6 ms·

I just wanted to say that I walked away from Facebook about a year and a half ago now. I didn’t delete it, I just logged out and uninstalled the mobile app. It’

I just wanted to say that I walked away from Facebook about a year and a half ago now. I didn’t delete it, I just logged out and uninstalled the mobile app. It’s all been totally fine. The most social social media I use now is reddit, where I’m more just talking to people. I don’t post status updates anywhere, and often amazing things happen to me that I never tell anyone about. I eat great meals and don’t share. I became vegetarian and am going vegan and almost all of the people I would have told before have no idea, but it doesn’t matter at all. I’m just living my life, and when cool things happen I share them with the people I’m around. With the continued leaks and breaches on Facebook, I’d like to do what the author does here. I do want to download the information, but then I’d like to delete my account. I still wish there was some kind of social media platform like Facebook from 2008, but it’s not that big of a deal. I’m glad I don’t get stressed by some app on my phone all the time. People who want to talk to me email or text now. I think social media could work. But until then, consider letting go of the existing platforms are stressing you out. We do just fine without sharing our day with the internet, as long as we have good people in our lives.

gaius 8y ago
I wrote up my own quitting FB approach here https://gaius.tech/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-books/ https://gaius.tech/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-b... I still use Insta and WhatsApp tho’ so I am not entirely free but FB is the biggest time sink for sure.
- ronaldl93 8y ago
  Likewise. I'm still on Instagram and Whatsapp... But in terms of controlling the content you see, Instagram and Whatsapp are a lot more manageable compared to Facebook - especially considering the state my FB was in. I'm trying to win my friends over to use Telegram instead. It's miles ahead of Whatsapp in my opinion.
  - telesilla 8y ago
    What is the long-term expectation of Telegram, once the current funding promise runs out?
    - jamesholden 8y ago
      https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network Probably this. It makes sense considering all the other stuff they have done.
- welly 8y ago
  Please don't take this the wrong way but writing a blog explaining to people how to quit Facebook is surely much like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs? Surely it is nothing more than "Delete facebook account"? That's what I did two years ago. No fanfare, just "Delete facebook account". A number of friends have since asked "Have you quit facebook?" "Yes" but that's been about the only repercussion.
telesilla 8y ago
>when cool things happen I share them with the people I’m around I really expect the next generation (I guess, kids born in the last 8 years) to launch a major backlash against over-sharing and pretty go back to the roots of relationships: exactly how you said it.
- bogomipz 8y ago
  That that would also be a generation who had their baby and childhood pictures unwittingly shared and now owned by social media companies. This is something I find really strange and unsettling.
  - TuringTest 8y ago
    I don't know why you've been downvoted, when you make a good point. I do think that for young people, "the people who is around" will not be necessarily people near in the physical world. Teenagers mainly communicate through chat groups, and work trends don't seem to go towards encouraging more physical presence. Thus a reaction against current social networks would take the form of using more private, ephemeral channels (think Snapchat), and reduced, more controlled usage of public-facing ones (Tweeter, Facebook, Instagram).
  - TaupeRanger 8y ago
    Yes it's so unsettling that their parents privately shared photos and videos of then with family members and friends. They will be horrified of this, I'm sure.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      I've seen how some of my family members share photos of their kids and grandkids. It ain't private - most of them are set to "Public", and are going to stay that way. Even if it's just shared with "Friends", most people will Facebook-friend a much wider range of people than who they would consider friends in real life. It's not just the close friends and family members who, a couple decades back, might have got a chance to thumb through the family photo album. It's also often your co-workers, friends-of-friends, and that person you got drunk with in a hotel bar 6 years ago and sporadically chatted up on Facebook Messenger for a few months after that. Even if nothing practical comes of it, I wouldn't at all blame kids who grew up in the Facebook era for being pissed about it. The harm isn't in what people who are seeing it are doing, the harm is the over-sharing itself.
davchana 8y ago
I too, about 1.5 years agi, realised that facebook & orkut is consuming too much time of mine, kind of addictive. I coldly uninstalled app, logged out everywhere. Felt so free. Then found reddit & hackernews, & now again whenever I feel i am spending too much time, I just delete the shortcuts of these from my most-recent-tabs.
- jameskegel 8y ago
  This is the first time I’ve ever heard someone say Orkut was a time monopolizer. Can you share a bit about your background and use for this network?
  - iKevinShah 8y ago
    Oh boy, not OP, but Orkut was the thing in my network those days (I was in high school), a majority of part was in "communities" which were sort of like subreddits and the ability to read your friends' scraps (essentially messages) was dope (and time consuming)
  - 394549 8y ago
    Wasn't Orkut massively popular in India and Brazil?
  - giobox 8y ago
    Outside of the US a number of social networks that aren’t Facebook found huge success in some countries at one time or another, especially in the mid to late 2000s before Facebook fully established its dominance, it’s not all that surprising. It’s still the case in a handful of markets (China etc).
  - davchana 8y ago
    Orkut was a massive hit in my college from about 2002 (? I think), till facebook arrived in 2008. Everything was in communities, similar to facebook groups, & personal profile pages were great too. You could even see who visited your profile page, so people used to control themselves from visiting their crush's profile too often. Obviously no smartphones then, so most of the time it was on computers only. Communities were for favorite quotes, singers, feelings, persons, subjects etc.
CPLX 8y ago
Interesting. I've experimented with deleting or going cold turkey from various social platforms over the past year or so to see how it affected my life. After a fair bit of experimentation it seems that deleting Twitter, and blocking Reddit, have been the two things that have most improved my mental state. Just a guess but I feel like the combination of endlessness (you can literally just scroll/browse forever) and that sort of trademark internet sarcasm, cliche, meme, pithy style of communication, just left me in a perpetually bad mood.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  > that sort of trademark internet sarcasm, cliche, meme, pithy style of communication, just left me in a perpetually bad mood. Interesting observation. I hadn't really thought of it before, but, now that you mention it, I do feel like Twitter is somewhat set up to be a game of seeing who can be the most misanthropic. Sardonic and sarcastic humor are the kinds that are best suited to such a short form. I suppose it's theoretically only a performance people are doing for fun. But, if you're doing it all the time. . . well, practice makes perfect.
- jvagner 8y ago
  i generally don't have social on my iPhone, but i left it on my iPad. even that distance has been helpful.. i can move around in the world with a phone in my pocket without being triggered/tempted all the time. then when i'm home and feel like being social-media-ish, i do. but the ipad is big enough that it's a more deliberate action to grab it and open the social apps. and since i'm not feeding social from my iPhone -- my engagement potential is quite a bit lower. i'm less invested in it, so i can open, scan and close in ways that were less likely just a while ago. to the point of younger generations not wanting it: my 14 year old son refuses a phone, and has declared he'll never have a social media account. not sure if that's likely to last forever, but whatever social is these days .. he's highly averse.
394549 8y ago
> I just wanted to say that I walked away from Facebook about a year and a half ago now. I didn’t delete it, I just logged out and uninstalled the mobile app. It’s all been totally fine. If you do this, change your profile pic/cover photo to a text-image saying something like "No longer using Facebook" in letters big enough to be read in the thumbnail views. It'll help build social momentum around disconnecting from Facebook, and it will let your Facebook connections know it's not a good medium to communicate with you.
Fnoord 8y ago
If you're new to vegetarianism and veganism I can recommend the Facebook group "Friendly and pragmatic vegans and vegetarians" which is a group where you can find support without the judgemental and elitist attitudes being tolerated. I'm not aware of any such group outside of Facebook.
- TaylorAlexander 8y ago
  Hah. Odd comment since I specifically explained how I don’t use Facebook, but thanks for the recommendation! I’ve found reddit’s /r/vegan to be good. They have a regular discussion post and I’ve had some nice conversations there.
khaledh 8y ago
I did exactly the same about a year and a half ago, except I deactivated my account (kind of a step between just logging off and completely deleting it), and I still feel the positive impact of that decision on my life until today. I encourage more people to do the same.

gaius 8y ago

I wrote up my own quitting FB approach here https://gaius.tech/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-books/ https://gaius.tech/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-b... I still use Insta and WhatsApp tho’ so I am not entirely free but FB is the biggest time sink for sure.

ronaldl93 8y ago
Likewise. I'm still on Instagram and Whatsapp... But in terms of controlling the content you see, Instagram and Whatsapp are a lot more manageable compared to Facebook - especially considering the state my FB was in. I'm trying to win my friends over to use Telegram instead. It's miles ahead of Whatsapp in my opinion.
- telesilla 8y ago
  What is the long-term expectation of Telegram, once the current funding promise runs out?
  - jamesholden 8y ago
    https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/08/telegram-open-network Probably this. It makes sense considering all the other stuff they have done.
welly 8y ago
Please don't take this the wrong way but writing a blog explaining to people how to quit Facebook is surely much like teaching your grandmother to suck eggs? Surely it is nothing more than "Delete facebook account"? That's what I did two years ago. No fanfare, just "Delete facebook account". A number of friends have since asked "Have you quit facebook?" "Yes" but that's been about the only repercussion.

telesilla 8y ago

>when cool things happen I share them with the people I’m around I really expect the next generation (I guess, kids born in the last 8 years) to launch a major backlash against over-sharing and pretty go back to the roots of relationships: exactly how you said it.

bogomipz 8y ago
That that would also be a generation who had their baby and childhood pictures unwittingly shared and now owned by social media companies. This is something I find really strange and unsettling.
- TuringTest 8y ago
  I don't know why you've been downvoted, when you make a good point. I do think that for young people, "the people who is around" will not be necessarily people near in the physical world. Teenagers mainly communicate through chat groups, and work trends don't seem to go towards encouraging more physical presence. Thus a reaction against current social networks would take the form of using more private, ephemeral channels (think Snapchat), and reduced, more controlled usage of public-facing ones (Tweeter, Facebook, Instagram).
- TaupeRanger 8y ago
  Yes it's so unsettling that their parents privately shared photos and videos of then with family members and friends. They will be horrified of this, I'm sure.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    I've seen how some of my family members share photos of their kids and grandkids. It ain't private - most of them are set to "Public", and are going to stay that way. Even if it's just shared with "Friends", most people will Facebook-friend a much wider range of people than who they would consider friends in real life. It's not just the close friends and family members who, a couple decades back, might have got a chance to thumb through the family photo album. It's also often your co-workers, friends-of-friends, and that person you got drunk with in a hotel bar 6 years ago and sporadically chatted up on Facebook Messenger for a few months after that. Even if nothing practical comes of it, I wouldn't at all blame kids who grew up in the Facebook era for being pissed about it. The harm isn't in what people who are seeing it are doing, the harm is the over-sharing itself.

davchana 8y ago

I too, about 1.5 years agi, realised that facebook & orkut is consuming too much time of mine, kind of addictive. I coldly uninstalled app, logged out everywhere. Felt so free. Then found reddit & hackernews, & now again whenever I feel i am spending too much time, I just delete the shortcuts of these from my most-recent-tabs.

jameskegel 8y ago
This is the first time I’ve ever heard someone say Orkut was a time monopolizer. Can you share a bit about your background and use for this network?
- iKevinShah 8y ago
  Oh boy, not OP, but Orkut was the thing in my network those days (I was in high school), a majority of part was in "communities" which were sort of like subreddits and the ability to read your friends' scraps (essentially messages) was dope (and time consuming)
- 394549 8y ago
  Wasn't Orkut massively popular in India and Brazil?
- giobox 8y ago
  Outside of the US a number of social networks that aren’t Facebook found huge success in some countries at one time or another, especially in the mid to late 2000s before Facebook fully established its dominance, it’s not all that surprising. It’s still the case in a handful of markets (China etc).
- davchana 8y ago
  Orkut was a massive hit in my college from about 2002 (? I think), till facebook arrived in 2008. Everything was in communities, similar to facebook groups, & personal profile pages were great too. You could even see who visited your profile page, so people used to control themselves from visiting their crush's profile too often. Obviously no smartphones then, so most of the time it was on computers only. Communities were for favorite quotes, singers, feelings, persons, subjects etc.

CPLX 8y ago

Interesting. I've experimented with deleting or going cold turkey from various social platforms over the past year or so to see how it affected my life. After a fair bit of experimentation it seems that deleting Twitter, and blocking Reddit, have been the two things that have most improved my mental state. Just a guess but I feel like the combination of endlessness (you can literally just scroll/browse forever) and that sort of trademark internet sarcasm, cliche, meme, pithy style of communication, just left me in a perpetually bad mood.

bunderbunder 8y ago
> that sort of trademark internet sarcasm, cliche, meme, pithy style of communication, just left me in a perpetually bad mood. Interesting observation. I hadn't really thought of it before, but, now that you mention it, I do feel like Twitter is somewhat set up to be a game of seeing who can be the most misanthropic. Sardonic and sarcastic humor are the kinds that are best suited to such a short form. I suppose it's theoretically only a performance people are doing for fun. But, if you're doing it all the time. . . well, practice makes perfect.
jvagner 8y ago
i generally don't have social on my iPhone, but i left it on my iPad. even that distance has been helpful.. i can move around in the world with a phone in my pocket without being triggered/tempted all the time. then when i'm home and feel like being social-media-ish, i do. but the ipad is big enough that it's a more deliberate action to grab it and open the social apps. and since i'm not feeding social from my iPhone -- my engagement potential is quite a bit lower. i'm less invested in it, so i can open, scan and close in ways that were less likely just a while ago. to the point of younger generations not wanting it: my 14 year old son refuses a phone, and has declared he'll never have a social media account. not sure if that's likely to last forever, but whatever social is these days .. he's highly averse.

394549 8y ago

> I just wanted to say that I walked away from Facebook about a year and a half ago now. I didn’t delete it, I just logged out and uninstalled the mobile app. It’s all been totally fine. If you do this, change your profile pic/cover photo to a text-image saying something like "No longer using Facebook" in letters big enough to be read in the thumbnail views. It'll help build social momentum around disconnecting from Facebook, and it will let your Facebook connections know it's not a good medium to communicate with you.

Fnoord 8y ago

If you're new to vegetarianism and veganism I can recommend the Facebook group "Friendly and pragmatic vegans and vegetarians" which is a group where you can find support without the judgemental and elitist attitudes being tolerated. I'm not aware of any such group outside of Facebook.

TaylorAlexander 8y ago
Hah. Odd comment since I specifically explained how I don’t use Facebook, but thanks for the recommendation! I’ve found reddit’s /r/vegan to be good. They have a regular discussion post and I’ve had some nice conversations there.

khaledh 8y ago

I did exactly the same about a year and a half ago, except I deactivated my account (kind of a step between just logging off and completely deleting it), and I still feel the positive impact of that decision on my life until today. I encourage more people to do the same.