
Leave Facebook - ingve
https://om.co/2020/06/02/leave-facebook/
======
supernova87a
I think Facebook is merely the conduit of human behavior that happens when
lack of regulation / social norms or the incentives of profit create a new
space much faster than we're used to before. So leaving Facebook and going to
some other platform will not fundamentally solve the problem.

As long as:

1) people want to socialize freely (as well as privately) with each other in
an online rapid medium,

2) the online forum is incentivized to make money, and

3) that same forum / business doesn't want the burden of regulating people's
speech and behavior

then some Facebook analogue will take its place no matter where people go.

Right now it seems we can only choose to have 2 out of the 3.

~~~
beart
I disagree. There were millions of people socializing on many different
platforms for years before anything like Facebook was created.

~~~
malwarebytess
I also disagree. The "curation" algorithms and other systems clearly have a
serious influence. Facebook is not responsible for human nature, but they are
responsible for intentionally guiding it for profit and ignoring the
consequences. It's not as if Facebook is merely tabula rasa; they meddle.

There have been many examples of executives and engineers who have spoken to
this effect:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-engineer-resigns-
tr...](https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-engineer-resigns-trump-
shooting-post-2020-6)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6e1riShmak](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6e1riShmak)
(Chamath Palihapitiya)

~~~
threatofrain
FB is the network of people on your green list, and FB's most pronounced
"algorithmic" influence is deciding priority on a feed of your green-listed
friends, but ultimately one has to ask -- can you handle your own relations?
Are your friends' ideas just way too infectious for your free will to handle?

~~~
luckylion
> Are your friends' ideas just way too infectious for your free will to
> handle?

Good point, but I'll add: if the ideas they are spreading weren't infectious,
they wouldn't be spreading them in the first place.

I've been on FB lately because my local government has decided that it will
use FB to give background info and outlooks wrt Covid-19. From what I saw in
the local groups, the "ideas" people spread are not original content, ever.
They don't have those ideas, they just read them and say "yeah, share", so the
ideas that make it to your feed have proven themselves many times to be
infectious. There's a reason we call it "going viral".

------
vzidex
A baby step you can take if you want to leave Facebook is to disable (I forget
if that's the exact term, it might be deactivate) your account. This removes
your access to the site, and hides your profile - while leaving the Messenger
half of your account untouched: messages, contacts, etc.

I've done it before for mental health reasons, and found it really refreshing.

~~~
arnvald
For me the first step was to remove the mobile Facebook app. I used to scroll
mindlessly while traveling and commuting, and once I didn't have the app on my
phone, my time on FB dropped by like 80%. I also found it refreshing and I
felt less stressed about missing something there.

------
bmarquez
As the article says, leave Instagram too!

It's surprising how many of my friends say they don't use Facebook for
political reasons but don't see Instagram as the same company.

~~~
HenryBemis
Don't forget WhatsApp. Many people I talk to don't realize it's also part of
the FB ecosystem.

~~~
mercacona
Leaving WhatsApp is not as easy, in many countries you need it to do things
like buying to local producers or communicating with a client. The network
effect is more unavoidable than in other FB products.

~~~
komali2
It's also worth mentioning that the whatsapp team still is filled with
dedicated anti-surveillance types, leftovers from the original company (note
that the founder publicly came out against facebook after the sale). I don't
know how much longer that'll be the case, now that they're all vesting, but
they're in there.

------
chishaku
People want to leave but stay for the network.

How can we leave and take the network with us?'

Edit:

I actually didn't have "friends" in mind. Small businesses, formal and
informal groups of interest, event discovery, the use cases are far beyond
what I'm aware of.

Also, organizing and protests...

~~~
moron4hire
I say forget "the network". If your so-called friends don't have your email
address, they aren't your friends.

~~~
ISL
Especially in the case of Instagram, it's a _de facto_ RSS reader for a lot of
really good content, if you curate it right.

I'm happy to say that the network I have built through Instagram has taken my
photography to new levels and facilitated social interactions I'd never have
had otherwise.

It is very fair to want to take the good (network/community) and leave the bad
(walled-garden and tracking).

~~~
moron4hire
You're assuming a similar, or even the same, network can't be found outside of
<site-x>.

I suspect this is a subset of what I call "The Fallacy of The Best", the idea
that things can objectively be quantified as "the best" and that there is
significant value that cannot be realized without "the best".

In reality, the products and services you choose have relatively little impact
on the quality of experience you have, both because there is little
substantial difference between most things on the main, and because the effort
you put into things is far more important.

------
staycoolboy
I left Facebook Nov 10th, 2016 after being on it for about 3 years.

That was easy because it was clear where it was headed. Getting friends to
quit took some time, but about 40% of my friends are off completely, and
another 20% mostly read instead of post (so they claim).

Now if I lived in certain parts of the world like Myanamar [1] where the
Facebook -IS- the internet, I'd be hosed. This is some serious Dole / DelMonte
level stuff Zuck is doing.

[1] [https://seasia.yale.edu/myanmar-facebook-internet-and-
intern...](https://seasia.yale.edu/myanmar-facebook-internet-and-internet-
facebook)

[2] [https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-
internet-f...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-internet-for-
many-people-in-south-east-asia-20180322-p4z5nu.html)

[3] [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-
free-...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/01/facebook-free-basics-
internet-africa-mark-zuckerberg)

[4] [https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-
internet-f...](https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/facebook-is-the-internet-for-
many-people-in-south-east-asia-20180322-p4z5nu.html)

------
yumraj
After not having logged in to my FB account for over 3-4 years, I finally
logged in today and deleted it.

I didn't feel like I needed to download anything, since I had not been sharing
anything anyway.. Now onto deleting other FB properties. I'll need to figure
out how to motivate some friends to move off of WhatsApp and onto Signal. But
once I'm able to do that, or just decide that the price of staying on WhatsApp
is not worth it, I'll be fully rid of FB. Was never on Instagram or anything
else..

To those who are on the fence, just try not to login for a few days, then a
few weeks and you will realize you are not missing anything at all.

Of all the social networks, I believe LinkedIn would be the most difficult, if
not outright impossible for me to get out of. But FB was a very easy choice.

------
bondolo
What is keeping many people on Facebook is FOMO. Every person who quits and
leaves, especially publicly, reduces the chance that those remaining will miss
something important and the perception that it is an important source of news
and information. Let it become a ghost town of bots.

------
dnsprovider
Zuckerberg hires police officers cited for using excessive force to work as
his personal bodyguards.

Yes, that's right. While he's busy pretending to feel bad about the situation
with bad cops, he recruits and pays them to protect his family.

Facebook and Zuckerberg are well beyond complicit.

~~~
kinkrtyavimoodh
He is complicit for wanting that he be not lynched by a mob?

If anything the virulent comments on this thread are enough reason for him to
hire as many bodyguards as he may need.

Some people here have no sense of perspective.

~~~
otterley
It is possible to hire bodyguards who aren't ex-cops with stained records.

(I don't know the truth about the situation, but if the facts are correct,
that is morally troubling.)

------
rvz
We should see Facebook as a drug store which its top kingpin, Mr Zuckerberg
sell its social network 'drugs' to billions of his users, which when abused
over and over again, the results are always never positive and messes with
your dopamine levels. Because of the social connections, followers and
inertia, it is harder for friends and family to leave.

Apart from its flagship product, social network 'drugs' it owns includes
Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. The fine-print is if you mix that with
trolls, disinformation and bots it equals never-ending reactionary anger. Very
unhealthy for you.

------
Munky-Necan
Is there a significant amount of Facebook employees that are actually planning
on leaving?

From my experience money talks. Many people will use the logic of "if not me
it will be someone else" for their cognitive dissonance to work at morally
degenerate organizations. I'd be interested if there was a survey of current
employees who would be willing to leave if another entity paid an analogous
salary.

~~~
ciarannolan
>Is there a significant amount of Facebook employees that are actually
planning on leaving?

Of course not. The proof is in the puddin'. There is, and never has been, a
mass exodus of technical talent from these companies. And during this period
there has been near constant hand wringing and crocodile tears about the evil
things these companies do.

~~~
ascendantlogic
Especially now with the US economy in the toilet and unemployment numbers at
astronomical levels. No mass exodus is going to happen unless people can
easily move into another job.

------
swagatkonchada
Why? Why not Google, Apple, Amazon?

~~~
creato
Personally, I find social media to be very problematic. I strongly dislike
facebook, twitter, etc. for how they are affecting the way so many people
think. It's not because of their business models, it's because I think their
product is fundamentally bad for people.

That line of reasoning doesn't lead to any opinion of google, apple, amazon
(except youtube, which has some of the problems of social media).

~~~
drukenemo
An alternative to mainstream media, at least?

~~~
airstrike
As if Facebook media were any better...

------
krm01
I’ve never been a FB user and only have a throwaway account to login quickly
into certain services (I use it pretty much like Apple Sign In works).

Calling a platform evil may be a bit out there, however, in the case of FB,
the word toxic is the best way to describe it. HN users, I assume, can handle
the toxic FB feed. But I’ve heard numerous times from people (usually older
generation) claiming that a certain (fake)news article was real.. because it
was on FB. People who can’t distinguish between real or fake news, real or
misleading ads, are becoming victims of fraud, misinformation and all sorts of
bad stuff.

Is FB to blame for all of that? Maybe not. But serving the world brings about
a certain responsibility that they clearly don’t seem to take serious enough.

Leaving FB so your friends and family members will leave may be the least you
can do to help.

------
bilal4hmed
The network effect is hard. I have family in India that would be next to
impossible to get in touch with if Im not using whatsapp. Everything over
there happens on it.

There are good things too, my friend found a kidney donor on there, a random
person which saved their life !!

It needs to happen, its a tough jump

~~~
bryan_w
Yeah, I mean, who needs kidneys anyways #deleteFB

------
Kapura
I shared this post, and I'm deleting my facebook account tomorrow. Most of the
people I care about already have my phone number any way.

I will miss the concert notifications for bands I follow, but I guess I'll
just have to put slightly more effort into following them :)

------
mark_l_watson
Facebook and most other social media make money by capturing peoples'
attention for very long periods of time. One way to push back, in a weaker
form, is to set a maximum amount of time per month that you will be on
Facebook. I set a 20 minute a month limit on myself. I get to occasionally
look at my feed and also use the platform to announce my new book releases. I
also use a single container for Facebook (and others for single use on
specific web properties).

I suspect that Facebook makes very little money off of me. On the other hand,
I have relatives who love Facebook, and as long as they don't try to use it as
a way to contact me I am fine with whatever they want for themselves.

------
mindfulplay
I don't think deleting a Facebook account really matters in this day and age.

The FB Ads SDK has infiltrated every nook and corner of your life. From
websites to your phone to TV's to iot. I am scared by the prospects of that
level of intrusion than anything else. They don't need your account.

Visiting my account off FB activity was just there tip of the iceberg. They
can connect everything about you without your involvement...

A mere FB account doesn't do much. Sure in the short term we can have lengthy
blog posts about "deleteFB" and so on but really it's mostly for sentiment not
really concrete.

~~~
kroltan
I agree, but this is not what is being discussed in the article. It is about
the manipulation provided by the platform, which you can indeed massively
reduce your exposure to by not using it.

(One could argue that targeted ads that would still follow you are another way
of manipulation, but it's way lesser than willingly consuming The Feed)

------
komali2
Does anyone have recommendations for a tool similar to Facebook Events that I
can use for planning the assloads of parties and camping trips I plan? That's
genuinely the only thing between me and deleting my FB.

~~~
shankr
[https://www.eventbrite.com/](https://www.eventbrite.com/) ?

------
OldFatCactus
I deleted my Facebook almost 8 years ago and never looked back. Was hard at
first but great for my mental health. I encourage you to try disabling it for
a while and keeping up with your network with alternatives

------
zupreme
Related reading, regarding my own process of Auditing Facebook.

[https://londondailypost.com/zeaun-zarrieff-writes-to-
faceboo...](https://londondailypost.com/zeaun-zarrieff-writes-to-facebook-ceo-
mark-zuckerberg-to-enquire-on-the-subject-of-data-transparency/)

[https://businessnewsledger.com/zeaun-zarrieff-from-
amerihub-...](https://businessnewsledger.com/zeaun-zarrieff-from-amerihub-
technologies-sounds-the-alarm-on-facebook-privacy-and-censorship/)

------
spikefromspace
Going to repost this here too: How many of FB users would need to have
adblockers and commit to never clicking on an ad in facebook to cause a big
enough dip in revenue in Q2 (ends this month)? Especially given already
depressed levels of online advertising spend. I don't mean this in a "lets
take down FB" way but more of a "how can we force Zuckerberg to have more
discussion/thought on this and brush it away?".

I would love to see some type of fact check warning be implemented for FB but
not necessarily censorship.

------
karmafish
Why isn't there a social network that actually cares about society? I swear if
one existed it would be gaining a million users a day right now. I'm dying to
abandon Facebook, but --I hate to say-- it's the best way for me to stay in
touch with international friends and family at the moment. Can't someone
please create a simple facebook-style app that's not driven by profit? Please
please please.

~~~
RMPR
Mastodon? [https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-
Mastodon/](https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/)

~~~
karmafish
I signed up for Mastodon. However it seems to be more of a Twitter clone than
Facebook. I'm looking for a Facebook alternative.

------
sgolecha
I am not on FB and I tried to get out of WhatsApp too. I deleted WhatsApp and
implored all my friends to move to Signal. But out of the 100 or so people I
reached, only 2 moved to Signal. My extended family is in India and WhatsApp
is very entrenched there. The other issue is that people in India do not
realize that the attention issue these apps create is a long term problem - at
least not yet.

~~~
jaldhar
Yes this is a huge problem. After several years of shunning Facebook I
installed WhatsApp last year because it’s the only way to stay in contact with
much of my family these days.

------
PascLeRasc
I deactivated my Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts
yesterday, and let me tell you, it's worth doing it just for the feeling of
deleting these apps from your phone. So far I do not miss any of them at all.
In a week or two I'll log back in and delete them forever. For now I'm trying
to campaign some of my friends to get on Signal.

------
jackcosgrove
I remember the leave Facebook campaign after they released their mobile app
and showed a pop-up on the mobile site offering the mobile app.

I did in fact leave over that. It was a simpler time.

------
komali2
Why leave? There's tons of options that "serve the cause" better imo, all
while getting paid to boot:

You could become a "stuck cog," deliberately working shittily to slow down
development. You could cause a disaster hid behind plausible deniability -
fuck up a deploy, accidentally forward an email, that kind of thing. You just
gotta try to avoid committing a crime.

Or you could bombard senior management with emails demanding they take action
until they just fire you.

You could spend all day improving your vimgolf skills.

------
mattlondon
I left Facebook many years ago - perhaps 2007 or 2008?

One of the best things I did for my mental health. Highly recommended.

------
kthejoker2
Deleted mine just now after 7 years of virtually zero activity. No regrets.

Also I bought this book for my dad - Facebook is extremely toxic for Boomer-
era people, just absolutely overrun with propaganda, low-value memes. The
complete opposite of critical thinking.

We haven't had a chance to discuss the book's arguments or merits, but I told
him I was really concerned for his mental health and his increasing paranoia,
and I thought a lot of it stemmed from social media.

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079DTVVG8/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079DTVVG8/ref=dp-kindle-
redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1)

Anyway, if anyone has any other advice for convincing others to leave social
media, I'd love to hear it.

------
dvduval
Now if this were an important Facebook employee writing this, and many
Facebook employees were considering getting together to leave and start
something better, I would totally love that.

------
kgraves
Please Please Please offer some GOOD alternatives to Facebook. Now is the time
to come together and replace Facebook with a free decentralised alternative.

If you want to switch away from other surveillance capitalist software like
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or WhatsApp here's a list [0]

[0] [https://switching.software/](https://switching.software/)

~~~
satyrnein
Decentralization is usually pitched as a solution to "censorship". In this
case, the complaint seems to be the reverse, that there was insufficient
intervention against misinformation. So I'm not sure how decentralization
applies here.

~~~
AgentME
I think that's a really good point to bring up. Decentralization solves some
problems but it doesn't automatically make everything better.

An interesting example relevant to this case would be Mastodon: it's an
alternative to Twitter where many instances federate together, and instances
are allowed to do their own moderation. Many instances have much more
protective rules than Twitter and have smaller communities that their
moderators are better able to integrate with.

~~~
pizzicato
To add on to Mastodon, Pleroma is another federated, decentralised platform
with slightly different features as far as I'm aware.

There's a whole ecosystem of decentralised alternatives out there, which you
can check out at [https://fediverse.party/](https://fediverse.party/)

It's definitely not easy to get people to jump ship, but I've seen an influx
of new users to the Mastodon instance I'm part of.

~~~
RMPR
Many of the people joining the instance I'm part of had troubles getting
started (follow people, What's going on, ...) I ended up writing a blog post
[https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-
Mastodon/](https://rmpr.github.io/Migrating-from-Twitter-to-Mastodon/)

------
donkey-hotei
On one level, Trump's statements about mail-in voting are just flatly untrue,
pure propaganda, and completely irresponsible. But isn't it weird as well how
much people are willing to let these massive tech companies essentially become
fact-checkers for the content posted on it? I that that's also frightening to
think about.

~~~
nico_h
Shouldn't the guy have been banned from the service for violating the terms of
service a long time ago? If you or me had said similar things we would have
been deplatformed a while back. I think this is just a half assed way of
making amends for allowing so much prominent lies on the network.

Plus it's their network, they likely have TOS allowing them to do anything on
it. Probaly except altering the posts (... but they replace links with their
shortener i think).

------
bedhead
The hyperbole of this is almost incomprehensible. The absurdity of this latest
"controversy" \- Zuck not wrapping some form of token and meaningless
censorship around a single Trump tweet - is proof that this isn't about Trump.
Hell, all this did was give Trump more exposure. No, it's clear that this is
about breaking Zuck for political purposes, and taking control of Facebook for
a single "side." Not one person _genuinely_ cares about this dumb Trump tweet,
this is just trying to tip over Zuck once and for all and get him to be full-
on Dorsey.

I left Facebook five years ago but it certainly wasn't about Zuck or Facebook.
I hate to break it to you guys but at the end of the day, Facebook is just
people. Get upset all you want but you're really just getting upset at other
people for whatever reason. Facebook isn't the problem, human nature is.

~~~
paulgb
> Facebook isn't the problem, human nature is.

This is almost exactly the line of thinking that the story The Weapon by
Fredric Brown warns against.

[http://www.digital-eel.com/blog/library/The_Weapon.pdf](http://www.digital-
eel.com/blog/library/The_Weapon.pdf)

------
renewiltord
Absolutely not. Facebook is the last major social network where people are
able to speak their minds. And since I can select who I want to listen to, I
like it. As it so happens, everyone who I follow on Facebook speaks their
minds by posting pictures of their babies. This is perfectly fine by me.

I am sceptical that the paternalists will let me be when they're done dealing
with Trump et al.

~~~
Jtsummers
> Absolutely not. Facebook is the last bastion of people being able to speak
> their minds. And since I can select who I want to listen to, I like it. As
> it so happens, everyone who I follow on Facebook speaks their minds by
> posting pictures of their babies. This is perfectly fine by me. I am
> sceptical that the paternalists will let me be when they're done dealing
> with Trump et al.

How is it the last bastion of anything? It is a place where people seem to be
able to speak their mind. It's not the last place. The Internet is vast, and
the major social networks aren't the only things in existence on it.

~~~
renewiltord
That's true. Allow me to edit it to "last major social network". I have access
to places where I can speak my mind. I think society is stronger for allowing
everyone places like that, and Facebook's discoverability is a lot higher than
many other places. Maybe Reddit is also as good but it's much smaller.

------
starpilot
FB will just attract more right-wingers as they play the "hands off" role,
both as users and employees. Every person who leaves because of this will be
replaced by someone who considers FB to be the "fair and balanced" tech
company.

~~~
drukenemo
Yep

------
haram_masala
There have been plenty of good reasons to leave Facebook, for many years. If
you only now want to dump FB because they didn’t muzzle Trump, you are
probably part of the problem.

------
ss7pro
Hmm you control your network on both FB and TW. People forget that is is then
ck trailing this network. Why do you need someone else controlling your
network? If you don't like someone you simply unfollow him. Doing twitter
style fact checking or blocking content is censorship is this should be the
reason to stop using platform not opposite allowing everyone for a free
speech.

