
Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch - ingve
http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/facebook-you-needy-sonofabitch/
======
taylodl
The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook app from my phone. I had
already disabled all the notifications, but that didn't change things like
deleting the app. Not being able to get to Facebook wherever you are. As silly
as it sounds it was _liberating._ I still access Facebook from my laptop - but
now that it's off of my phone, I'm accessing Facebook less and less frequently
and I'm find I'm happier as a result.

Less Facebook == more happy. It's the best advice I can give.

~~~
lamby
> Less Facebook == more happy

More productive, less distracted, etc., sure but was FB really getting you
down that much? Am I just using Facebook "wrong" in that it's not upsetting me
the same way it upsets others?

~~~
slackstation
Every time I'm on FB. It's pleasant, really pleasant. But, every single time
I'll go on the site and to do a thing like, check on the plans for my friend's
birthday party. I end up spending like 30min or so more time than I expected
to just browsing aimlessly.

It's not like they are putting a gun to my head but, they are using a billion
dollars of research and my friends' faces to entice me into doing something I
don't want. I'm more or less a monkey and my social circuitry just is so
super-stimulated that it's annoying.

And all of that is before the FOMO kicks in and I start feeling bad that my
life isn't as nice as my friends even though among my friends, I have a very
enviable life (my friends have confided in me as much). But, my every day life
cannot compete with the highlight reel of all the best moments of all my
friends' lives.

Even though I know all of this stuff consiously, it still affects me because
keeping guard and watch over everything constantly is hard. Falling into how
it's designed to make you feel is easy.

Deleting FB off your phone is the best thing.

This overwhelming feeling, I'm convinced, is one of the driving factors that
created Instagram and Snapchat because it was smaller and less invasive.
Ironically, they became just like FB or in some ways (to some people) worse as
they grew.

We are social animals and FB weaponizes the faces of all of your friends to
suck as much attention from you as possible. It's as unfair a fight as there
ever has been in the history of commerce.

~~~
beefield
Funny thing is that anyone with half a brain cell notices this if you just try
to look at it even a bit. People are manipulable to do things they do not like
to do. Yet any time there is a comment in HN stating that marketing may not be
the best thing since sliced bread, there will be tons of messages of type
"hey, just last week I saw an ad of an even I actually wanted to go, so there
is nothing bad ever in people throwing ads at my face against my will". Weird.
(And don't get me started on the whole damn "science" of economics being based
on the (obviously unfalsifiable as per popper) assumption that people always
and anywhere just maximize their utility.)

------
convery
Ye, Facebook is Facebook, which is creepy.

Some friends asked me to sign up for it because they wanted to use the
messenger service for a groupchat. When I registered it immediately propagated
my profile with information about my highschool (10 years ago) and suggested a
lot of people I knew from back then as well as some devs I've collaborated
with on Github. All this from a new email.

So I went into the settings and changed all privacy settings I could find, and
was suddenly banned for "suspicious activity". To unlock the account they
demanded my phonenumber, surely only for 2FA. But because my friends kept
nagging I gave them it so I could chat with them.

After about 10 minutes of chatting I got banned again for "suspicious
activity". This time they demanded a recent photo of my face to confirm my
identity. But also said that I shouldn't worry because only their servers will
see it. So I just sent a photo of some random from a local magazine and they
replied that it was not me in the image.

So although I've never posted any photos online, never used the email, never
posted my phonenumber online. They know everything about me, including what I
look like. Can't imagine what data Google has if Facebook has all that..

~~~
gertef
it's possible they rejected your photo because they did a reverse image search
and it matched the magazine?

~~~
jrowley
Facebook allows you to tag people who aren't on facebook in photos - so maybe
it was using those photos for comparison.

~~~
losteric
This. I went through the same process - Facebook rejected a photo from a
really obscure magazine, so I asked one of my friends to send me an image they
already uploaded to Facebook. FB quickly accepted that one.

------
warcher
This ties into a phenomena that I've noticed with a lot of social networks
lately-- fake content.

What I mean by that specifically is putting things into your feed that _nobody
actually intended to share_. e.g. "XXXX liked this thing!" Or generating
notifications of non-events, like "Hey, share a thing!"

The share button is literally right next to the 'uplike' button. And they
specifically did not press it. But you're gonna press it for them, because you
gotta have content and folks keep pretty mum on facebook (and everywhere else)
lately. There is very little I'm interested in sharing with _every single
person I know_. And even less I'm interested in sharing with strangers a la
Twitter.

To say nothing of the overall click-baity trollish quality of aformentioned
articles. Every time one of my dear friends gets triggered and feeds the
trolls, facebook is dutifully shoving it in my face. There is a high
correlation between virality and unredeemable shit stirring.

Facebook is doing it. Twitter is doing it. Reddit is perhaps the most
shameless of all with their mobile app working _hard_ to spam you with posts
that you.... haven't commented on, or even upvoted. (I can't say one way or
the other about Snapchat because I'm not a millennial.)

I do believe this is the intersection of 100% social media saturation and the
public markets' relentless demand for growth. This is peak social media.
They're flogging live video hard, but news flash: I grew up when you had to
make plans to watch your favorite TV show, and it's the worst. Live video
sucks. I got shit to do. I can't even be bothered to DVR things any more.

~~~
eat_veggies
Snapchat is pretty good about this. They only send notifications for direct
messages, not for sponsored content, stories, or group chats.

~~~
warcher
For now. The others didn't, until they did.

------
two2two
"The tricks, hooks, and tactics Facebook uses to keep people coming back have
gotten more aggressive and explicit. And I feel that takes away from the
actual value the platform provides."

This is why I stopped using Facebook. I really didn't mind the platform until
they crossed the threshold of being a useful product to reminding my each time
I used it that I AM the product.

I like to fly under the radar and prefer people to find my pictures and posts
naturally. Once they started force feeding people my content I decided to stop
inflicting my peers with fuel for facebooks social cannons.

~~~
merraksh
Agreed. I wonder how long before most of FB's users notice how aggressive this
is and, perhaps more likely, how boring the feed becomes with these tricks.

Is FB getting more aggressive because it wants even more or because it is
actually losing clicks/logons/attention?

~~~
Y7ZCQtNo39
Facebook is definitely losing engagement.

[http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/facebook-sharing-
decline/](http://fortune.com/2016/04/07/facebook-sharing-decline/)

------
roblabla
I have a facebook account, but I haven't even logged in in the mast few years.
Recently (like a week ago), I started receiving text messages on the number i
had setup, after constant nagging by fb about security, looking like this :

Robin, get back on Facebook by clicking:
[https://fb.com/l/someIDhere](https://fb.com/l/someIDhere)

I am OUTRAGED by this. My phone text messages is one of the only communication
medium that has no spam, and i basically use it for urgent stuff. I never
agreed to fb using it for anything further than 2fa. If it wants to spam me,
it may send emails.

This was basically the last straw for me. I'm going to send a message to all
my friends telling them to send a mail if they want to contact me, delete
everything on my profile and wall, and bid farewell. My account will stay up
mostly to keep scammers/impostors at bay.

~~~
mcherm
You are in luck!

At one point in time, text messages were extremely expensive (several cents
per message, depending on the plan you had). At that time, laws were passed
(in many countries, I don't know where you are) that made it illegal to send
unsolicited text messages.

You should see if you can scare Facebook.

~~~
renaudg
I don't know of many countries outside the US where you had to pay for
receiving texts or calls.

Most everywhere the cost was always borne by the sender (except when roaming)

~~~
dannyw
Even roaming, it is free to receive SMSes for my plan and most plans in
Australia.

If you need to receive an 2FA token, well, you need to receive an 2FA token.

~~~
renaudg
Yes, I failed to mention the roaming exception was for calls only.

Since this summer, roaming charges are also banned altogether within the EU.

~~~
mimsee
Not 100% right as some companies in EU member countries such as Finland, where
I'm from, were allowed to use a certain clause that would allow them to still
add roaming charges (mostly data related). This is done because the majority
of operators sell contracts based on the speed and not a monthly GB cap.
Almost all contracts are unlimited in data. I for one have a ~30€/month
contract that has unlimited data with 50Mbps down / 30Mbps up.

After the roaming change my contract includes ~6GB of roaming data within EU.
When that's reached there is a 0.0057€ per MB price in data abroad.

------
mike-cardwell
Although I'm not on Facebook anymore, I have the same problem with LinkedIn.
To deal with it, I just add to my email sieve filter every so often. So far I
have:

    
    
      ## Linkedin - Trash useless email
      if allof(
        address :is "From" "messages-noreply@linkedin.com",
        anyof(
          header :regex "Subject" "^(Congratulate|Say happy birthday to) .+",
          header :regex "Subject" "^Check out .+ (updated profile|new skill|new photo)",
          header :regex "Subject" ".+ is a?waiting (for )?your response$",
          header :regex "Subject" "^News about .+",
          header :regex "Subject" "ou have [0-9]+ (unread message|new update)",
          header :regex "Subject" "Do you know .+",
          header :regex "Subject" "^.+, you have .+waiting for you on LinkedIn$",
          header :regex "Subject" "see who you already know on LinkedIn$",
          header :regex "Subject" "^.+, more than [0-9,]+ new jobs in .+$",
          header :regex "Subject" "^Connect to your classmates from .+$"
        )
      ){
          addflag  "\\Seen";
          fileinto "Trash";
          stop;
      }
    

I'm sure you could do something similar for Facebook if you just switched to
email notifications and stopped using the mobile apps.

~~~
throwaway613834
Slight tangent, but any suggestions on how to do this kind of real-time
filtering with Gmail? The filter functionality doesn't quite let you do
regexes.

~~~
l-p
Imapfilter [1] would work.

It also uses regexes so it would be easy to convert mike-cardwell's rules.

[1]:
[https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter](https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter)

~~~
throwaway613834
Oh cool, thanks!

------
gk1
They also ensure there's ALWAYS at least one notification when you sign in.
Even if nothing of importance happened, they find _something_ to notify you
about just so you can see the red notification count every time.

I deactivated my account yesterday and look forward to a FB-free life.

~~~
Gaelan
Did you deactivate on purpose? Unless you still use Messenger or are
considering changing your mind, you should delete your account instead.
Deactivation just flips a bit; deletion actually removes your data.

~~~
pritambaral
> deletion actually removes your data

Keeping in mind that this is Facebook we are talking about, I doubt the data
is actually removed.

~~~
dannyw
GDPR means Facebook can face fines in the billions for not deleting data when
you delete your account

------
foxfired
Here is a perspective I read that I thought was interesting[1]:

"There are a billion active accounts on facebook and other than the 208 that
are set to private, I can communicate with every single one of them. I don't
know what other word I can use other then Power. This is great power, just
like the power held by the presidency, with great power comes great
responsibility, and loneliness.

The worst thing about Facebook is not the power it gives me. The worst thing
about facebook is what I chose to do with the power it gives me.

I certainly couldn't handle it. You might as well say the worst thing about
facebook is me.

On facebook, why would I give someone privacy when I have access to all this
information. And I don't even need their permission. I can watch your private
pictures because you made them available. It's not that I can find out where
you work, where you live, where you eat, everything about you. It's that I
actually do find out without ever hiring a private detective. It's not what I
can do, it's what I do!"

[1]: [https://idiallo.com/blog/facebook-and-
me](https://idiallo.com/blog/facebook-and-me)

------
otakucode
Lots of things we see as innocuous online would seem really weird, clingy,
abusive in other contexts. Imagine if every time you walked into a store
before you even looked at anything someone steps up right into your face and
says "Sign up for our newsletter!" Then you walk two steps and someone steps
up to you with a phone in their hand "Hey, call your friends and tell them you
love our store! We'll give you 5% off!" then a couple steps later a marketer
comes up to you "Hey, our advertising department wants your phone number so
they can call you up and just say something to you a few times a day!"

I just want to buy a damn pillow! (Don't forget to review it, your opinion is
important to the world! And the manufacturer would like to know how useful it
was to you but won't do anything if it wasn't!)

~~~
Pixeleen
Every postmodern retail shop in the US already does this. Have you been to a
Lush, Rituals, matress sales, or any clothing boutique lately? Their peppy,
pseudo-personal sales staff has a perfectly crafted script and they know it
cold. They'll interrupt me when I'm obviously happily browsing on my own.
"Just to let you know, everything in the back is 5% off, everything with a red
tag is 6% off, and if you sign up for our email newsletter today, we'll give
you $2 off. What is your name, by the way?" I want to ask them if there will
be a quiz on the material. They also ask for your phone number or email at
checkout. When I politely decline, they often act like that has never happened
before

------
proee
Perhaps the growth of the platform or certain internal user-based metrics are
not being met, so whoever is in charge of making sure they "hit their numbers"
is pushing like mad to find ways to grow product. I can see some very
aggressive people sitting around a table coming up with ideas to force
engagement. Then after a month, they sit back and figure out all the A/B
testing that drives the machine.

This reminds me of the quote, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology
of the cancer cell.”

~~~
Bartweiss
I keep expecting companies to suffer from this "hit your numbers" approach,
and it seems like they're starting to.

Every A/B test makes your site less predictable and straightforward for your
users. Every push notification dilutes the value of every other notification
sent. Every 'fake' event undermines the thrill of real engagement with other
users.

At a certain point you're burning real value to create better metrics, and
that's not sustainable for a company that actually wants to endure.

------
nulagrithom
As someone with maybe an "outside" perspective (I never got "in" to Facebook,
I never logged in with any regularity, I've posted once, and I essentially
have a blank profile), the "We haven’t heard from you in a while" thing is
what keeps from using the platform at all. I'm an "inbox zero" kind of person,
and there's so much noise on Facebook that I can't get any signal.

Every time I log in I somehow have around 6 notifications. Facebook _always_
finds something to notify me about. It's never a daunting number, but it's
never zero either. If I log in twice in a week, I'll have something under a
dozen notifications both days. So you'd think that after not logging in for 3
months I'd have dozens of notifications, right? Nope. Always some kind of
number that I imagine Facebook has decided is the ideal number of
notifications to keep me interested.

I've tried in vain to limit my notifications to things that I actually care
about, but I've never been able to get rid of the random noise. Facebook is
_determined_ to send me push notifications about _something_. I can't stand
it.

------
tbabb
It's official. I will never work for Facebook. In terms of hipness (lack of
it), positive impact (lack of it), and sliminess, this puts them on the same
shelf as Comcast for me. It also frames their ruinous impact on societal
discourse as "hostile" rather than just a "a naive and clumsy mistake".

For Facebook employees: Is this really the company you want to work for? Is
this the impact you want to have on the world? Is this really the best place
in society to apply your talents?

~~~
guftagu
No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible.

~~~
seppin
yeah plus $$$

------
indescions_2017
Unfortunately for $FB, they may have bigger fish to fry than user revolt over
cloying UX dark patterns.

The "Facebook reaches coveted non-existant people (NEP) demo" story would be
amusing, if it weren't symbolic of greater industry-wide risks concerning
click-fraud scrutiny.

But of greater concern as investigations into Russian meddling of the election
heat up, is that $FB profited enormously from microtargeted ads specifically
engineered as part of a program of mass psyops. With everyone looking for a
scapegoat, this could result in actual indictments.

Why Nobody Can Trust Facebook

[http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/why-nobody-can-
trus...](http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-11/why-nobody-can-trust-
facebook)

Facebook Wins, Democracy Loses

[https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/facebook-wins-
dem...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/opinion/facebook-wins-democracy-
loses.html)

------
inetknght
I haven't used Facebook for anything other than _chatting with family_ in more
than a year. I still get "notifications" about things that I literally could
not care any less about. Someone posted something on _their_ wall? I don't
fucking care! Someone said something and it got a lot of attention? I
literally hate that person, why are you telling me this?

And... you might tell me that I could just unsubscribe. Yeah. I did, multiple
times. The notifications still come. They just go to the spam bucket now.

Facebook is one of the worst "products" on the market and I'm pretty close to
telling family to find some other means of communicating with me. Like, you
know, a good old fashioned phone call.

~~~
lucaspiller
I'm in pretty much the same situation - the main reason why I use Facebook is
to message friends. Basically all my friends have Facebook, so it's the
easiest way.

Messenger seems to be moving more and more towards a snapchat clone, where as
I just want something to message people. I don't want to post updates, play
games, see ads, make phone calls, get spammed when someone new signs up.

iMessage before iOS 10 was perfect, except not all my friends use Apple.

------
penglish1
There probably should be a robot that responds about Facebook posts "you
aren't the customer, you are the product."

The article is pretty careful to use the term user - undoubtedly we are users.

But here is the problematic statement:

"This is what happens when the metric of how much time users spend using your
thing supersedes the goal of providing legitimate value to your users."

The thing is - sure, the user time spent is measured, and "providing
legitimate value" is not. How would one measure that, exactly?

But - more importantly - the metric, the ONLY metric, that really really
matters is revenue. From real paying customers - ie: advertisers, some alluded
to in the article.

So that is the one for which all optimizations are directed - via the indirect
metric of "user engagement" where "user engagement is a pretty good proxy for
"users see ads" and perhaps "users click on ads."

It does not appear that "providing legitimate value" is part of any of that,
nor is there any reason that it ever would be.

IFF sufficient value could be provided that people would actually pay money
just to use Facebook, so much money that it dwarfs all other forms of revenue
(and perhaps even anti-correlates with ad revenue).... THEN we'll see Facebook
focussed on user value. But not until then.

~~~
duderific
I've always thought would be interesting to create a survey that would ask FB
users: what is the maximum amount they would pay per month to use Facebook?
What is it really worth to them? Or, would they continue to use it if it was
$10/month? How about 50 cents?

~~~
thundergolfer
Check this article out. Cites a study that puts the estimated annual value of
Facebook to study participants @ $750!

[https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/2172707...](https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21727073-economists-struggle-work-out-how-much-free-economy-comes-
cost)

------
joeblau
I can't even get to Facebook anymore on any of my devices. On all of my Macs,
my `/etc/hosts` file includes:

    
    
      0.0.0.0    facebook.com
      0.0.0.0    www.facebook.com
    

And then to double down, I have a custom 1Blocker rule to prevent accidentally
opening up any Facebook links on my iPhone:

    
    
      https?://([a-z\.]*)?facebook\.com.*

~~~
makecheck
I’ve done something similar but technically that only prevents you from
visiting the main site.

If you want to be really shocked you should search for some of the host files
out there that attempt to list every known Facebook-owned host; there are
hundreds of lines or more. It is _extremely_ difficult to prevent Facebook
tentacles from being loaded by other sites, and it’s surely a losing battle (I
bet they register new domains daily).

~~~
joeblau
I've already got that covered[1].

    
    
      …/~ cat /etc/hosts | wc -l
      50773
    

[1] -
[https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts](https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts)

------
jventura
As a small part of a larger change in my personal life, I've also decided to
delete my facebook account as well as Linkedin and other social media
accounts. Basically I was in the need for a mental break.

Too much mental stimulation, specially from things that don't have much
interest, was making my mind very shallow and easily distracted. I still read
a lot of HN, but I'm trying to reduce my internet leisure time to 1 hour per
day at most.

Since now I easily get bored, I started doing some sudokus (on a paper book)
and I am finally starting to feel my mind a little bit sharper. I also feel
the need to find more productive things to pass the time. For instance, three
days ago I explored, quite in depth, C pointers and pointer arithmetic because
of the first comment on this hn thread [0]. Also, yesterday, starting on the
hn thread on microkernels [1], I started reading about these "alternative"
OSes (Minix, HelenOS, etc), checked the source code of some of them, and
eventually played a bit with nasm assembler and made a 32 bit and 64 bit
"hello world" app for MacOS. These are things that I wouldn't learn and do if
I was being mentally "stimulated" by facebook and that kind of things.

However, one positive thing about facebook is that those friends that used to
send emails with funny memes, videos and what else, now use facebook for that.
As a result, my email inbox is now much cleaner and calmer.. :)

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15198093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15198093)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15216615](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15216615)

~~~
vmateixeira
Thanks for sharing your experience! :)

Funny now that you mention.. I've been doing less and less side projects since
my life got 'invaded' by social media. I wonder if I'm suffering from a
similar problem...

------
Y7ZCQtNo39
I think so many platforms these days employ so many attention-grabbing
techniques, that they wear down people. So now they have to go to the bottom
of the barrel, notifying you for things that aren't really notifications --
the fact that you haven't posted in a week, for example.

The content quality is abysmal. People simply do not care to share on Facebook
in ways that they have in the past. Their awful algorithm ruined the user
value.

I think if they returned to a default chronological sorted news feed, with
still sprinkling in ads as they do, they could increase the amount of time
people spend on the service, show more ads, and increase revenue all while
providing a superior experience. Why they don't return to this level of
simplicity that the platform once had is beyond me. Too many engineers and too
many PM's pushing for their pet projects, I assume, and you really just end up
with an overdeveloped product.

------
psweber
If you want to delete Facebook from your phone but your friends use Facebook
Events, there is a stand alone Events app. That being said, I wish my friends
didn't use Facebook for events.

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/events-from-facebook-find-
th...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/events-from-facebook-find-things-to-do-
near-you/id1153443320?mt=8)

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.S...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.Socal&hl=en)

~~~
milcron
Better yet, use the [https://mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com)
website designed for feature phones. It doesn't even require javascript!

------
tomc1985
I'm beginning to wonder if our ability to sympathize only serves to advance
the agendas of those who want to make money on us. Facebook's pushiness is and
should always be held as unacceptable, in all circumstances and for all
people.

"I sympathize that the company needs business users to keep it afloat" does
not justify the kind of begging they've been up to lately.

The author's (and all our) collective sympathy keeps them soliciting us with
their bullshit

~~~
tenpies
> I'm beginning to wonder if our ability to sympathize only serves to advance
> the agendas of those who want to make money on us.

Using your adversary's virtues against them is a strategy as old as humanity.
With social media it's baked right into the name. Who doesn't want to be
social? Who doesn't want to share? Is something wrong with you?

------
fumar
I deleted my Facebook account a few years ago and quickly found that it
provided little value to my everyday. I would say longer term, as friends had
kids, I missed some of the "social bonding" experience via the web, but din't
miss anything in person. A month ago my phone died and as a test, I didn't
install Instagram. Instagram was the last FB connection. I always defended
Instagram to myself. It didn't require as much attention as FB and barrier to
entry was low (post some pics sometimes). In the last year Instagram has
shifted more towards the FB notification style and adopted more Snap features.
My feed became filled with ads, stories gained dominance, and notifications
became persistent. I figured that is sufficient mental intrusion to warrant my
departure.

As a heavily connected individual, work in tech, I find that disconnecting
does alleviate mental baggage. I have gained more time to read and that brings
me more joy than scanning an insta-feed.

------
minimaxir
Another notification type not mentioned in the article is "you last updated
your profile X weeks ago."

This one is _worse_ because it also uses the _iOS /OSX notifications system_
for maximum passive aggressiveness:
[https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/887740777031278592](https://twitter.com/minimaxir/status/887740777031278592)

~~~
choward
The one that finally did it for me was the "Do you know x?" notification that
I couldn't disable.

------
nametube
Something i've noticed recently is that my feed is flooded with the "x has
become friends with y" type of notifications. I literally see 5-10 of them in
a row, they make for a very monotonous feed experience. I think its supposed
to be a nudge for me to add co-workers and acquaintances to facebook.

~~~
striking
They're running out of things to notify you about. I've recently been getting
a lot of "X updated their status", where X is someone who I've recently
chatted with or whose status I've liked within the past month.

It's silly, but I suppose it's worked on some people.

~~~
badwolf
"x commented on {totally unrelated y}'s status" ... 6 days ago -_-

------
bambax
I've never been on Facebook but I have a few fake accounts. Those accounts
don't have photos, never posted anything, never friended anyone, never even
connected to anybody, etc. Yet they constantly get new "friends requests" and
pokes and whatnot.

Why would any real person want to be friend with a ghost fake account?

Facebook is not only "needy", it's a big bullshit engine.

~~~
Bartweiss
Those prompts almost certainly aren't Facebook-run. Too much effort and risk,
no real need.

Rather, Facebook has a huge number of scammers. A few might be scamming _you_
, but mostly they're from clickfarms that are trying to increase 'organic'
behaviors so their accounts won't be banned.

------
poushkar
What really pissed me off recently, is that after deleting my FB account,
whenever I login with email/password to a web site where I previously
connected my FB (Spotify, for example), it _restores_ my FB account without
asking me and tells about it to my FB friends. Why the hell does it even keep
a list of friends if I _deleted_ the whole thing?.

------
aetherson
Facebook has notified me once a day of "2 new notifications and 1 message" for
the account I created in order to access a developer tool once and I think
once clicked one "like" for several months ago. I've never put any more
information in than the bare minimum necessary to create an account, never
posted, never done anything.

I get that they've essentially tapped out the market for users, but jesus
christ, take a rest Facebook.

~~~
KGIII
So far, I've only had to miss one opportunity from not having a Facebook
account. Err... I've never had one. Even then, I could still have that
opportunity, it'd just take a bit more work and can't be done online.

I guess that I'm trying to say that it's possible to not have social media
accounts and still function in the digital world. I know others who don't have
accounts but I'm going to call them passive users of the web.

------
tankenmate
For those who want to go a step further and block all Facebook traffic on
their Linux machine

# for net in $(whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS32934' | grep '^route:'
| sed -e 's/.* //') ; do ipset add block-facebook-ips $net ; done

and if you have ipset-presistent

# /etc/init.d/ipset-persistent save

The same for IPv6 is left as an exercise for the reader.

------
fiatjaf
It's much better to not have a Facebook account. After a while you get used to
that feeling of not knowing what people are up to, but then you realize your
life isn't negative because of that.

There's probably someone in your circle of friends and family that isn't using
Facebook, so your friends and family are already used to reach to that person
through other means.

Also, every time you meet friends and family you'll have things to talk about.

------
NearAP
Apart from the core message that the author was trying to push across, I
immediately noticed that names/faces of family/friends were not masked. I
personally wouldn't like it if someone put out my information this way. I
think that is breaching someone else's privacy.

------
tucif
"I’m likely not going to delete Facebook entirely since I do genuinely enjoy
staying in touch with the people in my life, and for better or worse Facebook
is where those people hang out"

Is it likely that most people are willing to move and the only problem is
there are no compelling options?

~~~
dreamcompiler
No option is compelling until everybody you know is on it. And there is no
such option besides FB.

~~~
acidburnNSA
If there was an easy way to automatically process email address changes in
your address book and have links to people photoblogs (like RSS) it seems like
all the key features would be there. A decentralized email based event manager
would be nice. Does Lightning do that, I wonder?

~~~
bootsz
Not email-based, but I'm keeping my eye on ActivityPub from W3C:
[https://activitypub.rocks](https://activitypub.rocks) . Seems to be a step in
the right direction

------
Jedd
I still don't quite get why people (especially alleged news sources) post
pictures of a twitter box, rather than just say _' User NoodleHead on twitter
is quoted as saying "I don't like this"'_.

This feels like a not-so-gentle manipulation.

Some guy, who might be sitting next to you on the bus right now, said
something on twitter, but that's now news because it's got their @IGN, their
actual name (or maybe not), a weirdly formatted date string, the numbers '1'
and '6' adjacent to icons at the bottom of the box, a 'Follow' button so you
can forever be bombarded with more nuggets of wisdom from this person you
don't know, all inside a box that doesn't even have rounded corners.

------
gourou
> you’ve shared x days in a row and your friends are responding

A month ago, FB's first senior software engineer was saying on the Internet
History Podcast that FB would never create useless features/tactics to bring
users to the platform like the Snapchat streak. Listen here, 27:20 mark.
[http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2017/08/facebooks-
firs...](http://www.internethistorypodcast.com/2017/08/facebooks-first-senior-
software-engineer-karel-baloun)

~~~
staticelf
lol. This is just so lol. Good find. Thanks!

------
jordwest
Years ago I wrote a Chrome extension to block the news feed [1] so I could
keep using it without losing my sanity.

Recently though, I've noticed that Facebook seems to be moving what was once
in the news feed to notifications. Now that they've spoiled the feed with
useless information - the notifications box is the next exploit.

The cognitive overload from using Facebook is now so high for me that I almost
never visit the site. Once a daily user of Facebook, now deleting my account
would hardly affect me. If I have a choice, I always prefer to communicate
with friends over anything but Facebook.

I believe Facebook's constant neediness will eventually be the demise of the
platform. The mindless profit driven motives for constant engagement are
harmful not only to its users, but society, and the company itself. I wrote
more about this here: [https://blog.west.io/2016/11/30/the-birth-and-death-of-
faceb...](https://blog.west.io/2016/11/30/the-birth-and-death-of-facebook/).

[1] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-
eradicat...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/news-feed-eradicator-
for/fjcldmjmjhkklehbacihaiopjklihlgg?hl=en)

------
greymeister
I deleted my thefacebook.com account in 2008 when the daily privacy rollbacks
were the rage du jour. The chief reason was that 90% of the content I was
seeing was who received a banana in Mafia wars, which in retrospect is
annoying but relatively benign.

------
nikki-9696
Since they changed the timeline to the point where it's impossible for me to
see things in reverse chronological order (even if I try to tell it to), I've
unfollowed EVERYTHING, set up notifications for the few family members whose
posts I don't want to miss, and mostly quit using it for anything but family.
I'm so tired of all the ads and marketing crap. I was missing posts I cared
about and just seeing crap every day. No thanks.

------
ranveeraggarwal
The Facebook app is an abomination. It takes up all your battery, caches all
it wants, needs access to every permission my phone has to offer and those
goddamn notifications.

And it's not just Facebook. Every platform these days has been spamming with
notifications. Quora's infamous un-turn-off-able x upvoted an answer after
seeing your upvote or your Facebook friend y is now on quora, welcome him by
sacrificing a goat to the mighty God Ra. Irritating.

------
bbatha
My favorite is a _push notification_ to the effect of, "You haven't posted in
N weeks. Would you like to post something?" The first time I got it it was
annoying. Then it kept happening weekly, by the third time I deleted the app.

------
Yhippa
Can you imagine being a product manager at Facebook?

You are competing against other product managers and people at the company to
be a rising star or to get that big bonus. You are rated on the code that
makes it to production and it's lift.

I can't imagine the scheming that goes on to get your stuff into the website
or app. All in the name of drawing in more advertisers or people who will pay
for the data.

------
vasilakisfil
Facebook is just dying and they know that from their internal metrics long
time now so these features have been developed to save the engagement because
otherwise facebook's stock value will plange.

~~~
simonswords82
I was about to say exactly the same thing. This stinks of desperation on
Facebook's part to keep their metrics swinging up and to the right. They are
acutely aware that any levelling off in these metrics will have a knock on
effect for their share price.

Whilst I don't use Facebook, and dislike the social impact that Facebook has
brought about (acknowledging the amazing precedents Facebook has set too of
course) I do wonder how they get around this. There are only so many humans on
the planet that they can play these engagement tricks on. The number of new
users and amount of engagement will have to level off at some point.

I'd love to hear what Facebook plan to do to continue to "grow" in the the
sense that shareholders are kept happy when they reach this saturation point.

------
dgudkov
It's far not the first time when Facebook is using cheap manipulative tricks.
I remember when I only registered on Facebook for the first time, its contact
suggestions were mostly females (I'm a guy) in a proportion way more than I
actually have females on my contact list or in my social circles. Manipulation
is deeply in Facebook's DNA.

------
wutbrodo
I generally find that people are too quick to point to features as
"manipulation" when they actually have benefit to the user as well: I saw this
feature for the first time this morning, and my immediate reaction was mild
disgust. I can't think of a single way this is remotely beneficial to me,
which makes it just pure manipulation to increase engagement.

Facebook truly is the poster child for sleazy tech company: I can't think of
any point during their existence where they stood for anything but cold,
exploit-the-user amorality, as opposed to (e.g.) Google's traditional "only
earn profit by creating value" and Apple's "bring your vision to the world
because it needs it"[1].

[1] I don't even like Apple as a company, but I do believe that company
culture is rooted in prosocial motivations at some level, which is something I
have never thought about Facebook.

------
ve55
It's interesting the large amount of regulations that are involved with
gambling, due to how addictive and potentially harmful it is.

Facebook seems to be one of the few things even more addictive than gambling.
What is one of the only things humans value more than money? Attention, love,
affection, friendship, relationships...

~~~
gragas
>large amount of regulations that are involved with gambling, due to how
addictive and potentially harmful it is.

Regulation in the gambling industry is not there to protect you. It's there to
enforce monopoly.

------
DonHopkins
When Facebook's sound for getting a chat message was a "pop", I could imitate
it pretty well with my mouth, and trick my friends into checking their
messages.

------
briffle
I think one of the more interesting things in this article is that I read this
line, and it sounded 'normal'

    
    
       "I can appreciate the businesses paying for posts keeps the big blue ship afloat" 
    

It seems so natural, until you think about who used to be called "Big Blue"..

------
dmalvarado
I removed Facebook from my phone because I didn't like how impulsively I was
using it at any moment of waiting or downtime.

It was hard-ish at first, and it took a lot of "Do I or Don't I?" before I
actually did it. I didn't delete my account or anything, so I could still
check it from home, but as time went on and I was _only_ able to check it from
home, I would frequently find myself thinking, "wow, there's really not much
good here." which is one of those things that only occurs to you after taking
time away from it.

I realized I replaced my Facebook habit with an Instagram habit, so I deleted
that too. The only remaining distraction is Reddit, but I've never been as
impulsively hooked into Reddit as I was the other two.

When people say that it's better without Facebook, they're not kidding. You
should try it.

------
ck425
Today I finished unfollowing everything on my fb feed. Now it's just 5 or 6
ads, some relevant, some not. I'm curious to see if this cures the addiction.

------
orbitingpluto
Once upon a time I had a Dell Streak mobile, carrier locked. Without rooting
there was no way to remove the default Facebook app. It would keep asking for
you to log in. There was nothing you could do. If you dismissed the login
activity it would just respawn within two minutes.

------
hellofunk
Since FB got Instagram under the belt, it's no less annoying. On the mobile
app, I've turned off all notifications, because why? If I want to check in on
my Instagram apps, I'll open the app myself, thank you very much. No need to
litter my screen with that stuff. But guess what? The app of course knows if
you have notifications turned off, and there is no way whatsoever to get the
app to stop bothering you about this when you open. Every time, it asks me why
I don't have notifications turned on, and does so in a half-screen-sized
banner that is obnoxious. No matter what I do, this never tops appearing until
I turn on notifications again.

~~~
Chaebixi
I don't know about iOS, but I think it recent versions of Android you can
suppress notifications from an app at the OS level? Does it nag you about
that?

------
Paul-ish
Lately Facebook has been pestering me to enable notifications in my browser
nearly every time I visit. This is an anti-patern as I suspect once I accept
notifications, it is hard to remove. Some services just fatigue their users
into opting in.

------
BinaryIdiot
I also get this quite frequently. I setup a Facebook page for a side project
of mine that I hope to turn into a sort of side business and I wanted to make
sure the name didn't get taken. I get notifications almost EVERY SINGLE DAY
that my page won't be visible unless I add more stuff to it. I literally got 3
emails a few days ago, in the same day, saying the same thing for my page.

I feel forced to use Facebook to keep up with friends and family but I
absolutely hate using it the entire time and I try to avoid it where possible.
It's just amazing how spammy it's gotten and how their popularity continues to
just go up.

------
thestephen
I've recently received several friend requests a day from spambots. This is
annoying, but I can just ignore the "friend request" tab and go on with my
life.

However, as if it wasn't a nuisance enough, Facebook now gives me plain
notifications of these friend requests in my normal notification feed.
"Spambot is new to Facebook and just sent you a friend request."

I'd switch to only Messenger, but Facebook seems to think that I don't have
Messenger, so I keep receiving invites to install Messenger from my friends as
it covers half their conversation with me with that notification.

~~~
vthallam
I get these too. But for some reason, I believe it might be facebook which is
doing A/B testing by sending friend requests from random bots to people whose
activity is very less. The friend requests are usually from the opposite
gender apparently.

------
vincnetas
"This is what happens when the metric of how much time users spend using your
thing supersedes the goal of providing legitimate value to your users."

Don't forget, you are not the user, you are the product ;)

------
brailsafe
I held out on Messenger for a very long time for the reason that it required
way too many permissions upon installation. I was not going to give FB access
to my camera, file storage, location, microphone, contacts, etc. No thanks.
I've never had the FB app installed. For a while I was checking my messages
via the FB website requesting desktop mode or via the desktop browser. I also
used to be a big opponent of notifications. Once three things aligned, namely
granular permission granting for Messenger, a person I cared to actually chat
with enough, and my realization that the only value I got out of FB was in
messages, I installed Messenger. Still being the opponent to notifications
that I am, I only turned on push notifications for a few select people. No
sounds or lights or any other bullshit. Surprisingly, I'm way happier with
this setup. I'm far less likely to check FB. I'm not habitually checking for
messages from the few people I care about, in general now I feel more control,
and I'm not annoyed. I found the result surprising. Occasionally I'll log in
to FB and take a look at what's going on, but aside from the skating vidyas
it's mostly vacuous crap. In hindsight this all makes sense. Increase the
valuable communication between users, give them more control and they'll be
happier (at least in my case). Who would've guessed?

------
quadrangle
Everyone needs to understand one simple fact:

The PRIMARY use of Facebook should be to post about stuff like this,
explaining all the ways Facebook is unethical.

Note: write something like "I saw this article that really made me think… and
you should get in touch with offline to learn more about what's going on in my
life" and no link. Then you can link to this article in the comments. Facebook
has decided that links that get people to leave Facebook are bad, so you have
to pretend your post is about something personal.

------
noisy_boy
I deleted my facebook account last year and haven't looked back. It was a
great decision.

However, I don't think me (and may others in this thread) are a big cause of
worry for facebook. While tech-savvy/privacy-aware users are leaving facebook
in greater numbers, their absolute percentage is a fraction of the gigantic
market of users in the developing world.

The developing world is a huge pie for facebook that is totally primed for
taking. Majority of people in that group have absolutely no qualms about
happily sharing private information (if at all any awareness of them being the
product). In such a demographic, the social/economic/caste divide has been so
wide and entrenched that facebook is seen as something that breaks barriers.
People from lower socio-economic strata who have always been treated poorly by
the privileged can now buy a cheap Android smartphone and be on the same
platform of the people they serve and communicate as equals. They used to look
aspirationally at the privileged sitting in air-conditioned shops sipping
coffee while browsing smartphones - now they can (atleast partially) fulfill
the fantasy.

They have all the time in the world, they love the notifications and they are
eager to share. Our leaving barely makes a dent.

------
rottyguy
I'm seriously puzzled how reddit isn't eating facebook's lunch. the content is
light years better (and is upstream for much of the facebook feeds I
eventually see)

~~~
eduren
I am an avid redditor with a mostly dead facebook account, so I agree that the
content is better, but it's different networks entirely. Reddit has still held
on to its psuedo-anonymous roots, and thus hasn't lived up to the "social"
part of the social network. The people still consumuning content on facebook
are doing so because that's where their friends are.

You know the people that feel a need to tag their friends in a comment on
funny posts? That's the kind of user that reddit hasn't been able to convert.
Whether reddit wants or should try to garner that traffic/content is a choice
they need to make, but the site is doing fine regardless.

~~~
utexaspunk
I think the bigger issue is why FB hasn't been able to create the kind of
conversations that reddit does- the lack of real threading and the lack of a
true downvote (preferably anonymous) keep conversations on FB abysmally
superficial. You can't engage in a debate with someone if the back-and-forth
gets impossible to follow after the second reply, especially with more than
two participants. Likewise, FB and users have no idea whether people disagree
with a post or are simply ignoring it; or on something like a critical
article, whether a user agrees with an article and it's the article's subject
which makes them angry or the user disagrees with the article and the post
itself makes them angry. FB, with its status as the defacto social network
could be a place where people have real constructive discussions, but instead
its inability to foster real dialogue has a lot to do with the current
stupidity of political discourse and the problems with reality bubbles and
whatnot.

~~~
Nition
Reddit's system has its issues too. Early comments always get more votes and
have more sway than later ones, and the "reality bubble" effect is worse
because the general consenses upvotes posts that agree with their opinion and
downvotes ones that disagree - effectively hiding them whether they're
factually correct or not.

Hacker News is much better than Reddit in general for allowing comments on
both sides of an issue to be heard, but it's not perfect either. I think it
benefits from not being able to see the number of votes on someone's post
because it removes that way of checking the previous hive consensus. I'm not
sure I even like the greying effect on heavy downvotes.

The best real discussion (especially for ongoing topics and events) I've seen
is still on old-school forums like SomethingAwful. The barriers to entry help
($10 on SomethingAwful, 500 points to downvote on Hacker News) but I think
Discourse went too far in that direction, where anti-spam limits can make it
hard for new users to even write a good post or respond when they want to. I'd
like to see a modern forum site where anyone can create a subforum and
moderate it themselves the way anyone can create a subreddit on Reddit.

~~~
zepolen
> I'd like to see a modern forum site where anyone can create a subforum and
> moderate it themselves the way anyone can create a subreddit on Reddit.

Isn't that...Reddit?

~~~
Nition
Reddit is very geared towards short-term discussion. Top comments on a post
are usually from the first couple of hours and posts last less than a day. For
long-term discussion traditional forums with chronological posts and threads
that get re-bumped to the top are still king.

~~~
zepolen
Meh sounds like Reddit just needs a sort by 'weight' option that sorts by
amount of comments.

~~~
Nition
That's quite different if I'm reading your meaning correctly. That type of
system tends to result in the biggest threads staying at the top and getting
bigger and bigger while new ones never appear.

~~~
zepolen
Weight can mean anything, freshness of nested posts eg.

------
larodi
Facebook is/was important step in the evolution of our understanding for
social interaction and what is import as information and what not. The
complete exhaustion of the moving force behind FB is needed for us to
transcend into the next hyper-dense digital-society.

There's a saying that 'many things fly, only few are edible', and
understanding FB is fundamentally understanding this principle.

I doubt the service will ever completely disappear, but its high time it gets
marginalized (at least in developed societies) the same way TV is marginalized
as FB is essentially the same programmed stream of bullshit, that you don't
normally need in your life.

Understanding what the author understood in his article is a cathartic moment,
that besides other things, has something to do with the conscious decision to
actually consume what you want and not what you were given. This means focus.

Dropping out of FB and similar means of "social presence" is essentially
taking back control over where you are going in terms of information being
consumed by oneself.

Of course it will feel liberating to not feed oneself with irrelevant
information. It doesn't mean stopping being social, but re-evaluating what
socialization effectively means.

------
blahedo
Reading the comments here reconfirms that I had a good idea not using the FB
_app_ on my phone—using inside Firefox it is, of necessity, less pushy. If you
want to use FB messages without the crapfest, note that using the url mbasic
dot facebook dot com will get you a text-minimalist version of the site
(designed for very old mobiles) where you can receive messages without the
app. (No push notifications, but afaic that's a feature.)

------
reikonomusha
I'm sure Facebook, the company, enjoys posts like these:

1\. Complain a whole lot about the state of affairs with FB,

2\. Say "but I still like FB and will probably keep using it"

3\. Propose no alternatives to the status quo.

I think this post underscores the fact that FB really didn't have anything to
lose doing these things. In fact, these things caused some mildly annoyed
users to write lengthy blog posts about FB to give the company even more
attention attention and mental time.

------
imron
Not going to comment on the article, but I liked the contrast of text and
background on that site. It's nice to see something that is not grey on light
grey.

------
musage
> it seems strange and disturbing to talk to regular users like they’re all
> marketeers

It doesn't surprise me, not anymore. A lot of marketing is getting high on its
own supply, as in, they actually somewhat believe what they are saying; even
if they're not believing the euphemisms they put out externally, they still
have euphemisms internally they are really not thinking through.

The other explanation is A/B testing, which would be even more sad.

------
xnet
The best thing I did was uninstall the official Facebook app and replace it
with Friendly. The features like having most recent posts as defaults and no
ads are nice (paid feature) but I also like it because the UI feels a bit
clunky so I use it less. I don't seem to have a lot of the BS anymore and
notifications are off and I'm feeling better not glued to the app anymore.

------
3JPLW
Cache/Mirror/Ctrl-F: [http://archive.is/LFRxq](http://archive.is/LFRxq)

------
moepstar
I wonder when the majority of the people will get fed up and leave, like, when
have they pushed everyone over the edge and the last person on earth has
gotten the hint that Facebook is just a massive timesink with some social
sprinkled on...

I, for one, have just logged out and never logged in for a solid 3 months now
and haven't looked back.

------
samblr
Im glad that im not on facebook. 20 years ago, facebook could be equivalent of
sitting in street and checking on what others are
doing/liking/commenting/ranting/watching. Nutsos.

And even for that matter i ve stopped limited use of twitter. As i see some of
good classmates have become kind of trolls on few topics.

------
andreasgonewild
I have one word for Facebook: Myspace; and it's not a second to early for that
bunch of scheming zuckers.

------
sandov
Every time I see news about facebook I feel better about the fact that I
deleted my account several months ago.

------
georgebarnett
Interesting in this context that they killed the groups app so as to bring
people back into the main app.

Makes me wonder if the real reason is that so many people got sick of "normal"
Facebook when all they wanted is to use groups that engagement suffered and
they needed to bring everybody back.

~~~
sssparkkk
I don't think groups was that successful, was it?

~~~
georgebarnett
No idea about the app, but the service itself is hugely popular. From what I
can tell, there's a huge iceberg of hidden group activity that we don't see.

------
Nursie
I find it interesting that they guy is talking about tweaks, hooks and pokes
to keep you interested, and the whole trying-to-expose-you-to-new-stuff
phenomenon... but I find it all makes fb less appealing.

I check it a couple of times a day now I guess. Never allowed it to get its
mitts on my phone, though, web use only. More and more of my feed is "Your
friend X liked some inconsequential response by Y on a boring post by Z" where
I don't even know who Y and Z are.

It may be that my friends are gravitating away and posting less - I certainly
am - but I suspect if it is then it's part of a big feedback loop initiated by
facebook trying to become a news source rather than just a place to share
everyday happenstance and a few pictures with friends.

------
DesiLurker
Btw has anyone tried alternate social networks like ello. at the launch it
seemd like a good idea (having privacy protections in the company charter).
honestly I'd be happy to pay FB something like 100 bucks a year for a just
leave me alone, no-ads/no-tracking version.

~~~
corobo
Registered my desired username there in case it took off, found a single
friend there (who was also doing the same thing), haven't been back since.

It looks like it's done a pivot since the last time I was there, going by the
new onboarding process asking me if I'm an artist or a fan.

------
KozmoNau7
I have no idea what I did, but I don't get any of that nonsense.

I have all notifications turned off in the app, I've disabled all email except
if someone explicitly mentions me by name in a discussion (I should probably
switch off that one, too) and I've made an effort to hide all kinds of stupid
apps and games and pages that are nothing but time wasters. I also only like
and follow pages that I have a genuine interest in (such as concert venues and
bands I love).

Sure, there's a token notice from time to time ("why not repost a picture from
7 years ago?" and so on), but I find them easy to ignore.

Once you beat Facebook into submission, it becomes a reasonably useful tool.

~~~
danielh
Maybe they are collecting enough data about you that they don't feel the need
to bother you. Are you signed in to Facebook in your primary browser? Do you
have the mobile app running in the background?

Since I've signed out of Facebook on my PC and kill the mobile Facebook app
while not using it, I tend to get multiple push notifications per day, most of
them asking if I know some random person.

My girlfriend, who is on Facebook daily, has never seen any of these
notifications.

~~~
KozmoNau7
Possibly. Or maybe whatever they have is so boring they can't be bothered to
ask me for more. I share very little personal stuff on Facebook. Actually none
at all, now that I think about it. Most of my profile is empty.

------
sigi45
Yepp Facebook is more or less a big Machine Learning Apperatus tuning in on
user brain grabbing.

Like a cheap TV Channel or a Casino and similar crap.

Yes i still use Facebook but only to chat to people. It replaced icq and i
don't wan't to lose my contacts :(.

------
malloreon
Please don't use facebook. it is bad for you.

------
wambotron
I don't find it difficult to be a casual user. I've disabled all email and
notifications from them. I look at it maybe once every 2 weeks. There's
nothing really ever on it aside from a band mentioning they're touring again.
All the other stuff is just noise. Photos of babies, photos of people at
landmarks, shared news articles and outrageous comments.

That's why I only look every couple weeks, though. There's nothing worth
looking at on the site. I probably should delete it, to be honest. I never
post and I rarely find something worth looking at.

------
tagurit
The appeal of getting likes, making numerous amounts of friends, sharing
awesome posts, etc. is lost within the pile of nonsense that fills up the feed
every single day. it's simply not cool any more. At least on other platforms I
can follow a catered list of people that I find worthwhile. And the number of
followers mean much more. Facebook is just a jumbled mess right now. The only
thing it's good for is making it easier to keep in contact with others that
phone numbers can't do. Notifications are facebooks way of trying to encourage
engagement I think

------
basicplus2
I have an old phone with only the facebook app installed on it so i dont have
to log in.

Facebook is permanently quarantined

It sits on a desk closed up and never comes with me when i am out.

i look at once week at most to see if i need to respond to anything.

------
asciimo
On a meta note, I really like the design on the OP's site. The interactive SVG
circles is a nice touch, and trying to color them all in with my pointer was
almost as satisfying as popping bubble wrap.

~~~
dghf
I wasted a few enjoyable minutes doing just that. Then I realised that if I
revisited a circle I'd already coloured in, it would change colour. The
thought leaped into my head: "Can I make all of them _the same colour_?"

I realised I was standing on the edge of the abyss, and closed the page.

------
kbos87
It feels like growth tactic desperation levels have hit a new high. The
interesting thing is that it isn't just limited to tiny startups trying to
grab market share as this type of language once was - Facebook seems to have
no hesitation to just flat out beg for usage.

Personally, it comes off to me as desperate and presumptuous. They seem to
have come to the conclusion that most users see value in getting "engagement"
on Facebook, even in a nebulous and non-specific sense.

------
squiggy22
I went cold turkey a while back, never looked back. Facebook is the digital
equivalent of opening the fridge & staring inside, even though you're not
hungry.

------
gotbeans
What kills this platform is entities other than people participating. I ignore
anything else of facebook baits for posting/visiting.

In the beginning I added artists and maybe some companies I fancied: that's a
huge mistake. FB is only an ad framework for these entities and they are going
to occupy 100% of your feed.

You erase all that and I started to see some friends doing stuff again, which
is nice. I still think tho the algorithm to generate your feed is real s __*.

------
alanh
[https://twitter.com/janamjohnson/status/900372990881402880](https://twitter.com/janamjohnson/status/900372990881402880)
(linked from the article) is dead. Does anyone have a saved or cached copy of
the image in this tweet? Or a similar screen shot? I don't have Facebook, so I
haven't seen this engagement email

------
Void_
Before, I checked Facebook like 50 times a day. Now I check it once a day.

It was so easy to make the change! Facebook is just a habit, a bad habit, but
it's easy to break.

------
HillaryBriss
people respond to sincerity. once you've learned to fake that, you've got it
made.

facebook teaches us to be sincere to others because facebook cares. it really
does.

------
bronz
i have never had a facebook account. seeing everyone agonize over the pros and
cons of using facebook is ridiculous to me. is it better on a phone? with or
without notifications? are my privacy settings dialed in? facebook is
genuinely useless, if you agonize over how its so bad but also so good, just
stop using it. if someone is really your friend, you can keep up with what
their current email and phone number is.

------
inv
All the tactics described in the article fall into the category called
"growth".

Facebook has specialized Growth teams that come up with features like that in
order to move metrics such as retention, signups, active advertisers.

It's one of the reasons Facebook is so successful and the number of people
using it daily keeps growing, as well as revenue and stock price.

I believe most tech companies have teams 100% focused on growth.

------
skc
Is it that hard to ignore your Facebook feed?

I don't understand the people that find peace only after deleting the whole
app from their phones.

I've had a FB account since inception and it has loads of people in it. Yet I
probably look at facebook a maximum of maybe 10 times a year because I'm able
to mentally compartmentalize the people there into groups of "important" and
"not important"

------
tanilama
Hate this kinda of self-righteous, so called growth hacking gimmick, it is
borderline distraction, worse case harassment. It is cancer, please stop.

------
komali2
Off topic, but jesus check out this guys' clients: Exxon, Time, TechCrunch,
about.com. He's sitting on a motherload of a portfolio.

------
sparaker
Checking up on your friends and family once a week is good enough for most
people, Facebook will try to lure you to check it every 4 hours.

------
carlmungz
Deleted Facebook in 2011 and I've never looked back. I've got a faceless
account with no personal data whatsoever I use for social log-ins but that's
it. It's popular to bash social networks but I think it's probably more
effective to thoroughly educate users on the tactics used by social networks
to keep users hooked.

------
makecheck
It’s been over a month or so since I logged in and I received an apparently-
real E-mail trying to “help me log back in to Facebook”. I thought, _oh the
gall to act like that’s the reason I am not there right now_. They’re seeming
increasingly desperate-and-therefore-creepy lately and it’s not encouraging me
to return.

------
sqldba
Yes! Thank you! This crap has been driving me crazy lately and I'm so glad I'm
not the only one.

------
jeandejean
Yet another post on that subject... It's so disappointing that there are still
people discovering life without Facebook when they should have uninstalled it
long ago. They're very late in that process since sooo many have done it and
written about it in thorough details.

~~~
corobo
It's disappointing that people are doing the thing you want them to do? What
else would you like, them to hop into a time machine and do it at the right
time too? :P

------
periya
Deactivated my Facebook account last week and it's been one of the best things
I've done. No more mindlessly logging in, I still use messenger to communicate
with a couple of my friends who use it.

------
symbolepro
I also deleted facebook app from my mobile 2 weeks ago. And I feel better.
Although, sometimes I could not resist and open facebook in chrome but still
it feels better. And i agree to the point that these days I get a lot of
unnecessary notifications. It sucks!

------
madads
I've received 160 emails over around 200 days after signing up with a
temporary email to load up ads. I've even filmed this:
[https://youtu.be/xUwjs2Te5hw](https://youtu.be/xUwjs2Te5hw)

They are a juggernaut.

------
bukgoogle
Facebook, I rather use any other service that do NOT violate my privacy or my
political views !

------
tmaly
I deleted the FB app when I had a nexus 5 as it was a major battery drain. I
barely go on facebook these days.

What every tricks they are playing, it has reached saturation in my mind.

I just don't find it that interesting or providing any value at this point in
time.

------
artur_makly
THis. i too have noticed a 5x uptick in these dark patterns. perhaps the only
way to bend back their new algo is to manually disable/opt out of each one?
perhaps that will retrain their Ai? its seriously disgusting at this point.

------
vira28
I started using Twitter 3 months back. From that day onwards, my time spent on
Facebook started reducing dramatically. I just use FB to connect people and
reach them, if i don't have any other medium to reach.

------
sreeramb93
I deactivated my facebook account. It was more and more annoying these days.

Facebook is full of memes, trolls and pages whose sole purpose is to get more
likes and comments. It's not a social network anymore.

------
corford
I don't get it. If you don't like facebook or how they operate their platform,
don't use it. Surely every person in your life has one or more of a). a phone
number you can call them on or send an sms to, b). whatsapp/skype, c).
linkedin, d). email address, e). instagram/snap, f). postal address, e).
slack/irc channel they hang out on?

I gave in to "big blue" and created an account in 2009 when I moved to a new
country. I deleted it about 4 months later and am happy to report NOTHING IN
MY LIFE CHANGED (other than feeling happy with myself for calling facebook's
bluff and deleting the fucking thing).

If you don't like the crack, put the pipe down. It's that easy.

------
erokar
I only use this Facebook from this page on my phone:
[https://mbasic.facebook.com/](https://mbasic.facebook.com/)

------
sAbakumoff
I don't get what is this fuss all about. Just turn off ALL the email
notifications in Facebook and Bob's your uncle - you won't be bothered
anymore.

------
dpq
Facebook is annoying and grabby? This guy obviously hasn't ever used
ResearchGate. Facebook is the paragon of non-intrusive user experience
compared to RG.

------
khaledh
I had over 180 "friends" on facebook. I deactivated my facebook account 6
months ago, and I've never regretted the decision one bit.

------
chewz
Deleted account in 2013.

All facebook related domains blocked via hosts file on my router and on VPN
that my iPhone uses.

Used Instagram but it got creepy too. Never used WhatsUp.

------
RHSman2
Unlike Twitter who just sends me the same 'you have 3 notifications' email
everyday about 3 email notifications I don't have!

------
amelius
Here's my approach. Whenever I see a post that I don't like, I simply unfollow
the person who posted it.

------
jesperlang
i also get a popup about browser notifications with the options to activate or
"not now", how about never?

------
Tepix
Is there a way to create an icon on the home screen on iOS that when clicked
opens Facebook using Firefox Focus?

------
yeukhon
I still use FB a lot, but I did disable a lot of notifications, especially
those "X page is on live."

------
chaostheory
This is why I switched to Instagram which is still technically Facebook but
the experience is so much better.

------
rdiddly
_" I have a page for my business..."_

Facebook has a page for your business, that you maintain for them.

------
EADGBE
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's bad; but what else do you expect me to do when I poop?

------
cocktailpeanuts
I didn't even read the post yet but I already agree with the title.

------
tempodox
<This comment is only viewable for FacebookPremium® users>

------
maytc
Welcome to the group. I deleted the fb app and was never happier.

------
neat0-ninj4
Deleted FB because of this last night. I've already saved so much time by not
scrolling through the infinite feed of false smiles...

------
kylehotchkiss
Why is not capitalizing titles becoming popular :(

~~~
grzm
There are (at least) two different conventions when it comes to titling:
headline and sentence. It's a matter of taste and something that changes over
time. I'm not sure if there's a reason deeper than that. In general, I think
it's good practice for a publication (or site) to have a style manual for
consistency, but just as there are separate AP[0] and Chicago[1] style
manuals, it's unlikely you'll see one global style.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Stylebook](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AP_Stylebook)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style)

------
thinkloop
> This is what happens when the metric of how much time users spend using your
> thing supersedes the goal of providing legitimate value to your users.

What metric would be better to gauge "legitimate value"?

------
whipoodle
I mean, they do this shit for a reason. I'm not defending them or saying it's
okay, but either stop using it (actually stop), or don't. This sanctimonious
"look at them prompting me to do the thing they want me to do!", what purpose
does it serve?

Yes Facebook is bad. They're an advertising company. Advertising companies are
bad. We know this. Saying "How dare they, I can't believe..." is a defense
against change.

------
smsm42
OK, I get it, Facebook marketing is dialing it to the 11 to get you to use it
more. But really, how hard is it to ignore it? The article says:

There’s no respite from these messages, so it constantly feels like a gun to
your head to get you to boost, promote, and pay.

Really? Like a gun to your head? So you are in fear for your life and you
think if you don't click on this link, you literally are going to die this
second? Or maybe it is a tiny annoyance which you completely can ignore and go
on with your life, and you are over-dramatizing it a teensy bit?

