
Ask HN: Where to go after deleting Facebook? - sir_brickalot
Facebook for me is mainly a self updating address book. So is there any other recommended service that could possibly even import all or some of my FB data and is able to help keep in touch with my acquantances?
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drukenemo
Call a good friend for a coffee face to face.

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

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

~~~
Treegarden
I have many friends from Egypt, China, Brazil and other places but I live in
Germany. If I visit Egypt in 2 years for some reason I want to shoot a message
to my friends there to meet them for "a coffee face to face". There is no
better service then facebook to enable this.

~~~
jasonkostempski
Email, text, phone call, all better messaging services than Facebook.

------
theCricketer
While I am not a fan of Facebook myself for the all reasons recently talked
about and the addicting nature of it, yes the self updating address book part
is nice. Here's what I did: I got a Chrome extention[1] that unfollows all my
friends. I've also unliked every Facebook Page that I used to like. This means
my feed is now totally empty. When I login from anywhere there is nothing in
my feed. Also I rarely ever get notifications, except when someone adds me as
a friend. This way the feed is gone, there's nothing to be addicted to (feed
was my main addiction), its very hard to get back because it involves re-
following 100s of people which my lazy mind won't do and Facebook doesn't make
any money off me (no feed, no ads). So I still get to use it as a address
book.

~~~
fencepost
_> [I unfollowed all my friends] [...] I still get to use it as a address
book._

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

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

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

------
dandigangi
No where! You go back to a normal life where you just live it instead of
reading about other people living theirs.

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thrownaway954
Google! I joke, I joke.

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

------
fenwick67
Read the OP, people. OP clearly said "Facebook for me is mainly a self
updating address book", that's what they need a replacement for.

------
sir_brickalot
OP here: "Call a good friend for a coffee face to face." "Go outside and get
some fresh air and enjoy life. "

This kind of advice came up repeatedly but it doesn't answer the initial
question at all.

I'm fairly new to active HN but I followed passively and had the impression,
that we are supposed to interact with reason and logic. These were emotional
responses which triggers an emotional answer because it implies OP would be
anti-social and the question would be unnecessary at best.

I am not a FB addict. I don't use the apps I hardly use the timeline, I scroll
around when I'm really really bored (and that didn't help, ever), but my
hoarder soul feels relieved to know that my past encounters with people from
all over the world are listed somewhere and even when phone numbers changed
due to country hopping or emails changed due to finishing university I'm still
able to say hello when I feel like it or need a place to crash.

Maybe this context helps to stop the lecturing bullshit.

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

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

------
fabianhjr
Scuttlebutt, a decentralized social network protocol. Currently a small niche
community that is reminiscent of early internet communities.

[http://scuttlebutt.nz/](http://scuttlebutt.nz/)

Since it is a protocol, there are several clients that behave differently and
you can create your own. ( [https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-
guide/](https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/) )

------
soziawa
I have deleted facebook years ago and didn't really need a replacement, it was
just never useful to me. WhatsApp: This is tougher since everyone is expected
to have an account there. I really like Threema as alternative, it has most of
the features of WhatsApp (video chat is currently missing) and is self-
financed, so being bought by some evil company is not a risk (unlike Signal).
Instagram: That's where I don't have a real good alternative.

------
sp332
Hey this is off-topic, but since you recently dumped your FB data, could you
see if this kind of thing is in there?
[https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138](https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138)

~~~
sir_brickalot
I can't find a call history in my data. But I never used FB for calls. I never
installed the FB apps on the phone.

------
thisisit
Mastodon? It is decentralized. So, you can create your own instance and get
everyone you know added to that instance.

~~~
sp332
Or you could find a node that's run by someone you trust, or at least trust
more than FB.

------
JeanMarcS
As I still want to use FB (I use it for following bands I like to know when
they make new music or where they play their next show), but am concerned by
all those privacy issues, I use a Firefox extension by Mozilla :

[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

You can then use a container system. I've got one for all the google stuff
(might be worse than FB on the privacy concern in my opinion), one for
Facebook, one for some online site I don't want to cross data with anything
else.

That plus uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc...

------
nunez
Well, if you mostly use it as an address book of sorts, you can use something
like Sync.ME and pull data from LinkedIn or Twitter instead. You'll get
(somewhat) updated information if you're connected with them directly and
whatever public information they reveal about themselves if not (same as
Facebook). It even syncs contact photos!

This is what I do, except I also use Facebook as an information source, since
people post their "fun" contact photos through there.

------
cyclonetiger
If its a self updating address book, then LinkedIn would essentially serve
your purposes, but one could argue that LinkedIn has the same problems that
Facebook does.

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shortoncash
Strava became my FB substitute, oddly enough. It's the only social network I
really like and wish I could spend more time on.

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dberg
Whatever happened to Path ? This was supposed to be a "private" version of
Facebook that you had more control over.

------
marknadal
Why not build it rather than "going to it"?

[https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-
wi...](https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-
with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8)

YOU are the next Zuck.

------
gnarcoregrizz
Slack and discord for daily talks with friends. Everyone else I email, call,
or sms. I haven't had facebook for a few years and haven't had an issue with
keeping in contact with anyone.

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

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

------
post_break
I use email and text message to keep in touch now. Or Telegram (funny how that
has double meaning).

~~~
Treegarden
There is nothing I hate more then writing on my phone. In general I much
prefer meeting someone face to face, but at least on my pc my keyboard it is
much easier and faster to write a message.

~~~
icebraining
There are apps that let you send SMSs from your PC. Telegram also has a
desktop version.

------
abcdefghijklm
Go outside!

------
hprotagonist
Freenode's nice!

------
TeeWEE
I wanted to remove facebook, but i can't I will lose connections to friends I
met outside my home country. Its kind of the internal person-service that i
can't live without currently.

~~~
pera
You can always send them a message asking for their email addresses or phone
numbers before deleting your account.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I imported all of my Facebook contacts into
[https://www.monicahq.com/](https://www.monicahq.com/), which delightfully
enough, I found during a Show HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295)

~~~
lgregg
Did you manually import them all? What was your process?

~~~
toomuchtodo
The ol copy paste while binge watching a Netflix series on the couch method.

------
excalibur
HN of course.

------
glitcher
For a walk.

------
traviswingo
Outside.

------
bjarne92
outside

------
starchand
Instagram

~~~
woweeeee
Instagram is _still Facebook_!

~~~
starchand
Really!!!! I will use WhatsApp then

~~~
fencepost
>>>Instagram

>>Instagram is still Facebook!

>Really!!!! I will use WhatsApp then

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

------
mars4rp
Supreme Court ruled that illegal and if you do that, it is punishable by law
as hacking!

~~~
sir_brickalot
I don't live in the US so I am not familiar with this ruling, but are you
saying that I am not allowed to use my own data that Facebook handed over to
me in a neat zip file containing html files, photos, friends lists,
messages... everything?

~~~
frantzmiccoli
You surely are in your right to get your data, I guess there has been a
misunderstanding, he was mentioning data about your contact.

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

~~~
mars4rp
It is illegal to export your data from facebook by 3rd party even if you
authorities it.

Google Facebook vs power ventures or
[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/09/504999255/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/09/504999255/episode-741-amy-
and-steve-vs-facebook)

There is a reason for most of the monopolies, Government.

------
itshertz
Well, you could try: [https://kuende.com](https://kuende.com) \- still not
mature as a product, but not far from it

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

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

~~~
dna_polymerase
It looks and feels like Instagram. Is it decentralized running on Ethereum?

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

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

