No. I actually created a Facebook account in 2018.
The problem is that without Facebook you will miss out. Sure, close friends and family will invite you to their social events, but more distant acquaintances will not; you know, the bloke you met at the pub last week and had a 20 minute chat with, or that cute girl you talked to but then she suddenly she was dragged off to a birthday party by her friends.
By missing out on the social opportunities you lose the chance to upgrade these people from acquaintances to friends (or even lovers), as well as meet new people.
Some back story: I moved to a different country two years ago with my ex-girlfriend (for her job), and we both didn't really know anyone there. I work remote, so I don't meet a lot of people from work, either.
We broke up after a year and much to my dismay I discovered I had not really made any new friends in that year, and that I was quite ... alone. So I set out to change that. Facebook – as much as I dislike the company – was helpful. I moved to yet another country two month ago, and again Facebook has been helpful.
I dislike Facebook for all the standard reasons. I had an account but I deleted it about 5 or 6 years ago, but I decided that having a good social life was (and remains) vastly important to the quality of my life, and that Facebook is a tool to help achieve that goal.
(Facebook didn't really "delete" my old account, as after I rejoined it remembered many of my previous friends; some of whom I had no contact with outside of Facebook, like many Egyptians I was in contact with during the 2011 rebellion whom I had met through a friend and only knew through Facebook; my "suggested friends" list was full of Arabic names).
On a more deeper level, I am a little bit exasperated of always being the "different" and "difficult" person (which extends to things beyond Facebook). Standing up for your principles and "voting with your wallet" is good and all, but ... I'm not so sure it's all that effective. In this case, a more effective strategy is probably to first create a really good Facebook alternative (I'm not so sure there is one now), make sure decent privacy laws are enacted, etc.
> Sure, close friends and family will invite you to their social events, but more distant acquaintances will not; you know, the bloke you met at the pub last week and had a 20 minute chat with, or that cute girl you talked to but then she suddenly she was dragged off to a birthday party by her friends. By missing out on the social opportunities you lose the chance to upgrade these people from acquaintances to friends (or even lovers), as well as meet new people.
Man, missing those events is the BEST part about not being on facebook. I have way more than enough stuff to do, I don't need more things with random people. I have enough time for my wife, my kids, and a few outings a month with friends. I can fill that time easily, the thought of having to politely accept invitations from some bloke you met at the pub sounds horrible.
From your comment and the one right above, it seems that you two are at very different life junctures. If you're married with kids, Facebook is probably the last thing you need to bother with. If you're single and looking to socialize, Facebook is probably a great enabler.
Yeah, I understand that needs vary widely based on life stage. I realize many people want those things, I just was hoping to point out that for some of us, those things sound horrible.
I missed my friend's 50th birthday party because I wasn't on Facebook (haven't been for around 3-4 years), and he assumed that everyone he wanted there was. That stung enough for me to think about it, but whenever I see people scrolling through their feeds there's so much drivel that I immediately go off the idea again.
You'll get the benefits of Facebook (real identity with almost everyone on the platform, events, groups, etc.) without loosing hours reading crap on the news feed.
Kind of interesting, but then what's the point of Facebook? Asides from invitations - which, perhaps naively, this friend did through a post in his feed - the only thing that I'd be interested by is maintaining a light-touch connection with friends who are overseas by looking at their posts in the news feed.
Biggest use cases for me has been events and groups.
1. Events: Facebook's provides a streamlined experience for hosting events and all my friends use it for birthday parties, house warming and so on.
2. Groups: Facebook's group experience is quite good and I am a part of 4 groups of like minded people that I get to have conversations with quite frequently.
Makes sense in terms of network effects I guess. I wonder where the tipping point is when enough people aren't on Facebook so people go back to other services and / or email.
> I missed my friend's 50th birthday party because I wasn't on Facebook
Hate to break it to you, but he's not really your friend. You would have known about it directly or through someone else if so. Facebook is for finding out about events / people who aren't close to you, but you're still interested in. That's its value.
I think this is too harsh. Organising a grand 50th birthday is a lot of effort, and forgetting that one friend (who may not be a close friend but still a friend) doesn't have Facebook is easy enough.
There are many systemic wrongs that are worth fighting to change, and a single person can't possibly fight them all at the same time. You can't expect everyone to be deeply invested in the privacy cause; some people care more about, say, feminism, or veganism, or homelessness, or something else. That's okay, too.
We all choose our own battles and our own hills to die on.
And deep down, I suspect many of us (or at the very least "me") choose those battles and hills for not entirely rational or "for the greater good" reasons.
Having said that, if your battle is feminism you don't remain engaged with and support "locker room talk". If your battle is veganism you don't remain engaged with groups of butchers or hunters. One of my battles is privacy - I'm not going to support or enable surveillance capitalism, even though I know the social cost I'll incur there.
There's an unkind stereotype about vegans "Hoe do you know if someone's a vegan? Don't worry, they'll tell you..." - but that reveals an admirable trait shared by "them" collectively, if you aren't speaking out for what you believe in - you're enabling and maintaining things which you do not believe in.
This was well-articulated, and your example was good. I'm not vegan, but I dislike the vitriolic 'jokes' that many of them are subjected to -- voicing your beliefs is certainly an admirable trait to me.
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted. I feel the same way. I’ve been invited to multiple social events that were largely organized on Facebook since deleting my own account. I was always informed either directly or indirectly through mutual friends, usually by phone or SMS/iMessage. I’ve also been made aware of multiple events I did not attend because I do not consider myself close friends with those hosts and I’m happy to avoid that awkward ‘has not responded’ status that Facebook would mark me with.
In a world with email, SMS, and iMessage I do not fear being left out by my true friends.
>I was always informed either directly or indirectly through mutual friends, usually by phone or SMS/iMessage.
Precisely this. A type of thinking which includes Facebook being a persons only means of communication is very simplistic. While there are some unusual user cases -- such as my coworker who had to use wi-fi for Messenger -- and they pop up in certain circumstances, I do not think this is as widespread as some make it out to be. To explain my standing, it comes from my observation of hearing people say using Messenger is "easier" and they're able to stay in contact with people they may not want to on a more personal level (i.e. SMS, voice calls) or they are international.
That doesn't have to be true. I forgot to invite the guy who sits left of me at work to my 40th birthday, because he does not have Facebook. I coordinated the whole thing on Facebook because "everyone has Facebook". And it didn't cross my mind that someone didn't. I talk to him a couple of times a day about non-work related things, it just never came up for some reason.
Funnily enough I can categorically say that's not true. He's one of my closest friends, was extremely upset that I wasn't there, and was kicking himself for months afterwards for the lazy assumption. The almost total ubiquity of Facebook leads to an assumption that everyone is on there. Hopefully that's going to change over the next few years, but there are hard lessons along the way.
We go long-ish periods without speaking. We have that kind of lifelong friendship where we just pick up wherever we left off. He lives in London, I live on the south coast, so we only really speak when I'm in London for work and I stay over at his place. That's usually relatively frequent, but I wasn't going up much at that specific time. I should also say that he's not particularly good at organising these things and usually totally ignores his birthday, so it wasn't a huge party. Still stung though!
I am currently on my fourth military deployment. I have just learned to get used to living in a pseudo-isolated vacuum from life. I have missed many important life events. Facebook would really help where it doesn't matter and not where it does.
I just learn to focus on what is actually important and fortunately I have people that keep me in mind so that I don't get completely lost. Simply being married solves for much of this.
This is the most important thing people cite when the subject of removing Facebook comes up. I've certainly missed events because I logon to Facebook every few months... Then I spend a few minutes responding to people letting them know to email me instead. I think email is the go to place for invites 9 out of 10 times now...
Counter point, I deleted my account (not just deactivated.) I haven't missed any significant events. You can absolutely have an active and fulfilling social life without.
Would you class a party hosted by that guy who was talking to that girl who was friends with the coworker you went drinking with three Fridays ago as a significant event?
Sure; it's just harder. Although it also depends on who your friends are. It was easier back in the Netherlands as I was living in the city I grew up in and knew people there. I also had a regular (non-remote) job.
Is there a reason to believe, given how little we trust Facebook, that deletion and deactivation are different things? I've built multiple consumer web apps and if there's one rule, it's that rows are never really deleted from a database. Not to mention backups, caches, Google crawls and so on. I'd worry that the naive consumer thinks they can post embarassing content to Facebook, delete their account, and somehow believe it will never be found again.
I'm the other way. I _know_ I miss out of a lot of things I'd know about and be interested in attending if I had a FB account still. And I'm still happy with my choice not to be there. There are groups I've lost touch with, because they no longer bother running a website or mailing list, and do everything through FB these days. Even groups I'd have bet money on _not_ going that way (looking at you, DorkBot Sydney...)
A Facebook account which is accessed only via web browser with third-party cookies and notifications disabled is not the worst thing. It essentially becomes just another website.
What is the worst thing though, it's installing one of the Facebook's apps on your smartphone. Because then you basically give up the entire private data of your day-to-day life.
(I imagine, very few people have actually seen the full permission list of Facebook for Android, which includes almost every single possible one.)
> but it just enables the behaviour of selling out your entire social circle to Zuckerburg.
If that's the main reason to quit Facebook, the question should have been: "Did you delete your Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounts in 2018?". Yet, somehow nobody asks that question.
Well, not _quite_ "nobody". But yeah, I recognise I'm many standard deviations away from "normal" here... (I've also booted Twitter, and exiting Google is in-progress - except for the work GSuite account...)
"Did you delete your Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp accounts in 2018?"
Not possible, because I did not have any of these accounts in the first place. And I have a pretty normal social life with lots of technology, friends and activity.
Would mind elaborating about what part of the world you live in, and what are your strategies to finding out about events and interesting things to do? Because here in my country, more and more people use facebook to spread the word about events.
The reason your friend suggestions were still there is because your email or phone number is in your friends contact list on their phone, and that data is shared with Facebook. This indirect information about you is called a shadow profile, deleting your FB account does not delete the shadow profile because the data belongs to your friends, not you.
I'm pretty sure that is not the case here, or at least not completely. These are people I never met outside of Facebook and I initially got involved through IRC. They certainly never had my phone; besides, it had changed from my old Dutch to new UK number anyway. My email has been stable for some time, but I never used it to communicate with this crowd, I'd consider it unlikely that it matched there, too.
I left Facebook as soon as I realized they weren't reputable (some time around 2010 or 2011). By the time I left FB had already repeatedly betrayed user trust via "opt-out" security settings.
having a good social life was (and remains) vastly
important to the quality of my life, and that
Facebook is a tool to help achieve that goal.
From 2017: "A New, More Rigorous Study Confirms: The More You Use Facebook, the Worse You Feel"
Standing up for your principles and "voting with
your wallet" is good and all, but ... I'm not so
sure it's all that effective.
From July of this year: "Facebook on Thursday posted the largest one-day loss in market value by any company in U.S. stock market history after releasing a disastrous quarterly report."
Imo, those are valid points but still not worth giving up your privacy to Facebook for. I’d rather keep my data to myself until a non-ad supported version of either FB or some other platform comes out
I think I want to start using Facebook more in 2019 for these reasons. I have barely used it at all in the past ten years, mostly posting 3-4 pictures per year, and I never look at my feed. I'm actually afraid of looking at my feed today due to social anxiety, similar to entering a bar full of strangers talking.
It's been a few years, but I'm reasonable sure I actually deleted it and didn't just deactivate it. Or at least, that was the impression Facebook gave me. There was a big "you will lose all data!" warning as well as a cooling down period of a week or so, during which I could restore my account in case I changed my mind.
Perhaps, but unlikely; I didn't own a smartphone until January, and I've set up my browser to selectively remembering cookies for ages (I don't have Facebook in the whitelist, for reasons that should be obvious).
Almost. I started the process—downloaded all my data, etc. Unfortunately, I couldn’t go through with it for reasons I’m embarrassed to admit:
1. One entire side of my extended family relies on it for all familial communications. I was forced to use Facebook Messenger recently to help with wedding planning, for example. These people are addicted to it an have invested everything in it—Facebook knows their entire lives.
2. People post pictures of me on Facebook despite my objections. Continuously. They tag me—despite my objections. With an account, I can make it difficult for an average person to find photos of me.
3. I have zero faith that Facebook will stop tracking me, storing my data, or doing stuff I don’t want them to do if I delete my account. I have zero faith that they’d stop even if I got a court order.
I know several people who work at various positions in Facebook. Every time they talk about the company, it sounds worse and worse. I’m slowly transitioning from, “They’re just another big data miner,” to, “They’re a truly evil company that goes out of their way to be deceptive and would sell their soul—no, my soul—for a cheeseburger.”
> I couldn’t go through with it for reasons I’m embarrassed to admit
Quitting Facebook may not a choice without severe consequences. I'm lucky enough to be able to stay away from Facebook, but I know everyone isn't in the same position. It's important to acknowledge that Facebook is inextricably intertwined with many peoples professional and social lives.
Your workplace may require you to Workplace by Facebook for collaboration. The parents group at your childs school may only communicate via Facebook. Perhaps the bachelors party of a dear friend may be planned via Facebook.
Embarrassment is the last thing you should feel for being trapped by this tyrant.
> People post pictures of me on Facebook despite my objections.
We need to make legislation against this. I know taking pictures in public places is fair game. I also know celebrities are subject to having this information published due to the public nature of their lives. But for those wanting to live private lives, we should be able to ban tagging or indexing and sue those parties that enable this to happen without consent.
It's not fair game in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy at least, unless you're a person of public interest. I'm not sure how Facebook handles that.
If I look in google for pictures of those places there are plenty of people in them. I'm talking pictures of streets full of people or cool looking buildings with lots of people sitting around in the grass. I don't imagine the photographer went to talk to each person all the way to the horizon to ask permission, and I imagine, in the time one sets up the camera, multiple people probably enter and leave the view. There really is no practical way to take pictures of these places without people unless you get the help of authorities to close off these spaces and get everyone out of the way. So how do these laws work?
As what I've heard from my friends, you can deactivate your Facebook profile and still have Messenger on. Though you can't use Messenger without creating a Facebook account.
> People post pictures of me on Facebook despite my objections. Continuously. They tag me—despite my objections. With an account, I can make it difficult for an average person to find photos of me.
In the privacy settings there's a control so that you need to approve taggings of you before they go public.
Why delete though? Just keep it inactive. I use my account maybe like a few times a year, as well as a couple of fake accounts for logins to other sites.
I think it will hurt more if you don't delete the account but don't use it much because it reduces revenue per user, or ad views per user.
Yes, deleting all posts (using Social Book Posts Manager[1] IIRC) and other footprints as much as possible before I did. Of course, I can't control whether Facebook actually performed those deletions or just simulated it to my satisfaction.
On retrospect I'm now just sick that I was ever caught up in their "engagement at any expense" Skinner Box to the extent that I was. I'd have Facebook open in one tab and start typing f-a-c in a new one before being aware of what I was doing.
Facebook is digital lead, digital radon, digital asbestos—pick your metaphor. Life is much better without it.
I also did this, except I went through and mostly manually deleted everything first. It took weeks, I'm not kidding. There's a page where you can batch delete most posts, but only 50 at a time, and it doesn't always work because the calls take so long that they quite often time out. Most anything else is snappy, certainly posting stuff is, but deleting things can take several seconds per post. I ended up hacking together a script I could run on my activity log to delete most things all at once – Facebook doesn't seem to rate limit this and it didn't trigger any lockouts or captcha like forms. Some things couldn't be deleted by the script, so I just manually tried deleting them. Some things stuck around no matter what, they just couldn't be deleted and would always generate an error. I think these were songs I played on Spotify about a gazillion years ago.
I wouldn't recommend anyone do this. Use whatever automation tools you can find. One thing that was interesting though is that it made me review my "Facebook life" and boy was this depressing. It was more of a digital graveyard of past relationships and memories best left forgotten, than anything else. I deleted all my social media accounts except HN and LinkedIn (because believe it or not, I actually get some good offers there, despite me never having posted anything) the same week, sometime in October I think. It's great, I've read books, took up learning to play the piano and guitar, and just generally feel less anxious about life.
The only downside so far is that mom Is really pissed that she can't spy on my life anymore, and have to call me. Actually nevermind, that too is probably an upside.
(I also deleted everything Google. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.)
You have described exactly how I feel about this subject. My solution wasn't to delete facebook though, instead I ended up unfollowing every person I've ever argued with and unliked nearly every page. This has turned my news feed into a wasteland, and I've slowly become less of a Facebook junkie as a result.
Which isn't a strong enough correlation to suggest causation. Sounds a bit too "it's-a-conspiracy-because-it-inconvenienced-me" to ring true to my ears.
So some background. I used facebook as a normal user from 2010 to 2012. I thought it was stupid on day 1 but was peer pressured into it (thanks high school) and by 2012 I still thought it was stupid and useless so I quit.
At various intervals between 2012 and now I've had shitposting accounts. Fake names and fake pictures but most people in the friends list knew who was behind the mask (and frustratingly would address me instead of the mask). At some point I was posing as an over the top Chinese nationalist, reposting everything from China daily and xinhua. Using FB in this quasi anonymous way is so liberating. You're not playing the same status game as all those other suckers. You're free to touch any political third rail. In fact you're touching the third rail just to touch it. You don't even care what you're saying. You can completely make a mockery of the banality which consumes social media. I used to begin posts with "speaking as a mother" despite being very obviously male. It is like you're the only one who sees the emperor has no clothes, and you're sitting there jiggling his willy and everyone else is still insisting he's wearing pants.
Anyway my last account was one "Fiona Lockhardt". Her profile pic was a purple pen which had a smiley face and boobs added in ms paint. For people who know me, Fiona really is the name of my pen. It is a pen that I built but it is also a lockpick. I named it after a girl in the office who was caught stealing things. I would use this account to interject into conversations with ostensibly on topic information but secretly I was making lock puns. I would post sterotypically girly vacation photos but with the pen in various poses such as sitting on an airplane or drinking starbucks.
Importantly, none of the pictures posted were me. 100% of uploaded photos were the pen with a face added in ms paint. So one day facebook decides that something about my login is suspicious. They ask me to upload a picture to confirm my identity. They won't let me upload a picture of the pen because they failed to detect a face in the picture. So I upload a photo of Mark Zuckerberg. It goes to manual review and then my account gets locked. Ironic, Fiona could unlock things for others, but couldn't unlock her own account.
Do I care? No not really. Facebook was just a stupid site on the internet from day 1. It never deserved to be taken seriously.
I agree, it never deserved to be taken seriously. When my wife deleted her account, I found it quite bizarre that people were asking questions like 'how are you coping?'.
To me, it's just a website - I wondered how absurd that same question would sound had it been a pistonheads or mumsnet account she was deleting.
Parent comment represents another use of Facebook in 2018 that exists somewhere between deleting and using as intended. What was it about the post that made you feel the need to attack the author?
It's not meaningful protest that will produce any positive change, it's just being a jerk and wasting everyone's time. This is the kind of juvenile behavior that impresses 13 year olds.
No. As an introvert with a rich inner life, it’s one of the only ways for me to share that life with friends. People who have known me for years find they don’t really know me unless they’ve read my writing or seen my experiences through pictures. (I almost never share third party links; all my Facebook content is self-created and is a form of self expression — I suspect I’m in the minority of Facebook users)
There are egg people and onion people. Egg people are knowable once you break the shell, but with onion people there are many layers to peel. I’m one of those people who, despite being outgoing, are hard to know in real life because I communicate much more easily through writing. Friends have told me it’s through my posts that they learn there’s a whole other side of me.
Yes I could start a blog or send emails, but everyone knows it’s not the same.
To me there’s inhererent utility in a platform like Facebook for introverts. If there was another platform that’s as widely accepted I would switch but due to the objective function to monetize, any company going down this path will be faced with the same ethical challenges.
The data scandal was serious and to be honest, needed. It brought data and privacy awareness, countries and even entire continents are now trying to convey regulations on the subject.
Facebook was already superfluous, if you can afford to delete it.
Deleted my account permanently two months ago. In the beginning it was interesting too see how it had become a habit to write the url almost without thinking, and for three weeks I found myself opening a new tab and writing the Facebook.com address every time my mind started wandering. Also deleted my Instagram account at the same time and currently in the process of deleting WhatsApp as well, as soon as some projects depending on it as the communication platform conclude.
Can’t say I missed it. The things I’ve lost in terms of communication power are far outweighed by the positive effect it has had on my wellbeing and time management. Other than that the effect has been relatively small on my life.
At the time of deletion I had around 700 “friends”, most of which I hadn’t seen in years and many of which I had had no connection after becoming friends on Facebook. Now two months after is feels weird to have used this service daily, when in reality it worked mostly as an address book than a communication platform.
Another thing I noticed was how invested I had become in other people’s lives by mostly just consuming their status updates, stories and pictures. This combined with lack of updates from my side had really distorted my relationship with people, and had me feel more connected to people than I really was. It has wonderful to notice how much more interesting and easier it has become to converse with people when you don’t know what they’ve been up to recently
> Deleted my account permanently two months ago. In the beginning it was interesting too see how it had become a habit to write the url almost without thinking, and for three weeks I found myself opening a new tab and writing the Facebook.com address every time my mind started wandering.
I've deleted my account in 2017 when I realized that I only care about ~10 of my ~1,000 friends. The behavior you described also happened to me -- a lot. It was quite scary to realize how often I absentmindedly type in Facebook's url every day.
The hardest part about deleting my account was that I had a few deceased people in my friend list. That held me back for a good while (years actually) – because it was a terrifying thought that, no matter if I change my mind and come back, they could never accept a new friend request by me and I would never be able browse their profile again.
I understand the desire to delete FB and IG (I did the same in 2018) but why get rid of WhatsApp? Isn't it just a communication tool rather than a social-media site?
I deleted my account in April this year. At the point of deletion I had created some Facebook pages and had been a very active user for many years. I tried downloading my data through Facebook's built-in account download feature. And I was quite happy with the download.
I then wrote up a post about my motivation for leaving which I shared on my Facebook: https://nilsnh.no/2018/04/04/leaving-facebook/ I figured it would be better to be vocal about leaving instead of just disappearing without a word. I answered questions and helped some friends join me on Signal.
Personally, I'm happy to be investing more of my time in platforms which respect my privacy. And I eagerly encourage people I meet to consider ethically-minded platforms like Signal.
Ultimately, I hope to see real, legal consequences towards corporations that disrespect the privacy of its users. Also, if monopoly laws were revised for the digital age we might see that some large corporations should be broken up in order to cultivate better competition.
Dude thank you for the blog post. Its short and straight to the point, you nailed it. When I was reading it (mobile) I was hoping you would mention Signal.
Do you mind if I quote your post (and link to it) if I decide to leave facebook?
How did it go? It might be pointless, but I'm curious of the outcome/reactions
No, but I've just completed exporting as many of my contacts as possible to vcard format and have added them to my Protonmail account. I've also set my existing Gmail accounts to forward to my Protonmail, and I'll sunset those accounts down the road once I'm confident I've transitioned everything off it.
Facebook and Google will soon be eliminated from my life. Amazon will probably be next, but I'm less concerned with Amazon(with the exception of Alexa, which I no longer use).
My Facebook account is still around mostly because much of my family still uses the site and our private group is where most family news, photos, etc. get posted. Otherwise, my account is basically a "husk". Very few of the people I know who are under 40 use it much at all at this point. The site, in relation to my social circle, is tumbleweeds blowing around. I don't know if I'll ever truly delete my Facebook account, but I hardly go to the site and I've purged my phone of all their software.
> Facebook and Google will soon be eliminated from my life.
I have been trying to do that for a while without success. I have to keep Facebook account because of some professional reasons and at personal level I also it useful to look someone up quickly on Facebook if I am not sure who that person is.
As per google some jack ass coworker decides to use google docs and I am forced to keep google account. Sometimes I am also forced to use some google forums for work.
Even if you ditch your voluntary use of their services (like search, docs, forums), you are still faced with things like reCAPTCHA pervasively track your browsing and gatekeeping your access to large swaths of the internet.
No, and I won't delete my Facebook account in 2018 or 2019.
I log in to Facebook Feed maybe once every 2 - 3 months, just to see how the space looks like, always disappointed in how irrelevant the information is to me. No friend posts, no insightful publishing, just randomly shared articles, ads, sponsored content and page suggestions.
I also do Instagram sometimes, that feels a bit more towards what I want in that I can actually see what some friends are doing but seeing my wife and close friends scrolling on and on on their feeds and praising it really makes me wary of immersing myself too much in this gamified addiction center.
I use Facebook Messenger to keep contact with my friends and WhatsApp to talk to my family; I have my track blockers on, I have my ads blocked and notifications disabled on my phone so Facebook is minimally invasive for me. Not sure what point I'm trying to make, I think it's a bit counterproductive deleting your account on the biggest network on the planet. What I think we should be pushing for is people disengaging with their devices and their notifications and being in charge of when they want to connect.
I was once a daily Facebook user, I felt connected, I felt empowered, I felt knowledgeable and I never stopped to consider if it is truly so. The change for me happened when I decided to disable notifications on my phone. Ever since then, I've been a lot better at managing my daily attention and random apps don't really hold my attention any more than what I am willing to offer them.
Again, I'm feeling like I'm rambling without a cohesive thought, so I'll end it with the personal insight that it's not necessary to drop a service as long as you get to control how it works for you. The data mining and shadow profiling are the cost you pay for a free service, but being on it constantly is a choice individuals can make for themselves.
> […] it's not necessary to drop a service as long as you get to control how it works for you
> The data mining and shadow profiling are the cost you pay for a free service
That seems a bit contradictory to me. If you could control how something worked, you could also control what data is being mined and so on. Fact is, you can't; even when you tell Facebook not to, they still manage to find ways to do so.
Also, once upon a time, data mining and shadow profiling were decidedly _not_ the cost we paid for free services. We got either generic advertising or targeted advertising based on the state of the page being visited, not a huge history based on every little thing we've done online.
We do well to remember that the way things are is _not_ always the way things should be, or even have always been. Apathy to our own plight and a short collective memory span are dictatorships' greatest friends.
> […] it's not necessary to drop a service as long as you get to control how it works for you
I agree with this, and this is why I still have a FB account (for now).
> The data mining and shadow profiling are the cost you pay for a free service
I believe the OP was saying that “the way FB mines your data is the cost they charge for their service”, not necessarily that this has always been the cost of every free service, or that this is a cost that everyone should be willing to pay.
It’s more like “if you manage the notifications so it’s only a part of your life when you want it to be, and you understand and are okay with the data mining and shadow profiling they do to support their service, then there’s not much to be gained from deleting your FB account.” At least that’s how I feel (again, for now).
Thank you for trying to clarify my point, you are very spot on.
I think Facebook as a service SHOULD have access to how you use the platform AS you use it and if you can stop it from tracking your behavior outside their ecosystem and gamifying your interaction with it, I do believe that there's not that much to gain from deleting your account.
There's an argument to be made for their unethical addiction provoking implementations, but until another platform comes up with a working business model and a lack of psychological tricks, one would be arguing against the windmills.
I'm not arguing for control of how a service works, but control of how it works _for you_, _if_ it works for you. From my understanding, Facebook is a for profit company doing their best to get as much data as they can from me and offering x, y and z services in return. So then the question becomes, can I make this service work for me in a way that I feel comfortable with? I believe I can.
I can block most of that tracking through various channels, while also using the platform in a way that brings me value. I am feeding Facebook data when using their platform and I believe that is somewhat fair for them, but I am doing my best to build a system that doesn't feed them additional data, which I believe is unethical.
Do I like Facebook as a company and the direction in which it's going and the societal changes it brings? No. Do I think Facebook has 0 value? Again, no. Do I have an alternative service for keeping up with my friends and family apart from our occasional real life meetups? Strangely enough, I don't think I do.
Once upon a time we had simple HTTP servers sending you server rendered pages, in time, it evolved to a complex ecosystem of requests and responses for each page you visit. Part of that is used to offer us services which were unimaginable "back in the days", but with it came the other part where your behavior becomes heavily trackable.
I remember the old internet, I wish that simplicity came back in a way (somehow without the popups, the toolbars and the risk of running apps on your machine instead of in your browsers), but I think that ship has long sailed, and I'm not sure I'm willing to give up the possibilities of today for that.
Deleted in 2017! Life’s been great since. I’ve taken a bunch of classes, read a bunch of books, and I’m no longer plagued by the political and social ideas of the uneducated on a regular basis.
"Most of what passes for legitimate entertainment is inferior or foolish and only caters to or exploits people's weaknesses. Avoid being one of the mob who indulges in such pastimes. Your life is too short and you have important things to do. Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don't choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to, someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest. It is the easiest thing in the world to slide imperceptibly into vulgarity. But there's no need for that to happen if you determine not to waste your time and attention on mindless pap."
-Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness
Yes. I did it for the privacy issues, and for being personally opposed to advertising in all forms. But I also did it because social networks are harmful even beside that. They are attention suckers, they distract, and they also depress and mislead you. All in all, I feel measurably worse for having them in my life. I feel it was doing me harm, to my mental health, my free time, my overall well-being. The (small) benefits, which I can mostly replace with messaging via other services, do not outweigh this harm. That's why all the posts about "an open-source/distributed/decentralised facebook substitute" don't really appeal to me either.
Yes. Too much BS from FB piled up... So I've started the process on Nov. 25th and in two days it will be a point of no return (yay!). FYI: After deletion, there's one-month period when you can change your mind and undelete the account.
I was a very active user since 2007. and I've made the decision literally overnight and made it into action one week later, after announcing it to friends and downloading my data. I've also sent a canned message to almost all people I have communicated with. It said something like: I'm deleting FB account, here's my email, phone nr and name, as FB will replace my name in that conversation with "Facebook user" when I'm gone.
I've also deleted my Yahoo account 10+ yrs ago, for inserting ads in email signatures and became obsoleted by Google, Linkedin after they sold my data and trust to MS and Twitter when they announced censoring posts.
Google and Amazon accounts could be next.
P.S. I've just signed up here to post this comment (:
I didn’t delete FB but I cut my usage by >80% using a chrome extension I built to block the newsfeed. That way, I could still use messenger and view tagged posts without getting sucked into the blackhole that is the newsfeed.
Yes! My primary reason for my deleting FB was that it was a waste of time. The privacy issues were there from the beginning. I never doubted our data wasn't used in all kinds of unsavory ways but this is the cost of having a "free" social network. What else did anyone expect? What really surprised me was how addicting FB is and how it changed the way almost everyone interacts with each other. Facebook's biggest crime is deliberately addicting its users, especially young people. If for nothing else, I hope MZ gets a subpoena for that.
I deactivated it for a few months. I've reactivated it since. I live in a small town of about 300 homes, all the city information is posted in the city facebook page. It doesn't suck time from my day anymore since I broke the addiction (now reddit is my only addiction left) and I have the firefox container extensions and ublock origin so i'm satisfied it's not tracking me.
What's the problem with just using it for one or two features, deleting everything else you've posted and using anti-tracking software in your browser?
1) Friends in California who keep the social group messaging on Messenger despite pleading with them to migrate so that I can at least uninstall Messenger from my phone. If you have lived in a variety of places, made friends in those places, and it's important to you to keep in touch with them, then they're on Facebook. The End.
2) Facebook properties are huge locally (Tel Aviv). Need to find housing? Facebook groups. Looking for local events? Facebook events. WhatsApp is endemic here: if you get somebody's number, the default is to contact them on WhatsApp. Want to make an appointment? Nobody needs some kind of business-focused WhatsApp - the guy just gets a cheap phone, sets up normal WhatsApp on the number, and publishes that number. Every social group imaginable is on WhatsApp - roommates, work, family, various social groups, coordinating weekly exercise groups, absolutely everything.
I visualize people who quit Facebook as the kind of person who always lived in one place, probably rural, is friendly with a handful of people from work, maybe a couple of people from school/college, and family. Sum total maybe fifty people who they've ever been close to in their life. If they're quitting Facebook, it's because Facebook didn't provide them much added value in the first place. And they either don't live in a place where WhatsApp is huge, or their social group is small enough and close enough that it's not a big deal for them to drop off the grid.
Quitting isn't a laughable idea. I live in California (SF Bay) and got all of Facebook's companies out of my life in 2017. I had over 2,000 connections there.
Since leaving, my offline social life improved and I'm more productive, because I don't scroll through newsfeeds, waste time chatting online about things that are not related to work, or think about posting anything on Facebook at all.
I'm in the triple digits for connections. Most of those connections are people I met such a long time ago that I couldn't remember their names if you showed me their pictures, and couldn't remember their faces if you told me their names. I'm not on Facebook for them, I'm on Facebook for a) the few people I do care about split between a variety of time zones who won't migrate off the platform and b) features like groups which are irrespective of the number of connections I have. Besides WhatsApp which is a default here.
I travel a lot , make hundreds of connections per year and I don't have a FB account. I quit in 2016. I do use WhatsApp and occasionally Instagram. Quitting FB improved my life and reduced lot of noise. I call my friends more often now rather than just expressing the friendship over a like or comment.
Yes because I found it absolutely useless since I didn't interact with people much besides a friend who I forgot to tell I was leaving Facebook. Thankfully she emailed me so we could stay in touch.
I wasn't using FB a whole lot since it made me feel bad but what pushed me to the edge was their utter contempt for their users.
I doubt it means much given how big of an influence it has in the world however. And I'm not sure I'll get all those productivity benefits since I'll waste time on something else.
I quit using Facebook in early 2014. I asked them to delete my account. Later, in 2017, I logged into Spotify for the first time ever, using the same email I had registered with Facebook in the past. Magically my account was restored and linked to Spotify.
After that I was sort of at a loss, but I did delete my account again this year after seeing a link on a thread here that claimed it would “really” allow me to delete my account. I still don’t trust it.
People have commented that they have missed out on friends 50th parties and even their death due to not being on Facebook. And therefore not being on Facebook is a big decision with consequences for your life.
However I think if you are not on FB, and you don't want to miss out, you need to do some old fashion stuff, like call your friends on the phone if they are long distance, or meet with them in person if they are local. And you'll have to do more of that to not miss out on stuff. You might then have to be more fussy about who you class as friends.
Even given all that I think it is worth giving up FB.
It goes both ways, too. If you have people in your life who are more than surface relationships then they and you will both make the effort to maintain it—Facebook isn’t going to enhance that to any real degree. The moment it becomes more than just a tool is the moment I’m OUT.
I'd been on it since high school in 2005 and treated it like the new version of MSN Messenger (oh 2002...). After a while it just got stale and it felt like I was pouring way too much of my personal data on to the platform. I think the turning point came after a friend of mine had committed suicide and his profile continued to live on the platform for at least a year. People kept posting to it and it just didn't sit well with me at all and I didn't like the idea of having an FB profile tombstone for myself either.
I actually, in a strange way, don't really care about all this privacy stuff. A for-profit company looking into my personal preferences just to show me better targeted ads, instead of boring, generic ones? What's better than that?
They're either going to charge me monthly subscription fees, which would kill the whole business in an instant, or find a way to make a profit off ads.
Hard to tell if you’re sarcastic here. Facebook is now a tool that endangers elections. It worsens political dialog and keep people in a bubble that strengthens their uninformed opinions. It does not only shows ads but works super hard on making you addicted to the service, so you spend all your available time looking at ads, even when they don’t look like such (your friends and family are unimportant there, they don’t pay Facebook).
So, Facebook does screw up a lot, most of all they screw their users. The monthly fee might help but at this point I’ve lost most trust.
You are suffering from one cut in the thousand cut death mechanism. Each corporation will take away a little of what everyone used to have by default, in exchange for something worth just a little less than what they're taking away. Once every corporation, government office and secret agency has taken their cut you will no longer be a free person. Some time down the line, someone will notice that you are not a free person, and then they will do something that could impact your happiness.
I don't know man. I'm just perfectly ok with them sneak peeking into my conversation trends and extracting key phrases for targeted ads..
I mean, what is the alternative? You can pay subscription fees(noone would), or see generic ads(no company would advertise due to next to zero CR).. Either way, facebook is dead.
What makes companies like Facebook, Google etc unique is that, their ability to appease to both sides of the market.
If they don't, they simply cannot exist. And lack of privacy is a price we have to pay if we want these services in our lives.
An alternative would be to have contextual ads that were based on the present state of the page, but none of your history. This is how it always was, only a few years ago.
And it is so much better, because when I'm thinking about X anyway my though process is not hijacked in an uncomfortable way by ads about X, and so sometimes I actually look at them instead of using energy to disregard them and gasp have even clicked on one or two.
I don't consider this recent news as any sort of surprise. On the contrary, I have always disapproved of Facebook tricking users into thinking any of the data they hand over is "private".
I'd rather have irrelevant ads than targeted ones. When I visit a web site and see irrelevant ads, I have more confidence (but not 100%) that they are not collecting or using information about me. So I'd rather see irrelevant ads.
Yes. It was my New Year’s resolution on 31 December 2017 and I deleted my account on 1 January 2018. I’ve been able to focus on growing our startup and getting back to reading; I subscribed to the New Yorker and the Atlantic. That’s primarily how I get my news now. Being off Facebook means I don’t get invited to many events, but I’ve been surprised at how people have adjusted to emailing me or texting me instead. You certainly learn who your real friends are.
I also deleted my Twitter account which has been much more cathartic and healthier for me. I was a long time Twitter user, and followed a lot of very liberal people in tech. Unfortunately, after the 2016 election, most of their tweets became political, and my feed was all ranting, whinging, and hate. What’s even worse is that I’m in Australia, so even though I agreed with them, it wasn’t relevant to me.
I just unfollowed all my friends (back in 2015). They still see me as a friend, I can read their posts individually, I can use FB to communicate with my family — but there is nothing interesting now in my feed, so I am free from addiction. Highly recommended.
I don't care much about ethics, Facebook is free to topple governments or play with the very fabric or democracy or whatever — cool stuff to do, I'd join them in a heartbeat. I don't want to be addicted, though.
I did the same thing. Unfollowed everyone but super close family and friends. It does wonders to clear addiction. Now I check it for maybe 5-10 minutes once a week and that's it.
And since then I've been stuck in a loop of reactivating/deactivating because I do use facebook messenger and logging in from a new device seems to magically turn my account back on. I finally just gave up a month ago and just left it on. However, I did completely break the habit of mindlessly opening facebook when I'm bored. I'm really glad I quashed that habit - once it's gone facebook feels like a pretty lifeless experience when you open it.
I did delete my Facebook account (this past week). I forgot to download all the data they had on me but I had a download from earlier in the year (maybe a few months ago) and that's sufficient enough for me since I made very few posts to Facebook this year.
In the lead up to deleting facebook, I deleted many "friends," removed all my likes, and deleted every single picture I could.
Unfortunately I can still be seen in pictures others have posted to Facebook.
I will admit that I still have Instagram installed on my phone. I could probably delete it and not miss anything but there are some interesting people I follow.
Yes. It stopped providing value. It used to provide a way to stay in touch with friends from college.
Then it provided too much info about how my family and co-workers really feel about the world. Turns out ignorance is bliss. I am happier not knowing about their contrail conspiracy theories or their racist Obama cartoons.
Deleted mine in 2010. 2 months was all I could handle was horrible experience then. It is a cheap way to keep up superficial relationship with people. If you had to put any energy/time keeping up a relationship with these people you would probably stop talking to them all together.
No, see no need to delete it. I don't post anything anymore, but use messenger a lot to keep in contact with a very broad friendcircle, like people I travelled with.
Events are also very important to me. My calendar is synced with Facebook so if I click somewhere on "interested" or "going", it syncs into my schedule.
Lastly, the selling community is big and I sell more on Facebook than on Craigslist.
Is everyone that's getting rid of their Facebook also getting rid of their cell phone? I don't really use Facebook much but don't have a compelling reason to delete it. It's good for contacting people whose phone numbers I don't have.
I keep trying, but the fact is that all my friends and family rely on Facebook for communication (usually through Messenger), so either I use it and stay connected or I don't use it and I become completely disconnected.
We can argue the virtues of becoming disconnected until the cows come home, but practically speaking, I still rely on my family and friends for a lot of things. Putting myself on radio silence is not an option.
I've been spending the past couple days looking into what options I have available to continue using Facebook whilst never visiting the website or using its apps. Most positive options seem to involve using a bridge to another service.
> Putting myself on radio silence is not an option.
You're (deeply) conflating disconnecting from FB with disconnecting from communication. These are not remotely the same thing.
My family and friends know I'm not on FB and so they call me, they text me, they even email me. In 3+ years the fact that I'm not in FB has presented zero difficulty for me or the people and groups I want to communicate with.
> You're (deeply) conflating disconnecting from FB with disconnecting from communication. These are not remotely the same thing.
Nobody I know uses email for actual communication, and no amount of me sending them emails is likely to change that. Further, I don't pay for therefore don't use text messages, and the majority of people I know don't use Apple devices so can't use a free service like iMessage to contact me.
I'm also not planning to sign up for another service just to replace another, nor do I think I could reasonably convince anybody to follow me to another service aside from WhatsApp which wouldn't be much of an improvement, really.
I'm glad you've managed to have zero difficulties. However, if it were really so simple for me, I would have already pulled the trigger long ago. Someone else's anecdote has no relevance to my situation just as my anecdote has no relevance to anybody else.
So please don't tell me what I'm conflating. I know my own business best.
I didn’t delete my Facebook account and probably won’t.
I deleted the app from my phone and then logged out of all browsers few months after that (i dont know my FB password as it’s stored in my pwd manager so it makes checking FB tad harder). I feel I have a lot more time for other stuff and more focus at work especially.
The only reason why I wont delete my account is that I live abroad and this is the easiest way to stay in touch with family/close friends, especially my non-tech saavy mother. So Im only using Messenger.
I find it more important to learn how to “free myself” from the phone addiction than just deleting a FB account and this is what Ive been working on recently.
In the midwest ( a place before people have had a mass exodus ), Facebook still serves a purpose as somewhat of the white pages, in that everyone you have ever known at least has an account. It is a single place to find everyone.
If you delete your account, which I did in about 2006 and maybe again in 2008 or so, people thought I specifically unfriended only them, and were mad at me.
I would love to see the network (list of people), and connections (friends) to be separated from facebook itself.. so that you could use different websites to still find the full list of people and friends, but didn't need to go through facebook for everything.
No. Still super useful to keep in touch with my friends. Actually I was in Milan not so long ago and have a friend living there, but he deleted his facebook account so I didn't manage to reach out to him. It was a bit sad.
I thought it would be hard but once I jumped on deleting my account I feel much better. Friends get in touch with me over text or email. Many of my friends prefer using email at this point anyhow, possibly since most of my male friends are programmers or luddites or both.
My girlfriend still gets Facebook invites for things but increasingly we get email invites for parties and similar. I get my news more actively through browsing sources now; I navigate to Pitchfork or a subreddit for music stuff.
It's easier than it sounds; people will find a way to get in touch and new people you meet will just be fine with texting.
I deleted it a few years ago. Before doing so I unrated myself from everything, unliked everything, replaced all my posts and comments to just an underscore, then deleted each post and finally the account.
I am probably one of the few who has gone the other way. I had a Facebook when it was college e-mail only. I got rid of it... and then I added it back this year.
It turns out that Facebook is fundamentally required if you want to schedule events which contain a lot of individuals. At first I assumed I would only use it for messaging/coordination. But then I decided I liked having the ability to post jokes.
I have also found it easy to filter out all of the nonsensical political argumentation. But that's probably because I have personally learned to just not argue.
No, as sometimes I dip back in to see what some of my friends who refuse to quit it are up to, as they don't post elsewhere. I don't post, and my profile has been purged of all posts and content[1]. For now this will have to be good enough.
I did find out recently that you can now delete your 'Facebook profile' but keep your login just for Messenger' though.
I deleted it several years ago, then re-opened it briefly this year, then almost immediately closed it again.
I needed to buy FB ads for a project I was working on, so I signed up with a brand new email address. Immediately after signing up, it was messaging people in my old network that I had joined facebook and suggesting they add me as a friend. Really creeped me out. I just wanted to join so I could buy ads and have zero contact with other people.
So I immediately deleted it and decided I was going to live without facebook ads.
I get the benefits of Facebook (real identity with almost everyone on the platform, events, groups, etc.) without loosing hours reading crap on the news feed.
No, I didn’t delete my account. But I have reduced my exposure quite a bit over time (I want using it much in the first place) and I find it more peaceful to stay away. There’s too much negativity, too many black and white arguments, too much chest thumping, too much narcissism, too less empathy...almost every negative human quality one can imagine is magnified a thousand times on these platforms (to the extent of my observations).
Yet, as someone who deeply cares about privacy (and strongly despises Facebook) but is also involved in some causes where connecting with other people (many strangers) helps, I use Facebook only for those purposes.
I don’t post anything personal, though Facebook would have my number because of all the other people uploading their address books to it. I use Facebook as a focused tool, and not to kill time by scrolling and clicking/tapping and watching videos that are ultimately wasteful in every way. Luckily, I don’t have a big social circle that’s only on Facebook, and if there are events that are only on Facebook, I don’t mind missing those. People who need to connect can always email me or call me.
Network effects aside, the user experience is very important. Without that, there’s no hope of making people try something else and having them stick with it. After all, many people have moved from Orkut to Friendster to MySpace to Facebook to Instagram to Snapchat and then back and what not. Anything that wants to replace Facebook should invent a new paradigm for communication and connection and/or should come as a complete replacement (“batteries included”).
No and see no reason to. I've 100+ Facebook friends that are fellow strength athletes, 99% of the time you find out about competitions via facebook friends sharing or expressing interest in attending.
It's how we plan social events at the facility I barbell at, the local Atari club I belong to etc.
It's how I find out about local shows without having to monitor local venue websites which may or may not be updated (some haven't been updated in years).
Most of my friends no longer live anywhere near me in Indy. I have friends in Australia, New Zealand, Florida, San Francisco, Germany, England, Hungary... Facebook is how I see what is going on in their lives and Facebook messenger is how I keep in touch with all of the ones now outside of the United States.
I don't mindlessly scroll through. People and pages that are important to me are marked as 'see first'. When I open Facebook I'll scroll 5-10 posts (a few times a day) unless I'm waiting on an appointment/oil change/whatever and then I'll scroll past that.
As far as privacy concerns... yeah I don't care. My domain is my name, my username just about everywhere is my name, if I share it online I don't care if every single human being alive sees it. If I don't want people seeing it, I... don't share it online.
Didn’t delete, but deleted the app and stopped using it. Very occasionally drop on to look something up, or to browse say once a month or so.
I downloaded my data and started deleting everything. I started messaging friends to ensure I had up to date contact info. Then I realised it was just easier to leave the account alone.
Never look at it at work anymore, don’t post anything other than the occasional article on how social media is bad for your health!
You quickly learn who your real friends are - we have long phone conversations every few months instead. Much more satisfying and meaningful. Interacting through a screen is an extremely poor substitute for a phone or face to face conversation.
Attention span improved, extremely focused at work.
When I drop back in I always see the same small subset of people posting the same kind of thing: they’re evidently consistently bored or addicted, and there is very little of value there.
Still use messenger a bit, but use Signal and SMS as much as possible.
Completely stopped using instagram, it’s a whole extra level of narcissism that I can’t stand.
I’d love to see some competition in this space. Small simple apps for chat and photo albums and status updates, chronologically ordered, with a small monetisation fee / freemium model. Please, someone bring back functional social networks.
I simply "logged out" of Facebook in 2015 and haven't logged back on since. Why not delete? Because I still have people who message on Messenger every once in a while and the effort of asking them to switch to a different service is simply not worth the effort (for me).
Thankfully, Facebook has https://messenger.com where I can log in every 1-2 months to reply to messages I've gotten there (Which are mostly either long lost friends trying to get back in touch or the dreaded "Hey how are you? PS I need a favor" type messages)
Sure, I probably miss out on knowing whats going on in everyone's life, but I think with age (hit my mid 20s), I've leaned more towards cultivating a fixed set of "good, stable, bankable" friends instead of 1500 contacts (which was my FB when I quit), and the quality of life improvement has been massive for me. As they say, FB makes you compare your backreel with everyone's highlights and that has a massive psychological impact. I've gained back hours of time which I used to spend scrolling endlessly on the "infinite" timeline and managed to use large parts of it to do things that truly enrich me.
Fact is that FB has reached a point of "uncool" in the younger generation (I know people 6-7 years younger to me who wouldn't be caught dead on FB simply because it's not cool) and more and more people are moving off of FB, or using it more as a secondary network (again, only applicable for my network), so in many ways, I feel that leaving FB today is much easier than a couple years ago (leaving the FB network of Whatsapp/Instagram as well is a different question).
I haven't yet deleted my account, but I've been about 3 years 'clean' of Facebook - only dropping in briefly on my birthday as I know people like to wish people a happy birthday there.
I've made a real effort to actually connect with the friends I love and want to spend time with, and to text, call, email, write or visit them - all of which are much more impactful than a 'like on fb. I've 'lost out' on interacting with the huge group of friends that I had on Facebook, but you know what, they weren't friends, they were just people I knew or knew of. My real friends I've actually spent a hell of a lot more time with and on. And going from 500 to a 1000 people to 10 to 20 certainly felt like a downgrade at first but within a few weeks I was obvious that it was vastly better for me.
Although happy and successful in many ways, Facebook left me feeling anxious and like I wasn't keeping up. With things that I didn't care about. Talking in person removes all of that.
I've not yet deleted as I've not yet bothered to pull all my details off there, and I like to return just to tell people that it is OK to leave the party ;)
No, but I don't use it aside from Messenger either.
I don't have any of the apps installed and none of my browsers are specifically logged into facebook.com (just messenger.com which is likely just the exact same cookie/tracking wise).
Mind you, it's basically the illusion of freedom because I use Instagram every so often which is another Facebook owns product so I'm still in the ecosystem.
I did delete my Facebook account around mid-2017 but the utility of it pulled me back in once I started my job/moved to the city earlier this year. Whoever referred to it as a "human pokedex" wasn't wrong.
As long as you feed it a little, it'll give you quite a bit in return. For example, you could meet a total stranger at a party and only learn their first name. Using that, mixed with your own geolocation and social network, is usually enough to find out who they were. While it is publically available information (in a sense because it's still inside a walled garden), I don't think most people realise how little work is needed to track down who someone is.
That in itself isn't particularly useful of course. Anyway, I'm just rambling at this point haha
No, I've never used it. Or MySpace, Instagram, SnapChat, LinkedIn, FourSquare, etc.
I did install Android on my 'phone when it was first released, but at the time its keyboard was hard-coded to specific hardware (the G1 had a physical "jump" button that my 'phone doesn't have, and this was required for typing punctuation). I uninstalled it and went back to Debian, haven't looked back :)
I have not yet but plan to. I announced my intention to delete it last week. Since then I have been getting as many people as I can, that want it, setup on Wire.
The main reason I didn't delete it yet is that I just started my vacation to Iceland and wanted to make sure I can arrange meetings with my friends here for Christmas and New Year's.
My plan was, and still is, to delete it on New Year's eve.
I did do a bunch of research on different messaging apps before announcing my intention to delete Facebook so that I could point those that want it to another app.
Here on the west coast of Canada it's really hard. Everyone uses Facebook messenger for chatting. I am definitely going to lose contact with a number of people when I pull the trigger.
Between email, SMS, Discord (along with Steam and Battle.net to a lesser degree), and Wire I should have a way to contact most of the people I currently chat to.
It's really hard though and my wife isn't enthusiastic about it as she wants me to stay in contact with her family and they basically just use Facebook. They also live in another country so SMS is more costly.
Will be interesting to see how much it effects me next year.
2. Wrote a script and used it to unfollow all the people and pages I follow.
3. Clicked not interested for a few days after on any ads or things that FB tried to still force into my news feed
1 month later I found I have no urge to visit the network anymore. I pop over there once a week or so when I want to check the FB page of a restaurant or to see events happening around me but I'm 100% in control of how I use the network.
I'd love to delete it for privacy reasons, but there's a lot of value to be had in the network which I can't truly be rid of.
Some other notes: FB's behaviour becomes pathologically "interesting" when it senses it's losing your engagement. You get to see just how many paths it tries to take to draw you back in. Right now it's down to what I believe is the last resort. My notifications are filled up whenever I choose to login to FB. And they are filled with "person X posted something". I never click them but I imagine that to someone still trying to wean themselves off FB, it'd be an effective way of trying to pull them back in.
Facebook is one of those things I learn about what long tail really meant. There are still regions and countries just getting on or Facebook being a hot new item. People are using it for all sort of things. In the west, the social circle might have moved to IG for youngsters years ago, for many Facebook is still the king.
Facebook is also informational ( Problem of Fake News ). Those hipster who like Sanpchat? Where were they now? The so call next gen didn't like WhatsApp and Facebook? What do they use when they are finally out of college? The thing I love about working is that it these people will have to adopt to OUR way of working ( Gosh that sounds old, as if like I was forced to use Lotus Notes for email ) but seriously Snapchat and IG just cant be used much for work because information density is too low. It might be good for entertainment. Twitter and Facebook is still king.
So I didn't delete my Facebook. It is still useful without replacement. I am waiting to see if deleting Facebook is still a Silicon Valley / nerds movement or actual real world movement.
Deleted both Facebook and Instagram (requested permanent data deletion etc). Its been a couple of months, and I've never felt better. Sure, I lost touch with some people but managed to find other ways to get in touch whenever I needed to. Not to mention my phone battery now lasts like 3 days and I dont scroll through Instagram like a zombie every time I'm bored for a few seconds.
No but it's just totally irrelevant for me now. Its been almost a month and I didn't even think about it until now, so it's like dozens of accounts that I have (like yahoo mail) which even though I have in theory are completely useless and irrelevant to me.
But I don't plan on deleting it since I may have a use for it some day and I would like to have that option just in case.
I haven't and don't plan to. I don't really post - maybe once in six months. It's great for what it is - keeping up with what's going on in your family and friend base.
What bothers me more than Facebook though are all these self-righteous people, that obviously know more than everyone else, calling on everybody to quit FB. It's almost a religion to them. MYOFB.
Yes, I have lost contact with some people in general, but it's not worth the privacy violations. There's still email and texts if someone needs to reach me. I also deleted twitter around the same time. Mostly because I just don't use it enough. It's just non stop spam on twitter I feel. Nothing of substance from any one I followed.
I had an account for about a month in 2010 and deleted it because of the constant notifications for Farmville and some other game. That was my one and only flirtation with any kind of social media (unless you count HN as social media). Haven't looked back, pretty sure I haven't missed anything important in my social life.
I deleted it last year. No negative effects more than a couple of comments from family members and 1/2 events that were only organised via Facebook events.
The impact on my life is not large. It’s muted but palpable, I don’t consider myself “better” than anyone else, which is usually the implication that Facebook-account holders seem to have.
1. It was taking too much time than supposed to take.
2. There are lots of information on a page which actually I don't want to see or read.
Yeah, sometimes I fill like I'm missing something when my friends taking each other like, "Oh, you did this and that. I saw your photos on fb". But, hey it is okay to not present everyplace, right!
In 2018 I got rid of whats app and the smartphone. This one involved a sacrifice, being farther away from my friends. But I got so much in exchange. Time, presence, big reduction in anxiety, contact with people, compassion. Got my life back.
I get to call and visit my friends and really enjoy talking to them.
Nope. Definitely use it a bit less because I've realized that there aren't that really any benefits of using it for anything other than messaging/events. Despite the shitstorm against them from NYT/HN I really couldn't care less about what they do with the data I willingly share on their platform
No. I unfollowed everyone and everything on Facebook, and whenever I add someone new, I unfollow them immediately too. So my news feed is perpetually empty. This makes Facebook something that reminds me of people's birthdays, and let's me keep in touch via Messenger, which is all that I need.
I did this, and infuriatingly, Facebook still insists on emailing me about notifications from people I'm not following. There seems to be no way to avoid this if I want to receive email notification of event invites. (Which I do, since I don't have the apps installed and won't visit the website otherwise.)
I deleted my account in 2017, and it was the best decision I’ve made in a long time. I redoubled efforts to connect with my friends in real life, which is what I thought I’d been doing all along in Facebook.
It took some time and the expense of a few airline tickets, but the result was more than worth it.
Yes, but I haven't noticed much of a different in my life as I wasn't using it obsessively anyway. The only thing I used Facebook for was to follow and sign up for events/parties. I do feel like I'm missing out on some of those ever since I deleted my account.
Not permanently, but yes, I stay deactivated nearly 100% of the time. Facebook's algorithm doesn't seem to work for me, as the feed is cluttered with mostly old college acquaintances and (maybe worse) older relatives sharing crazy articles and posting things that look like they came straight out of r/oldpeoplefacebook.
In many ways, I preferred Facebook and other social medias when my family members were not following me on the platforms. I am an adult and nearly 30 years old, but it feels a bit like your parents watching you at your first school dance. That is, it's hard to be yourself when you're worried what people think. This includes peers, but maybe it's easier to brush off the opinions of non-relatives than it is relatives.
Late to the party but yes, not only did I delete Facebook (which provided me updates about my friends' lives [mostly superficial]) but also deleted instagram, twitter and LinkedIN.
Just coz I did not think they provided value compared to the effort I had to put in, at least on LinkedIN.
It was weird initially just unlocking the cellphone and not having that now-learned-pattern of unlock->facebook subconsciously and then do whatever I was going to do.
Do I miss it? No.
Do I miss updates? Yes.
A lot of times my friends msg me (SMS / Whatsapp mostly) that so and so has happened so get in touch with the person to congratulate / condolences. I fear the that once my friends stop informing me and I'll be uninformed of anything major regarding any of the acquaintances, for real.
I did not delete it, since I do use it for login to many sites and many friends, coworkers and groups that I find relevant use it, however I took few effective steps that almost eliminated its usage:
- turning of notifications
- removing the app from the main screen, and putting it in a random folder (I tried deleting it, but for 2FA I need to have its key generator, so I keep the app)
This is it. I just checked and in the past week, I used it 14 minutes on mobile, and probably around the same time on desktop.
My usage is quite low profile, I tend to post a picture every few months, and check out some groups, but nothing more than that.
Instagram on the other end is becoming problematic as its becoming a main social network for almost all of my friends and it is really easy to get sucked into it.
Deleted it early in the year. The wall turned into junk anyway in the preceding years, so it was not difficult to quit.
My wife still has Facebook, but she rarely mentions any interesting friend/family news sources from Facebook. It seems that Facebook is slowly becoming a Ghetto.
Is there anyway to know, if you delete your Facebook account, if they will process that in accordance with GDPR or not? I believe they are supposed to do something different if you are under the GDPR jurisdiction but I don’t know how they would determine that.
No, but early in 2016 I tightened up my account settings, deleted all those "friend requests" from people I didn't know or interact with, made all my posts viewable by only "friends", and I've made very few "Public" posts since. I also very seldom post any photos of me or anyone I know there. I also delete cookies and other saved data in the browser I use to access FB regularly.
I have less than 200 FB friends, and most I know very well or follow them because they post very interesting stuff. I don't, and never have, used FB on my phone.
This has made using FB enjoyable for me because I know what data they have. It's only what I let them have, and it's not really all that much.
Yes. I seldom used it and in the wake of the CA scandal, deleted all my posts, photos, and then finally the account itself.
I don’t miss it and am quite happy that I got around to it and that a one-time cost of 45 minutes of my time has likely paid itself back twice over by now.
I haven't used facebook since... about 2013 Q1. I stopped using it more or less organically, just by looking for social life in other places (and by having less social life, actually). I thought that there wasn't much harm in having it open, but a few days ago I finally got fed up and deleted the account. I didn't bother downloading my data or anything.
Unfortunately I don't see myself getting rid of Whatsapp any time soon. For the vast majority of people around me, it's the only means of communication they will use (aside from face to face, of course). I'm sad that people would not use email for personal communication any more, but I guess that my preferences have become obsolete.
After many comments I made here how leaving Facebook is unviable because of my hobby, I did.
I also deleted my Google account when getting an iPhone, and deleted my Twitter account (that was the thing I felt most — in a very positive way, I'm much less angry all the time).
Deactivated it about half a year ago, because it wasn't showing me anything relevant any more, only shares and likes.
Ever since that I realized I need to go back to the internet and actively trace my interests - music, concerts, art, etc. I nearly forgotten how to do it, but it's worth it.
As for "missing out": never happened. If I was interested in doing something, I found a way to find it. Random invitations did not get to me, true, but that is OK.
Losing "friends": I know a lot less of everyday nonsense. Turned out nobody was using facebook to share their real life or thoughts any more. Exchanging a few emails, meeting up, even if it's once a bluemoon, makes a complete difference.
I never made one in the first place. I still don’t understand why it wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone else that Facebook was toxic and a bad idea. I truly don’t understand how other people did or recognize that. It was blindingly obvious to me.
I deleted it Jan 1 2018 and am trying to decide whether to reactivate Jan 1 2019. No part of me misses News Feed or mindless scrolling, but Events and Groups have become an essential part of discovering and organizing social events for my peers (I’m late 20s, live in Europe, am in grad school). I don’t think I will reactivate, but I find it interesting that those have become the “stickiest” part of Facebook: I have so many other channels for close interaction (email, text) and interaction with strangers (Twitter, Medium) but that mid-range acquaintance circle is most easily accessible (only accessible?) on Facebook
Of course. Why not? Who benefits? The day we have to rely on centralized social media outside user control for meaningful engagement with our social spheres is a sad day indeed. Folks just call or email if they need to reach me. Better yet a hand written card. i think the key is to take social media with a grain of salt, another superficial publishing channel subject to null privacy. Folks have invested too much trust with their data and it has been naturally exploited for corporate profit. Y'all move fast with stable infra, now. y'ere. Ugh. I gotta write my friends back with my fountain pen.
I deleted mine in early 2017. I still have a “burner” account though. It was from back in the days when you needed a .edu address, and I figured out there was an alternate domain at my school that could be used to receive emails to the same mailbox. I’ve had that account since 2004. I use that to look people up, but I never post on it.
I do not miss Facebook in any way, nor do I feel I am missing out on any social stuff without one. My wife deleted hers as well and found it to be incredibly liberating. If someone wants to get in contact me, they’ll find a way. I generally prefer it if people don’t, though.
No. For all it's flaws and bad behavior, Facebook remains the best way of sharing photos with my friends and family. And it allows me to discover interesting events that I wouldn't have otherwise known about.
No, but I deleted the app off my phone. This is much more manageable as I only check Facebook for event invites through a web browser (either on my phone or desktop). Additionally, I no longer use SSO through Facebook
I've tried since I didn't want to accept their escape hatch when GDPR came and thus couldn't use their services anyway. Unfortunately they apparently drag out the deletion process so I haven't successfully deleted it as of yet.
It's actually worked out quite OK, I'm relying on a few friends updating me on what happens in some group chats right now but a lot of friends has already moved over to alternative chat platforms like Telegram, Signal, etc.
I haven't missed other parts of facebook like groups and events at all which is nice and I've never used IG or WhatsApp.
For a while it blocked me from the News Feed because I didn't accept their new GDPR policy, but could still send Messages to other friends. After a while I discovered I could use the News Feed and never saw the GDPR page again.
I hope they aren't claiming that I accepted it. I guess it's their word against mine, no way to prove that I didn't click the button if they just flip a bit in their database.
I just rarely use it for Messages now, no News Feed.
Yes. I deleted my facebook account because I realized that I have not used facebook and posted any comments on it.
These days, there are more useful SNSs a lot, so I think everyone do not have to use facebook.
I've uninstalled the app in June and hardly use Instagram.
I see no reason to delete Whatsapp because of E2E encryption. Maybe things will change.
As for actual account, it's trickier. I have a decent following there, and alternatives don't really exist. Where I live, nobody uses Twitter.
Also, Facebook Messenger is by far the most popular messaging platform: so much so that hardly anyone has even heard of Whatsapp, not to mention Signal or Wire.
Looks like my FB account is here to stay, unless I figure out a way to reach friends (alternative to Messenger) and followers (alternative to Facebook). Sucks.
I'm surprised people use messenger for communication. 99.9% of my friends and family are on WhatsApp and that's where we communicate.
As many here I also didn't delete the account but only log in once or twice a month and usually don't spend more than 5 minutes on the site and never write or like anything. I don't get any notifications from FB so it's useful to see if someone sent me a msg. (which happens rarely). I have another "fake" account that I use more often since I have a few groups that I follow there.
Yes, I did. Actually I stopped using since 2016 but deleted in 2018 after massive data scandal. I'm nowhere missing it, and that helped me in many ways in saving my own time and doing real stuff.
Stopped using even Instagram, I installed the app again today itself after almost 1 year, and just added one picture. Then I might forget to use it and have to uninstall the app till next time.
I use WhatsApp but only when I need it most. All notifications are turned off so it can't disturb me and I can open only when I need to.
Though I use Twitter often. Maybe 30-60 minute a day.
No, but I stopped opening the webpage/app about 2 months ago.
Interestingly, the first couple of weeks FB started emailing me whenever someone acted in my feed.. posts, comments, likes, etc. FB is mostly a ghost town for me now so it was interesting to see how desperate it looks when I got an email that someone I hadn't talked to in years "liked a post."
In the past week or so, FB has started texted me these updates. I assume they have some data that says it only takes one time opening the app to get someone re-engaged.
Blocked all Facebook domains, even Instagram, (so many!) in my MacBook's etc/hosts file to "blackhole" any FB tracking. Can no longer sign in on my laptop.
Still have Facebook on my phone with Location privileges turned off.
This has corresponded with increasingly aggressive notifications on my phone about things that don't directly involve me. I used to I only get notifications about things I posted on or posted myself. Curious if this has happened with anybody else who disengaged.
I deleted my account last year. I made a new account this year (fake name, no photo) to try out some adspend. The adspend was ineffective and I should probably delete that one too.
I haven't had it for years already, deleted it a few years ago, and to be truthful I think it's been long enough they legit don't have much data on me anymore.
I kept my profile but painstakingly deleted everything I ever contributed in my profile. I think I did it in response to something posted in HN about some data breach with Facebook or something. I wasn’t affected it turns out but I did it just as a precautionary thing. I kept the profile around just in case I wanted Facebook credentials for something down the road. I was able to attend a webcast once using my account that I wound not have been able to otherwise.
I thought about it, but I came across some interesting groups that shared the same interests I do and I now primarily log into facebook to check what has been posted in those groups, responding to comments on my comments and commenting on other discussions.
Before I came across those groups, I would occasionally log in and see what on the newsfeed. Now I don't really remember the last time I checked my news feed.
No, I ended up creating one. I've had an account for the longest of times where I had family I never talk to who are just virtue signalling, but I wanted to start fresh as I started college, and I wanted a way to keep track of what schools my old classmates were moving to. It was a great decision as a lot of people use messenger, and sometimes reception can be a bit non-existent in subbasements.
I opened an account long ago - I think around the same year Facebook started. I never really understood the appeal in the first place, but I keep the account around for the odd chance someone from the past might want to get in touch. I'm not exactly Facebook's dream user. Other than confirm friend requests from people I know once every few months, I have no use for it.
First of all, I do not use the Facebook mobile app, just the website. But -- I deleted my Facebook account very long ago, but I created a new one in 2016 and it's indispensable. Just a few days ago I posted why https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18728223
I did not, but I most certainly do not "use" it anymore, aside from the very occasional checkup on old friends (who still use Facebook and no other platforms), and the occasional laugh when an older relative posts "Happy birthay!" on their own wall unintentionally.
I have also made sure that I no longer use Facebook authentication on any other sites.
ttps://www.businessinsider.com/10-reasons-to-delete-your-facebook-account-2010-5 I joined the Delete Facebook campaign back in 2010, I believe it was the first (big one), we were with 50.000 people. I never returned. No regrets. Eight long years, that's how long this awareness has already been widespread. Geert Lovink
I haven't deleted it yet but stopped using it mid-year. The junk political posts from both sides got on my nerves. Nothing on there every caught my interest.
I have no plans to go back to using it. I do have quite a bit of family on it so will have to put up a "no longer active, here's how to contact me" post or something like that.
No. I have a few online businesses and Facebook is critical to driving traffic. It's not a stretch to say I would not have a viable business without the ability to advertise on Facebook proper. Even Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest...none of these have ever driven a single sale, but I've gotten plenty off Facebook.
I'm curious - would you be happy mentioning what type/area of business that is?
I've heard _way_ more stories of five and six figure Facebook ad spends resulting in zero attributable transactions than success stories. The word on the street I'm hearing is that Instagram is where the conversions are coming from in B2C...
T-shirts. I have a few different niches - one for regional/state pride, one for the band Phish. Honestly I would have expected Instagram to deliver since it's such a visual medium, but it hasn't so far. It could definitely be my creative; it's possible Instagram requires a higher quality than I'm posting. But I would be surprised if there was an appreciable difference between that and FB
yes already in January. Deleted twitter last month. Next up will be Linkedin (before the year ends). As of Jan 2019 I've decided to no longer carry a mobile phone (it will be switched off with batteries removed in a drawer for at least 1 year then I'll decide if I want to keep using it or not). Babysteps ...
PS: one of the projects on my mind is a small faraday cage at the entrance of my home right next to the wardrobe. It will be a "feature" I offer for visiting friends to show them what it's like to unplug for an evening. It will be non optional for anyone spending time at my house. Any visitors (guests or otherwise) entering my home will have to use it.
Linkedin is a tough one for me. Although I can't say its social networking has ever provided a lick of value, the Easy Apply and One-Click Apply feature for job postings is incredibly nice and has been pretty effective for me. Maybe I'll get rid of my account once I land my next gig soon.
No, I just uninstalled the FB and Messenger apps from my phone when I read that the app was getting phone call data. And because they've been censoring non-leftist voices. I only use FB on browsers on desktop until I finally migrate to something better. I've started cross-posting on Gab.
No. I know that there are many, many compelling reasons to, but doing that would effectively cut out my lines of communication with my immediate family (we use WhatsApp and Facebook almost exclusively), who lives in another city, and I'm not doing that any time soon.
Yes, I deleted mine earlier in the year. It creeps me out on privacy grounds, and was a net negative to life satisfaction.
I believe in technology being able to foster and improve things in the social and community aspects of people's lives, but I do know for sure Facebook is not it.
Nope, but I did kick the habit of visiting it multiple times daily. Now I login once a month or so (in incognito), check the updates from my real, actual friends of family, and close it until next time. I also don't post anything there. I do use Instagram, however.
Once because I wanted to remove it, the politics, the drama, and the big brother from my life.
The second time because Facebook didn't actually delete my account the first time. I haven't checked to see if they have honor my request this time around. Maybe I will check next year.
Nope, I did better...I alienated, anonymized, and corrupted my data stream such that I am no longer a reliable data point. And I recommend all to do the same. Poisoned Lake Theory for the advertisers that prop them up while still able to use the assets.
i was also the only parent in kindergarten out of 100 children who had problem to sign consent with publishing photos of my child on Facebook, since then kindergarten backpedaled and will discontinue using Facebook for photos and other communication and use their own site plus they upload photos to password protected galleries on other local photo sharing website without attaching names of children
speaking of backpedaling, photos and deleting accounts with Flickr deadline approaching in few days i am also gonna delete wives and mine Flickr/yahoo accounts and all photos, ain't gonna bring them any visitors with 1000 photos they let me store there after luring me to 1TB offer
Deleted it in 2017, still deleted now. I've grown tired of having a "footprint" online. I miss the old days of anonymous handles. I no longer use the same username for different services, or emails either.
I have experienced some downsides, mainly losing contact with some not-so-close friends. But the advantages + knowing that I followed my principles make it worth it.
I still use whatsapp though, because unfortunately I keep in contact with my close friends through it.
I deleted mine in October, 2015. I haven’t looked back... though I think strictly speaking I deactivated it then, and I finally went through with full deletion in 2017.
Though I did recently have to create a fake one for work to manage our Facebook page.
yes. finally got rid of that time sucker. I didn't do it for any political reason or to punish facebook, just because I felt like it was basically a waste of time. All my family and friends can easily get a hold of me without it.
No, instead I deleted every post, picture, video and "details about me" and hid every event/milestone/activity and left one post up linking to an article about facebook's privacy breaches over the years.
Yes - in Feb-18. Had pangs of regret some months later .. the network I'd built over many years was an unused asset, I just never looked it like that. Luckily those feelings didn't last long ... I just go on with life.
No, and I keep a fb tab open. I actually quite like Facebook and the messenger thing is handy in that it works on the laptop with a real keyboard rather than being forced to poke at a bit of glass on the phone like many apps.
I was really close to using Signal but ended up going with Wire. The requirement to use a phone number just didn't work for me. The multi-device support was also a bit lacking.
Can you elaborate on the "multi-device support" comment?
Their app works on my phone and laptop, and I love that it's P2P so they don't have a central server like Wire. I also love that I can set messages to expire and they're gone for everyone. Open-source, secure, and funded by spite. Ha.
> Multiple mobile devices and Android tablets are not currently supported.
Also for me anyways I have changed numbers 3 times in the last 6 years. Once when I moved to Iceland, once when I moved back to Canada, and once due to abuse on my number. Having a service that can be tied to email instead of phone number is awesome.
As far as I understand it Signal is basically considered the most secure option out there. After looking at lots of options which primarily included Telegram, Wire, Keybase, and Signal I settled on Wire as the reasonable compromise.
I actually really liked Keybase. It was just a little too complicated for random family members.
> I also love that I can set messages to expire and they're gone for everyone.
Wire has that feature as well. Works on direct messages and can be set on group chats as well.
Different user, but I find the lack of iPad support to be a real drag. I mostly use my iPad around the house, so if I want to use Signal it means I have to trundle over to desk where my laptop is docked.
Backing up messages is also pretty clunky and non-automated on Android, and impossible on iOS.
No, but I started posting to my own website instead, and syndicating the content to FB, Twitter, Instagram, and Mastadon. I also use brid.gy fed to backfeed Twitter and Instagram to my blog.
No, but I only log in once a month using incognito mode and I never post. I take any conversations over to email or SMS. I can't leave completely, but I can limit the value that they get from me.
Yes. I sort of miss having connections to groups that I was a part of, but it's been well worth it. Google and their products are next (with the exception of Chromecast via a burner gmail).
Deleted Facebook several years ago, but I transitioned by family to WhatsApp this year. (I'm an android user, and whatsapp is much better than Hangouts IMO).
I deleted Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, twitter, uber. I have stopped using chrome on my computer and device. I dont use google for most searches on my personal computer. I have gone back to relying on a RSS feed to keep up with the news. And have disabled all personalisation features on my google pixel 2.
It is impressive how truly evil companies are becoming in silicon valley.
I was recently at a Kent Beck talk (yow 2018). Where he went in great lengths to tell us how people can use facebook to elect fascists. I assume he means Trump. On the other hand, he also said that from the inside Facebook does not feel like it is doing anything nasty.
As a complete outsider to silicon valley - has valley basically become group think and finding it difficult to have discussions around morality and collective responsibility. Purely relying on "thought leaders", usually tech-journalists to drive these discussions?
Yes. During the election I was viewing FB as a more negative influence on my day to day attitude. When initial news of their profit seeking behavior during the election hit, I quit.
Stopped using Facebook in July in 2016 because the election had turned it into a terrible place. Never found a reason to go back, so just deactivated my account earlier this year.
I can understand why some people can't do it, but for me it was a minor upside vs major downside situation. I found that my overall level of happiness increased after I stopped using it (and Twitter.)
I still log onto Twitter occasionally but my rules are:
- Always log in with a specific goal in mind, like DMing someone or making a tweet
- When not performing that goal, log out
- Prefer direct navigation/bookmarking of interesting people and reading their feeds vs looking at logged in timeline
It works a lot better but if you want to tweet something you still need to wade into it.
No, only ever had one for about half a year back in 2011 or so. Never got on WhatsApp because I already disliked it even before it was bought. Instagram isn’t my cup of tea either.
I didn't. But I used to check it every day and I stopped. I'm going there every second week or so, just to be sure I'm not missing on something somewhat important.
Not deleted but stopped using fb. Haven't affected anything at all except now I feel like I don't have friends because of 0 interaction but am happy with it.
Deleted in 2008. I was quite addicted to it which was my main motivation for deleting it, though I'm glad to not be on the platform for different reasons now.
Responding to this thread would be an excellent way for the poster to discover people who don't have facebook profiles, then create fake profiles on facebook.
Agreed, as someone that's never used facebook, I see a lot of the criticisms levied against it and think hacker news and other forms of social news are just as damaging.
I've read enough books about the internet now to realize that all of the benefits come with costs. I can be just as addicted to any of the information spouts on the internet. Hacker News provides the same sort of response for me as Facebook might for someone else. It is almost ironic but it is harder to 'delete' Hacker News than Facebook because of the walled garden approach of Facebook.
I think to me the value is equal in a way. It comes down to fear of missing out. What events/social activities will I miss out on by not having Facebook? What possible job/career opportunities will I miss out on by not having LinkedIn?
In 2012: Slowly changed all information in the account to misinformation, moved the account to 'Ireland', Wrote a crappy script to uploaded blank replacement photos / images where possible, remove all friends and then delete all post attachments then the posts, then waited several weeks and "deleted" the account.
When I asked my friend why be shared something that was clearly fake and he said "some people share things and some people look them up" or some bullshit I decided to unfollow every single person on my feed. Took a while but now when I log in there is nothing, and I basically never log in.
I never made one in the first place. I still don’t understand why it wasn’t immediately obvious to everyone else that Facebook was toxic and a bad idea. I truly don’t understand how other people did or recognize that. It was blindingly obvious to me.
Nope, but after an ex dropping in to randomly flame me for no real reason (perceived, but whatever), I just don’t use it. I have only a few photos from years ago.
I have no desire to send mass messages to the friends list I have. I have no desire to acquire a list of friends who want to hear me broadcast messages (is this weird?) I have no desire to listen to the inane posts people make. If I could come in once a week and get a valid chunk of ongoings that interest me - id drop in. But it’s almost always low quality stuff. Maybe my friends are just lame? Maybe I think humans are kinda lame, to sit and study?
YES. I disabled it, and no longer use it. I did not delete it altogether, because all of my contacts are on Facebook Messenger. Honestly, my general happiness rose about 10% after leaving FB. It's trash for the brain, and hurts more than it helps. Get rid of it.
No, but I haven’t used it in over a year. My reasoning is that they will track me anyway (shadow profile) and I want to maintain a handle just in case GDPR has any teeth that I can use later.
The problem is that without Facebook you will miss out. Sure, close friends and family will invite you to their social events, but more distant acquaintances will not; you know, the bloke you met at the pub last week and had a 20 minute chat with, or that cute girl you talked to but then she suddenly she was dragged off to a birthday party by her friends. By missing out on the social opportunities you lose the chance to upgrade these people from acquaintances to friends (or even lovers), as well as meet new people.
Some back story: I moved to a different country two years ago with my ex-girlfriend (for her job), and we both didn't really know anyone there. I work remote, so I don't meet a lot of people from work, either.
We broke up after a year and much to my dismay I discovered I had not really made any new friends in that year, and that I was quite ... alone. So I set out to change that. Facebook – as much as I dislike the company – was helpful. I moved to yet another country two month ago, and again Facebook has been helpful.
I dislike Facebook for all the standard reasons. I had an account but I deleted it about 5 or 6 years ago, but I decided that having a good social life was (and remains) vastly important to the quality of my life, and that Facebook is a tool to help achieve that goal.
(Facebook didn't really "delete" my old account, as after I rejoined it remembered many of my previous friends; some of whom I had no contact with outside of Facebook, like many Egyptians I was in contact with during the 2011 rebellion whom I had met through a friend and only knew through Facebook; my "suggested friends" list was full of Arabic names).
On a more deeper level, I am a little bit exasperated of always being the "different" and "difficult" person (which extends to things beyond Facebook). Standing up for your principles and "voting with your wallet" is good and all, but ... I'm not so sure it's all that effective. In this case, a more effective strategy is probably to first create a really good Facebook alternative (I'm not so sure there is one now), make sure decent privacy laws are enacted, etc.