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Why I deleted my Facebook account

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ioquatix 9y ago
  If you are not paying for it, you are probably the product.
  • kronos29296 9y ago
    And privacy isn't worth anything. Nobody cares. Because everybody is on Facebook.
    • avaer 9y ago
      If privacy isn't worth anything, someone should tell the advertisers spending billions to buy it.
      • kleer001 9y ago
        Someone really should. Also tell them that 90% of what they do doesn't work. In fact we should get rid of most advertizing.
  • notliketherest 9y ago
    What does that even mean? Do you even know what you're talking about? I don't pay for a lot of things of which I'm certainly not the product. FYI resorting to such banalities is rather pathetic
    • breakingcups 9y ago
      Not the original poster, but I think he is quite right. IF you are getting a product or service for free, continuously, the company providing it usually has a different motive, a different way to make money. Usually that means selling your data, thus you are the product being sold in the statement the original poster made. Can you explain why you consider the statement a banality instead of a rule of thumb? What kind of things do you not pay for where the company providing it is not gaining something from you using it?
      • Kiro 9y ago
        I run several free websites where I don't have any ulterior motives. I do it for fun and have quite a lot of active users. Not saying you're wrong, just giving some examples where it isn't applicable.
      • piyush_soni 9y ago
        It has just reduced to the new "cool kids" thing to say "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product". You are saying it usually means "selling your data" - while most of these websites clearly state in their policies that they DON'T sell your "personally identifiable" data in any manner to third parties. So that's that. Of course, it means they could aggregate the data and sell that, but then it really doesn't void my privacy much. Is Google getting benefited from my data? Definitely. Am I getting benefited from Google's services? Definitely. Does Google know much about me? Yes. Is Google selling my personal data? No. One just needs to be aware of what they are sharing with these service.
        • breakingcups 9y ago
          Them not selling data doesn't mean you are not "the product". You are being advertised to based on what Google know about you. To use another hyperbolic term, your "eyeballs" are being sold to others. You are the product. Google not selling personally identifiable information is not out of benevolence, but because it makes their own position stronger. They are optimizing how to sell what you are giving them. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that, my point is that "If you're not paying for the product, you are the product" is usually true. Resigning it to the parenthesized cool-kids corner is (unjustly) diminishing the value of the sentence.
          • piyush_soni 9y ago
            There's just one difference. "You are being advertised" is technically wrong. A product is being advertised to me, and yes, I have to look at it as a cost of using their service. They are advertising masses to the product companies, and product to the masses, but not 'personally me'. There's a huge difference here. I look at it more like a mutual contract between me and the 'free' service. They're not selling "me", it's more like you scratch my back, I scratch yours.
    • cobbzilla 9y ago
      Let me rephrase: if you are not paying for it, you are the product, but you probably don't know it, and even if you did know it, you probably don't care. If I was to go one step farther, I'd say the entire powerbase of companies like Facebook and Google is founded on a large mass of people not caring about their privacy. Maybe a step too far, but I'm not so sure.
      • ioquatix 9y ago
        I'd say you are probably right on this - it's interesting to consider how these companies actually function - sometimes the core product has been free - for a long time - and yet for services like YouTube - now there are paid options. Can you imagine an internet search engine with a paid option? Perhaps a personal search assistant who sorts through all the junk to find what you are actually after? It may well happen. As someone whose started a company with a "free product", seeing how it's been monetised has certainly been eye-opening.
      • dredmorbius 9y ago
        Not so much not caring, but getting stuck in a vortext. Free-to-use, privacy-voiding services kill any paid-for, privacy-respecting service. There's a race to the bottom -- Gresham's Law -- and the "good" services can neither gather sufficient users nor revenues to be sustaining. The leaders, at the same time, have to stay ahead of all three fronts in the game: 1. They need low per-user costs to sustain themselves. 2. They need to exploit user data (or whatever other advertising-based edge) they have to retain advertisers. 3. They've got to retain sufficient network size and quality to keep smaller services from taking off, or from boiling-off the high-quality users who are no longer satisfied by the service. Google launched G+ to kill Facebook. It failed in that, with a large number of arguments as to why. But Facebook's initial attraction was that it was literally Harvard. That is: it began as one of the most selective, aspirational, and attractive (to both other participants, and advertisers) cohorts on the planet. Metcalfe's Law is only so powerful, and it's a strong overstatement. There's both a falling value with additional nodes (Tilly-Odlyzko), and a per-user cost constant (myself). The size of a network is ultimately governed by that per-user cost. (There is also, if you will a perverse T-O factor -- a subpopulation who are actively detracting from overall site value. This can be addressed by specifically addressing and neutralising those participants. The cost-constant isn't subject to this.) Which is why a new social network could form, and relatively easily, among some sufficiently large appealing cohort. Throwing some funding money and support to individuals within such contexts might well take down Facebook, eventually. (Though the replacement would almost certainly eventually present the same problem.)
    • sctb 9y ago
      Please downvote or flag instead of posting rude replies like this.
• jsemrau 9y ago
  Usually I don't like these "why I left [company]" post. However, for this one it struck a nerve. I am not even on Facebook and since about a week ago receive emails along the line "Jan see what [real friend of mine]" has posted. I flagged is as Spam in this is where the emails now land. But WTF is going on ? This is a severe intrusion of my privacy. What's next. Install camera's wherever I physically go ? Is that the drone plan?
  • ljk 9y ago
    > What's next. Install camera's wherever I physically go how about camera in your home? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_fP4pPWPw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9X_fP4pPWPw
  • newscracker 9y ago
    > I am not even on Facebook and since about a week ago receive emails along the line "Jan see what [real friend of mine]" has posted. I flagged is as Spam in this is where the emails now land. But WTF is going on ? This is a severe intrusion of my privacy. It's just a trap. One of your real friends uploaded all their contacts to Facebook, and when Facebook found you weren't on it, I guess it decided to send you an email in the hope that you'd be enticed to join in and see what your real friends are up to...on Facebook, of course! I wonder if Facebook does this even for any company/organization addresses that get uploaded or if it has some sort of intelligence not to do that (imagine a "payroll@company.com" or "legal@company.com" or "abuse@company.com" getting an email to check out what friends are up to). As for the severe intrusion of your privacy, Facebook's privacy policy says what applies to its users. You're just a shadow profile who can be monetized in the future or in other ways. You're like an outlaw/alien who doesn't have rights as far as Facebook is concerned.
• smnscu 9y ago
  I was a huge facebook fan early days, I used to own facebook.com/<mylastname>, going as far as using their email address extensively. While I'm somewhat of a privacy activist (Lavaboom, Oakmail) the real reason I deleted my Facebook account (several times...) is that I simply hate the clutter I feel it adds to my life. I barely care for 10-15 people in my life, yet Facebook makes me fill in my boredom with trite details about quasi-strangers.
• em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
  "Facebook tracks posts and comments even before you post them...sending form data surreptitiously is morally wrong, and everyone knows it..." protip: you can access FB without javascript via https://mbasic.facebook.com/ https://mbasic.facebook.com/ and you don't have to worry about such concerns. (I learned this from a Stallman video.)
  • notliketherest 9y ago
    I'm surprised Stallman even encouraged visiting a Facebook property.
    • em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
      He doesn't encourage it by no means. But I have seen him say on one of his "javascript trap" videos (talking like parent telling his teenager if you are going to use sex, use a condom) that if you find you must, then use the mobile site. I can't find the video, but on https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html https://stallman.org/facebook-presence.html under the heading "How you can communicate safely with Facebook" he writes: "To make the site work without the need to run nonfree Javascript code, visit to m.facebook.com rather than facebook.com itself." FYI, currently m.facebook.com now uses javascript, however mbasic.facebook.com doesn't, and is basically the same as m.facebook.com was at the time of his writing.
  • chinathrow 9y ago
    And you can even write and read messages on mbasic.facebook.com opposed to m.facebook.com which just re-directs you to the app store in order to install their messenger app.
    • ikeyany 9y ago
      It's not coercive, you see, Zuckerberg is just empowering users to make meaningful connections.
• dontlie 9y ago
  I stopped using facebook when i graduated from college, i couldnt accept to have my whole life archived somewhere in the internet.
  • notliketherest 9y ago
    No one uses Facebook enough to actually have their whole life archived on the internet. You're running from a fantasy.
    • milankragujevic 9y ago
      Obviously I do, therefor your argument is invalid.
    • zer0tonin 9y ago
      A lot of people do multiple post a day on facebook and use it as their only private messaging solution, it's as close as you can get to having your whole life archived on the internet.
    • e12e 9y ago
      Maybe you don't, but what about you and the sum of your friends and friends of your friends? That doesn't just mean tagging pictures or facial recognition - that includes collating ips and times - in someone checks into Starbucks with a NATed ipv4 ip from Starbucks wlan and your visit fb from the same external ip...
• dontlie 9y ago
  I stopped using facebook when i graduated from college, i couldnt accept to have my whole life archived somewhere in the internet.
• grx 9y ago
  It's too late to join the Leaving Facebook party. If you were a regular user since 2005 and leave now, it does not make any difference anymore. The collected data about you is enough to interpolate your profile for the next decades. Of course, decentralization is a valid point and it's really important to get people who are kinda "new" to social media on distributed platforms. Twitter is centralized as well and also tracks with buttons and scripts. We need critical masses for e.g. XMPP and OStatus platforms like Mastodon. This of course also applies to mobile clients like WhatsApp.
  • adrianN 9y ago
    > The collected data about you is enough to interpolate your profile for the next decades. Did Facebook recently hire Hari Seldon?
    • grx 9y ago
      Heh, nice reference. Of course I am exaggerating. But IMO people vastly underestimate how similar their own behaviour is to other people. Meaning, if Facebook "knows" me since 12 years (!) it can very precisely categorize me into a group of people. And those other people do not leave Facebook but feed it more information.
      • markatkinson 9y ago
        Agreed to a degree, they can probably quite accurately fill in the missing puzzle pieces of your life according to the category you are in. It almost makes me jealous of all the data they have.
      • tvanantwerp 9y ago
        Funny how Facebook can have all of this information about me, my preferences, my social groups, etc., and has not once served me a remotely relevant advertisement.
        • yequalsx 9y ago
• valentinebm 9y ago
  >all those silly games and quizzes people are adding to their account are making off with all sorts of information about you. But (most) people prefer taking silly quizzes than thinking about potential dark implications of doing that. And it's not like this is a big secret no one has ever talked about (just google 'Facebook quizzes data' for more on that).
• TrickyRick 9y ago
  Was it just me who thought it was referring to working at Facebook before clicking the link?
  • sparky_ 9y ago
    No, I'm in your boat. I was expecting a rather enlightening introspection on the weaker points of FB's corporate culture.
    • valentinebm 9y ago
      +1 Certainly has to do with the wave of such posts published lately (Susan Fowler & Uber, Coraline Ada Ehmke & GitHub etc.)
  • dandr01d 9y ago
    Looks like the submission title was renamed now. Good work!
• z92 9y ago
  When someone leaves FB, he makes a public declaration. But his return years or months later is generally silent. Not claiming everyone that leaves FB, returns. But Facebook is continuing to expand. I remember reading here years back that new generation isn't really using FB cause their parents are using it. And they weren't comfortable with that setup. Rather they are switching to other social media.
  • zer0tonin 9y ago
    >I remember reading here years back that new generation isn't really using FB cause their parents are using it. And they weren't comfortable with that setup. Rather they are switching to other social media. They are mostly using FB for "public" stuff, and the stuff they would only share with their friends is on snapchat and similar applications.
• fastbeef 9y ago
  I quit Facebook right around the time my son was born. It wasn't for privacy reasons (and frankly, it never bothered me), but rather for the enormous energy and time sink it had become. Truly, it was as if I was a dopamine junkie and Facebook was the pusher of those sweet, sweet red circles with a number in them that meant someone, somewhere vaguely agreed with something you posted. I noticed I was not present in the moment with my newborn son, but rather my brain was hunting for the next quip to post or cute/smug/humblebragish picture to upload. I quit cold turkey and have never looked back. I'm off all social media today (except LinkedIn) and have weeded out a lot "friends" who really were just co-enablers in the dopamine rush hunt.
  • keganunderwood 9y ago
    LinkedIn is perhaps the worst of the bunch though. I see people in "people you may know" that I've already tried to add but LinkedIn will show them to me because I assume they're not the ones spamming if it happens due to me clicking a button. All for a blip in user engagement.
    • ljk 9y ago
      definitely agree for linkedin. another thing about linkedin is that people lie on there all the time and exaggerate their accomplishment
    • taftster 9y ago
      The thing is, with Facebook, we all knew it was mostly public information and that you'd be a dolt to reveal everything sensitive about yourself in your profile. Most people instinctively know to leave certain tidbits about themselves off of their FB profile. Whereas with LinkedIn, we are willing to give up much more sensitive and accurate profile data, such as all of our past employers, addresses, phone, email, birthdate, professional experience, headshot, school information, coworkers, etc. The initial content of a typical LinkedIn profile is much more rich than a starter FB profile. There is no need-to-know for Facebook to have as much "real" information about you as LinkedIn has. I feel that LinkedIn got in through the backdoor with the information most people have provided to it. Though Facebook undoubtedly has more of your day-to-day activities than LinkedIn, which might be more dangerous. I never personally got suckered into a Facebook profile, one of those (lucky) few that have continued to live on planet earth without a FB account. But LinkedIn is another story, I totally got swooped up in that one for sure.
• primozk 9y ago
  Sadly all local events are posted on FB and it is the easiest way to track them.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• hnarn 9y ago
  This might be an unpopular opinion in the tech-savvy crowd of HN, but while I agree with pretty much 100% of the points brought up in this article, I still disagree that leaving facebook is a net positive. I simply believe that as privacy violating as facebook is, as scary and orwellian their statistical analysis of my life and habits are, they have solved a very real problem for real people: social networking online. You can argue that facebook benefits from a lock-in effect and you wouldn't be wrong, but facebook hasn't always had that effect. They must have been doing something right from the start to get that effect. I remember around 2007-ish when facebook was introduced in my life as a kind of cool club for university kids (I think they had already dropped this idea by then, but I still remember "networks" being a thing), and joining I was struck by how it was everything that my other social networks was not. It felt "professional", it allowed a low-frequency update into people's lives that wasn't matched by IM services like MSN/ICQ/whatever back then, and as it developed it turned into a crucial tool for groups in school, events (a major thing for me as a student), and more. There will always be people that say they don't "get" facebook, that anything you can do on facebook you can do with other technology. Well, if you're one of those people you're probably also one of those people who thought "meh" when you saw Dropbox the first time because you can easily put together the same thing yourself with an FTP server and version control. Well, the kicker is obvious: normal people who don't read HN can not. Facebook changed lives for people who "can not". If you fast forward to today and look at how non-profits are run, how political organizations are run, how after school-groups are run, you might have a point saying they could use something else. They could, but not without losing functionality. The payoff is always "a worse solution but you get to keep your privacy". The reality is, almost nobody wants that (unless you're politically active in a repressive regime, but facebook does support Tor, so kudos to them). The basic issues from the past linger: who will host it, who will support it, who will pay for it? Are we going to use an e-mail list, a web based forum, how will we communicate and share content? Like it or not, ad financed networks solve all these issues and people are more than happy to sell their browsing habits for that. I don't think that's changing anytime soon, because even if the minority ("you and me") may be willing to pay for a substitute to buy out our own privacy, most people won't, and then the whole point falls anyway, because the solutions will obviously not integrate.
  • em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
• submeta 9y ago
  I use Facebook as a Google Reader replacement. I don't care what my contacts share. Twitter was my go-to site for this use case (news consumption). But that platform is too polluted now. Feedly was another site I used regularly. Is there any good news reader alternative to the platforms mentioned?
  • rhizome 9y ago
    There are a variety of RSS readers for each platform, is there something specific you're looking for?
    • submeta 9y ago
      Do people still use RSS readers? Honestly curious. I thought that was a thing from the past.
      • konart 9y ago
        Well... no real alternative as many see it. How else can you get updates\aggregate articles from the blogs you want to follow? >I thought that was a thing from the past Just like I can't understand how Facebook or something similar can be such a problem for people. Always though that you just keep it to stay in touch (in other words have their contacts info) with some people you met over the time.
      • rhizome 9y ago
        Yes, they do, and in fact that's what Google Reader was.
  • janwillemb 9y ago
    I add rss feeds to a new iftt recipe and send new posts to an emailaddress that ends up in my mailbox. In the mailclient I'm using a filter to automatically move these emails to a separate folder. This is as close to Google reader as I could get and it's working quite well.
  • konart 9y ago
    RSS for blog. Telegram thematic channels for everything else.
• AJRF 9y ago
  1. Change Password -> generate a random string -> copy paste it as your new password 2. Go to the actual delete facebook account page. 3. Copy that random string in when it asks your password and the captcha 4. Copy something else Now you’ve bypassed their arbitrary and nefarious 14 day filter
  • mamon 9y ago
    What about password reminders? Should we add: 0. create temporary email account and use it as your facebook email address? I used that tactic successfully in the past.
• jakebasile 9y ago
  I regret deleting my original Facebook account. I made it around the time they opened to every college in the US and there was a lot of history there, photos and videos and text. Sure most of it was worthless and maybe even embarrassing but that data is gone now.
  • Jaruzel 9y ago
    I'm sure if you ask REALLY nicely, they'll just 're-activate' your 'deleted' account and magically all the stuff that was 'deleted' will suddenly be back. /sarcasm
    • gcoda 9y ago
      Why sarcasm? Sounds reasonable
      • collyw 9y ago
        I think the point is that its not actually deleted at all. Its Facebook thats in control of your data not you.
      • futhey 9y ago
        When you delete your account, Facebook implies that they will (eventually) purge your data from their systems. Given the current costs of storage, many are skeptical of this.
  • tjoff 9y ago
    Just create several accounts and segment your social life.
  • kome 9y ago
    don't worry, your data is safe and still in FB hands; you just don't have access to it anymore ;)
  • aphextron 9y ago
    For anyone worried about this, Facebook gives you an option to download all of your data in a single zip file before deleting your account. https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467 https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• Jaruzel 9y ago
  I just randomly typed this URL into Chrome to see if it existed: http://quitfacebook.com/ http://quitfacebook.com/ And it does :) Ironically, it's got Google tracking and Google Ads on it...
• logicallee 9y ago
  The article quotes someone saying: >One New York comedian had a SWAT team break into his house based on a joke post. could someone find a citation, I'd like to read about that case? I googled what I just quoted and a couple of variations and did not find it. Thanks.
  • blakewatson 9y ago
    https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/right-to-remain-silent https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/414/...
• weego 9y ago
  Do we need a why? because you wanted to? Over opinionation and over justification is an insidious disease in tech related fields.
• ucarion 9y ago
  The crucial argument for me was that I have to trust Facebook forever. Facebook intends to keep your data forever, so you have to trust them for just as long. I don't think Facebook will go forever without some major data leak. I don't like to count on the competence of corporations in handling secret information. Similarly, I don't think any human ever looks at Facebook's statistical models for any individual. Facebook likely considers this data of the upmost secrecy. But I'm not sure they'll remain as upstanding decades from now, if they're ever in dire financial straights. In my view, Facebook is only going to get eviler.
  • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
    There's nothing to stop FB from getting out in front of a leak. They can figure out that someone is writing about a leak and pull a CNN on them before they post it on their blog or whatever.
• minademian 9y ago
  "... one of the last things that kept me on Facebook—after I had largely stopped posting and reading the News Feed—was simply checking my notifications. I unconsciously craved that little hit of happiness one gets when they see, So-and-so liked your post. But that’s not real happiness. It’s an unhealthy addiction." This is true, especially of my current use of Facebook.
• minademian 9y ago
  "... one of the last things that kept me on Facebook—after I had largely stopped posting and reading the News Feed—was simply checking my notifications. I unconsciously craved that little hit of happiness one gets when they see, So-and-so liked your post. But that’s not real happiness. It’s an unhealthy addiction." This is true, especially of my current use of Facebook.
• GoToRO 9y ago
  Even if you were never on facebook, all it takes is for somebody to post a picture in which they can clearly see your face. That's your unique id. Then they will add more information to your profile gathered not from you, but from your friends. For sure you have somebody in your group that gave them access, without knowing, to their contacts and your number in in there too, to their pictures and your face and easily recognizable landmarks are in there and so on. You might have a massive profile already all due to the little bits of information your friends are giving away. Another problem is that the profile only grows larger with time. They never delete anything.
• 2845197541 9y ago
  I deleted my Facebook, created a new one with 0 friends and now only use the messenger as a second email to communicate with my actual friends if I have a message that's too long for text. And I'm so glad to not care anymore what ____ who I met at a St. Patrick's day party five years ago is doing on vacation in ____. I also enjoy not seeing my good friends falsely display their lives. There's been so many times where I was with _____ for some outing and the next day saw a different, composed representation on Facebook. Facebook is an extension of the obscurantism of photo albums of the past. It used to be that photo albums were these things that you looked into and got a sort of false narrative where in every picture everyone is smiling and you can't see the metastasizing cancer in grandpa's lungs as he stands next to Niagara falls in 1978 months shy of his divorce from grandma. Now you're not looking at a photo album's exclusion of life's complexities once in a blue moon when someone's grandmother pulls it out you're looking at it every day, several times a day, in 2d, 3d, 4d, 5d, with footnotes and notifications in an endless feed. Not to mention it's created a culture of poisoned narcissists.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• kbar13 9y ago
  i quit facebook because honestly it's not even good for what it's intended to do. i want to know about what my friends are doing? snapchat, instagram, sms, twitter, old friends are on irc. want to stay in on communities? discord, slack, real life facetime with people. facebook just isn't really that useful for me anymore, a lot of the posts on my feed were from people i don't care about.
• stevewillows 9y ago
  For most people I know, we're only using facebook for events and as a centralized location where I can basically contact anybody. The sooner someone creates a standalone, sustainable event organizing application that doesn't spam you to death, the sooner the exodus can begin.
  • em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
    google calendar?
    • lmm 9y ago
      No good discussion/update flow, groups aren't really dynamic enough, and getting a google account isn't going to appeal to the kind of people who dislike facebook. (FWIW Meetup does completely replicate this use case, but they charge money)
      • stevewillows 9y ago
        exactly. Even with meetup, its not perfect for 'I want this specific group to come over.' In a lot of ways, mid-2000s evite would be perfect -- but there's the spam / nagging side of their business that spoils it. To be fair, I have no idea how one would monetize my dream events platform.
        • em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
          is monitization terribly necessary? The server costs of an open-source type of meetup should be negligible. Hypothetically a lot can even be done with plain email, provided users set up a filter to send all the invites into a separate folder if don't want to get distracted.
          • stevewillows 9y ago
            somebody always pays. Ideally it would have a strong app and desktop version with a standard calendar export... not too far off from facebook today, just omitting their other garbage. It wouldn't be too server intensive, but if people are using it, there's a cost. Also, keep in mind that not everybody is as savvy as the people who typically participate on HN. It should be as simple and minimal as possible.
• aphextron 9y ago
  >As a person who writes a lot of JavaScript and (mostly) enjoys it, this makes me sad because while I enjoy the interactivity it provides, I must concede that big data companies and advertisers have weaponized it against us. I could not agree more. I have started browsing the web with JS turned off by default in all of my browsers (desktop, laptop and mobile) over the last few months. I've never been happier. Especially on mobile. The web has become a bloated, unusable mess.
• dannysu 9y ago
  If you're not sure you want to delete your Facebook account completely, but think maybe you might want to reduce your use of it, then uninstalling the app from your phone is very helpful (Assuming you have it on your phone). That worked very well for me. I used to have it on my phone and would check it all the time. Then I decided I didn't want to do that so I uninstalled it from my phone. Doing so helped me reduce and eventually stop using the website. In between those times I also had a browser plugin to hide the news feed. So if I do login, I see nothing. Now I'm basically rarely on Facebook. I have an account, but I don't feel I need to delete it because the account doesn't control or affect me. I can still get messages, and Facebook keeps trying to get me back into it with their notification emails, but I'm in control and I feel great about that.
  • KozmoNau7 9y ago
    The best thing I ever did was to disable all notifications on my phone, other than text messages and direct instant messages. No Facebook, email or other app notifications. It has severely reduced my tendency to constantly check my phone, and it doesn't buzz in my pocket all the friggin time.
    • beefield 9y ago
      Done that. If only somebody told me how to disable facebook (and slack and gmail etc) starting blinking the browser tab when they think something happened that I need to note, that would make my desktop life much less distracted.
      • Gluek 9y ago
        Just close these tabs. Or use something like The Great Suspender.
        • beefield 9y ago
          Great suspender looks promising. Thanks.
  • 9y ago
• palerdot 9y ago
  I quit Facebook around 2011. One funny/shocking thing that happened is I got email notifications even after 14 day grace period. I had to go and click the unsubscribe link manually to stop that even though I don't have a valid fb account at this point of time. Not sure, if it is happening still. Another one - I created a dev account some time back with dummy email Id, but gave my mobile number of deleted account. Voila ! Facebook was suggesting my old contacts. Though this was suggested as expected by scanning the contacts of suggested members, I find this creepy enough. I'm a happy and relaxed person for six years now, and as with all other things you will get used to life without Facebook. Deleting fb account is not like jumping a ring of fire as your social circle might suggest.
  • Macha 9y ago
    They seem to also populate it based on IP address. Created a dummy amount to sync a mobile game across devices that requires a Facebook login to do so. It was created in a brand new private window, with no overlapping details with my actual account and it still suggested all the friends on my regular account.
  • e12e 9y ago
    I'm fairly certain such data retention is illegal in Europe. Afaik the eu, like Norway, considers ip addresses to be personal information - and storing them in a database without (valid) user consent would run up against privacy directives.
• baby 9y ago
  I personally rarely use facebook.com but messenger.com instead. I can't afford to delete my facebook account because this is how I keep in touch with most of my friends. People who can delete their facebook accounts probably all have their friends in the same city?
• gcoda 9y ago
  I quit Facebook years ago, and just recently created new account. It really helps, I need eyes on me, to get some opportunities. I need to be visible. I am controlling is my behavior, treat fb.com as a real public life, and it's hard for me, I used internet as free place where I can be my true self as oppose to real life where other people might disagree, where it is better to always avoid politics and religion to maximize social gain.
• KozmoNau7 9y ago
  Good for him. I basically use Facebook as a way to keep track of upcoming shows and events, and which of my friends are going. It's a lot easier than maintaining invites in a Google Calender (or similar) by hand. All of the games, copy-paste "share this!" bullshit and random shitposting pages of "humor" I either ignore or outright block. I also refuse to read news and engage in related discussions. With some discipline, Facebook can be a useful tool.
• infectoid 9y ago
  Similar boat to everyone else. Have had an FB account for ages. But gradually used it less as opposed to more. Barely use it at all now. Social Media has just never really my bag. I don't really see the value in deleting it as I don't really use it and it does offer me a connection to old friends if I'm so inclined to contact them.
• randomsearch 9y ago
  Pro tip: use messenger.com rather than going to Facebook if you want to keep using chat without the distractions of the news feed and notifications etc.
• Aaargh20318 9y ago
  I never had an account because I never had a need to and can't see any advantages to having one. There are lots of articles about how the price of using Facebook is your privacy but I've never seen one explaining to me what you get for that price and why you'd want that.
• djhworld 9y ago
  I returned to FB last year after a 3-4 year hiatus. I limit my use of it, maybe one visit p/day or less, it seems to work OK. The nice thing about it is I get to see photos of my family and friends who I don't see often. I visit Hacker News more than I visit Facebook, I'm not sure what that says about me.
  • colordrops 9y ago
    I just returned myself after about the same length of time. I was shocked to find that most content is no longer personal images and text. I counted the first 66 posts in my timeline, and 2 were personal content. The rest were viral videos and news items and others junk. That's 3% personal content. Absurd. I've been spending the last two days clicking "hide all from <media outlet> to no avail, as the outlets are essentially endless. Facebook purposely does not provide the ability to separate or filter content from your friends and content from 3rd parties. That is borderline malicious behavior, and definitely sociopathic.
    • WesleyLivesay 9y ago
      My solution was to Hide all from <person posting a bunch of garbage>, gotta take care of the problem at the source.
    • pmlnr 9y ago
      That's not only fb's fault: as far as I can tell, people simply stopped posting personal entries.
  • robertcope 9y ago
    That's why I'm on Facebook: family and friends. We live away from most of our family and friends. When we had our first child, we discussed it and decided that it would be best to very actively share pictures and stories via Facebook with our family and friends. I do a pretty solid job of posting almost daily updates and whatnot. This strategy has worked great. People "know" her. When we go to the race track (my hobby), everyone knows who she is. Many, many people comment on how much they love watching her grow up, etc. This is exactly what I was hoping for. She isn't some random kid at the track now, she's my kid, and everyone knows her. Maybe Facebook is evil. I have no idea. I don't really care. I care about the bridge that it provides between me and other people.
• allenleein 9y ago
  Hacker News is my new Facebook.
• elorant 9y ago
  I joined Facebook some ten years ago. It was pretty useless back then. Couldn't find anyone I know and the UI was fucking hideous. I deleted the account in less than a month and haven't looked back since. Recently I took a job as consultant for an art institution and part of the job is to oversee the use of their social media accounts. Facebook as a marketing venue seems lame. You get tons of traffic but very little loyalty. It just seems that users use Facebook pretty much as a photo gallery. They rarely click on anything and even when they do they visit the site for two minutes and then they leave. As an avid web user I loathe that behavior. It seems to me that fb is actually hurting Internet. They aggregate pretty much everything but their content isn't searchable, not even inside fb itself and they provide little to no value to web sites.
• basicplus2 9y ago
  I quit Facebook but was forced to return when it was the only way to communicate with certain Social groups. So now I use one of my old phones with nothing on it, including no contacts, just for Facebook on a guest wifi channel on home router so it cannot link into main home network. I look at once a week at most. Otherwise it sits there marooned ha ha
• rajadigopula 9y ago
  I deactivated my facebook almost 7 years ago, and never looked back. Now I am considering to move away from google services, as google is getting aggressive these days. I use nexus 6p phone and I am seeing youtube recommendations these days based on my phone conversations!
  • onion2k 9y ago
    I use nexus 6p phone and I am seeing youtube recommendations these days based on my phone conversations! The implication of this is that Google listens in and recommends things based on your phone conversations. A much more likely explanation is that you talk on the phone about the same things you look at online, and you're making an incorrect assumption about Google's source of data.
    • rajadigopula 9y ago
      I know what I talk on phone and what I search online. I have observed this so many times - not once. So I am confident in what I imply.
      • Hasknewbie 9y ago
        Doing voice processing is much much more computationally expensive than scanning text, and has a much higher error rate, so it would make little sense for Google to do that. More likely explanations could be: - Your topic is a common/popular one, so it's statistically likely that Youtube mentions it. - Other people that (text-)search the same things as you tend to watch these videos (i.e. you have been put is some category or other). - You did not search for it, but your phone correspondant did, and Youtube/Google tries the same suggestions on you because you're linked (see: there are other and less costly ways for Google to be creepy!).
• hdi 9y ago
  Got rid of it about 6-7 years ago, mainly due to all the annoying people posting photos of their food and pointless updates and check-ins. Who needs that.. I don't miss it one bit nor do I plan on using it ever again.
  • colordrops 9y ago
    It's way worse now. At least you were seeing pictures and text that your friends posted. Now it's over 90% viral content.
• adgasf 9y ago
  For those looking for a replacement "hit", why not divert your procrastination into something useful, like StackOverflow or Codewars?
• WA 9y ago
  Thoughts on Facebook: 1. Privacy-wise: It doesn't matter if you're on Facebook or not. They have a profile about you and you can't do anything about it. There was this article in January [1] that showed how only a few data points Facebook or Google or Twitter actually needs to paint a fairly accurate picture of your personality. 2. Addiction-wise: Uninstall the app, disable all notifications. I rarely use Facebook for the feed, because it's actually extremely boring. Most friends don't post personal stuff anymore anyways. There's a handful of people who post a lot, but mostly links to other websites. I also unfriend people I haven't talked to in a while. Try to reduce your friends (and cognitive load) to <200 or <150. Not all at once. Unfriend 10 or so today, another 20 tomorror etc. 3. I also see tremendous benefits of Facebook and that's why I use it: We have a local startup community. Basically, a page with 100 likes or so. We posted a video about our events and it reached 1,200 people organically. It's an extremely useful tool to discover and promote local events. And new people constantly find our events because of Facebook. You can't do this with your private website. You need to go where the attention is. The only other option to promote local events is the newspaper or distributing flyers, but this takes a lot more time for less awareness, because of broader targeting. I also found new events because of Facebook. [1]: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-li... Edit: clarification
• NumberCruncher 9y ago
  Back then when Zynga got big I got more and more annoyed by the "water my plants, bor!" and "milk my cows, bro!" requests. At one point I decided to unfollow anybody on the spot sending me Zynga requests. After that I unfollowed my favourite bands inviting me to concerts on a different continent. Then people posting about political topics. Than everybody posting annoying BS. And I ended up with a nice empty timeline.
• HealthGoth 9y ago
  Where's a reference for Facebook's storing long term everything you type in the comment box? I am skeptical of that claim. Having previously interned at Facebook, I got the impression that Facebook actually takes user privacy really seriously, and I'd be super surprised if they were doing something creepy like that. I know for a fact they don't use any personal message data for advertising, they were really serious and open about that.
• jokoon 9y ago
  I stopped using facebook around 2009 after I created a group for a highschool. Some students of my class were harassing me and insulting me on it, so I deleted the group and stopped using facebook entirely, in bitter anger. I started using it again recently, because it's the norm. I have only 30 friends and I remove them very easily. I use it to watch events, shops in my neighborhood, signin in other apps, but nothing else. It's weird because facebook is usually a place of exclusivity since you only interact with your "friends", meanwhile it should really be a place where you could discover things and potential users using geolocalization (hobbies, parties, neighborhood). I don't know why they are not doing it. Pokemon go and tinder already proved geolocalization is awesome. So all in all, facebook just collects information about you, but it's useless for the users. You just share photos, post comments about people you know, but nothing else really. And in the end, you add friends with people you might have lost touch with 10 years ago, and they will peek into your life, but the fact is your life changed. Just like in real life, you constantly have to use make-believe and behave well because your personal life is shared with all your friends at the same time. I don't understand why people really use facebook at all. Facebook is about showcasing your life. It has become very superficial.
• nilsocket 9y ago
  I have deleted my Facebook account, because must of my feed is stupid and doesn't make any sense. Ever thought to read a post on Facebook without having an account. You probably can't read , due to their very big banner saying you to "connect with friends". That doesn't go away it keeps re-visiting for every 3 to 5 seconds.
• romanovcode 9y ago
  Wow what a news. You deleted facebook, congratulations! Is anyone even using FB, I think it's slowly dying for the past years.
  • davidivadavid 9y ago
    They recently crossed 2 billion active users. Guess that qualifies as "anyone."
• Tehnix 9y ago
  While I certainly get why you’d get off Facebook for privacy reasons, I feel like a lot of the “addiction” comments here and in similar posts as OP’s are a bit of a weird thing to me. Are people nowadays not capable of moderation? Purely anecdotally, but I mostly see older generations being the ones that hop off. Is it because they didn’t grow up with this kinda of social media and can’t seem to balance what is a perfectly fine way to interact with friends and stay updated without pulling a cold turkey on it? I personally mainly like to have my FB profile as a catalog for my pictures, and might casually browse it when I got nothing else to do. There’s a lot of value in various FB groups, for example, I’m currently in South Korea for a year, and there are communities in the different areas for posting apartments and asking questions for expats and internationals. I don’t know what I’m trying to get at, but I feel that the cold turkey approach is rather an indication of a persons lack of self-control and moderation - you don’t have to choose an all or nothing approach, simply disable notifications if that is what’s bothering you, unfollow people that annoy you, and a ton of other methods to handle these things other than going nuke-all.
  • sasvari 9y ago
    Are people nowadays not capable of moderation? Purely anecdotally, but I mostly see older generations being the ones that hop off. Is it because they didn’t grow up with this kinda of social media and can’t seem to balance what is a perfectly fine way to interact with friends and stay updated without pulling a cold turkey on it? 95% of the people I see on the subway every day are glued to their smartphones without interruption the moment they enter the carriage until they leave. And around 80% of the time I get a glimpse of the screen of those it's facebook/instagram/snapchat/<insert your social network of choice>. This is somehow independent of age. So moderation? Balance? Probably depends on the definition.
    • Tehnix 9y ago
      >95% of the people I see on the subway every day are glued to their smartphones without interruption....80% of the time I get a glimpse of the screen of those it's facebook/instagram/snapchat/... Is there anything inherently bad in that? You have to do something on the boring commute. This is honestly the worst example as a counter-point, literally in a situation where you have little else to do, and even then, that something definitely also depends on where you are. For instance, in Japan I mostly see people playing games, IM’ing or reading pocket books. In South Korea I honestly don’t see phones that often in public transportation, and in Denmark it is maybe half social networks and half just reading online or listening to music.
• kvgr 9y ago
  I unfollowed every page and all of my +-400 friends. Now I follow only my wife, mother and brother. They do not post much. This cleaning helped me a lot. But every time I add new friend, I need to remember to unfollow him, because than my wall is constantly cluterred with random post from viral pages and friends interaction on the site. I wish there still was the option to deactivate facebook and keep messenger. I don't want to delete facebook and then recreate the friends on messenger only again.
  • GuiA 9y ago
    You can very much disable FB and keep Messenger. Your account will get reactivated if you click through one of their emails or use FB login though.
    • kvgr 9y ago
      I tried to do that, but it seems the option is not available when I was trying to deactivate facebook.
      • krrishd 9y ago
        It happens by default when you deactivate. Try deactivating and then logging into messenger.com or the Messenger app.
  • foota 9y ago
    I'm not sure how it works, but I think you can create a separate messenger account at https://messenger.com https://messenger.com
• rcdwealth 9y ago
  Well Facebook has stolen US $400 from us, in a single click, as they have been thinking we are not watching the campaign. There was absolutely no support or answer on incident.
  • 8draco8 9y ago
    How they did that?
• Hasknewbie 9y ago
  I have to ask: do people really believe that "2 billion users" claim? I live in Europe, and yes the majority of people I know have an account, but nowhere near all of them, and they're often unfrequent users. But more importantly: with the places where FB is banned, all of the people too young to be on it, all the people too old to have an interest, and all of the people who have in general a limited/difficult Internet access and have more important things to do than get facehooked? Being told that 2 out of every 7 human being manually created their account and are 'active users' who log in at least once a week (or is it month?), somehow leaves me skeptical.
  • calafrax 9y ago
    I do. Facebook peaked and is decline in its early markets but still very strong and growing in other parts of the world. Interesting question is do they actually make any money in emerging markets and are those billion users actually an asset.
    • Hasknewbie 9y ago
      I did work for a few months in Bombay last year, and most of my colleagues (20s-to-40s middle class white-collar employees -- a minority in India) had a FB account, but with very little engagement. I have to assume that having many non-urbanized people in India, and therefore many less-connected relatives, probably reduces the interest in FB. They were however all heavy users of Whatsapp, which makes sense to me. I have a feeling that, thanks to smartphone adoption, legions of people are counted as 'in' by FB only because the app is running in the background, when in fact it's not seeing any significant use.
  • piotrkubisa 9y ago
    Could you also explain me if test users generated by dashboard for developers are counted in this 2 billion users claim? I've noticed these accounts aren't in any way logically separated from real accounts. I think there is a lot of apps which uses Facebook services (i.e. OAuth2) which were somehow tested, maybe even by such users.
• Bakary 9y ago
  I stopped using Facebook for a variety of reasons years ago and I am starting to regret it. In my case it had a clear negative effect on my social life, since friendships are heavily based on repeated unplanned interactions and many of these now occur on the service. If you add to this the friction of contacting someone outside of the service (in a context where they are a clear minority), the slight difference builds up and affects how friendships develop during student life. The privacy issue is certainly a factor but over time it feels more like an expression of vanity. I am just a face in the crowd, what matters is the relationships I can build with others in the present before my pubes turn grey. If Zuckerberg becomes the Dark Lord it will be a collective problem anyway.
  • Draiken 9y ago
    You say "friendships" but I don't believe that's the exact word. Real friendships will continue to survive and thrive, as they did before Facebook, as long as both parties keep trying. If a "friend" of mine won't invite me to a party because I don't have Facebook, he's not really my friend. It's as simple as that for me. Of course we probably differ on what we define as friendship, but I believe you'd agree that having a fake number of Facebook "friends" is not going to change who your real friends are. Facebook is one of many ways to talk to people (even tho I don't consider clicking "like" on something is in any way meaningful) but it is not the only one. If people force you to communicate through one mean they are, pardon my french, inconsiderate jerks.
    • kinkrtyavimoodh 9y ago
      > friendships are heavily based on repeated unplanned interactions I think this hits the nail on the head. 'Unplanned' is the keyword here. If it's a party it's likely your friend will invite you, but it's also very likely that you will miss out on some banter in the comment section of a pic they uploaded on FB because you were not around. This is not something deliberate—it's casual, it's unplanned, it's organic, and you will not be included in it if you are not on the platform. I think a lot of people here on HN are parts of bubbles (for lack of a better word) whether their real life social circles are not very active on FB either. If that's the case, you can pretty much leave FB without it affecting you too much. But if your friends are active on FB, and you are the only one who is not, well it's your choice and that's perfectly fine, but it definitely has an effect.
• known 9y ago
  I use a fake account;
• thinbeige 9y ago
  Key is to reduce FB usage to the minimum while still using its features to socialize and network. FB is like alcohol. Once in a while it's great but FB or alcohol 24/7 makes you sick. Having the app installed on your phone is a no-go. FB is super crucial when it comes to networking. It is so easy to follow up/stay in touch with people you just met, thanks to real names, a complete social graph, a smooth Messenger experience and a good DNA for that use case ('hey we are friends now', compare this to Linkedin). What are the other options? Getting the business card and writing an email or text the next days? Works as well but it's more formal and not that subtle. And if you don't have a topic to follow-up with people will forget you and be surprised about your awkward email six months later. Not with FB. Linkedin is a strange thing, connecting there feels somehow wrong and the messaging experience is subpar.
  • yosito 9y ago
    > FB is like alcohol FB is like alcohol with an entire team of people constantly engineering it to get more and more people using it more and more often.
• gorhill 9y ago
  > This article is all about Facebook, but I have also scaled back my use of other big services like Google The issue is with whatever 3rd parties which are ubiquitous enough. The difficulty is, how do we find which 3rd parties are ubiquitous enough so as to warrant that we take action against it? This is why I wrote uBO-Scope[1], its whole purpose is to inform users of which 3rd parties out there are ubiquitous, according to their own browsing history, and according to which 3rd parties were allowed to connect on any given site. The extension observes network traffic on all pages you visit and from the data it collects over time, and will inform you about which 3rd parties are in a position to collect how much of your browsing history using a per-base domain heatmap of privacy exposure. It's a side-side-project, and hopefully I will find time again to further improve it. The whole motivation is that I want people to become aware of what is happening when they browse the net, and in the spirit of informed consent, to encourage them to take action to reduce their privacy exposure. [1] https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Scope#preamble https://github.com/gorhill/uBO-Scope#preamble
• darrmit 9y ago
  I too have quit Facebook (and all social media) for long periods of time, but recently got back on. In the past I've felt pressure (from myself) to post witty things or drive up my friend counts. But now I see the value in just being a "consumer" - groups, articles, etc. Plus the added benefit of being able to see business pages, videos people send, etc. I still agree it's crazy intrusive and addictive, I just think it's possible (though difficult) to find a middle ground.
  • throwawaymanbot 9y ago
    Facebook wants you to feel its a intrinsic part of your life, but in reality its not. Your brain fools you. What you dont know about, you wont miss. For me that 90% garbage on Facebook is not incentive to give in to the feelings of missing out on other stuff, that I will get to see anyway eventually.
• AndrewOMartin 9y ago
  How do you know when someone doesn't have a Facebook account?
• strokeswan 9y ago
  Have a look at https://www.vero.co/ https://www.vero.co/ I worked there for more than 2 years, I can assure you they have absolutly no intention to use your data. + there is no ads. they gonna start charge new users after 1M users
  • aembleton 9y ago
    Android app is 68MB! Why so big?
    • strokeswan 9y ago
      you get a lot of offline features
• throwawaymanbot 9y ago
  Once Facebook changed their algorithm that hid people I didn't communicate with regularly further down my feed, in favor of the few that I did being in my face more, I have to say, I lost interest. So, about 4 or 5 years ago I quit Facebook. Privacy concerns aside, I'm happy to say my social life has not suffered. I feel saner, more informed, (No "obama needs to be locked up" posts for me) and I feel like I have more mental energy for REAL things I interact with, such as colleagues and friends, which are more important to me.
• jhasse 9y ago
  The one thing keeping me on Facebook are events / RSVP. I don't know any good alternative. For example it's still missing in Diaspora: https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/1359 https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/issues/1359
  • akvadrako 9y ago
    This is a big one. Meetup is good for group events, and personal invitations are good for close friends, but I haven't really seen anything for the middle.
  • free_everybody 9y ago
    Even though I deleted my Facebook account earlier this month, I totally agree. Events on Facebook were easily the fullest set of local happenings that I could browse through. Luckily, my girlfriend keeps me updated using her Facebook account, so I don't feel like I'm missing out. I feel there's significant opportunity for an events dedicated app to really take over. I'll be waiting.
  • Grangar 9y ago
    I'm working on an alternative. I'll post a Show HN when I have my MVP ready!
  • thoth 9y ago
    Same here. I'm on Facebook because of events. Years ago, a club I was in was using Yahoo Groups, and over time more and more events were posted to Facebook. People complained, and eventually the organizer wrote back "I've been using Facebook because it lets me schedule an event, track RVSP's, link to the location/map, add members, post pics, and help advertise/recruit for more members. Anybody that wants to help or takeover any or all of this, let me know". Total silence for a day or two before about 50 of us joined Facebook. That was 8 years ago. I moved away but now I'm in at least 4 clubs that actively use Facebook for events... now it's typical for friends to schedule birthday parties, housewarmings, plain old get-togethers via Facebook private events. Also alumni groups, community events and so on that keep in touch or advertise things to do that way. The only thing I'm tired of is people that constantly mention how they quit Facebook. I don't care. It serves a useful purpose for me. It's like that Onion article about the guy who doesn't own a TV and mentions that as often as possible - Onion should do an update starring Facebook quitters. And before anybody suggests it, Meetup isn't a good alternative. (I'm an organizer of a Meetup group as well; I like Meetup but fills a different niche.)
• riledhel 9y ago
  All the posts about this subject and not a single one I've read mention using facebook login for websites or mobile apps. There are a lot of these out there that simply don't work otherwise. Take instagram for example, even before facebook's buying it.
  • Propen 9y ago
    and freakin' Tinder. damn it
• DigitalTraffic 9y ago
  Facebook is great for developers! The groups for specific languages and graphics packages are very active. The Lightwave group is great for example. Asocial and autistic people are generally not interested, but for the rest of us, it's great! I can see how nerds would have problems with it.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• jstewartmobile 9y ago
  If I drop Facebook, where will I get my vaporwave fix?
• Demoneeri 9y ago
  Oh God, my Facebook feed is way more interesting than the comments section on HN of a post about leaving Facebook. Are you all wearing your "I left Facebook" badge?
  • JohnKacz 9y ago
    Forgive my obtuseness but I'm not understanding your comment.
    • NoCoastCoder 9y ago
      People talking about leaving facebook are more boring than the feeds that were so boring that they has to leave.
  • havetocharge 9y ago
    The back of my fridge is more interesting than this comment. Why am I replying to this comment then, rather than looking at the back of my fridge? Hmm...
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • bduerst 9y ago
    "I don't have a Facebook Account" is the 90's equivalent of "I don't have a TV". Here's the trope for people who who may not remember: http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429 http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioni...
• jaxomlotus 9y ago
  I still have my account but disabled all notifications and effectively stopped visiting it except for rare occasions. I did this about 4 months after the election, when I realized how toxic Facebook had become, watching my friends and family deride each other for their voting choices. It wasn't healthy. I am actually glad that I stopped visiting it because in retrospect I don't miss it at all, and can't even estimate how much productive time I probably wasted on it.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• free_everybody 9y ago
  I deleted my Facebook account recently ONLY because of how spammy the notification system is! I didn't want many sources for my news feed so I unsubscribed to all of my hundreds of friends save a few. This redeemed my faith in the news feed, although I would have preferred to have just turned the whole feature off honestly. The problem came when I stopped using Facebook often so I wouldn't have any notifications, at which point Facebook would arbitrarily fill my notifications with updates about random posts of random friends of mine (i.e. "John posted a picture! Mark updated his status!") to whom I was not in any way subscribed to or particularly interested in. Clearly, Facebook wanted to lure me back into their world by spamming my notifications, and there was no way to turn this behavior off. This approach to UX is condescending and pathetic. No more Facebook for me.
  • Pulcinella 9y ago
    It's shocking how bad the Facebook UX and App are. Bloated download size. Weird A/B testing of the UI. The "time"line showing you want it thinks you want to see rather than chronological order. As you said, pointless, spamy notifications that person A commented on person B's photo from 6 months ago. The list goes on...
    • free_everybody 9y ago
      I think Facebook is an amazing tool in many ways, but I agree with you. It really seems like they treat their users like farm animals.
  • iak8god 9y ago
    I refuse to install Messenger, so I'm actually annoyed by FB's lack of notifications (by email) when I receive a FB message. It used to be the case that FB would email you the message text. They switched that to "you have a message, click here to see it," but now it seems to be completely random whether I'm ever notified. The immediate effect on my behavior is that I find myself logging in to FB frequently just in case I have a message, and then falling into the endless scroll of crap in my feed.
• whiddershins 9y ago
  The one greatest internet life hack I discovered in the last couple of years is to delete browser autocompletes (cmd + shift + delete or similar). Once I became aware of the "slot machine" effect of websites I deleted the default autocompletes for Facebook and Hacker News, for example. Prior to doing this, if I typed "F" into chrome I went to my Facebook news feed, and "N" in chrome took me to HN. I deleted those defaults and made it so the autocomplete takes it to my profile on each site. My Facebook profile page is inherently non addictive. It's just me. I can then choose to click on events or whatever. My HN profile is even more boring. This forces me to make one extra click before viewing the news stories but that single click is enough to stop me from compulsively checking news. I can't overstate how many hours per week I reclaimed from this one change. It is better for my purposes than any sort of focus blocker. It doesn't prevent me from doing anything, it just removes the addictive trigger. I also moved my Facebook app from the first screen on my iPhone, and disallowed any notifications. This is better for me than deleting the app. As long as I don't see the little red circle with a number, there's no compulsive reminder. As a consequence of using this technique I am able to get what I want from web services without the addictive component. --edit: grammar--
  • graeme 9y ago
    Brilliant, thank you. I use Facebook only on my phone, but there's no newsfeed eradicator I can use on my phone. This approximates it. Way less cumbersome than unblocking using 1blocker, but should still be effective.
  • thearn4 9y ago
    This is a great idea for FB and Reddit. For HN, it's a tougher call for me, I value the topics and discussions a lot more than I do most other sites. But it is probably a giant distraction when taken as a whole. Slack is another one I've found myself trying to stop compulsively checking. I've been collecting a lot of public slack teams lately.
  • smokeyj 9y ago
    I use this app to block websites when I'm trying to work: https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol https://github.com/SelfControlApp/selfcontrol It's amazing how reflexive opening a tab and going to your favorite distraction is. I also make sure to put my phone silenced and out of arms reach.
• bogomipz 9y ago
  The author states: >"Here’s the thing. You won’t be as outcast and lonely as you think. Your friends—and I know this is hard to believe—are still your friends in real life. You just won’t get notifications of what they ate on their lunch break." This is so true and you might even find that you interact with your real friends more in real life after quitting Facebook. "Facebook friends" is really a misnomer that has kind of devalued the word friend in my opinion. I think for the vast majority of connections on FB are more likely to be "Facebook acquaintances." These exists in real life as well, you just might not be as up to date on "what they had for lunch"(quoting the article.
  • walkingolof 9y ago
    Problem with quitting Facebook has nothing to do with your (real) friends, at least not for me, but for one or two communities (retro computers in this case), 10 years ago they would have been on a forum-like platform, but are now on Facebook instead.
    • bogomipz 9y ago
      Well FB is also a "forum-like" platform. What does that mean? What does FB provide your two communities that wouldn't be available via a Slack Channel/Blog/mailing list/subreddit etc?
      • softawre 9y ago
        The fact that all of those people are already in the community on Facebook?
        • bogomipz 9y ago
          So what FB is really providing is inertia. You hear similar sentiments by people that they stay on FB because "I don't have any of these peoples email addresses." I think this is the real danger, that FB replaces all these other channels and mediums. Have you suggested to the group the possibility of moving off of FB? I mean it sounds like they are tech people if they are part of a computer group.
• petraeus 9y ago
  Look at all you facebook haters lol, its just a tool, its YOUR problem if you cant control it. Its like swearing never to use a hammer again because you missed a nail once.
  • krrishd 9y ago
    I think that's a flawed comparison, at least for some people it has a negative impact (as opposed to simply not being useful enough as a tool). I've actually derived a lot of value from Facebook in the time that I've had it, but I left as an experiment with my mental health and it's genuinely helped me. Also, not being able to control it is hard to blame on the end-user when Facebook designs aggressively around engagement and hooking users in by virtue of psychology.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• throw2bit 9y ago
  I am happy to leave Facebook. But what will I tell the US govt if they ask for my social media ? I frequently fly in & out of US and not a citizen.
• kodt 9y ago
  One issue now is many social groups and businesses primarily communicate through Facebook. I was part of a subreddit that was basically dead, gaining no users only around 30 active people. The mod decided to create a Facebook group instead, that group quickly ballooned to 1,000 members and now has over 7,000, this is for a single metropolitan area. The subreddit still exists but has very little activity or useful information. If you want to be a part of that community Facebook is pretty much your only choice. I also follow a number of small business in a certain industry, and I would say 100% of them have Facebook accounts, 90% have websites, 50% have decent/good websites, 10% actually update and post news to their website. A good amount use Twitter & Instagram, but all post events, news, promotions, etc.. on Facebook. If you want to follow these businesses, you have to use Facebook to do so.
• skc 9y ago
  So here's a question. Facebook seems to have a really bad rep here on HN. But I'm wondering how many people here that hate Facebook, run their own businesses or have apps that include some form of Facebook interaction whether it be for ads, authentication, social media integration etc and how do you justify that if so.
• jancsika 9y ago
  I'd really like to see some kind of "Proving Ground" social network that exists for the sole purpose of verifying and elucidating the emotional manipulation that can be achieved with the current technology. Otherwise I predict we're going to continue getting articles from technologists leaving Facebook who all keep quoting the same scant material, who all make highly speculative and grand conclusions that aren't supported by the evidence. (E.g., Facebook's "emotional lock-in" that the author doesn't back up with any evidence.) People break DRM thanks to the toolset that others made available on their OS. People will break the facile emotional manipulation that exists on every social network today, but only when we have the toolset to at least elucidate the problem.
• S_A_P 9y ago
  I deactivated/deleted my FB account in 2010. I've thought that I may try to open it back up in 2020 just as a self created "time capsule" of my life. Unfortunately my life circumstances around that time were not fantastic. Mid divorce and lots of shade thrown by the wife in my direction. Even 7 years out, I dont like to think about that time, dont know if I will be ready in 3 more years.
• yuhong 9y ago
  The studies they mention in this is pretty fun, both the self-censorship and the news feed one.
• rdiddly 9y ago
  "It’s difficult to know how much of your information will be truly deleted." Not difficult - the answer is none of it. But at least you can stop adding to it.
• Elect2 9y ago
  Where/How do you get daily news after quitting Facebook?
  • tmccrmck 9y ago
    I deleted my FB nearly three years ago and it forces you to actually go to news sites. I'm much more informed this way. I get my local newspapers (the Chronicle and the East Bay Times) delivered and I go online throughout the day to read NYT, LA Times, WaPo, BBC. I've never felt the need for the instant spam news that you get on FB or Twitter. There's only been one time where I've had to use Twitter for realtime news and that was during the fire in Oakland last fall.
• dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  To all the people who deleted FB, has your husband/wife deleted it. If FB has them hooked then they may as well have you.
• grashalm01 9y ago
  Not to be trusted. Likes JavaScript.
• microwavecamera 9y ago
  I quit using Facebook years ago. If you value your privacy, I would recommend you do the same. Facebook's data gathering is pervasive and perverse. And it doesn't stop with facebook.com. All those social media buttons you see for Facebook on websites also gather data for Facebook and Facebook works with several 3rd party companies to gather data such as Acxiom and Atlas Solutions, which is owned by Facebook. Government organizations, such as the NSA, can and do legally purchase and acquire this data without a warrant. https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research https://labs.rs/en/category/facebook-research http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08/19/98-personal-data-points-that-facebook-uses-to-target-ads-to-you https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/08... https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-likes-helped-trump-win https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg9vvn/how-our-li... "The only winning move is not to play."
• UseaName 9y ago
  I used to like facebook until it wanted to know where I was and what I was doing at all times. It's just creepy. A goldmine for stalkers and other criminals.
• haterswillhate 9y ago
  You are lucky! I tried to delete and now I have 3 accounts but none of those I can delete nor login in to. Facebook is shouting how much users they have.. Reality is opposite.