
Yes, You Should Delete Facebook - submeta
https://medium.com/s/story/yes-you-should-delete-facebook-heres-why-bc623a3b4625
======
sweden
Why do people go to extremes about Facebook? Every single submission I see
here on HN, and most of the comments as well, are either about using and
abusing Facebook for every single aspect of their lifes or about eradicating
it from the face of the Earth.

Is this part of the American culture? I'm from Europe and while there is a lot
of people sharing every single thing on Facebook here, I would say that most
of the people never really post or follow stuff on Facebook. People don't
really care that much about the social showoff. Most of people use Facebook
because it is really convenient for contacting other people and organizing
events, and that's it.

Can't you just use Facebook when you find it convenient and then just move on
with your life?

~~~
volume
> Why do people go to extremes about Facebook? Every single submission I see
> here on HN

Are you a paid anti-GDPR propagandist? You are somewhat convincing. You almost
made me back out of deleting my account but instead I went through with it
just now.

> Most of people use Facebook because it is really convenient for contacting
> other people and organizing events, and that's it.

Well also at the expense off FB mining every little interaction and tidbit of
you. Sure Google is doing the same. But might as well control what you can.

~~~
dang
> Are you a paid anti-GDPR propagandist?

That breaks the site rule against insinuating astroturfing or shillage without
evidence. Please don't do that on HN—it's one of the most toxic tropes around.

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

------
everdev
I deleted Facebook years ago, but so many of my friends have persisted or
increased their usage.

I think instead of scaring people about privacy you have to first understand
and appreciate the value people get out of Facebook. For me, it's that I can
quickly "feel" connected to and get validation from my friends and community.

Trying to scare people into giving up something they enjoy doesn't usually
work. Instead, we should be helping people realize how they can build
connection outside of Facebook.

For me, I just gave up on the "did you see on Facebook" conversations with my
friends, but not everyone is willing to just abandon a category of shared
experiences with friends.

The day will come when we see Facebook as a net negative, but I think it's a
long way off unfortunately. The number of people leaving Facebook has to
increase to a critical mass where "did you see on Facebook" conversations
become un-cool.

~~~
anonu
Call me old school... But what about meeting a friend for a coffee or dinner?
And then getting validation that way?

Rhetorical questions probably. Because Facebook has reduced all that friction.
Being connected and getting validation gives you that same dopamine hit you
get from connecting with someone in person...multiple times over.. and you can
do it from your smartphone

~~~
lordCarbonFiber
As the world becomes increasingly unbound from geography more people are going
to have friends outside of the "lets meet for coffee" radius. I think it's
arrogant to the extreme to suggest that people should go back to giving up on
their connections just because you've made a judgement about a company's
business model or privacy tradeoffs.

~~~
zaphod4prez
You think it's arrogant in the extreme to argue that we should boycott a
company because of its immoral actions? That seems like a very reasonable,
non-intrusive thing to do. Further, you assume that "leave Facebook" and
"leave social media" mean "give up on your connections [with people far
away]". That seems quite silly to me-- I've found that Facebook helps me
maintain a few sort of distant-friend/acquaintance connections that I care
about, while all my close friends who live far away connect with me by phone.
Group text chats or email exchanges are also fun ways to connect that are just
as good at doing their job as facebook is.

------
dizzystar
I'm not a huge facebook user, and really eschew social media in general. I
only use these sites for promotion, as I have no personal gain from it. None
if my friends use Facebook much, and that hasn't stopped us from keeping in
contact.

In any case, I'm just not sure why people go on and on about deleting these
sites. Those who are concerned aren't that active (if they use it at all).
Posting on Hacker News is preaching to the choir. Anyone who's had this
discussion with regular Joe's and Jane's knows the dead eye glaze all too
well.

If it makes people happy to use Facebook or whatever, we aren't supposed to
judge them. We, as the tech community, ARE the problem, and we add to it with
every new IOT device, AI invention, and every database we build. It's up to us
to take responsibility before being called on it. We are supposed to be the
trusted ones, and we can only betray that trust because of the ignorant
masses.

------
panarky
Maybe we're seeing an awakening that's different from previous episodes.

Just like people woke up about tobacco use, high-fructose carbonated
beverages, and workplace sexual abuse, maybe we're at a cultural inflection
point with Facebook.

Facebook will soon require 500 million people to consent to a long list of new
terms and conditions to comply with GDPR. There will be no option to decline
the new terms, only "accept and continue". What if 5% of users don't accept?

That doesn't sound like much, but that 5% is probably the most media savvy and
influential cohort on the platform. 5% defection could be a big deal in
continuing the awakening.

What if 25% of the people who remain with Facebook don't feel as good using it
any more, and they use it 25% less. That's another 6% of activity and
engagement that evaporates, making the platform less "sticky" for everyone.

Just like positive network effects amplified Facebook's importance, negative
network effects could cascade into tectonic changes in how people use social
media.

No, most people won't delete it completely. Facebook will be with us for many
years.

But if I owned Facebook shares, I'd be worried.

~~~
matte_black
I own Facebook shares. I’m not worried. Facebook owns several other properties
and has the cash horde to buy more properties.

~~~
wyclif
Yes, and this is important to understand about Facebook. Let's say for the
sake of argument (and I don't really think it will pan out, but let's pretend
for a sec) that Facebook takes a serious hit from the Cambridge Analytica
fallout and the company is weakened considerably. Well, they're shown before
that they can spin off a new "communications product" under a new name and
effectively shed a lot of the ill will surrounding the parent company, but
still leverage the massive benefits of their cash reserve and talent.

------
caser
I don't get the argument that giving data to Foursquare / Swarm is somehow
better. It seems to be the same misaligned incentives as he argues exists with
Facebook, they just haven't taken in as much data yet. For years people have
been making the same argument about Facebook (the data makes the ads more
relevant).

~~~
tomxor
The difference is that foursquare isn't a monopoly and facebook is. Quiting
foursquare if you don't like them is easy (nothing to loose other than a
service you didn't like for whatever reason), quiting facebook because you
don't like them can be hard because it has a monopoly over your friends.

When it's hard to quit something that you don't like, that thing can easily
evolve in ways against you, essentially you've removed the democratic aspect
of the thing and you have a dictatorship - facebook.

I think this problem is a little unique to social networking, it feels like
it's inevitable that one will prevail above all others because people _want_
to all be on the same platform. If social network is to survive in a healthy
way it would seem that a cross network protocol would need to exist to make it
easy to switch between them, but that will likely never come from facebook.

------
time0ut
Which sends the stronger signal: deleting the account or just never logging in
again?

I haven't visited Facebook since I removed it from my Firefox start page a
couple months ago. I was visiting it out habit but getting so little value
that just having to type the URL in is too high a barrier for me to visit now.

Is it worth the effort to log back in and actually delete the account?

~~~
isostatic
Currently your information is accessible. Removing everything may not (yet)
remove it from facebook servers, but it means it's less accessible than
before, and come GDPR a good chance they'll have to remove it.

~~~
polskibus
Afaik, if you delete now, and ask them to delete all after gdpr, they have to
obey same as if you waited until gdrp to ask them

------
JohnTHaller
You can minimize your Facebook footprint by removing unnecessary data from
Facebook and your profile, never using Login with Facebook on websites (and
switching any you do to a proper login and strong password), using an ad
blocker to block Facebook like/share/login/comment on third party sites, and
only using Firefox in a contained way. I use it in Firefox with the Facebook
container ( [https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/facebookcontainer/](https://www.mozilla.org/en-
US/firefox/facebookcontainer/) ) which keeps your Firefox browsing separate
and doesn't bleed the data to other sites.

~~~
drdeca
> using an ad blocker to block Facebook like/share/login/comment on third
> party sites,

Would blocking domains used for Facebook embedded content using the hosts file
also work for this purpose?

I would think this would have the advantage of applying to all browsers on
ones machine, and not requiring the code to remove the references from the
pages on each page load (instead doing stuff when resolving the domains).

Is there a reason this wouldn't work as well?

~~~
downandout
You can do it this way. Though as I have repeatedly said, blocking Facebook is
more of a symbolic gesture that you dislike tracking, rather than actually
disabling tracking. There are many other companies that are tracking you, who
collectively have far more data about you than Facebook does, and because they
are lower profile, they can do things with that data that actually are
nefarious (unlike in the case of Facebook). If you don't want to be tracked,
give your smartphone to a homeless person and cancel your Internet service.

Still, if you want to bother with the drop-in-the-ocean strategy and block
Facebook domains with your hosts file, see:

[https://gist.github.com/thomasbilk/1506210/2d20f47bbcca75b2f...](https://gist.github.com/thomasbilk/1506210/2d20f47bbcca75b2f78d6909c1637501000d846f)

------
docdeek
> Be the customer not the product.

Didn't someone from the Facebook executive float a paid version of Facebook in
an interview recently? I'm not on Facebook but what would be a reasonable
price for the services they provide right now, and would anyone pay it?

~~~
theophrastus
I believe this was raised via an inference during the Zuckerberg testimony[1].
That is, since he stated with significance that there would always be a free
version of facebook it suggests that there is at least a non-free version on
his "whiteboard".

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/mark-zuckerberg-there-
will-a...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/10/mark-zuckerberg-there-will-always-
be-a-version-of-facebook-that-is-free.html)

~~~
icebraining
The COO also hypothesized it: [http://fortune.com/2018/04/07/sheryl-sandberg-
says-facebook-...](http://fortune.com/2018/04/07/sheryl-sandberg-says-
facebook-users-would-have-to-pay-for-total-privacy/)

------
Yizahi
It is hilarious how people believe that free application/site A sells user
data for profit and that application/site B does not. I just wonder what logic
is going on in their heads. It's like saying that if I close my eyes and
doesn't see the monitor in front of me then it doesn't exist. Writing stuff
like this is delusional:

"These are apps where I volunteer my location, travel, eating, and shopping
habits, and I’ve never had the slightest sense that Foursquare was using this
data in a way that made my life worse." (c)

------
kull
I am visiting a small town in Texas near the border, I am living here with a
friend for few months (originally I live in NYC), and Facebook is really the
only place where I can find info about local restaurants and events. There is
no delivery.com here and google maps often list places that were closed. I
have never used really Facebook but I am finding myself now this being the
only option to connect with locals online.

------
contoraria
It's too much low quality data. If you yourself agree that you neither
contribute nor can find valuable data, do Facebook a favor and leave.

They probably have enough vacation and family reporting to not need anymore of
that. They are interested in finding trends, so if you are trendy enough and
use facebook for trending, feel free to try to take advantage of it and hope
you wont _miss out_.

------
methodover
For any ad on Facebook, you can click on it and see why you're seeing it. They
are not listening into your conversations.

You can review your ad preferences, including what information is used for
FB's ad targeting, here:
[https://m.facebook.com/ads/preferences/](https://m.facebook.com/ads/preferences/)

------
kjgkjhfkjf
If you're experiencing withdrawal symptoms due to a lack of attention from
people on the internet after deleting Facebook, you can just re-enable your
account. There's no need to write yet another article about why you did it.

------
mbrumlow
I already did.

~~~
submeta
So did I a couple of weeks ago. And I have to say: The world did not come to
an end.

Since I muted most of my contacts posts and used it like a newsreader, I had
to find a newsreader alternative. Feedly is a pretty good replacement so far.
And I am thinking of reading a printed daily newspaper again. I feel like on a
digital detox path. And I haven't finished my journey yet.

------
elvirs
I think this is the beginning of the end for Facebook as we know it

~~~
humanrebar
Facebook as I knew it ended some time ago.

------
wyclif
_And as for staying up to date on my friends lives… well I just do it the old
fashioned way. Talking to them._

We hear this bromide constantly from people in the #DeleteFacebook movement,
but it's facile. It is because it assumes that a "friend" on FB and a friend
IRL are equivalent but they're not, and intelligent people know this. There
are people in your life that you either want or need to passively keep up with
rather than actively socialise or reach.

I've been critical of Facebook's lack of privacy and other issues surrounding
the company but I can't get too worked up about the danger of perpetuating
passive/active friend distinctions because I think it exists outside of social
media and is simply a reflection of the meatspace, and it's actually healthy
to do.

------
Sophira
> And since we’ve been sipping the Facebook friend juice for so long, it’s
> legitimately scary to quit. How will you know what events are going on? How
> will you know if something big happens in your friend’s life? How will you
> stay in touch with people?

> The simple answer is… all the ways we did for the last 100,000 years.
> Talking to people. Being an active consumer of information and knowledge
> about your friends’ lives instead of letting it passively wash over you.

That's a nice sentiment and one I absolutely agree with, but there's a big
problem with it - how do we _do_ this?

Before the Internet, the answer was obvious; talk to them. That's because
friendships tended to be mostly local; you probably knew your friends'
addresses and phone numbers.

When the Internet got popular, friendships were made on a global scale, and
instant messaging became a thing. A lot of people grew up with AIM, Yahoo!
Messenger, and MSN. It's important to note that these services weren't
provided by companies whose soul reason for existing was to provide
communication platforms. They were all secondary platforms provided by
companies whose main business was elsewhere.

Now, all of these services are gone. In its place are apps like Twitter,
WhatsApp, Instagram and Discord, which would be great, except that WhatsApp
and Instagram are owned by the very company you're trying to escape from
(Facebook) and Discord is a company whose soul product is their communication
platform and thus have the mother of all motivations to make money from your
data (even if they don't do that right now, thanks to unsustainable VC
funding). Twitter is also a platform owned by a company which has the
communication tool as its soul product, and to its credit hasn't made too much
controversy in its long tenure, but even though it can be used for direct
communication (and is used more for this purpose than Facebook), it's still
primarily a "push" platform; for the most part, tweets come to you, as
determined by algorithms.

Yes, there do still exist chat platforms provided by companies whose main
product isn't their communication platforms: GTalk (or Hangouts) and Skype.
Unfortunately these are both owned by companies who have been proven to behave
in predatory fashions to their users: Google and Microsoft.

There are free and open-source programs that can be used. Jitsi allows instant
messaging and video conferencing via XMPP, for example, Mastadon is a recent
Twitter-like platform, and Signal allows for encrypted conversation. Each of
these (and others) allow communication with users connected to other servers
(and in most cases using other protocols), but even so the problem is that
it's unlikely that your friends use programs that communicate over these
protocols and are compatible. (The exception is GTalk, which uses XMPP.)

Then there are the numerous decentralised free/open-source methods. Mumble
provides text-based and audio-based communication, numerous IRC servers
provide text communication, etc. On a wide scale, the biggest issue with these
are that you can't communicate with anybody unless they're connected to the
same server as you. That might be desirable in the case where you have groups
all interested in the same thing or otherwise tied by a common bond, but
people can't be expected to join multiple servers just to keep in touch with
their friends.

Of course, all of these _can_ be used as primary methods of communication,
particularly among small groups of friends, and maybe this is actually what
the article is arguing for.

I personally would _love_ if Mastadon became more popular, even though it's a
"push"-style system like Twitter, because I think it has the best shot at
doing so and it allows communication with potentially your entire circle of
friends while simultaneously having differing servers with different policies.
It's probably the closest thing to democratic messaging that we have.

~~~
Sophira
I apologise for using 'soul' where I should have used 'sole' in this reply. I
promise I know the difference but I was clearly tired when I wrote this.

------
downandout
tl;dr Guy who had researched Soylent got targeted by ads for one of their
competitors, called Ample, and uses that as a basis as to why you should
delete Facebook.

Really? My guess is that he wound up on a page with the FB pixel as a result
of a Soylent search. Ample was likely running a Lookalike audience ad. It
doesn't take any sort of deep knowledge, illegal/immoral data processing, or
any other of the nefarious things he is implying to make that connection.

Let's remember that Ample didn't actually ever have this guy's data. An
algorithm on Facebook's side said "this guy lives in San Franscisco, has lots
of friends in startups, and has searched for articles related to Soylent
before" and showed him an ad based on targeting parameters setup by Ample.
This is all data that he voluntarily gave to Facebook. Unless he clicked on
the ad and then voluntarily entered his personal information into the Ample's
site, Ample does not and will never know anything about him, including whether
or not he ever was shown their ad.

If you want to avoid this kind of thing, unfortunately deleting Facebook is
just the beginning. You'll have to never search the internet (all sites that
you click on from any search engine know what you were searching for when you
click over), turn off all cookies (which means you can never log in,
anywhere), and disable javascript. That doesn't even begin to address the
elephant in the room: your ISP knows just about everything you do.

The genie is out of the bottle. Referrers are sent by browsers. The Internet
works by first connecting to a network provider, which means they know
everything you do. Even in the world of SSL everywhere, DNS queries provide a
very telling map of your behavior. Almost all sites rely on cookies at least
for login purposes, and those can be used to track your behavior. Just want to
disable third party cookies? Go ahead. How long will it be until a service
shows up for sites to band together and correlate their first party cookies
with info about your IP and achieve the same mission?

So if you're worried enough about your privacy to delete Facebook, then it's
hypocritical of you to be reading this message on the Internet at all. You
should not be accessing the Internet if you do not want to be tracked.

~~~
bertil
You don’t seem to consider the possibility of having control over that data --
knowing and editing who knows what about you.

I’ve been actively filtering any ad not coming from a network where I had a
good knowledge and detailed access over my profile (Google and Facebook);
filtering any cookie not justified by my direct usage, and it hasn’t really
hampered my usage. I can’t read things on Forbes and Business Insider, but
that’s hardly a loss.

It doesn’t mean my information doesn’t get leaked, but it means that, starting
next month (I’m in the EU) if I see an advertiser in my Spam box, or on
[https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/](https://www.facebook.com/ads/preferences/)
I will be able to ask how they got around our agreements and not be given
evasive answers.

~~~
downandout
I think you're putting far too much faith in regulation of companies outside
of the EU. It hasn't yet been tested whether or not a given entity (in the US
for example) will be able to be fined by the EU and actually have it enforced.
While it's theoretically possible, even then, there are ways to avoid the
enforcement of any such judgment.

The GDPR experts I have spoken to have said that if we don't block EU traffic,
as a US entity, we should simply have an LLC setup that actually owns each
site we run, and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to
a different LLC for its content and domain. The LLC that technically operates
the website can then be fined to death and the website will still exist with
no actual lost revenue. There are even more effective shell games that can be
played in other countries, and there many countries where no such games have
to be played because they will simply not enforce EU judgments for fines under
the GDPR.

At this point, we've just decided to block EU traffic entirely, but others
will likely just proceed as normal and not worry about these heavy-handed
regulations, knowing that it is unlikely that penalties can ever actually be
enforced against them.

~~~
reitanqild
> and have those LLCs pay 100% of their profits as a license fee to a
> different LLC for its content and domain.

I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : )

> There are even more effective shell games that can be played in other
> countries,

It seems even the Irish sandwich is failing now.

I'm no expert but my understanding is we have reason to be somewhat optimistic
in this case.

~~~
downandout
_I think courts have ways around it if it is that clear cut : )_

You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to pierce the corporate veil in the
most popular states for LLCs and corporations (Nevada, Delaware, etc.).

------
whataretensors
None of this is new information, just another FB hit piece - likely paid.

I'm sick of people trashing facebook when they can only wish for the data
collection ability of the NSA. Oh, and there's no opt out there.

~~~
bertil
Who do you suspect is paying for pieces like that? I don’t really see a lot of
upside from attacking Facebook.

~~~
downandout
There are many political action groups etc. that would like to see Facebook go
down.

~~~
bertil
What are their actual objectives? I can’t imagine taking Facebook down is the
end game.

------
andreyk
No, you should not delete Facebook.

Not because it's not a good response to recent events, but because it's like
fighting climate change with conserving energy at home; primarily a token
gesture that will change little (mainly due to not enough people ever doing
it).

If you actually feel strongly about this, do something about it. I have been
setting up a Diaspora* pod for my friends (and exploring the similar
[https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/](https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/)), have been trying
to be active on Minds.com (social media is one place crypto may actually make
sense, but the community is tiny and highly toxic as is), supporting the idea
of a paid-model for FB, and generally thinking about this. Facebook is a
powerful tool that is best used to do these more productive things to help
create a viable alternative - leaving Facebook is not going to change
anything.

I also own the domain name hnsocial.club , and have been wanting to try and
setup a Diaspora/Scuttlebutt pod to try and get the HN community to embrace it
so the network effects of a large community being on such a platform are felt.
I don't have much time for this (I am a PhD student at Stanford), but if you
think this might be a good idea get in touch to collaborate!

~~~
simonbarker87
Not sure where your idea that fighting climate change by conserving energy at
home is token gesture. In the UK 4,000 GWh/day are used for heating during
winter, about half of that will be domestic and so moving to something like
Passivhaus would be a big step forward in both domestic energy bill reduction
and green house gas emissions. To put that 4,000 GWh/day in context the UK
hovers around 1,000 GWh/day for electricity and 1,500 GWh/day for
transportation.

~~~
andreyk
It is a token gesture because there is little chance of it being done by
enough people to make a difference. I base this off the documentary Before the
Flood, in which DiCaprio says that in the early 2000s the big tactic was to
promote home energy conservation but it amounts to very little and it has been
realized that other more involved strategies are needed. This is stated
explicitly early on, and it seems very plausible to me

~~~
simonbarker87
I prefer the approach promoted by David Mackay: a combined strategy of energy
use reductions in all sectors combined with diverse renewables and nuclear
power sources.

I agree that silly measures like turning off electrical items in stand by mode
is like trying to loose weight by trimmeng your toe nails (you are technically
lighter but not in anyway that matters) but to say the domestic energy
reductions is pointless is a cop out to make people feel better about not
trying.

------
nkkollaw
This obsession with Facebook is getting really annoying.

When I lived in the States 15 years ago Publix (and I guess other stores, or
maybe my bank) already sold a list of everything I bought with my debit card
to advertising agencies, along with my full name and home address. I would get
ads to my house, tailored to what I had bought a few days before, I'd say at
least once a week.

There are also hundreds of other companies that sell data besides Facebook.

No one is talking about the companies that _buy_ the data, either. Can't the
case be made that that's unethical too, and if they didn't happily buy the
data Facebook would have to find another way to make money?

My point us that it's all good to spread the word about questionable practices
employed by companies that people use, but do we have to exclusively focus on
Facebook forever, like it's the source of all evil and everyone else is a
saint, or can we talk about someone else for a change..? Even in this article
other companies are mentioned barely to prove the author's point against
Facebook.

~~~
kstrauser
If a million people are upset with the practices of a million companies, each
company loses a customer and nothing changes. If the million people
concentrate on a single company, that company notices. And when the next
company tries the same shenanigans, they can be reminded about what happened
to the first once. That's a bigger when for society than spreading out the
protests.

~~~
nkkollaw
If we're talking about efficience, I would argue that concentrating on letting
governments know would be even better. Facebook knows that regular users have
no idea about privacy and it would take years to lose a big enough portion of
users to even matter.

~~~
kstrauser
Sure, but nothing gets governmental attention like a million angry users being
featured on the news.

~~~
nkkollaw
I see, you're probably right.

