browsing and I get a
notification that "Y has accepted your friend request" and I just couldn't
recall sending friend request to that person.

So, Yeah, They were literally forcing me to be friends with people I don't
even know, presumably, because I never clicked on ads and if I have less
friends, That just means there is little activity in my circle and there is
little information they can collect about me, IDK.

Whenever this happened, I usually took a screenshot, It probably doesn't do a
solid job of proving my claim but it's something.

And before someone here starts running down a list of possible things that
might have happened, Like someone hacked into my account, apps that had access
to my account etc. I just want to say, I was a member of official 2600 magzine
group, I posted all of this multiple times there and they did helped me a lot
to prevent me from a lot of ways that someone might be accessing my account. I
followed everything and it 6 months later it still didn't stop.

~~~
beagle3
If you are the only person seeing this behaviour, it is likely a bug in their
system.

Many ages ago, on one of the most popular mail and news systems of the day, it
turned out that myself and another person both managed to register the same
username, each with a different password, but were assigned to the same
account.

After a couple of weeks in which each of us would log in, see the changes the
other did, undo them, change our own password, and mail the abuse team (which
kept replying "no, we see that you did it yourself on xxxx"), we both realized
what had happened, and started talking by emailing ourselves. Eventually, the
other guy left the account to me (I had it for 2 years when he managed to
register it).

It could just be a bug, rather than malice.

~~~
ishanjain28
It's didn't just happen to me.

Search for "Facebook adding friends without my approval" on google and you'll
a lot of threads where people have had similar experience like me.

Here is one,
[https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=9079047...](https://www.facebook.com/help/community/question/?id=907904762560111)

------
soared
> None of that will happen

Why not? My grandparents love looking through old photo albums. I don't see
why I couldn't do the same with Facebook.

> It’s an advertiser’s dream and it is wildly expensive in terms of privacy
> lost and cash spent to steal that privacy.

A few problems with this. Op dates users freely gave away their data, but now
advertisers are stealing it?

The same sentence can be said about the internet as a whole - but most people
believe the benefits are worth it and op hasn't proved we don't get benefits
from Facebook.

Lastly.. the article assumes allowing advertisers to use your data is
inherently evil. I'm not arguing either way, but it's never explained. Lots of
people believe that to be true, but I don't think you can just call
advertisers "the devil" without an explanation. Why is op harmed by data
collection (outside of nonsensical hypthotheticals, like getting his house
robbed when he posts that he's on vacation?)

~~~
aluhut
> I don't see why I couldn't do the same with Facebook.

Because it very likely won't be there anymore. Your grandparents had full
control over their photo albums. You have nothing.

> Op dates users freely gave away their data, but now advertisers are stealing
> it? The same sentence can be said about the internet as a whole - but most
> people believe the benefits are worth it

Most people don't grasp the _extend_ of what they give to the advertisers. Not
even in the slightest way. They still think that as long as they don't fill
out a questionnaire, "they" won't know. Or what I give to Facebook, stays with
Facebook and so on.

> Lots of people believe that to be true, but I don't think you can just call
> advertisers "the devil" without an explanation.

Their sneaky methods, lack of information and the whole attention stealing
industry it is, is bad. Just the basic normal ad on the street is already
exploiting us. The digital versions are even able to infect our tools. It's an
uncontrolled mess. An anarchy of people who don't give a damn because they
can. We'll never know the full extend of misuse happening with our data on
daily bases. I don't see a reason to trust them. Do you?

~~~
soared
Yeah Facebook might not be around, but I'm sure there is an app that will
archive everything so you could store it locally.

I don't understand your view though - you believe billboards are an exploiting
everyone who sees them? That would mean all advertising should be stopped. I
think many people, you included, misunderstand the economic benefit of
advertising. It enables commerce that wouldn't take place if it was gone. If a
Spotify competitor started out today with zero advertising it would never make
it - how would you hear about it? How would anyone learn about it?

I work in digital advetising and see no reason to distrust the industry.
Nobody is abusing data about you.. you are tossed into groups that contains
millions of people similar to you. No advertisers cares who you are, about any
of your data, any of your Facebook posts. They care that you just bought a
razor and might want to try their new shaving cream.

I'm not sure what you mean by sneaky methods, but it's as simple as you
visited a website or talked online about shaving, so now they know you're
interested in shaving. Basic text analysis is most of it.

Edit - very true that most people don't understand it. But then again most
people don't understand anything they use daily (the internet, any app, etc).

~~~
aluhut
> Yeah Facebook might not be around, but I'm sure there is an app that will
> archive everything so you could store it locally.

You've forgotten that those pictures belong to Facebook. So whoever buys them
out from the remains of Facebook will do whatever they want with it. They may
share it with you. They may not. Maybe they'll use it to train some AI and
then discard it altogether. Maybe they'll put your head onto some porn star.
Maybe China will buy it. Can you imagine, a Chinese man coming to your
grandparents house and taking away their photo album? What would your grandpa
do?

> I don't understand your view though

It's not a view. It's a fact. Did you even learn your job somewhere? Any
scientific background to this "work in digital advertisement"? Ads steal your
attention. You can't do anything about it and most of the time you don't even
have any kind of profit from it. To say it in the new cultures terms: it's
mind rape.

> I think many people, you included, misunderstand the economic benefit of
> advertising.

Please spare me that marketing talk. I do accept that there are ads on the
internet. Sure. Some people even watch and click them. But just like the part
you ignored in my previous comment you seem to intentionally forget about
_extend_ here too. There is a huge difference between a cookie and a canvas
fingerprint. There is a difference between a picture advertising a product and
an autoplay video or malware infected script. There is an difference between
an IP in your HPs log and a live track of a user.

The internet would have not gone bankrupt without the higher extend of
advertisement intrusion. It's a lie to make advertising companies make even
more money because that's what you do on the market. Their new product is
data, profiles build upon that data (the more data about a single user, the
more worth it is) and the continuous lie about the customer who WANTS their
tips on where to spend money. I don't want those tips. I don't know anyone who
wants them just like I don't know anyone who didn't want an adblocker
installed. Think about it. The trust is gone. Forever.

> I work in digital advetising and see no reason to distrust the industry.

Of course you do...it's soothing for me though because such an amount of
ignorance would be frightening.

> I'm not sure what you mean by sneaky methods,

Then you are a pretty shitty digital advertiser. You need to get some updates
fast.

Edit@Edit:

> Edit - very true that most people don't understand it. But then again most
> people don't understand anything they use daily (the internet, any app,
> etc).

So you assume that this gives you a carte blance? I mean, this attitude by
people from the ad industry is just another reason nobody trusts you.

Imagine, that I'd be tricking your grandparents into letting me into their
apartment by brabbleing some tech bullshit about their cable. I wouldn't do
any kind of work. They'd have no benefit at all but I'd have stolen their
photo album.

With your world view, I had the justification to do it because they didn't
understand a single word I told them to get in their house.

Would you like that?

~~~
aluhut
Isn't it a great day today? :D

------
gamblor956
I suppose techies don't have much need for social interaction, but for those
of us outside the tech world, Facebook survives because it's useful for
facilitating social interaction. I use Facebook (and occasionally Meetup) to
help organize local running groups and events. Fantastically useful for
coordinating with multiple groups of people across multiple computer and phone
platforms, separated by hundreds or thousands of miles. _Nothing else comes
close._

It sounds like the author primarily used Facebook to be seen rather than to
connect, and so he views it as a cancer. He doesn't understand that Facebook
is a tool. The problem isn't Facebook, the problem was him. He was the cancer,
treating Facebook as a platform for aggrandizing himself. Good riddance.

~~~
Sir_Substance
>but for those of us outside the tech world, Facebook survives because it's
useful for facilitating social interaction.

It's useful for facilitating connections with other facebook users. You're in
a bubble.

~~~
astine
> It's useful for facilitating connections with other facebook users.

And anyone willing to join Facebook to keep up with the event invitations. You
don't have to post anything at all on Facebook to do this. I definitely know a
bunch of people who use Facebook that way.

------
medyadaily
I have a personal story from inside facebook to share. 5 years ago Facebook
recruiter reached out to me and invited me to the W hotel in Chicago. I was
very excited -not for the job- but for the opportunity to meet with senior
Facebook managers and tell them about an evil thing Facebook does.

Here is the background story:

I am Kurdish from Iran. And Iran has many provinces. one of them is called
Kurdistan. In Facebook profile section for Hometown you could pick all of the
Iranian provinces except Kurdistan.

And at first I thought it was a bug. For years and years we submitted bug
reports and collected petitions for Facebook they never responded why the
Kurdistan province cannot be picked while other provinces could be picked.

Till one day, An internal document -guidance- leaked out of Facebook. That
explained it all ! One of the pages was talking about Kurdistan. In which they
had explained any reference to Kurdistan is considered terrorism. That was on
the request of Turkish government.

In "Turkey", the word Kurdistan is forbidden. and many people in Turkey been
prisoned for speaking Kurdish. however in "Iran" we officially have a province
called "Kurdistan Province). and Iranian government recognizes the name
Kurdistan for my homeland.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Iran](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provinces_of_Iran)

But Facebook decided to enforce the Turkish government racist rule on other
countries that have Kurdistan (Iran, Iraq, Syria...)

Also in that leaked guidance memo. Kurdistan flag was considered illegal. And
hundreds of Kurdish pages and accounts got banned for having Kurdistan flag.

While Kurdish flag is illegal in Turkey. Kurdish flag is officially recognized
in the Constitution of Iraq for Kurdistan regional government.

So when they invited me to W Hotel to recruit me. I was like yes finally I can
meet the people in person. Because as a Kurd I have no importance and they
will never respond to me but a software engineer I am pretty attractive on the
market.

So I asked the question from one of the managers. And told them my story this
for years and years I send them emails and nobody got back to me and we made
petitions about this so-called bug.

He said these things are decided by higher management.

I told him how often do you show this disagreement to higher managers or Mark
Zuckerburg's policies if you have a different opinion. He responded if I
disagree with them I wouldn't work there.

I left the W Hotel in Chicago 5 years ago refusing to proceed with a job on
FB. I knew Facebook is on the wrong path. And today I see that prediction
coming true.

Even today when Turkey committed a massacre in Kurdish city of Afrin, Facebook
blocked many voices inside the city who were showing massacres by Turkish
government.

10 years ago FB came after kurds and you said not my problem. Today they are
coming after all of us

~~~
this_user
I don't think this is specifically a FB problem, but a problem that globally
operating Internet companies in general face: You will be dealing with
different groups and countries that have different views about things, and it
is next to impossible to avoid being dragged into these political issues. Take
map services as an example. There are lots of controversial borders out there,
and no matter what you do, you're going to to antagonise someone.

There are also things like data protection laws like the EU's "right to be
forgotten" that allows an individual to request the removal of their personal
information. Of course, you're now dealing with the situation that the EU is
effectively trying to enforce its rules worldwide since the information would
not just have to be deleted for users from the EU but for everyone.

In the end, there is no perfect solution, and it comes down to who has more
power to impose their will on these companies. In your case, FB is clearly
more afraid of getting into trouble with Turkey than the Kurds. Same goes for
a lot of what China wants.

~~~
medyadaily
That is not the case in this case !

Let say FB wants to do everything Turkey wants, Fine ! ban Kurdistan word and
Kurdish language for inside Turkey. (sounds horrific but just to go with your
poor loginc, lets do that) BUT still according to your logic...

INSIDE IRAN- word kurdistan is not forbiden, Iran OFFICIALLY has a province
called Kurdistan, it is on Iran's official Map.

and I am a Kurd from Iranian Kurdistan, and facebook deleted many Iranian
Kurds for posting Kurdish material.

That is a flat disgusting targeting an ethnic group.

That is a no brainer, do not make it like Facebook is an innocent company,
trying to not get dragged into regional conflicts.

All I am saying they first came for Kurds you said not my problem. That is a
regional Others Problem.

Now they are coming for you. Taste it ! Facebook will screw all you over so
bad. just wait and see it happening !

------
OscarTheGrinch
My partner is still on facebook, she has a "crazy aunt" who posts all manor of
sensationalist bulshit, so she blocked her. An this is the crux of the
problem, the complete information warfare asymmetry, this aunt is still
plaguing her little pool of friends at the push of a button several times a
day.

We could try and talk to the aunt, get her to stop, how difficult would that
be? Probably very, and likely to cause offence. And if we extrapolate out how
can we possibly get the millions of social media dopamine fiend "crazy aunts"
out there to think more carefully about the bullshit they spread around the
world?

And so another platform is lost to the bottom feeders.

------
adam12
> Facebook is using us.

It's funny how people are just now realizing this.

------
yoodenvranx
Has anyone ever done an analysis which compares the "social media" in the book
"Ender's Game" to our current social media?

I haven't read the book in a few years but if I remember correctly there was
some sort of global discussion forum / social media which was used to steer
political and social discussion. Ender and his siblings wrote tons of articles
under pseudonyms and became quite influential.

15-20 years ago this might have sounded like a viable way to do global
communications but looking at the current click-baity social media with all
its Fake News it looks like we are very far away from a viable system.

~~~
teddyh
If I recall correctly, _Ender’s Game_ basically assumed that the future would
be like Usenet Netnews.

------
wybiral
Turns out that deleting your account doesn't stop them from tracking you on
every website you visit that uses their code.

~~~
bradleyankrom
Privacy Badger, Ghostery plugins are wonderful for curtailing this.

------
leoharsha2
“I have nothing to hide” - most of the people

a pregnant teenager being outed by the store Target, after it mined her
purchase data – larger handbags, headache pills, tissues – and sent her a
“congratulations” message as marketing, which her unknowing father got
instead. Oops!

Don't confuse privacy with secrecy. I know what you do in the bathroom, but
you still close the door. That’s because you want privacy, not secrecy.

I found this article very interesting about FB -
[http://www.salimvirani.com//facebook/](http://www.salimvirani.com//facebook/)

------
munificent
There's something I never see talked about in all of these discussions around
social media. There is the old refrain "If you didn't pay for it, you aren't
the customer, you're the product." But I don't see people talking about that
mantra as a useful tool.

We all rushed to use Facebook. We put our data on their servers, we uploaded
our photos and watched them get resized, stored, and served. We use a service
that costs actual money to run and paid them zero dollars.

Sure, they served ads, but we've all learned to completely tune those out when
it comes to being persuaded to actually buy stuff, so that revenue stream
isn't enough to keep the lights on.

That doesn't leave Facebook and similar companies with too many other options.
I'm not saying they are _innocent_ , but it seems to me that much of this
behavior — data mining users, selling ads to the rich to enable them to
influence elections, etc. — is a predictable outcome from incentives we put in
place by our collective behavior.

If Facebook didn't do this shady stuff, they'd run out of money and get
replaced by another company that did. In the cutthroat natural selection
environment of the market, only businesses that make money — by any means
possible — survive.

I'm sure I'm naïve and missing something, but it makes me sad that the obvious
solution hasn't manifested — _pay for stuff_. A version of Facebook, Reddit,
Twitter, etc. that had a monthly subscription fee would have less incentive to
extract value from user data because they are already extracting money
directly from their users. I miss the days when Reddit just had Reddit gold.

I suppose the answer to my supposition is that companies would do _both_. If
you have the data, why not _also_ pimp it out even if your users are already
paying you. And, at that point, the goal becomes maximum users, which is gated
by subscription costs, so those fees get driven to zero and here we are.

But I do wish a simpler business model where people pay for things they use
could be successful and properly incentivize companies to act in our
interests. Given that in a capitalist market, businesses fully expand all the
way up to the boundary of the letter of the law (and often past that), I
suppose there's little left to do but try to get strong regulations passed and
vigorously enforced.

Given the fundmental network effects of social media, competition — the
primary user-beneficient force in capitalism — is completely ineffective.
Absent that, I think all we're left with is the law.

------
readams
As a meme #deletefacebook has limited virulence because of self-termination.
Probably #deletefacebookafterpostingaboutitthenwaiting would be better.

------
amingilani
Off topic, has anyone noticed the really cool thing that happens when you
scroll too far below this article? You end up at techcrunch.com, as in the
homepage. I made a gif if you missed this or are on another type of device.[1]

I'm curious about how they did this.

[1]: [https://cl.ly/qFLY](https://cl.ly/qFLY)

~~~
282883392
Not exactly the same, but here's a javascript plugin that can add more content
to the bottom of the page as you scroll down.

[https://infinite-scroll.com/](https://infinite-scroll.com/)

------
socratesone
Does anyone have a script or app that can go in and delete every post I've
ever made? Google turns up a few Chrome plugins that all look dubious. Be
great to have an authoritative guide to deleting everything without fully
deactivating Facebook (since there is still a lot of utility in it w/r/t
rolodex, event planning)

~~~
StavrosK
I saw the one in the post, but it's a Chrome extension. I think this will be
very useful for me, so I'm going to write a very simple one (basically you
just log in with FB/Twitter/whatever) and it deletes every post older than
what you specify.

It's going to live at
[https://forgetme.stavros.io/](https://forgetme.stavros.io/), if you want to
take a look later on to see how far I've gotten. Hopefully, deleting posts
will be doable from the APIs, and the app will be feasible.

I expect I'll have a useful app up in a day or two.

~~~
latexr
From the website:

> an application that will delete all your old posts from social media every
> so often, to help your privacy.

I’m not sure this will help with privacy. If you keep posting, you keep giving
Facebook data and helping them build their profile of you. There’s no
guarantee deleting old data from your timeline will delete the data Facebook
has on you. To help your privacy, you need to stop giving them data (i.e. stop
posting).

~~~
StavrosK
That's true, but privacy is more than against Twitter/FB. You can also have
privacy against a new boss, a new friend, etc. You aren't the person you were
ten years ago, there's no reason your opinions should remain somewhere,
immutable.

Unfortunately, this is looking very hard to do as a service, as most platforms
don't let you delete posts at all (e.g. Facebook) or only give you access to a
very limited amount of _your own data_ (e.g. Twitter, where there's no way to
access more than your 3200 latest Tweets).

Especially with Twitter, _corporations literally have more access to your data
than you_ , as accessing old Tweets is only done via an Enterprise API, and
not via the standard API or even the website. You cannot access your own old
Tweets unless you pay good money for the Enterprise API.

------
JKCalhoun
Worth noting. Some users have found they are unable to delete their Facebook
account because, when they are asked to enter their password on the final
screen, FB says the password is incorrect.

Seems FB has a bug where you must enter your password in _all lower case_ on
the final screen.

Imagine, big company like FB, having still not caught that bug....

~~~
inetknght
Actually, that's intended behavior.

[https://security.stackexchange.com/a/68014/47800](https://security.stackexchange.com/a/68014/47800)

~~~
thisacctforreal
They can accomplish that feature using 3 separate hashes for various common
mistakes, and it will still accept the normal case, but what GP is describing
is that only a lowercase version of the password will work for account
deletion.

~~~
ynniv
It's most likely that they're using lower(password) everywhere, except someone
forgot to use that on the account deletion page and no one noticed.

~~~
steaknsteak
How convenient that they forgot to use it on the one action they never want
you to perform

------
1MillMegabytes
Adverticing companies and Internet search engines are like a decietful friend
that would rat you out in communist East Germany or in Pol Pot's Cambodia.
They spew out garbage that fuels insecurity in the adolescents of our
generation. It's goal is to make people feel uneasy. I deleted facebook in
2011. It's to late though. Facebook and google have ratted me out a long time
ago. DDR anno 2018, wouldn't be much different than western societies. They
would have evolved. Facebook and google and advertising and marketing
companies are the stasi of our time. I don't even dare applying for a visa to
the US. A country I would love to visit and my nr.1 travel destination. This
is mainly because of a drunken rant on facebook a decade ago. Hate to be
denied entrance at Newark after a 7 hour flight.

------
MBCook
Another good thing to look at is Josh Constine’s article:

[https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/move-fast-and-fake-
things/](https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/18/move-fast-and-fake-things/)

------
kimdcmason
I never liked the reciprocal friend model of Facebook, and I liked even less
that it was exposed publicly by default, allowing anyone to crawl the social
graph. Even if you lock down your friend list, it doesn't matter because your
friends mostly aren't locking down theirs.

The Cambridge Analytica scandal clearly demonstrates why this is a dangerous
thing. The clear solution is to unfriend everybody then delete (not suspend,
but delete) your account.

Enough people do this, and Facebook's cherished network effect will be
weakened enough for better alternatives to begin appearing. Alternatives that
don't vomit large amounts of data about you into the public sphere by default.

~~~
leadingthenet
And what exactly is the business model for that going to be? Unless people
switch to decentralised services (they won't) or pay for a centralised one
(they won't), what way could any alternatives survive?

The problem isn't Facebook as much as it is the system in which it exists.

------
zaarn
I'm without facebook account for almost a decade by now, I deleted it very
early on. I never really missed it.

(Faceboook still sends me stalker/spam mails)

------
dmurthy
I quit Facebook a few months back and I've tried to coax my BH into quitting
and she would have if not for one reason.

Our son's school shares all updates on their Facebook page which is only
accessible by members. Ironically Facebook should not be the place to share
such information & content given the recent happenings.

I wish schools could find another solution or platform.

------
breakpointalpha
I've been Social Sober for 20 days now. I didn't delete any content from FB,
since I had been using a fake name on there for 5 years. I just deactivated
the account and haven't logged back in since.

I honestly haven't noticed much of a difference in my life. I still work all
day, come home and watch Netflix or play my Switch.

It's ok to not "know" what's happening. Just do it!

~~~
jgh
I did the same with my facebook account last fall. I haven't missed it either.
I admit I still use instagram and messenger though. I think most people on my
facebook list had pretty much stopped using it regularly anyway, it was
basically all ads by the time I left. Twitter I never really used to start
with, its primary use-case for me is I'm walking around somewhere and
something's going on and i search Twitter to see if someone who knows more
about it than me has mentioned anything. Although even that use-case has
gotten pretty hit-or-miss recently.

------
throwaway39393
I deleted facebook when Candian Border Patrol demanded I log into my Facebook
account on my phone so they can peruse it at their will.

------
aembleton
How do you know that `Social Book Post Manager` isn't scraping all of your
data and sending it to some third party server?

------
sysbell
That's one diddle that can't be undone. Does the author really think deleting
his old posts is going to somehow cover all the cached copies of his data? Not
to mention all the little picadillos in the metadata Axiom has on him that
they gleaned from said data? Articles like this make me fear for tech
journalism.

~~~
bunderbunder
It can't necessarily be undone, but if you're among the people who is skeeved
out by surveillance capitalism, you can at least try to reduce future level of
exposure going forward.

Also, if you're worried about the long-term psychological impact of social
media, with all its dark patterns designed to get you to spend more and more
time distracted by their sites and apps, then all you really have to do there
is switch the distractions off. Deleting one's Facebook account isn't the only
way to do that, but it's certainly an effective option.

------
jcsnv
How can you delete Facebook if you've become so reliant on its Oauth for
login?

I'm just dreading migrating all of those logins

~~~
gregknicholson
> I like that Facebook is now a glorified version of OAuth

I don't. One company should not have the power to decide whether I should be
recognised as a legitimate individual or not, and they should not act as a
gatekeeper between me and my online identity. I don't care how benevolent that
one company genuinely is.

If an intermediary is necessary (like an email provider for mere mortals), I
should be able to choose a service provider.

------
MaxWell360
I don't use the Facebook mobile app. I only use messenger.

Also, I use the "newsfeed eradicator" chrome addon to remove the newsfeed when
I go to facebook on my PC. That way I only see notifications, where I am
tagged/invited & I only go see posts from a few groups that interest me.

------
a_imho
Consider obfuscating the profile before deleting the account. Whatever delete
means in facebook terms.

------
jonbarker
Does anyone know if FB uses deleted photos in their face recognition feature?
Or if there is any detail around what happens when data is deleted? I think it
probably is like running chkdsk: the data still exists it's just not addressed
at the user level any more.

------
debaserab2
Does anyone know if deleting posts and likes actually removes the post from
Facebook?

Even if it does, what’s the likelihood it hasn’t already been sold and a
shadow profile of ourselves exists with facebooks marketing partners in a
place where we can’t reach the delete button?

~~~
notthemessiah
Not really. In some countries, you can submit a request to download everything
facebook knows about you, and for deleted posts, it just toggles a flag that
removes it from public view instead of removing it from the database.

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/20/law-student-
trig...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2011/10/20/law-student-
triggers-22-legal-complaints-and-likely-audit-of-facebook/)

------
fiatjaf
Even if Facebook was perfect and did everything everyone is expecting from it,
would it be worth losing, say, 2 hours everyday on chat and discussions with
friends? With 2 hours every day you could become a master in any art or
technique.

------
ixtli
"Until we find them, however, it’s probably better for us to delete the ones
we use today."

This is a really dangerous, reactionary notion. If there's something inherent
in our social formations that are translating themselves into our public
spaces and we are unhappy with, let's work to change them together. This is a
thoughtful piece and I think there are great reasons to delete your posts from
long ago because, well, people change! Other commenters here have made good
supporting arguments for this.

But we must be very, very careful not to demonize tools where their users need
to be taken into consideration: unless there is something specific about
facebook, unique among other social networks, that is toxic (this may be the
case!) then we need to be wary of these arguments because they are very easy
to apply to all social media which, imo, is a copout.

~~~
kimdcmason
Why is it a dangerous notion? For the sake of argument, if everyone went
completely over the top and deleted all their social media accounts, the world
would go back to looking like it did around 2006. A few corporations would go
broke. A few other corporations values would increase. Mass psy-ops would
become more difficult and expensive.

Doesn't sound dangerous at all to me.

~~~
ixtli
So in the extreme case that you're talking about it's not dangerous in any way
I can think of at the moment. One of the big reasons I called it dangerous was
that the effect only a portion of the users leaving the platform is dangerous
and more subtle. To my eye, it's a social critique which leads to people who
agree with it voluntarily removing themselves from the 21st century version of
the "public square." I worry that this leads to disenfranchisement on their
part as I've seen such isolation result in those feelings.

I guess the spirit of my claim is that the shape of group conversation will
always come to resemble the cultural context of that conversation, regardless
of the medium. While the medium can and should be critiqued, calling for total
abstention from the medium is effectively self-censorship and I don't think
that'll lead to the desired result.

------
zerostar07
People don't just delete stuff, they replace them. Give them something new.

------
teilo
I did this to all my social media accounts and all personally identifiable
information on them. No pictures, no dates, locations, etc.. They now exist
for messaging and group participation, and nothing else.

------
niwde
Stop using Facebook. Your future self will thank you for it.

------
rambossa
Where do I share photo albums and keep up with friends?

------
butterbot
Your new hosts file
[https://pastebin.com/d04ah8eP](https://pastebin.com/d04ah8eP)

------
throwaway84742
Whoever organized this coordinated hatchet job, thank you guys for the
opportunity to buy FB at a discount. Keep up the good job.

------
ggm
How does whatsapp compare to facebook messenger, for intrusiveness and access
to data and call logs?

------
3chelon
> In fact, I would wager I use Facebook more to broadcast my ego than interact
> with real humans

You don't say?

------
swlkr
I haven’t had a Facebook account for years, sometimes the grass really is
greener on the other side

------
hokus
start by deleting all applications that have access to your information.

[https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications](https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=applications)

You thought setting things to private kept them private?

------
Froyoh
For some reason nothing on my FB feed it's from my friends anymore. Just news
articles.

------
Myrmornis
I’m very down on Facebook nowadays. But because of the way it’s algorithms
interfere in my communication with friends: I don’t know who will be shown
what message. So they aren’t messages, they are “contributing content”. So
it’s not commmunication.

But I don’t get all this obsession with privacy. I’m just not interesting
enough for that to be a concern.

------
MacroChip
If you delete your posts or account, Facebook is probably still using the
data.

------
carrja99
Facebook and twitter are trash.

------
JonasJSchreiber
That was such a well written article and an empassioned plea.

------
singularity2001
recently on HN: #deleteUber had no lasting effect

------
carlosvega
Is there any way to batch delete posts in FB?

------
jordache
the author assumes deleting his data via facebook api actually deletes it?

------
ravenstine
I normally wouldn't defend Facebook, but did people using it _really_ think
that they weren't selling off their private information? I thought this was
just something everyone accepted, as they accept Siri/Alexa/Google to listen
to their every word. (yes I know they listen for only wake words)

I mean, Zuck called us all "dumb fucks". You can look it up. Everyone shrugged
it off because college boys be college boys.

I have a Facebook profile, and never used it with the expectation that I owned
the content I placed on it. I do think that we need a better alternative to
Facebook, but at the same time it's not wrong for someone not to delete their
profile.

Sorry, but texting is not a viable replacement. Neither is email. Reactions
and comment threads are fun and useful ways of interacting with shared life
events. For a lot of people, including myself, being off Facebook means
missing out on social interaction. The reality is that texting or emailing
people sometimes simply doesn't cut it; if you don't pull the same perceived
weight as everyone else in your social group, you're going to be outcast and
perhaps forgotten about. That can be the perception, anyway, and it's not
entirely wrong.

Why hasn't a viable alternative to Facebook come up? I mean a serious one –
not some piece of shit whipped up by right-wing bloggers. Perhaps it's because
everyone feels that they need to _compete_ with Facebook. Facebook has its
tentacles in a lot of things, but perhaps we can just boil it down to a few
things:

\- Posts with images, comments, and reactions.

\- Direct messages that are interoperable with email and SMS.

\- Event planning and coordination.

How much else do you really need to be social? Everything else about Facebook
is really about selling ads and has nothing to do with people being social.
Building something that can replace the social aspect of Facebook shouldn't be
that monumental. If Duck Duck Go has survived, surely a DDG of social
networking shouldn't be so far away.

Even better: sell it with the idea that it's algorithm-free. Everything should
go back to being chronological.

Outlandish? Not really. The real reason that your feed is algorithmically
sorted is to bubble up more paid content and viral posts. If you
unlike/unfollow all the company and group pages associated with your account,
you're left with only what your friends are posting. Ooh, even better – delete
people who aren't actual friends. If you only include the people you care
about, you don't need some black box algorithm to tell you what you need to be
seeing. You'd have enough time to see what people are up to in the order of
which their posts were made.

But not, I won't be deleting my Facebook. I'm fine limiting my use to
mbasic.facebook.com. That is, until that better thing comes along or I have
the time and will-power to just build it myself.

------
eptakilo
30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have
their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they
posted in their teens will be brought to light.

It's probably going to raise a lot of discussions about what constitutes
normal human behavior. We might finally stop pretending they are perfect
humans.

After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We
probably will stop caring about online privacy.

It might also be a bad thing because society would expect oversharing as the
norm and would consider anyone who doesn't put their private lives on display,
to be hiding something.

Either way social media is here to stay. But it will change, this is version
1.

~~~
Pigo
It's really funny when people bring up things people said or did 10 years ago
as way to knock them down a peg. If anything, it should show that a person has
the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the
embarrassing way. It does bother me that people are expected to behave
perfectly their entire lives in order to be a leader. It creates a situation
that caters to psychopaths.

~~~
tachyonbeam
What makes it even worse is that there are always people who will try to put
forward the worst possible (mis)interpretation of what you said, ie: in the
guise of social "justice", and the domain of what constitutes acceptable
discourse (the overton window) is constantly shrinking. There is a fair chance
that some of what you posted, which was considered perfectly acceptable and
maybe humorous 10 years ago, is now considered toxic / harmful / triggering /
misogynistic / oppressive / etc.

Heck, what you say now can put you in trouble today. There are a number of
opinions that I hold which I consider to be fairly balanced and mild, but am
afraid to discuss online, because I think they could put me at risk. If you
upset the online twitter mob, they're not going to fight you with coherent
arguments and thoughtful discourse. They're going to insult you, threaten you,
publicly shame you, and maybe get you fired from your job.

~~~
nasredin
The attempts to demonize the words "social justice" are quite Orwellian.

"Justice" is literally the last word in America that I thought would be used
in some RWA-type context.

~~~
tachyonbeam
What's Orwellian is being publicly lynched for wrongthink. The far-left is
just as authoritarian as the far-right, IMO. The left accuses the right of
living in a bubble, but they're completely unaware of their own dogmatic echo
chamber.

I'm queer. I'm in favor of universal access to abortion and socialised
healthcare, but there are a few things I could say that would quickly get me
labelled as right-wing and all sorts of bad things. It used to be that being
liberal, being left stood for freedom of speech and the open discussion of
ideas.

~~~
fzeroracer
Ah yes, the ever-famous both sides argument. I always hear this alongside
arguments from people using the word Lynch in an incredibly inappropriate
context.

