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Ask HN: Where to go after deleting Facebook?
Facebook for me is mainly a self updating address book. So is there any other recommended service that could possibly even import all or some of my FB data and is able to help keep in touch with my acquantances?
- mars4rp 9y agoSupreme Court ruled that illegal and if you do that, it is punishable by law as hacking!
- sir_brickalot 9y agoI don't live in the US so I am not familiar with this ruling, but are you saying that I am not allowed to use my own data that Facebook handed over to me in a neat zip file containing html files, photos, friends lists, messages... everything?
- frantzmiccoli 9y agoYou surely are in your right to get your data, I guess there has been a misunderstanding, he was mentioning data about your contact. European GDPR is making this data export a consumer right (it comes applicable in may). Though I haven't heard about any service enabling data loading from a Facebook export (nor a Facebook export tool).
- mars4rp 9y agoIt is illegal to export your data from facebook by 3rd party even if you authorities it. Google Facebook vs power ventures or https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/09/504999255/episode-741-amy-and-steve-vs-facebook https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/12/09/504999255/epis... There is a reason for most of the monopolies, Government.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cyclonetiger 9y agoIf its a self updating address book, then LinkedIn would essentially serve your purposes, but one could argue that LinkedIn has the same problems that Facebook does.
- dandigangi 9y agoNo where! You go back to a normal life where you just live it instead of reading about other people living theirs.
- abcdefghijklm 9y agoGo outside!
- starchand 9y agoInstagram
- woweeeee 9y agoInstagram is still Facebook!
- post_break 9y agoI use email and text message to keep in touch now. Or Telegram (funny how that has double meaning).
- Treegarden 9y agoThere is nothing I hate more then writing on my phone. In general I much prefer meeting someone face to face, but at least on my pc my keyboard it is much easier and faster to write a message.
- icebraining 9y agoThere are apps that let you send SMSs from your PC. Telegram also has a desktop version.
- soziawa 9y agoMost messengers offer a desktop client.
- drukenemo 9y agoCall a good friend for a coffee face to face. I quit Facebook months ago, and guess what, no one cared. I keep contact with REAL friends far away via email or Whatsapp. For local friends I use Whatsapp and meet in person. There is no NEED for a true Facebook replacement. But to be honest, I created a new account, with a fake name and won't add anyone to it. The goal is to track some events and key communities I like to interact with. But I've added no personal data to this account and only log on to it on a less used web browser and don't use it in my mobile. I also use the following add-ons to prevent any Facebook tracking: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and uMatrix. Probably overkilling it.
- woweeeee 9y agoWhatsApp You know that's still Facebook, rrriiiight?
- iamjaredwalters 9y agoThe data may ultimately belong to Facebook but Whatsapp is not the same as Facebook.
- soziawa 9y agoBut everything is made by Facebook, the only difference is branding. It's like saying that Facebook Messenger only belongs to Facebook but isn't Facebook.
- sp332 9y agoTrue, but it does have end-to-end encryption so their ability to leak or abuse your data is a lot more limited.
- black_puppydog 9y agoI doubt they'd need the word "coffee" to infer what's happening when said message gets sent. Who sends it and to whom would be just enough thank you very much...
- theCricketer 9y agoWhile I am not a fan of Facebook myself for the all reasons recently talked about and the addicting nature of it, yes the self updating address book part is nice. Here's what I did: I got a Chrome extention[1] that unfollows all my friends. I've also unliked every Facebook Page that I used to like. This means my feed is now totally empty. When I login from anywhere there is nothing in my feed. Also I rarely ever get notifications, except when someone adds me as a friend. This way the feed is gone, there's nothing to be addicted to (feed was my main addiction), its very hard to get back because it involves re-following 100s of people which my lazy mind won't do and Facebook doesn't make any money off me (no feed, no ads). So I still get to use it as a address book.
- salmonfamine 9y agoYou cited the extension but did not link it. I'm interested in it. Could you provide the link?
- aloner 9y agohttps://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook-at-once https://www.quora.com/How-do-I-unfollow-everyone-on-Facebook... I've used the script provided by the top answer here before and it worked! No need for an extension (I don't know if it still works however).
- fencepost 9y ago> [I unfollowed all my friends] [...] I still get to use it as a address book. I'm not understanding something here. Is that an empty address book, or does FB allow you to still access the information of people you're no longer connected to? I was under the impression that the default information visible to folks not on your "Friends" list was pretty limited, which is why [Cambridge Analytica/Kogan] needed to use an app to scrape data from users' friends.
- fabianhjr 9y ago> or does FB allow you to still access the information of people you're no longer connected to Unfollowing removes someone's posts from your wall but they remain connected as friends. (You can also like a page and unfollow it)
- TeeWEE 9y agoI wanted to remove facebook, but i can't I will lose connections to friends I met outside my home country. Its kind of the internal person-service that i can't live without currently.
- icebraining 9y agoCan't you ask them for alternative contacts?
- pera 9y agoYou can always send them a message asking for their email addresses or phone numbers before deleting your account.
- Treegarden 9y agoThat's too inconvenient. The nice part about facebook is that you can forget about people, but then they post a status update that they are currently somewhere in your country and you can meet them.
- toomuchtodo 9y agoI imported all of my Facebook contacts into https://www.monicahq.com/ https://www.monicahq.com/, which delightfully enough, I found during a Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14497295
- lgregg 9y agoDid you manually import them all? What was your process?
- toomuchtodo 9y agoThe ol copy paste while binge watching a Netflix series on the couch method.
- Treegarden 9y ago
- hprotagonist 9y agoFreenode's nice!
- glitcher 9y agoFor a walk.
- shortoncash 9y agoStrava became my FB substitute, oddly enough. It's the only social network I really like and wish I could spend more time on.
- excalibur 9y agoHN of course.
- traviswingo 9y agoOutside.
- gnarcoregrizz 9y agoSlack and discord for daily talks with friends. Everyone else I email, call, or sms. I haven't had facebook for a few years and haven't had an issue with keeping in contact with anyone. I want an encrypted chat service thats convenient as slack and discord.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- earthwrldshaman 9y agooutside nigga; theres people everywhere!!
- sp332 9y agoA potentially messy way to use that zip file is to find the page with your contact info in a big HTML table. You can copy and paste that table from a web browser into a spreadsheet program, edit the data into a useful format, and then export it as CSV. The CSV file can be imported into a local or online mail app. Outlook.com used to have a feature that would import your Facebook contacts directly. I can't find that feature in the current version of the site though. Yahoo.com still does have one. So you could make an account there, import your FB contacts, then export them as a CSV file.
- thisisit 9y agoMastodon? It is decentralized. So, you can create your own instance and get everyone you know added to that instance.
- sp332 9y agoOr you could find a node that's run by someone you trust, or at least trust more than FB.
- itshertz 9y agoWell, you could try: https://kuende.com https://kuende.com - still not mature as a product, but not far from it I'm part of the team, we are running a token sale somewhere around the next couple of months (https://ico.kuende.com https://ico.kuende.com <- easier to understand the vision from here) and planning a "paradigm shift" of social media, so to speak. I guess, given the current drivers within traditional social media and all the associated bull*t, we might have a shot at fulfilling our vision.
- dna_polymerase 9y agoIt looks and feels like Instagram. Is it decentralized running on Ethereum?
- itshertz 9y agoPart of it is decentralized, the challenges module. Planning to move further on decentralizing more and more of the product (during the past 3 years we developed it in a centralized manner), but its not that practical now, given the fact that we need storage, tons of micro-transactions with 0 fees for the end user. So, yes, using Ethereum blockchain, not fully decentralzied, and we might switch to a dPOS blockchain in the near future (if EOS, SMT succeed).
- kough 9y agolol @ the ico, why would a centralized company require a blockchain?
- itshertz 9y agoIndeed, that would be hilarious. What we are working on is a semi-decentralized product, with a core part (that of challenges) being on blockchain and two tokens governing the ecosystem (details about the mechanics are in the whitepaper and on the ico site) Users can create, curate and participate in challenges. And they are incentivized to do so through gamification. For all that, they can earn tokens and keep the fun running.
- fabianhjr 9y agoScuttlebutt, a decentralized social network protocol. Currently a small niche community that is reminiscent of early internet communities. http://scuttlebutt.nz/ http://scuttlebutt.nz/ Since it is a protocol, there are several clients that behave differently and you can create your own. ( https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ )
- arichard123 9y agoSurely the power of Facebook is in how the data they have on you can be used to influence you. That is, it's about what you are fed. You just need to be a conscientious consumer.
- thrownaway954 9y agoGoogle! I joke, I joke. Just send them all an email or a last FB message with your contact information. Seriously... you are not that important for 90% of the people in your FB contacts to care about. Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. the people who you really matter to will either email or call you.
- marknadal 9y agoWhy not build it rather than "going to it"? https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8 https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi... YOU are the next Zuck.
- dberg 9y agoWhatever happened to Path ? This was supposed to be a "private" version of Facebook that you had more control over.
- fenwick67 9y agoRead the OP, people. OP clearly said "Facebook for me is mainly a self updating address book", that's what they need a replacement for.
- soziawa 9y agoI have deleted facebook years ago and didn't really need a replacement, it was just never useful to me. WhatsApp: This is tougher since everyone is expected to have an account there. I really like Threema as alternative, it has most of the features of WhatsApp (video chat is currently missing) and is self-financed, so being bought by some evil company is not a risk (unlike Signal). Instagram: That's where I don't have a real good alternative.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- JeanMarcS 9y agoAs I still want to use FB (I use it for following bands I like to know when they make new music or where they play their next show), but am concerned by all those privacy issues, I use a Firefox extension by Mozilla : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account... You can then use a container system. I've got one for all the google stuff (might be worse than FB on the privacy concern in my opinion), one for Facebook, one for some online site I don't want to cross data with anything else. That plus uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc...
- nunez 9y agoWell, if you mostly use it as an address book of sorts, you can use something like Sync.ME and pull data from LinkedIn or Twitter instead. You'll get (somewhat) updated information if you're connected with them directly and whatever public information they reveal about themselves if not (same as Facebook). It even syncs contact photos! This is what I do, except I also use Facebook as an information source, since people post their "fun" contact photos through there.
- sp332 9y agoHey this is off-topic, but since you recently dumped your FB data, could you see if this kind of thing is in there? https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138 https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138
- sir_brickalot 9y agoI can't find a call history in my data. But I never used FB for calls. I never installed the FB apps on the phone.
- bjarne92 9y agooutside
- sir_brickalot 9y agoOP here: "Call a good friend for a coffee face to face." "Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. " This kind of advice came up repeatedly but it doesn't answer the initial question at all. I'm fairly new to active HN but I followed passively and had the impression, that we are supposed to interact with reason and logic. These were emotional responses which triggers an emotional answer because it implies OP would be anti-social and the question would be unnecessary at best. I am not a FB addict. I don't use the apps I hardly use the timeline, I scroll around when I'm really really bored (and that didn't help, ever), but my hoarder soul feels relieved to know that my past encounters with people from all over the world are listed somewhere and even when phone numbers changed due to country hopping or emails changed due to finishing university I'm still able to say hello when I feel like it or need a place to crash. Maybe this context helps to stop the lecturing bullshit.