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Ask HN: Are you with me? Leaving Facebook.

105 points by ihodes 16y ago

I'll be deactivating my Facebook account (tainting what I need to) and removing as much information there as possible within the week. I'm not a hardcore privacy advocate, but I joined Facebook with the understanding that some of what data placed there would stay private. That is what we agreed to. Facebook has repeatedly violated that trust.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
cianestro 16y ago
I've been purging my data every week for 2 years on facebook. It keeps things fresh.
steveklabnik 16y ago
Nope. I'm not. Yes, privacy is important. However, the only information that I've ever put on Facebook is information that I'd want everyone else to know. That's why I have a Facebook; to give people who don't know me an idea of who I am and what I'm like, and get a little bit of personal branding out there. For instance, there's at least one little portion of my life that I don't want to be broadcast out to everyone, so it's conspicuously missing. I don't feel that Facebook told anyone that their data would be private. Maybe I'm just naïve, or a little bit of an exhibitionist.
- ihodes 16y ago
  I agree with a lot of what you're saying, and I'll miss Facebook for the very reason you like it, too. But I'm often more worried about what my friends do that can effect the amount of information out there, about me. Facebook makes it easy to inadvertently share information about your friends. That, I don't like. I'd love a replacement Facebook, one that is a little bit like Facebook used to be: relatively simple, unintrusive and benign. I want fine-grained control over what I can share, and not to have to worry about what will be given away. Or at least know upfront what will be. Opting IN to things is great. Basically, Facebook has treated me (and those who feel similarly) like crap.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Even with the way Facebook used to be (I signed up in 2004), people could have still shared information about you. One wall post is all it takes. For that matter, this could happen anywhere on the Internet. Someone could write a blog post about you, or tweet about you, or any number of ways to publish information about others. The web is increasingly becoming read/write, and Facebook privacy settings aren't going to change that.
    - jarek 16y ago
      Writing a wall post or tweet takes active action on behalf of the friend. Hmm, this is on Jarek's Facebook profile -- let's paste it somewhere where others can see it too. With the recent app privacy changes, all they have to do is use an app. The programmer can take care of the rest. Different level altogether.
  - hartror 16y ago
    Much of the talk I have been around has been that Facebook is adjusting societies mores as it concerns to what information you share about oneself and how one judges others. The result of this could be that Gen Y and Z will have a better integrated outlook on people. I'm not sure if this will actually be the case, there could be a backlash against this (much like the backlash against the sexual revolution of the 60s/70s) or simply that "oversharing" will be done by a section of society while the rest continue to judge as we do today. I have unfettered access to a rather large social graph so I should make some studies of this. Anyone know some good reading on the subject to get me started?
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
      Yep. I think this is what's happening. I wrote a bit about the topic on my blog a while back: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/the-burning-question-of-reputation http://blog.steveklabnik.com/the-burning-question-of-reputat... If you find any other people discussing this, I'd be interested in reading, too. Edit: It's kind of funny reading old things you've written. At the time, I felt like I might have said "asshole" one too many times when writing this post, and now I _definitely_ feel that way. Oh well, I apologize for the moderately excessive profanity.
- rogermugs 16y ago
  I WANT to, but I'm not either. I'm with steveklabnik in the sense that I dont share basically anything. it is tiring to have to always be updating my privacy settings to be kosher, but the in-laws want kid videos and this is my best medium. it's also handy for some other networking i always need to do for work.
- jkincaid 16y ago
  "I don't feel that Facebook told anyone that their data would be private. Maybe I'm just naïve, or a little bit of an exhibitionist." This was actually how Facebook got popular in the first place. The whole point was that it was more private than the other social networks out there. As the site grew, one of its big selling points was its privacy control panel, which gave you granular control over how your content was shared. Perhaps the perception has changed in the last year or two, but I think a lot of people signed up under the impression that Facebook is a safe/private site.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    I think you're conflating privacy with exclusivity. Facebook was originally only for those in college because it was an electronic version of a book that was put out by Zuck's college. Secondly, I don't think that Facebook's privacy controls were ever a big selling point. The fact that it was for cool kids combined with the fact that all of your friends were on it was a huge selling point. Yes, people use the privacy controls, but never the fine grained stuff, it's all "don't show info to people that aren't my friends." Or maybe my perception was skewed. Facebook came to my school in September of my freshman year of college, so I'm literally in the exact cohort that grew up with it.
    - jkincaid 16y ago
      "Yes, people use the privacy controls, but never the fine grained stuff, it's all "don't show info to people that aren't my friends." Exactly. People didn't care much about the granular stuff, just that only their friends could see what they were posting. With the changes FB has made to its settings (namely, the 'Everyone' setting that is now the default), that's no longer true. For what it's worth, I was in the exact same group as you — Facebook came out while I was in college and I joined the day it came to my school. Exclusivity definitely played a part in helping it catch on, but I think Facebook's reputation as a "safe" site is what helped it make the jump from high school/college kids to everyone else.
      - steveklabnik 16y ago
- zmmmmm 16y ago
  > However, the only information that I've ever put on Facebook is information that I'd want everyone else to know Congratulations, you already demonstrated your agreement with the author and effectively stopped using Facebook then. The whole point of Facebook is to enable a you to form a private community of friends that share things. If you've degraded that to "only what I will share with everyone in the universe" then you've essentially withdrawn from Facebook already.
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Maybeyou've assumed facebook is for private things. I assume anything on the internet is public, at all ties, except for my bank.
    - jarek 16y ago
      I'd say that's a pretty common assumption. Back in the day Facebook really did use to be a pretty walled garden and I have no doubt things were said that would not be said on Twitter or elsewhere on the web. I'm sad to see that aspect go. Maybe it's different for people with 300 or 600 friends.
sthomps 16y ago
I did that, except I deleted, not deactivated. I'm not a hardcore privacy guy either, but they got to be a little too much after f8
andymoe 16y ago
As soon as tell me how to delete my data for real. Maybe they will let us into the datacenter to help them do it.
philcrissman 16y ago
I've stopped using mine, removed all apps, unfollowed (er, unliked?) all pages. I'd guess the market is ripe for a fb-type site that, for lack of a better phrase, isn't evil. And doesn't have a horrible ux.
- pg 16y ago
  What features should it have? (Or not have?)
  - philcrissman 16y ago
    I mentioned a few things that bug me in the above reply-to-myself... Should: - Be able to export all friend/contact information anytime. CSV is fine. - Be able to _easily_ block/remove applications & notifications. It's fine people can create "which star trek appliance are you?" quizzes, but let's make it _easy_ for these to be removed from my feed if I don't want to see them. - Maybe have a more twitter style follow where it does not need to be a mutual follow. Obviously less information is shared if I don't follow back; etc. Just pondering this, it might or might not be better. I actually don't think there's _that_ many things. There are a few key things that, if done right, would make it a better facebook. I'm just stabbing in the dark though. Can this post be considered a YC application? ;-)
    - TrevorBramble 16y ago
      Better than removing the deluge of unwanted app notifications individually would be a list, off to the side, of apps your friends have used that you haven't opted in or out of yet. Opt in and they all show up, opt out and it's added to a list of unwanted apps in your profile that you can edit later if desired. Obviously this would make users happy but not app makers, because the way it currently works is free (obnoxious) advertising for them. The mixed-access to updates based on bi- or unidirectional association is one of the very nice things about LiveJournal's social scheme. I knew a few people who use FaceBook for one level of communication and retain their LiveJournal accounts for another, because of this.
  - ihodes 16y ago
SandB0x 16y ago
How about changing your name and birthday a bit Winston Jonathan Smith -> W.J. Smith 01/03/1980 -> 01/01/1950 (this doesn't even have to be visible) and not posting any sensitive information on there?
geuis 16y ago
I am torn when it comes to this. In principal I want to. But my friends and family are spread around the world and in many cases FB is the only way I have of keeping in touch with them. My privacy settings are already as high as I can make them but I can't readily leave the silo.
cschep 16y ago
I recently deleted mine. I had it for a long time, and I just felt like it was keeping the most brain dead relationships barely alive. I was constantly seeing people in real life and saying, "oh yeah, I read that on facebook." I didn't like that, and the privacy concerns were just the last straw. So yeah, I'm with you.
- sheldonwt 16y ago
  I'm graduating from university next week at a school with twelve thousand kids and this happens all the time to everyone I know. It's so mundane to learn some new social goings-on around campus that it's cliche to mention you found out on the site. I hate it for the same reason. On graduation day, leaving facebook will signify a new phase of life.
Qz 16y ago
I've never really used it for much, so I don't see much gain in deleting it.
Ixiaus 16y ago
Stop placing your trust in other people. I considered committing Facebook suicide but decided against it for the primary reason that many casual friends I'm able to keep in touch with/share media with that would normally be quite difficult. I have my privacy settings locked down, all 3rd party apps removed, and I never...ever say anything on Facebook that I would encrypt/sign in email. I'm sure people had a similar upset over the postal service when it was first suggested! It has more to do with being mindful of your mouth and being aware of the options you have as an individual for privacy (GnuPG).
enomar 16y ago
I left and advised everyone I know to do the same. Privacy was never an issue for me, but Facebook keeps changing the rules. I can't keep up. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/ http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/ http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduces-control-over-personal-information http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduce...
maxwin 16y ago
We need a decentralized social graph. I should host and own my data not facebook or any other organization. Maybe browsers should innovate and solve this problem.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  You'd probably like OpenLike: http://openlike.org/ http://openlike.org/ or OpenSocial: http://www.opensocial.org/ http://www.opensocial.org/ Not that OpenSocial took off or anything. And I'm not that confident in OpenLike, either.
  - nose 16y ago
    opensocial isn't doing too bad. It is supported by Yahoo, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many more networks.
- vyrotek 16y ago
  Many people have thought this too. A sort of p2p social network? You solve a handful of problems but create many new ones to overcome. For example, using Facebook on multiple computers is simple right now. Now lets consider a p2p model. How do you handle uploading photos from a computer that isn't your main/home one? You'll need to basically synchronize content between the computer involved and your main one. There's also the case where I want to share a photo and not store it locally at all. What happens when some of the computers involved in your friend network are turned off and those friends want to view photos? I'm not sure you can make it completely P2P. You might need a central 'cache' of new content which then just gets pushed down to your friends once they sign in. And since everyone is disconnected that sounds like everyone needs to have a copy of their friend's data. I'm not interested in storing their photos on my PC. Just some random thoughts that came to mind.
- theli0nheart 16y ago
  I actually architected something for this on the last airplane ride I was on. Here's the gist. First of all, there is a basic protocol that any social application can adopt to. It basically consists of a few URIs like /user/login/, /user/register/, etc. Secondly, since "virality" is key in getting something like this implemented, I propose that there is a form of global identity database that is accessible by anyone. Only email, user_id (depends on provider), and provider_id information is stored (I'll get to the provider bit in a second). Any identifying information is hashed to protect private information. The issue is making this database publicly run (similarly to Bittorrent) and being able to publish the hashing algorithm used. It would obviously have to be more complex than MD5 or SHA1. Thirdly, there are what I call "providers". Providers are basically apps like Facebook and Twitter. They are capable of deciding what information is public. There aren't any privacy "settings" for each provider. Each provider's privacy policy is static and will not change. I.e. provider A will display to the world your SS#, name, and phone number, whereas provider B will display just your name. This is done to eliminate any gray areas. Thirdly, the idea of "notifications" and connections. Connections are one-way (like Twitter). So, you might be wondering, how do you connect between two "social networks"? You search for the person you're looking for by email and are given their user_id and provider_id. Your provider then has all it needs to connect with this person (it sends a message to the friend's provider to a notification endpoint, and the friend's provider then can do whatever it wants with that information). Notifications consist of updates, connections made, and other things (possibilities are endless). Rules: 1) Users can only use one provider at any given time. 2) Users can choose to delete their profiles on demand. 3) User data can be exported so that provider migration is quick and easy. I should write a blog post about this. There's way more. I called it OpenConnection.
cj 16y ago
I honestly don't care. People shouldn't have private conversations or implicating pictures on Facebook, period. If you don't do either of those two things, you'll be fine. No need to dramatically or publicly terminate your account.
- jseifer 16y ago
  Devil's advocate: If you have a facebook account you really can't stop people from tagging you in "implicating pictures" and the like. You can un-tag yourself after the face or delete things on your wall but there's no guarantee you'll get to that before someone else sees it.
  - wyclif 16y ago
    I thought it was possible to not allow tagging to your Wall in Settings?
    - darren_ 16y ago
      It is. If you set the 'photos and videos of you' privacy option to just yourself, when you're tagged in a photo it appears on your Wall but only for you. Your friends looking at your wall don't see it. That said, I don't think you can block the actual tagging, which is a shame, although you can manually untag yourself, and once untagged you can't be re-tagged. Incidentally, you can stop your friends posting to your wall, or commenting on any of your items, or even just block specific friends from commenting or posting.
cmars232 16y ago
I will if there is a better place to go. Or even a place that isn't better yet but could be made better by the early adopters.
s3graham 16y ago
Sort of, never joined so I guess I'm effectively joining you.
kevintwohy 16y ago
I think the 'don't put anything you want kept private on the internet' is, generally, a good argument. I will say though, that I do think Facebook encouraged a reasonable expectation that certain data would be 'private,' and that's since changed.
- gte910h 16y ago
  I honestly hate I can be tagged in photographs and cannot turn this off.
  - kevintwohy 16y ago
    Yeah. The same is true of certain actions like '[name] commented on [otherName]'s photo' - you used to be able to control those kinds of feed stories but no longer.
ivenkys 16y ago
I never went in - i still don't understand the point of FB or others of their ilk. If i really want to keep in touch with far-flung family, friends - i pick up the phone or drop an email. If they are important to me i will make the effort. I also don't find the need to advertise on a daily/hourly basis what i am doing or tell people about the cool car/bike/tv/ipod etc. i bought. May be its just not for people like me.
- Legion 16y ago
  Facebook is highly efficient for communicating with a large number of "fringe" acquaintances. Things you suggest - picking up the phone, dropping an email - require 1-on-1 contact. I am limited in the amount of time I can devote to 1-on-1 contact. But I can post on Facebook and people that know me but aren't necessarily people I want to devote a lot of 1-on-1 time to - more distant relatives, old friends, etc. - can see what I want to share. And I can skim my feed and see what they want to share. The level of time and contact is proportional to the relationship. They're not my inner circle, they're outer circle. Facebook is the single best improvement to my "outer circle" relationships ever invented. For low effort, I get to have some contact instead of no contact. For some people, Facebook is all about the time wasting activities, but that's not the core of the experience unless you make it so.
  - ivenkys 16y ago
    I can see your point but my take is - that's what New Year, Christmas, ${Special_Occasion} are for, keeping in touch with fringe acquaintances. Send an email on those days.
- Asa-Nisse 16y ago
  I too was a FB-absente for a long time, but a friend of mine (non techie) explained its usefulness to me in a very good way. "It lets you keep updated on what your aquintances does on a daily basis". Not your good friends (because you call them). Not your collegagues (because you chat/mail them). But all those highschool and childhood friends you dont see on a day-day basis because they're in another country/region/world/whatever. Now, I could argue that that information is quite, uninteresting, and in many ways, it is. It is however quite nice to know that if I want to reach those people, I can.
kennu 16y ago
If you share something with your 300+ friends on Facebook, I think it's obvious it's no longer private. I have always considered Facebook a tool for _finding_ interesting stuff intead of _hiding_ it. A more open, non-evil alternative would be cool, of course. But good luck rebuilding the whole social graph there. Almost anybody who has tried that has failed. (I view this as somebody who follows the Facebook News Feed all the time, posts several times a day, and often participates in long discussion threads about news, politics etc. with my friends.)
glhaynes 16y ago
One thing to keep in mind: there are no signs I know of yet that the 'unwashed masses' are going to quit using Facebook: they love it and don't seem to care about the privacy thing overall. So by leaving, you're missing out on a significant perspective of what users (read: customers) experience everyday. It's like refusing to use Windows during the 90s. Not saying you shouldn't, but just that it's a cost to keep in mind. Also: how confident are you that Facebook won't still be HUGE 10 years from now? Many smart people think FB will only expand in its importance on the web. Again, not saying it will be or that people shouldn't quit if it offends their sense of propriety, but I'd hate to reopen my account 5 years from now after publicly committing a principled FB suicide.
cmelbye 16y ago
No, I'm really happy with the service that they provide. If there's something that's actually private, I'm not going to be posting it on the Internet in the first place.
- steveissuperman 16y ago
  Seriously. I can't believe how differently others view facebook compared to me. I log in every now and then and talk to some old friends who I wouldn't be able to contact otherwise. What info is everyone so scared of getting out? What's the harm in targeted ads? Not like most of us are going to see them anyway.
- jamesjyu 16y ago
  Hear hear to that! I'm always puzzled by all these privacy nuts that go on and on about privacy problems with social media sites like Facebook. If something is absolutely private and you do not want to share it outside of one or two people, DO NOT put it on a social media site! Period. In fact, I would go as far as to say never put any critically sensitive information on the web.
  - ams6110 16y ago
    Absolutely. I sum it up as: "What happens on the internet, stays on the internet".
    - rokhayakebe 16y ago
      "What happens on the internet, sprays on the internet. Fast. And Forever."
  - minalecs 16y ago
    well sometimes its your friends.. that will put pictures up of you without knowing, or will tag you in and can't remove it yourself
    - derefr 16y ago
anactofgod 16y ago
I don't know why I would. I decided early on that I wouldn't use any of their apps, play any of their games, and actually introduce disinformation into the medium from time to time. (I went to the "Barnum and Bailey Clown College", "The School of Hard Knocks" and "How High". No really! I did!) I view FaceBook as being purely frivolous, for casual interaction w friends & acquaintances, and treat it thus. There are other "social networking" sites (for instance, LinkedIn) for other types of (real/purposeful) networking.
jchonphoenix 16y ago
I'm already gone. They annoyed me after forcing me to link to pages in my profile.
chanux 16y ago
No. YOU ARE with me. I deleted my FB sometimes back and lived happily ever after.
greenlblue 16y ago
I'm with you. Although my personal problem wasn't with how they managed privacy but with how they used social links between friends and exploited it for marketing purposes. Plus, on facebook everyone is a fan of something and that's all they are and the people that claim their facebook page gives others a sense of what they are like in real life are delusional.
scorxn 16y ago
Facebook made the decision for me yesterday. I declined to link all my profile data to business Pages, so everything I'd bothered to maintain was wiped out. It was clear I'm no longer part of their intended user base. It's fine. I have no interest in participating in an ad network, so I wiped out the rest (friends, photos, etc) and publicized alternate contact info. Gotta keep the account for some of my clients' Pages. Facebook was great for me ca. 2004-5. Now its goals and policies are very different. Maybe more people will get shocked away when tagging + image recognition start imposing on their family photos.
adrianwaj 16y ago
I've got two words concerning Facebook (and feel free to downvote): Fuck Facebook and for the more adventurous: Fuck Apple
adrianwaj 16y ago
97 comments from 8 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1289997 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1289997 Ask HN: Anybody else quitting Facebook over privacy concerns?
- nfnaaron 16y ago
  I'm not quitting, I've just pared my data and I don't use it much, it's boring. To me.
techist 16y ago
I am not only with you, I am ahead of you. I deleted my account(with some effort and patience)when I read that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had declared that"Privacy is Dead". Well he may think so but a of lot of people, including myself think otherwise.
phiberoptik 16y ago
I'm a pretty big advocate of privacy, but in order to protect mine, I take certain steps in order to avoid letting people use any of my personal information. For starters, any social media I use, I use one of my many nicknames. I never use my real name, birthdate, and none of the information I use in any of these sites is accurate. My address, my age, my DOB - NOTHING is real in my profile. Even the picture I use isn't me. This way, I control who gets my information and what they use it for. If Facebook is using my information, it certainly doesn't represent me in anyway. If you really want to control the information, you can.
rajat 16y ago
Nope, like many others here, I use Facebook as a public communication medium, which means I don't post private things there. It is not a tool for intimacy; it's a resume that I am handing out to perfect strangers. Perhaps, over time, had they not compromised their privacy standings, I would have treated it more as a tool for intimate conversations with friends and family. I certainly will not do so now, or ever again. I will treat them forever like a public billboard.
schammy 16y ago
I really disapprove of what Facebook has done in the past year or two with privacy. It's disgusting. However, I don't really "use" Facebook. I have an account but I rarely post anything on it, and I don't use any of the apps. I just use it to see what my real life friends are up to, including many that I don't actually see anymore because they have moved away. So, their new privacy stuff doesn't really affect me, since I really only use Facebook on a passive level. So I am not deleting my account. But I still strongly disapprove of what they are doing.
brown9-2 16y ago
How exactly did they violate it?
adamc 16y ago
Left it a year ago, but more because it was a time-waster than over privacy.
jrockway 16y ago
Reminds me of this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention... If you want to give up Facebook, just fucking do it... but realize that nobody else cares. (For the record, I haven't updated facebook in about 5 years, because it bores me. But I don't go on and on about it...)
bcl 16y ago
Nope, I'm not leaving. But what I have done is sanitize my profile info and remove all of my 'likes'. I joined FB to communicate with friends, not to be a cog in another marketing machine. I'll still use it to keep up with friends and share pics, but that's the limit of it. Their recent announcement that they are going to be sharing their databases with 3rd parties is what pushed me to take these steps.
omnivore 16y ago
Facebook has certainly gone from being pretty straightforward about privacy to deceptive about it, but the real people who need to worry aren't tech savvy HN denizens, but parents of those types and kids who don't have the first clue or don't know what to check, etc. That said, there are some fairly easy ways to ensure that you're not "exploited" digitally using Facebook. You can't scrub it entirely of your presence, but you can at least ensure that people can't access anything about you publicly without being a friend of yours. That's fairly reasonable. Now the stuff like making wall posts show up on news feeds and such are somewhere between annoying and intrusive, but that's where we can just choose to ignore it, pair down the number of friends we maintain or other tactics. For better or worse, the site works.
petercooper 16y ago
This is about as interesting as the old "Microsoft sucks" circle jerks that would occur on Slashdot. I deleted my FB account six months ago and it wasn't a big deal. There are plenty of people who will continue to use FB and not care about most of these implications.
random42 16y ago
I deleted my FaceBook account yesterday. For me, their absurd privacy policies are unethical, but the real reason is, I find it a complete waste of my good time.
lvecsey 16y ago
Relax. Just grow some crops on Farmville and don't worry so much.
GeneralMaximus 16y ago
Already done that, but for an entirely different reason. I realized that most "social media" websites are meticulously designed to get people hooked. The "Like" button, for instance, was not added to FB on a whim. It makes sure people keep posting new status messages and keep logging in every day (or shudder every few minutes) to see if someone liked them. My hosts file currently blocks Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, among other websites.
benwerd 16y ago
I've never been under any illusions about Facebook's business model or intent, but the expansion of their boundaries and Zuckerberg's stance on privacy mean I feel I have to take an ideological stand. Professionally, I argue for strong access controls, user control over data and the ethics of privacy in web applications, and that's incompatible with my continued presence on Facebook. It's not just hackers and Internet professionals who are worried by this. So I reckon it's up to all of us to create an easy-to-use, secure, friendly web-based framework for us to share and collaborate with our friends.
oomkiller 16y ago
I like Facebook, I also like the new features they are adding. I never posted anything under the assumption that the world couldn't see it. So no, I won't be joining you.
known 16y ago
Isn't it easy just to change your name.
milofelipe 16y ago
I just deleted my 0 karma Plurk account a month ago. I deleted my Friendster account (I'm from the Philippines) last week. I "MIGHT" delete Facebook next.
benkant 16y ago
I haven't had a Facebook account for years. My leaving had nothing to do with privacy.

105 points by ihodes 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

cianestro 16y ago

I've been purging my data every week for 2 years on facebook. It keeps things fresh.

steveklabnik 16y ago

Nope. I'm not. Yes, privacy is important. However, the only information that I've ever put on Facebook is information that I'd want everyone else to know. That's why I have a Facebook; to give people who don't know me an idea of who I am and what I'm like, and get a little bit of personal branding out there. For instance, there's at least one little portion of my life that I don't want to be broadcast out to everyone, so it's conspicuously missing. I don't feel that Facebook told anyone that their data would be private. Maybe I'm just naïve, or a little bit of an exhibitionist.

ihodes 16y ago
I agree with a lot of what you're saying, and I'll miss Facebook for the very reason you like it, too. But I'm often more worried about what my friends do that can effect the amount of information out there, about me. Facebook makes it easy to inadvertently share information about your friends. That, I don't like. I'd love a replacement Facebook, one that is a little bit like Facebook used to be: relatively simple, unintrusive and benign. I want fine-grained control over what I can share, and not to have to worry about what will be given away. Or at least know upfront what will be. Opting IN to things is great. Basically, Facebook has treated me (and those who feel similarly) like crap.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Even with the way Facebook used to be (I signed up in 2004), people could have still shared information about you. One wall post is all it takes. For that matter, this could happen anywhere on the Internet. Someone could write a blog post about you, or tweet about you, or any number of ways to publish information about others. The web is increasingly becoming read/write, and Facebook privacy settings aren't going to change that.
  - jarek 16y ago
    Writing a wall post or tweet takes active action on behalf of the friend. Hmm, this is on Jarek's Facebook profile -- let's paste it somewhere where others can see it too. With the recent app privacy changes, all they have to do is use an app. The programmer can take care of the rest. Different level altogether.
- hartror 16y ago
  Much of the talk I have been around has been that Facebook is adjusting societies mores as it concerns to what information you share about oneself and how one judges others. The result of this could be that Gen Y and Z will have a better integrated outlook on people. I'm not sure if this will actually be the case, there could be a backlash against this (much like the backlash against the sexual revolution of the 60s/70s) or simply that "oversharing" will be done by a section of society while the rest continue to judge as we do today. I have unfettered access to a rather large social graph so I should make some studies of this. Anyone know some good reading on the subject to get me started?
  - steveklabnik 16y ago
    Yep. I think this is what's happening. I wrote a bit about the topic on my blog a while back: http://blog.steveklabnik.com/the-burning-question-of-reputation http://blog.steveklabnik.com/the-burning-question-of-reputat... If you find any other people discussing this, I'd be interested in reading, too. Edit: It's kind of funny reading old things you've written. At the time, I felt like I might have said "asshole" one too many times when writing this post, and now I _definitely_ feel that way. Oh well, I apologize for the moderately excessive profanity.
rogermugs 16y ago
I WANT to, but I'm not either. I'm with steveklabnik in the sense that I dont share basically anything. it is tiring to have to always be updating my privacy settings to be kosher, but the in-laws want kid videos and this is my best medium. it's also handy for some other networking i always need to do for work.
jkincaid 16y ago
"I don't feel that Facebook told anyone that their data would be private. Maybe I'm just naïve, or a little bit of an exhibitionist." This was actually how Facebook got popular in the first place. The whole point was that it was more private than the other social networks out there. As the site grew, one of its big selling points was its privacy control panel, which gave you granular control over how your content was shared. Perhaps the perception has changed in the last year or two, but I think a lot of people signed up under the impression that Facebook is a safe/private site.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  I think you're conflating privacy with exclusivity. Facebook was originally only for those in college because it was an electronic version of a book that was put out by Zuck's college. Secondly, I don't think that Facebook's privacy controls were ever a big selling point. The fact that it was for cool kids combined with the fact that all of your friends were on it was a huge selling point. Yes, people use the privacy controls, but never the fine grained stuff, it's all "don't show info to people that aren't my friends." Or maybe my perception was skewed. Facebook came to my school in September of my freshman year of college, so I'm literally in the exact cohort that grew up with it.
  - jkincaid 16y ago
    "Yes, people use the privacy controls, but never the fine grained stuff, it's all "don't show info to people that aren't my friends." Exactly. People didn't care much about the granular stuff, just that only their friends could see what they were posting. With the changes FB has made to its settings (namely, the 'Everyone' setting that is now the default), that's no longer true. For what it's worth, I was in the exact same group as you — Facebook came out while I was in college and I joined the day it came to my school. Exclusivity definitely played a part in helping it catch on, but I think Facebook's reputation as a "safe" site is what helped it make the jump from high school/college kids to everyone else.
    - steveklabnik 16y ago
zmmmmm 16y ago
> However, the only information that I've ever put on Facebook is information that I'd want everyone else to know Congratulations, you already demonstrated your agreement with the author and effectively stopped using Facebook then. The whole point of Facebook is to enable a you to form a private community of friends that share things. If you've degraded that to "only what I will share with everyone in the universe" then you've essentially withdrawn from Facebook already.
- steveklabnik 16y ago
  Maybeyou've assumed facebook is for private things. I assume anything on the internet is public, at all ties, except for my bank.
  - jarek 16y ago
    I'd say that's a pretty common assumption. Back in the day Facebook really did use to be a pretty walled garden and I have no doubt things were said that would not be said on Twitter or elsewhere on the web. I'm sad to see that aspect go. Maybe it's different for people with 300 or 600 friends.

sthomps 16y ago

I did that, except I deleted, not deactivated. I'm not a hardcore privacy guy either, but they got to be a little too much after f8

andymoe 16y ago

As soon as tell me how to delete my data for real. Maybe they will let us into the datacenter to help them do it.

philcrissman 16y ago

I've stopped using mine, removed all apps, unfollowed (er, unliked?) all pages. I'd guess the market is ripe for a fb-type site that, for lack of a better phrase, isn't evil. And doesn't have a horrible ux.

pg 16y ago
What features should it have? (Or not have?)
- philcrissman 16y ago
  I mentioned a few things that bug me in the above reply-to-myself... Should: - Be able to export all friend/contact information anytime. CSV is fine. - Be able to _easily_ block/remove applications & notifications. It's fine people can create "which star trek appliance are you?" quizzes, but let's make it _easy_ for these to be removed from my feed if I don't want to see them. - Maybe have a more twitter style follow where it does not need to be a mutual follow. Obviously less information is shared if I don't follow back; etc. Just pondering this, it might or might not be better. I actually don't think there's _that_ many things. There are a few key things that, if done right, would make it a better facebook. I'm just stabbing in the dark though. Can this post be considered a YC application? ;-)
  - TrevorBramble 16y ago
    Better than removing the deluge of unwanted app notifications individually would be a list, off to the side, of apps your friends have used that you haven't opted in or out of yet. Opt in and they all show up, opt out and it's added to a list of unwanted apps in your profile that you can edit later if desired. Obviously this would make users happy but not app makers, because the way it currently works is free (obnoxious) advertising for them. The mixed-access to updates based on bi- or unidirectional association is one of the very nice things about LiveJournal's social scheme. I knew a few people who use FaceBook for one level of communication and retain their LiveJournal accounts for another, because of this.
- ihodes 16y ago

SandB0x 16y ago

How about changing your name and birthday a bit Winston Jonathan Smith -> W.J. Smith 01/03/1980 -> 01/01/1950 (this doesn't even have to be visible) and not posting any sensitive information on there?

geuis 16y ago

I am torn when it comes to this. In principal I want to. But my friends and family are spread around the world and in many cases FB is the only way I have of keeping in touch with them. My privacy settings are already as high as I can make them but I can't readily leave the silo.

cschep 16y ago

I recently deleted mine. I had it for a long time, and I just felt like it was keeping the most brain dead relationships barely alive. I was constantly seeing people in real life and saying, "oh yeah, I read that on facebook." I didn't like that, and the privacy concerns were just the last straw. So yeah, I'm with you.

sheldonwt 16y ago
I'm graduating from university next week at a school with twelve thousand kids and this happens all the time to everyone I know. It's so mundane to learn some new social goings-on around campus that it's cliche to mention you found out on the site. I hate it for the same reason. On graduation day, leaving facebook will signify a new phase of life.

Qz 16y ago

I've never really used it for much, so I don't see much gain in deleting it.

Ixiaus 16y ago

Stop placing your trust in other people. I considered committing Facebook suicide but decided against it for the primary reason that many casual friends I'm able to keep in touch with/share media with that would normally be quite difficult. I have my privacy settings locked down, all 3rd party apps removed, and I never...ever say anything on Facebook that I would encrypt/sign in email. I'm sure people had a similar upset over the postal service when it was first suggested! It has more to do with being mindful of your mouth and being aware of the options you have as an individual for privacy (GnuPG).

enomar 16y ago

I left and advised everyone I know to do the same. Privacy was never an issue for me, but Facebook keeps changing the rules. I can't keep up. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/ http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-timeline/ http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduces-control-over-personal-information http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/facebook-further-reduce...

maxwin 16y ago

We need a decentralized social graph. I should host and own my data not facebook or any other organization. Maybe browsers should innovate and solve this problem.

steveklabnik 16y ago
You'd probably like OpenLike: http://openlike.org/ http://openlike.org/ or OpenSocial: http://www.opensocial.org/ http://www.opensocial.org/ Not that OpenSocial took off or anything. And I'm not that confident in OpenLike, either.
- nose 16y ago
  opensocial isn't doing too bad. It is supported by Yahoo, Google, MySpace, LinkedIn, and many more networks.
vyrotek 16y ago
Many people have thought this too. A sort of p2p social network? You solve a handful of problems but create many new ones to overcome. For example, using Facebook on multiple computers is simple right now. Now lets consider a p2p model. How do you handle uploading photos from a computer that isn't your main/home one? You'll need to basically synchronize content between the computer involved and your main one. There's also the case where I want to share a photo and not store it locally at all. What happens when some of the computers involved in your friend network are turned off and those friends want to view photos? I'm not sure you can make it completely P2P. You might need a central 'cache' of new content which then just gets pushed down to your friends once they sign in. And since everyone is disconnected that sounds like everyone needs to have a copy of their friend's data. I'm not interested in storing their photos on my PC. Just some random thoughts that came to mind.
theli0nheart 16y ago
I actually architected something for this on the last airplane ride I was on. Here's the gist. First of all, there is a basic protocol that any social application can adopt to. It basically consists of a few URIs like /user/login/, /user/register/, etc. Secondly, since "virality" is key in getting something like this implemented, I propose that there is a form of global identity database that is accessible by anyone. Only email, user_id (depends on provider), and provider_id information is stored (I'll get to the provider bit in a second). Any identifying information is hashed to protect private information. The issue is making this database publicly run (similarly to Bittorrent) and being able to publish the hashing algorithm used. It would obviously have to be more complex than MD5 or SHA1. Thirdly, there are what I call "providers". Providers are basically apps like Facebook and Twitter. They are capable of deciding what information is public. There aren't any privacy "settings" for each provider. Each provider's privacy policy is static and will not change. I.e. provider A will display to the world your SS#, name, and phone number, whereas provider B will display just your name. This is done to eliminate any gray areas. Thirdly, the idea of "notifications" and connections. Connections are one-way (like Twitter). So, you might be wondering, how do you connect between two "social networks"? You search for the person you're looking for by email and are given their user_id and provider_id. Your provider then has all it needs to connect with this person (it sends a message to the friend's provider to a notification endpoint, and the friend's provider then can do whatever it wants with that information). Notifications consist of updates, connections made, and other things (possibilities are endless). Rules: 1) Users can only use one provider at any given time. 2) Users can choose to delete their profiles on demand. 3) User data can be exported so that provider migration is quick and easy. I should write a blog post about this. There's way more. I called it OpenConnection.

cj 16y ago

I honestly don't care. People shouldn't have private conversations or implicating pictures on Facebook, period. If you don't do either of those two things, you'll be fine. No need to dramatically or publicly terminate your account.

jseifer 16y ago
Devil's advocate: If you have a facebook account you really can't stop people from tagging you in "implicating pictures" and the like. You can un-tag yourself after the face or delete things on your wall but there's no guarantee you'll get to that before someone else sees it.
- wyclif 16y ago
  I thought it was possible to not allow tagging to your Wall in Settings?
  - darren_ 16y ago
    It is. If you set the 'photos and videos of you' privacy option to just yourself, when you're tagged in a photo it appears on your Wall but only for you. Your friends looking at your wall don't see it. That said, I don't think you can block the actual tagging, which is a shame, although you can manually untag yourself, and once untagged you can't be re-tagged. Incidentally, you can stop your friends posting to your wall, or commenting on any of your items, or even just block specific friends from commenting or posting.

cmars232 16y ago

I will if there is a better place to go. Or even a place that isn't better yet but could be made better by the early adopters.

s3graham 16y ago

Sort of, never joined so I guess I'm effectively joining you.

kevintwohy 16y ago

I think the 'don't put anything you want kept private on the internet' is, generally, a good argument. I will say though, that I do think Facebook encouraged a reasonable expectation that certain data would be 'private,' and that's since changed.

gte910h 16y ago
I honestly hate I can be tagged in photographs and cannot turn this off.
- kevintwohy 16y ago
  Yeah. The same is true of certain actions like '[name] commented on [otherName]'s photo' - you used to be able to control those kinds of feed stories but no longer.

ivenkys 16y ago

I never went in - i still don't understand the point of FB or others of their ilk. If i really want to keep in touch with far-flung family, friends - i pick up the phone or drop an email. If they are important to me i will make the effort. I also don't find the need to advertise on a daily/hourly basis what i am doing or tell people about the cool car/bike/tv/ipod etc. i bought. May be its just not for people like me.

Legion 16y ago
Facebook is highly efficient for communicating with a large number of "fringe" acquaintances. Things you suggest - picking up the phone, dropping an email - require 1-on-1 contact. I am limited in the amount of time I can devote to 1-on-1 contact. But I can post on Facebook and people that know me but aren't necessarily people I want to devote a lot of 1-on-1 time to - more distant relatives, old friends, etc. - can see what I want to share. And I can skim my feed and see what they want to share. The level of time and contact is proportional to the relationship. They're not my inner circle, they're outer circle. Facebook is the single best improvement to my "outer circle" relationships ever invented. For low effort, I get to have some contact instead of no contact. For some people, Facebook is all about the time wasting activities, but that's not the core of the experience unless you make it so.
- ivenkys 16y ago
  I can see your point but my take is - that's what New Year, Christmas, ${Special_Occasion} are for, keeping in touch with fringe acquaintances. Send an email on those days.
Asa-Nisse 16y ago
I too was a FB-absente for a long time, but a friend of mine (non techie) explained its usefulness to me in a very good way. "It lets you keep updated on what your aquintances does on a daily basis". Not your good friends (because you call them). Not your collegagues (because you chat/mail them). But all those highschool and childhood friends you dont see on a day-day basis because they're in another country/region/world/whatever. Now, I could argue that that information is quite, uninteresting, and in many ways, it is. It is however quite nice to know that if I want to reach those people, I can.

kennu 16y ago

If you share something with your 300+ friends on Facebook, I think it's obvious it's no longer private. I have always considered Facebook a tool for _finding_ interesting stuff intead of _hiding_ it. A more open, non-evil alternative would be cool, of course. But good luck rebuilding the whole social graph there. Almost anybody who has tried that has failed. (I view this as somebody who follows the Facebook News Feed all the time, posts several times a day, and often participates in long discussion threads about news, politics etc. with my friends.)

glhaynes 16y ago

One thing to keep in mind: there are no signs I know of yet that the 'unwashed masses' are going to quit using Facebook: they love it and don't seem to care about the privacy thing overall. So by leaving, you're missing out on a significant perspective of what users (read: customers) experience everyday. It's like refusing to use Windows during the 90s. Not saying you shouldn't, but just that it's a cost to keep in mind. Also: how confident are you that Facebook won't still be HUGE 10 years from now? Many smart people think FB will only expand in its importance on the web. Again, not saying it will be or that people shouldn't quit if it offends their sense of propriety, but I'd hate to reopen my account 5 years from now after publicly committing a principled FB suicide.

cmelbye 16y ago

No, I'm really happy with the service that they provide. If there's something that's actually private, I'm not going to be posting it on the Internet in the first place.

steveissuperman 16y ago
Seriously. I can't believe how differently others view facebook compared to me. I log in every now and then and talk to some old friends who I wouldn't be able to contact otherwise. What info is everyone so scared of getting out? What's the harm in targeted ads? Not like most of us are going to see them anyway.
jamesjyu 16y ago
Hear hear to that! I'm always puzzled by all these privacy nuts that go on and on about privacy problems with social media sites like Facebook. If something is absolutely private and you do not want to share it outside of one or two people, DO NOT put it on a social media site! Period. In fact, I would go as far as to say never put any critically sensitive information on the web.
- ams6110 16y ago
  Absolutely. I sum it up as: "What happens on the internet, stays on the internet".
  - rokhayakebe 16y ago
    "What happens on the internet, sprays on the internet. Fast. And Forever."
- minalecs 16y ago
  well sometimes its your friends.. that will put pictures up of you without knowing, or will tag you in and can't remove it yourself
  - derefr 16y ago

anactofgod 16y ago

I don't know why I would. I decided early on that I wouldn't use any of their apps, play any of their games, and actually introduce disinformation into the medium from time to time. (I went to the "Barnum and Bailey Clown College", "The School of Hard Knocks" and "How High". No really! I did!) I view FaceBook as being purely frivolous, for casual interaction w friends & acquaintances, and treat it thus. There are other "social networking" sites (for instance, LinkedIn) for other types of (real/purposeful) networking.

jchonphoenix 16y ago

I'm already gone. They annoyed me after forcing me to link to pages in my profile.

chanux 16y ago

No. YOU ARE with me. I deleted my FB sometimes back and lived happily ever after.

greenlblue 16y ago

I'm with you. Although my personal problem wasn't with how they managed privacy but with how they used social links between friends and exploited it for marketing purposes. Plus, on facebook everyone is a fan of something and that's all they are and the people that claim their facebook page gives others a sense of what they are like in real life are delusional.

scorxn 16y ago

Facebook made the decision for me yesterday. I declined to link all my profile data to business Pages, so everything I'd bothered to maintain was wiped out. It was clear I'm no longer part of their intended user base. It's fine. I have no interest in participating in an ad network, so I wiped out the rest (friends, photos, etc) and publicized alternate contact info. Gotta keep the account for some of my clients' Pages. Facebook was great for me ca. 2004-5. Now its goals and policies are very different. Maybe more people will get shocked away when tagging + image recognition start imposing on their family photos.

adrianwaj 16y ago

I've got two words concerning Facebook (and feel free to downvote): Fuck Facebook and for the more adventurous: Fuck Apple

adrianwaj 16y ago

97 comments from 8 days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1289997 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1289997 Ask HN: Anybody else quitting Facebook over privacy concerns?

nfnaaron 16y ago
I'm not quitting, I've just pared my data and I don't use it much, it's boring. To me.

techist 16y ago

I am not only with you, I am ahead of you. I deleted my account(with some effort and patience)when I read that Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, had declared that"Privacy is Dead". Well he may think so but a of lot of people, including myself think otherwise.

phiberoptik 16y ago

I'm a pretty big advocate of privacy, but in order to protect mine, I take certain steps in order to avoid letting people use any of my personal information. For starters, any social media I use, I use one of my many nicknames. I never use my real name, birthdate, and none of the information I use in any of these sites is accurate. My address, my age, my DOB - NOTHING is real in my profile. Even the picture I use isn't me. This way, I control who gets my information and what they use it for. If Facebook is using my information, it certainly doesn't represent me in anyway. If you really want to control the information, you can.

rajat 16y ago

Nope, like many others here, I use Facebook as a public communication medium, which means I don't post private things there. It is not a tool for intimacy; it's a resume that I am handing out to perfect strangers. Perhaps, over time, had they not compromised their privacy standings, I would have treated it more as a tool for intimate conversations with friends and family. I certainly will not do so now, or ever again. I will treat them forever like a public billboard.

schammy 16y ago

I really disapprove of what Facebook has done in the past year or two with privacy. It's disgusting. However, I don't really "use" Facebook. I have an account but I rarely post anything on it, and I don't use any of the apps. I just use it to see what my real life friends are up to, including many that I don't actually see anymore because they have moved away. So, their new privacy stuff doesn't really affect me, since I really only use Facebook on a passive level. So I am not deleting my account. But I still strongly disapprove of what they are doing.

brown9-2 16y ago

How exactly did they violate it?

adamc 16y ago

Left it a year ago, but more because it was a time-waster than over privacy.

jrockway 16y ago

Reminds me of this: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel,429/ http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-constantly-mention... If you want to give up Facebook, just fucking do it... but realize that nobody else cares. (For the record, I haven't updated facebook in about 5 years, because it bores me. But I don't go on and on about it...)

bcl 16y ago

Nope, I'm not leaving. But what I have done is sanitize my profile info and remove all of my 'likes'. I joined FB to communicate with friends, not to be a cog in another marketing machine. I'll still use it to keep up with friends and share pics, but that's the limit of it. Their recent announcement that they are going to be sharing their databases with 3rd parties is what pushed me to take these steps.

omnivore 16y ago

Facebook has certainly gone from being pretty straightforward about privacy to deceptive about it, but the real people who need to worry aren't tech savvy HN denizens, but parents of those types and kids who don't have the first clue or don't know what to check, etc. That said, there are some fairly easy ways to ensure that you're not "exploited" digitally using Facebook. You can't scrub it entirely of your presence, but you can at least ensure that people can't access anything about you publicly without being a friend of yours. That's fairly reasonable. Now the stuff like making wall posts show up on news feeds and such are somewhere between annoying and intrusive, but that's where we can just choose to ignore it, pair down the number of friends we maintain or other tactics. For better or worse, the site works.

petercooper 16y ago

This is about as interesting as the old "Microsoft sucks" circle jerks that would occur on Slashdot. I deleted my FB account six months ago and it wasn't a big deal. There are plenty of people who will continue to use FB and not care about most of these implications.

random42 16y ago

I deleted my FaceBook account yesterday. For me, their absurd privacy policies are unethical, but the real reason is, I find it a complete waste of my good time.

lvecsey 16y ago

Relax. Just grow some crops on Farmville and don't worry so much.

GeneralMaximus 16y ago

Already done that, but for an entirely different reason. I realized that most "social media" websites are meticulously designed to get people hooked. The "Like" button, for instance, was not added to FB on a whim. It makes sure people keep posting new status messages and keep logging in every day (or shudder every few minutes) to see if someone liked them. My hosts file currently blocks Facebook, Twitter and Reddit, among other websites.

benwerd 16y ago

I've never been under any illusions about Facebook's business model or intent, but the expansion of their boundaries and Zuckerberg's stance on privacy mean I feel I have to take an ideological stand. Professionally, I argue for strong access controls, user control over data and the ethics of privacy in web applications, and that's incompatible with my continued presence on Facebook. It's not just hackers and Internet professionals who are worried by this. So I reckon it's up to all of us to create an easy-to-use, secure, friendly web-based framework for us to share and collaborate with our friends.

oomkiller 16y ago

I like Facebook, I also like the new features they are adding. I never posted anything under the assumption that the world couldn't see it. So no, I won't be joining you.

known 16y ago

Isn't it easy just to change your name.

milofelipe 16y ago

I just deleted my 0 karma Plurk account a month ago. I deleted my Friendster account (I'm from the Philippines) last week. I "MIGHT" delete Facebook next.

benkant 16y ago

I haven't had a Facebook account for years. My leaving had nothing to do with privacy.