9 ms·

The ideal solution here is to stop using Facebook.

ColinWright 4y ago
Regrettably, I have family members with whom I really must stay in touch, but who think that FB is the internet. No matter what I've said, what I've shown them, and what I've encouraged them to do, there is nothing to replace it. They can post photos, statuses, chat with friends, reply to other friends' posts ... what can replace FB for them? Nothing. So I'm forced to stay on FB. Vile platform, no alternative.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Yeah, that's fair. There's a cost. I've deleted it a couple years ago. I miss out on some stuff for sure. I have an iMessage group chat with my family as a replacement, but of course not the extended family and certainly not the more distant friends.
- FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
  What about SMS and phone calls? It's like saying I need alcohol to stay in touch with my alcoholic friend. No you don't.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
- robolange 4y ago
  - LightG 4y ago
  - Macha 4y ago
    Is the inverse not true? If you interpret your family member's refusal to migrate from Messenger to Signal as them not caring about you, what does that say of your refusal to use Messenger for them?
    - sieabahlpark 4y ago
    - endorphine 4y ago
      It really isn't. The reason I don't want to use Facebook is it's against my principles and ethos. What's my family's reason for not wanting to use Signal? (I'm not the parent poster.)
      - robolange 4y ago
        Exactly. At some point I've had a conversation with most of the people who have filtered out of my life over this. I explained the reasons why I feel that Mark Zuckerberg is a sociopathic scumbag and his company is a cancer upon humanity, with the consequence that I won't knowingly use any product made by any company he owns or controls. For those who've filtered out of my life, their response was mostly along the lines of, "You said words, but I wasn't paying attention. I think Facebook is fun." For most of the non-techie people in my life, I just communicate via common open protocols like SMS and email, things everyone can use easily. I do encourage people to try Matrix or Signal, but I certainly don't require those to communicate with me.
        ColinWright 4y ago
        > ... SMS and email, things everyone can use easily. I beg to differ. I have direct personal experience of a number of people who find FB far, far easier to use than SMS or email. These are close family members in their 90s who don't know how to use email[0], and struggle to use SMSs because of sight problems and physical problems such as arthritis. I pleased for you that you've been able to avoid people who use FB. I wish you'd grant me the courtesy of accepting that other people have a different experience from yours. I agree with you entirely that MZ is a sociopathic scumbag, but I am unwilling to lose contact with close family members, even though they literally use no communications method other than FB. [0] Despite using FB they don't use email, because FB was set up for them by others, and they don't even know how to send or receive emails.
  - avgcorrection 4y ago
    I don’t think OP is interested in naturally and painlessly filtering out his family.
  - just_for_you 4y ago
    Can't echo this enough. I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO, and my experience each and every time was a soulless one like yours. It was just a non-stop stream of people and their friends reposting shallow things they found on the Internet, inspirational quotes, and political garbage. And if people did comment, they were just brief quips - probably just enough effort to try to manipulate others to like+comment back on their own content. Email and phone's all I need. If people can't put in the effort to remember or catch up with me, even if it's just every few months, then they're not my friend.
    - ratww 4y ago
      > I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO Just out of curiosity, as long as you don't mind: what was the reason (or which feature, actually) they asked you to use Facebook in those cases? I haven't needed it in 5 or 6 years and nobody I know really uses it (or nobody admits), but that might be due to my location (Germany), so I'm a bit curious what's it still good for!
      - just_for_you 4y ago
        The first time I used it, it was family members wanting to connect with me, and the old "everyone uses it!" argument (the same one applied to MySpace back in the day). So I made an account, commented on stuff, posted pics of my cat, but ended up deleting my account after a few months because nobody was really "connecting" with each other, plus I found friends-of-friends' posts boring. Second time was from some new friends I had made, who argued that exchanging phone numbers and emails were old-fashioned and awkward when meeting new people, and that it was essential to have Facebook since it's easier to just say "you can just look for me on Facebook; you'll know it's me since I have XYZ in my profile pic". I saw some validity to the argument, since recently I had met and got along with a couple cute girls on a train ride, but regretted not exchanging contact details with the two of them because asking for numbers/emails felt like a slight overreach. Though if I had a FB account at the time, I thought it'd have made sense if I could've just been able to casually say something like "look up John Smith on FB if you wanna hang out sometime. See ya!". Third time was my then-SO. She posted on Facebook a LOT, and had many hundreds of followers. She begged me to make an account for months, so I could bask in all the content she posted. Anyway, your experience with people not using Facebook sounds on-par. Facebook is increasingly considered a "boomer" technology, especially by the younger generations. Many younger folk these days tend to keep in touch via small Discord groups, or whatever dopamine-drip privacy-nightmare app of the week is.
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    Absolutely. If your relationships is dependent on a single medium of communication, and you cannot migrate it to another one, that's a weak relationship or it's only local to the medium (some people are Twitter friends, and that's fine).
    - ColinWright 4y ago
      See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
      - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
        I've seen that comment too. It's unclear to me why you can't just have 1:1 relationships with these relatives by calling them on the phone or visiting in person regularly. You seem locked into the concept of only being able to interact with them using this specific group chat type format.
        kareemsabri 4y ago
        I think for him Facebook is a necessary evil to keep in touch with some elderly family members who are stuck on it. So that's fine. It doesn't really undermine the point that for most people the ideal solution is to not use Facebook.
        ColinWright 4y ago
        Calling them on the phone doesn't let them share their photos with me. I can't see the new plant in their retirement village, or see the painting they just did, or check out how they've personalised their room. Visiting in person would require a 70 to 80 hour round trip. And once in the same country, getting to see all of them is also a further multi-day journey. I've worked on this, I've thought about it, I've considered all the alternatives I can find, and I've come to the conclusion that the only effective way to stay in touch with my relatives is to use FB. Really, I've thought about it. A lot. Really. I have. You've read my comments, and if I haven't explained well enough for you to understand now then I guess I'm just not able to make myself understood, so I'll give up.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    I'm going to be blunt, and I'm neither going to apologise for it, nor ask your forgiveness or understanding. Do you really think I haven't considered all these points? Do you really think I haven't considered alternatives? I have, and I have, and my conclusion is that I (a) want to stay in touch with these people, and (b) have no effective alternative. These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else. Despite many attempts they are unwilling or unable to use email as effectively as they use FB, and proliferating platforms would do them no favours at all. You, and several others in this discussion, are using what you believe to be ironclad reasoning to replace any sense of understanding, sympathy, or empathy.
    - jancsika 4y ago
      > These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else. Just to be clear-- they send and receive rich content over the FB app (taking and forwarding pictures and/or video, etc.), but they don't know how to send/receive that content through text messages? Not trying to be unsympathetic-- it's just that every non-technical user of a smartphone I've ever seen degrades to text messages.
      - ColinWright 4y ago
        Using FB to post photos is really, really easy. Sending photos via SMS costs money under the plans they use. And you're asking people in their 90s to become familiar with more than one interface when they struggle to understand that "internet" is not "the web", and "the web" is not "Facebook", and worse, they think FB is everything. And for them, it is. It's the only interface they use.
    - libraryatnight 4y ago
      It's not a lack of empathy or understanding it's that those of us who faced the dilemma you seem stuck on found the people who care and we care about still found ways to communicate after we left Facebook. Calls and texts are sufficient. I'm sorry you feel that trapped though. Something seems off in your replies. And ultimately nobody here has said anything that you have to listen to but you seem pretty defensive.
  - awillen 4y ago
    This is a pretty bananas take that conflates people caring with their technology-related behavior. Most people don't have problems with Facebook. It's useful for them, and they don't consider the bigger picture because they're not in tech and they have more important things taking up their attention. Now you swoop in and say "Facebook is evil, and if you don't get off of it, I'll cut you out of my life!" In that scenario, you're the one who doesn't care about the relationship, not them - you're the one that won't get off your high horse. You could make a minimalistic FB profile that has no information and use it to exchange messages and reply to event invitations. But instead you demand that they change their behaviors in order to support your moral imperative. That's your prerogative, but it is ridiculous to think your relationship is pretend as a result. Also, to be clear, you're the only one here talking about a relationship that consists of a few likes on Facebook. Everyone else is talking about a broader set of interactions, like using Messenger to chat and sharing photos with each other.
    - SoftTalker 4y ago
      You don't have to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the evil of Facebook. Just say "sorry, I'm not on Facebook."
      - charcircuit 4y ago
        Signing up for a facebook account takes less than a minute to do. Not having an account is a tiny hurdle to get over.
        SoftTalker 4y ago
        Yeah but then they are asking you to do something, rather than you asking them.
    - robolange 4y ago
      > Now you swoop in and say "Facebook is evil, and if you don't get off of it, I'll cut you out of my life!" I said no such thing, and I'd thank you not to put words in my mouth. As I explained in a different subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131334
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  I traveled all around the world before Facebook was a thing, and it never prevented me from keeping in touch with the people that mattered. What you realy mean is that you value more the convenience it offers that the price to pay for using it.
  - PretzelPirate 4y ago
    > What you realy mean is that you value more the convenience it offers that the price to pay for using it. People should be more charitable. They said that they must stay in touch with these people and that these people can’t seem to use other things. Often times you have to stay in contact with family members because they aren’t able to properly care for themselves. Those same people may not have the ability to easily change how they interact with the digital world due to mental health issues and you have no choice but to meet them where they are.
    - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
      Again, this is implying that the cost of another solution to all those problems is very high, and facebook is a very cheap, convenient solution. So privacy is not important enough to justify those costs.
    - kareemsabri 4y ago
      I think this is largely a straw man, or taking an extreme case as representative. I have friends that are not on Facebook. It requires more effort to stay in touch with them (for example, calling them on the phone) but it's doable. I don't see how a thing that was invented 10 years ago is now the sole method of communication with loved ones. That said, I agree it's not without cost to delete Facebook.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    So did I. But things have changed, and some of those people with whom I remained in contact now use FB to the near exclusion of everything else. These people are family in their 90s, for whom well-meaning children and grand-children have set up on FB. They don't use email, they can't write letters because of arthritis (and time delays ... international post can be very slow), and effectively the only async comms they use at all is FB. I'd ask that you not try to tell me what I really mean.
- root_axis 4y ago
  Photos and statuses are nice, but not essential. Though conversely, I'd say that getting tracked online isn't really a big deal either.
- jancsika 4y ago
  Your last two sentences don't pass the smell test. There's even graceful degradation in your set of solutions: 1. You drop FB. Now you just look on your spouse's Facebook when necessary, and your family learns to tell your spouse to show you stuff on FB. Annoying? Yes. Unworkable? No. 2. Your entire immediate family drops Facebook. At least one (if not all of you) can still communicate with the rest over text. And the rest of your family knows how to send a photo over text on an Iphone. Annoying to extended fam? Maybe. Unworkable? Definitely not. (In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it cuts out extended family spam and makes those moments of connection more meaningful.) 3. You attempt a quixotic adventure to switching your entire extended family over to some half-baked decentralized alternative to Facebook that will be usable in forever minus a day. Impossible? Yes. So choose #1 or #2 above.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    I have 10 to 15 family members in their 80s and 90s who use FB. A group has been set up for them, and they post photos and comments, and they chat with each other using Messenger. These are people who don't know of and honestly don't care about the difference between the internet and the web, and to them, "The Internet" simply is Facebook. Using the tech is already hard for them. Some are partially sighted, some have mobility issues, some have arthritis, all can easily use FB to stay in touch. And they don't use anything else. It's just not an option to try to get them to change, it really isn't. Please, please do me the courtesy of accepting that I've done the analysis. Many times. It's simply not a reasonable objective. And no, I won't squat on someone else's FB account so I can stay in touch.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- ratww 4y ago
  My family replaced FB with WhatsApp. So have most of my friends (although with friends it's mostly Signal). Sure, it's a completely different kind of platform, but it serves well. People post their travel pictures there, people ask random stuff and the group can discuss, we can have private discussions by clicking one name. Sure, it's still Meta, and there's still a lot of bullshit groups, but at least I don't have to be exposed by it, nor do baby/kid pictures are exposed to the world, nor do I give money to Meta. Of course, maybe by "Facebook" you mean "Messenger", which is more popular than it should in the US. Replacing FB with WhatsApp or Signal is possible because my family and friends are around Latin America, Europe and Asia, where nobody uses Messenger anyways.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- bastardoperator 4y ago
  So they don't understand email, phones or text messaging where people have been doing what they're doing now for years? I have some family that are like your, I shutdown my Facebook profile, and now I just call them on the phone now and we actually communicate more frequently and have better conversations.
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    See my other replies: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131013 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
- deleted 4y ago
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- jamiek88 4y ago
  It’s whatsapp for me. Can’t get away from it. I tried for 3 years. I ended up basically unintentionally ostracized by family and friends. It’s a chore for people to forward to my preferred communication method and easy to occasionally forget. Which snowballs into only hearing about events afterwards. Eventually you basically become a weirdo with no mates. I’m not prepared to make that sacrifice any more. I honestly gave it my best shot and still don’t use FB and Insta but have to use WhatsApp.
- deleted 4y ago
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- djmips 4y ago
  Perhaps the best strategy is to use Facebook but never click on links. At least that solves the particular tracking that this post is about.
endorphine 4y ago
I've just deleted my Messenger account. Won't lie, that felt good. Good thing my friends/family from there are on the other two alternatives I use.
krupan 4y ago
And like all ideals, that's easier said than done
- deleted 4y ago
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- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Yeah most things involve tradeoffs.
Barrin92 4y ago
privileged solution. In many countries Facebook is the de facto communication infrastructure. They own four of the five largest communication platforms in the world. The ideal solution is to hit them with the hammer until morale improves. Regulators need to wake up and just start fining them absurd amounts of money and keep it vague until Facebook et al. are scared enough to comply and then some.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Facebook is facebook.com, that's what the article is about. I don't know what other communication platforms aside from WhatsApp you're referring to, but they aren't relevant to the discussion. If you think it's necessary to caveat that if you rely on facebook.com as your "communication infrastructure" (not that many countries would fit that bill) then you shouldn't delete it, I'm happy to do so.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    messenger, whatsapp and instagram. And of course they're relevant because if Facebook employs these tactics on one site there's no reason to believe they won't do equivalent things anywhere else. They own the largest competitors to their own products, obviously that's relevant because it shows how strong their grip is and that there's no genuine alternatives. "delete it" isn't a solution at all. You may as well say "turn the electricity off". People deserve privacy when services are provided to them by private companies, that's not a bonus, it ought to be a fundamental right. It's not the job of individuals to take on trillion dollar multinationals.
    - kareemsabri 4y ago
      Delete it is absolutely a solution. You may not like it, but it's a solution. For some reason people here seem to think I'm precluding regulatory action against Facebook. I'm not. I just also think it's better not to use it.
FabHK 4y ago
Just like the ideal solution for climate change is to stop eating meat, stop flying, stop driving, stop heating, stop air conditioning, and, for good measure, stop using computers. Heaven forbid that we seek a political/regulatory solution.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Seek whatever you like. I don't think those are comparable examples.
anigbrowl 4y ago
That's like saying 'stop being poor.' I'm not personally invested in FB, but people with large extended families, businesses, political campaigns etc. don't have the option of just ignoring it. Every HN thread about social media has one sub-thread like this, and it never produces anything of value because the premise is trite.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  It's not like saying that at all. God I wonder what people with large extended families did before Facebook was invented! Surely they were all isolated and out of touch, how sad. This comment was not directed at people running Facebook business accounts or political campaigns. The reason this thread produces nothing of value is because of pedantic comments such as yours bringing up irrelevant edge cases.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Yes, it's exactly like saying that. Your sarcasm is misplaced; once people adapt to a benefit, many understandably don't wish to forgo it, and leveraging such network effects is the core business model of social media. As for who the comment was directed at, it was so broad as to be inclusive of all users, because it didn't qualify its suggestion at all; that's why it's trite. You're just making a 'not true Scotsmen' argument.
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  - mjreacher 4y ago
    Large extended families used the best option they had before Facebook. Now they have Facebook, they use Facebook, because it's the best, most useful option for the vast majority of them. This thread is full of people saying that if people aren't willing to switch to other platforms for you then you should cut them out of your life. This might be fine for some acquaintances or even friends, but no normal person is going to cut their close family out of their life because they didn't switch to Signal. Nor does this even begin to take into account people who live in countries where Facebook or WhatsApp are the internet to the average person. Making an individualistic moral stand is nice and all, but to the majority it isn't a realistic solution, Facebook is too in-baked to society and how it functions. Thus the solution needs to be regulatory/political.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Regrettably, I have family members with whom I really must stay in touch, but who think that FB is the internet. No matter what I've said, what I've shown them, and what I've encouraged them to do, there is nothing to replace it. They can post photos, statuses, chat with friends, reply to other friends' posts ... what can replace FB for them? Nothing. So I'm forced to stay on FB. Vile platform, no alternative.

kareemsabri 4y ago
Yeah, that's fair. There's a cost. I've deleted it a couple years ago. I miss out on some stuff for sure. I have an iMessage group chat with my family as a replacement, but of course not the extended family and certainly not the more distant friends.
FrenchDevRemote 4y ago
What about SMS and phone calls? It's like saying I need alcohol to stay in touch with my alcoholic friend. No you don't.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  See my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
robolange 4y ago
- LightG 4y ago
- Macha 4y ago
  Is the inverse not true? If you interpret your family member's refusal to migrate from Messenger to Signal as them not caring about you, what does that say of your refusal to use Messenger for them?
  - sieabahlpark 4y ago
  - endorphine 4y ago
    It really isn't. The reason I don't want to use Facebook is it's against my principles and ethos. What's my family's reason for not wanting to use Signal? (I'm not the parent poster.)
    - robolange 4y ago
      Exactly. At some point I've had a conversation with most of the people who have filtered out of my life over this. I explained the reasons why I feel that Mark Zuckerberg is a sociopathic scumbag and his company is a cancer upon humanity, with the consequence that I won't knowingly use any product made by any company he owns or controls. For those who've filtered out of my life, their response was mostly along the lines of, "You said words, but I wasn't paying attention. I think Facebook is fun." For most of the non-techie people in my life, I just communicate via common open protocols like SMS and email, things everyone can use easily. I do encourage people to try Matrix or Signal, but I certainly don't require those to communicate with me.
      - ColinWright 4y ago
        > ... SMS and email, things everyone can use easily. I beg to differ. I have direct personal experience of a number of people who find FB far, far easier to use than SMS or email. These are close family members in their 90s who don't know how to use email[0], and struggle to use SMSs because of sight problems and physical problems such as arthritis. I pleased for you that you've been able to avoid people who use FB. I wish you'd grant me the courtesy of accepting that other people have a different experience from yours. I agree with you entirely that MZ is a sociopathic scumbag, but I am unwilling to lose contact with close family members, even though they literally use no communications method other than FB. [0] Despite using FB they don't use email, because FB was set up for them by others, and they don't even know how to send or receive emails.
- avgcorrection 4y ago
  I don’t think OP is interested in naturally and painlessly filtering out his family.
- just_for_you 4y ago
  Can't echo this enough. I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO, and my experience each and every time was a soulless one like yours. It was just a non-stop stream of people and their friends reposting shallow things they found on the Internet, inspirational quotes, and political garbage. And if people did comment, they were just brief quips - probably just enough effort to try to manipulate others to like+comment back on their own content. Email and phone's all I need. If people can't put in the effort to remember or catch up with me, even if it's just every few months, then they're not my friend.
  - ratww 4y ago
    > I've been railroaded into using Facebook 2 or 3 times by friends, family and even my SO Just out of curiosity, as long as you don't mind: what was the reason (or which feature, actually) they asked you to use Facebook in those cases? I haven't needed it in 5 or 6 years and nobody I know really uses it (or nobody admits), but that might be due to my location (Germany), so I'm a bit curious what's it still good for!
    - just_for_you 4y ago
      The first time I used it, it was family members wanting to connect with me, and the old "everyone uses it!" argument (the same one applied to MySpace back in the day). So I made an account, commented on stuff, posted pics of my cat, but ended up deleting my account after a few months because nobody was really "connecting" with each other, plus I found friends-of-friends' posts boring. Second time was from some new friends I had made, who argued that exchanging phone numbers and emails were old-fashioned and awkward when meeting new people, and that it was essential to have Facebook since it's easier to just say "you can just look for me on Facebook; you'll know it's me since I have XYZ in my profile pic". I saw some validity to the argument, since recently I had met and got along with a couple cute girls on a train ride, but regretted not exchanging contact details with the two of them because asking for numbers/emails felt like a slight overreach. Though if I had a FB account at the time, I thought it'd have made sense if I could've just been able to casually say something like "look up John Smith on FB if you wanna hang out sometime. See ya!". Third time was my then-SO. She posted on Facebook a LOT, and had many hundreds of followers. She begged me to make an account for months, so I could bask in all the content she posted. Anyway, your experience with people not using Facebook sounds on-par. Facebook is increasingly considered a "boomer" technology, especially by the younger generations. Many younger folk these days tend to keep in touch via small Discord groups, or whatever dopamine-drip privacy-nightmare app of the week is.
- kareemsabri 4y ago
  Absolutely. If your relationships is dependent on a single medium of communication, and you cannot migrate it to another one, that's a weak relationship or it's only local to the medium (some people are Twitter friends, and that's fine).
  - ColinWright 4y ago
    See my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
    - doktorhladnjak 4y ago
      I've seen that comment too. It's unclear to me why you can't just have 1:1 relationships with these relatives by calling them on the phone or visiting in person regularly. You seem locked into the concept of only being able to interact with them using this specific group chat type format.
      - kareemsabri 4y ago
        I think for him Facebook is a necessary evil to keep in touch with some elderly family members who are stuck on it. So that's fine. It doesn't really undermine the point that for most people the ideal solution is to not use Facebook.
      - ColinWright 4y ago
        Calling them on the phone doesn't let them share their photos with me. I can't see the new plant in their retirement village, or see the painting they just did, or check out how they've personalised their room. Visiting in person would require a 70 to 80 hour round trip. And once in the same country, getting to see all of them is also a further multi-day journey. I've worked on this, I've thought about it, I've considered all the alternatives I can find, and I've come to the conclusion that the only effective way to stay in touch with my relatives is to use FB. Really, I've thought about it. A lot. Really. I have. You've read my comments, and if I haven't explained well enough for you to understand now then I guess I'm just not able to make myself understood, so I'll give up.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  I'm going to be blunt, and I'm neither going to apologise for it, nor ask your forgiveness or understanding. Do you really think I haven't considered all these points? Do you really think I haven't considered alternatives? I have, and I have, and my conclusion is that I (a) want to stay in touch with these people, and (b) have no effective alternative. These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else. Despite many attempts they are unwilling or unable to use email as effectively as they use FB, and proliferating platforms would do them no favours at all. You, and several others in this discussion, are using what you believe to be ironclad reasoning to replace any sense of understanding, sympathy, or empathy.
  - jancsika 4y ago
    > These are people I care about, who care about me, and who are, today, using FB almost to the exclusion of anything else because they find it convenient and have given up nearly everything else. Just to be clear-- they send and receive rich content over the FB app (taking and forwarding pictures and/or video, etc.), but they don't know how to send/receive that content through text messages? Not trying to be unsympathetic-- it's just that every non-technical user of a smartphone I've ever seen degrades to text messages.
    - ColinWright 4y ago
      Using FB to post photos is really, really easy. Sending photos via SMS costs money under the plans they use. And you're asking people in their 90s to become familiar with more than one interface when they struggle to understand that "internet" is not "the web", and "the web" is not "Facebook", and worse, they think FB is everything. And for them, it is. It's the only interface they use.
  - libraryatnight 4y ago
    It's not a lack of empathy or understanding it's that those of us who faced the dilemma you seem stuck on found the people who care and we care about still found ways to communicate after we left Facebook. Calls and texts are sufficient. I'm sorry you feel that trapped though. Something seems off in your replies. And ultimately nobody here has said anything that you have to listen to but you seem pretty defensive.
- awillen 4y ago
  This is a pretty bananas take that conflates people caring with their technology-related behavior. Most people don't have problems with Facebook. It's useful for them, and they don't consider the bigger picture because they're not in tech and they have more important things taking up their attention. Now you swoop in and say "Facebook is evil, and if you don't get off of it, I'll cut you out of my life!" In that scenario, you're the one who doesn't care about the relationship, not them - you're the one that won't get off your high horse. You could make a minimalistic FB profile that has no information and use it to exchange messages and reply to event invitations. But instead you demand that they change their behaviors in order to support your moral imperative. That's your prerogative, but it is ridiculous to think your relationship is pretend as a result. Also, to be clear, you're the only one here talking about a relationship that consists of a few likes on Facebook. Everyone else is talking about a broader set of interactions, like using Messenger to chat and sharing photos with each other.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    You don't have to get on a soapbox and pontificate about the evil of Facebook. Just say "sorry, I'm not on Facebook."
    - charcircuit 4y ago
      Signing up for a facebook account takes less than a minute to do. Not having an account is a tiny hurdle to get over.
      - SoftTalker 4y ago
        Yeah but then they are asking you to do something, rather than you asking them.
  - robolange 4y ago
    > Now you swoop in and say "Facebook is evil, and if you don't get off of it, I'll cut you out of my life!" I said no such thing, and I'd thank you not to put words in my mouth. As I explained in a different subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131334 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131334
BiteCode_dev 4y ago
I traveled all around the world before Facebook was a thing, and it never prevented me from keeping in touch with the people that mattered. What you realy mean is that you value more the convenience it offers that the price to pay for using it.
- PretzelPirate 4y ago
  > What you realy mean is that you value more the convenience it offers that the price to pay for using it. People should be more charitable. They said that they must stay in touch with these people and that these people can’t seem to use other things. Often times you have to stay in contact with family members because they aren’t able to properly care for themselves. Those same people may not have the ability to easily change how they interact with the digital world due to mental health issues and you have no choice but to meet them where they are.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Again, this is implying that the cost of another solution to all those problems is very high, and facebook is a very cheap, convenient solution. So privacy is not important enough to justify those costs.
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    I think this is largely a straw man, or taking an extreme case as representative. I have friends that are not on Facebook. It requires more effort to stay in touch with them (for example, calling them on the phone) but it's doable. I don't see how a thing that was invented 10 years ago is now the sole method of communication with loved ones. That said, I agree it's not without cost to delete Facebook.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  So did I. But things have changed, and some of those people with whom I remained in contact now use FB to the near exclusion of everything else. These people are family in their 90s, for whom well-meaning children and grand-children have set up on FB. They don't use email, they can't write letters because of arthritis (and time delays ... international post can be very slow), and effectively the only async comms they use at all is FB. I'd ask that you not try to tell me what I really mean.
root_axis 4y ago
Photos and statuses are nice, but not essential. Though conversely, I'd say that getting tracked online isn't really a big deal either.
jancsika 4y ago
Your last two sentences don't pass the smell test. There's even graceful degradation in your set of solutions: 1. You drop FB. Now you just look on your spouse's Facebook when necessary, and your family learns to tell your spouse to show you stuff on FB. Annoying? Yes. Unworkable? No. 2. Your entire immediate family drops Facebook. At least one (if not all of you) can still communicate with the rest over text. And the rest of your family knows how to send a photo over text on an Iphone. Annoying to extended fam? Maybe. Unworkable? Definitely not. (In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it cuts out extended family spam and makes those moments of connection more meaningful.) 3. You attempt a quixotic adventure to switching your entire extended family over to some half-baked decentralized alternative to Facebook that will be usable in forever minus a day. Impossible? Yes. So choose #1 or #2 above.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  I have 10 to 15 family members in their 80s and 90s who use FB. A group has been set up for them, and they post photos and comments, and they chat with each other using Messenger. These are people who don't know of and honestly don't care about the difference between the internet and the web, and to them, "The Internet" simply is Facebook. Using the tech is already hard for them. Some are partially sighted, some have mobility issues, some have arthritis, all can easily use FB to stay in touch. And they don't use anything else. It's just not an option to try to get them to change, it really isn't. Please, please do me the courtesy of accepting that I've done the analysis. Many times. It's simply not a reasonable objective. And no, I won't squat on someone else's FB account so I can stay in touch.
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ratww 4y ago
My family replaced FB with WhatsApp. So have most of my friends (although with friends it's mostly Signal). Sure, it's a completely different kind of platform, but it serves well. People post their travel pictures there, people ask random stuff and the group can discuss, we can have private discussions by clicking one name. Sure, it's still Meta, and there's still a lot of bullshit groups, but at least I don't have to be exposed by it, nor do baby/kid pictures are exposed to the world, nor do I give money to Meta. Of course, maybe by "Facebook" you mean "Messenger", which is more popular than it should in the US. Replacing FB with WhatsApp or Signal is possible because my family and friends are around Latin America, Europe and Asia, where nobody uses Messenger anyways.
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bastardoperator 4y ago
So they don't understand email, phones or text messaging where people have been doing what they're doing now for years? I have some family that are like your, I shutdown my Facebook profile, and now I just call them on the phone now and we actually communicate more frequently and have better conversations.
- ColinWright 4y ago
  See my other replies: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131013 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131013 * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32131180
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jamiek88 4y ago
It’s whatsapp for me. Can’t get away from it. I tried for 3 years. I ended up basically unintentionally ostracized by family and friends. It’s a chore for people to forward to my preferred communication method and easy to occasionally forget. Which snowballs into only hearing about events afterwards. Eventually you basically become a weirdo with no mates. I’m not prepared to make that sacrifice any more. I honestly gave it my best shot and still don’t use FB and Insta but have to use WhatsApp.
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djmips 4y ago
Perhaps the best strategy is to use Facebook but never click on links. At least that solves the particular tracking that this post is about.

endorphine 4y ago

I've just deleted my Messenger account. Won't lie, that felt good. Good thing my friends/family from there are on the other two alternatives I use.

krupan 4y ago

And like all ideals, that's easier said than done

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kareemsabri 4y ago
Yeah most things involve tradeoffs.

Barrin92 4y ago

privileged solution. In many countries Facebook is the de facto communication infrastructure. They own four of the five largest communication platforms in the world. The ideal solution is to hit them with the hammer until morale improves. Regulators need to wake up and just start fining them absurd amounts of money and keep it vague until Facebook et al. are scared enough to comply and then some.

kareemsabri 4y ago
Facebook is facebook.com, that's what the article is about. I don't know what other communication platforms aside from WhatsApp you're referring to, but they aren't relevant to the discussion. If you think it's necessary to caveat that if you rely on facebook.com as your "communication infrastructure" (not that many countries would fit that bill) then you shouldn't delete it, I'm happy to do so.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  messenger, whatsapp and instagram. And of course they're relevant because if Facebook employs these tactics on one site there's no reason to believe they won't do equivalent things anywhere else. They own the largest competitors to their own products, obviously that's relevant because it shows how strong their grip is and that there's no genuine alternatives. "delete it" isn't a solution at all. You may as well say "turn the electricity off". People deserve privacy when services are provided to them by private companies, that's not a bonus, it ought to be a fundamental right. It's not the job of individuals to take on trillion dollar multinationals.
  - kareemsabri 4y ago
    Delete it is absolutely a solution. You may not like it, but it's a solution. For some reason people here seem to think I'm precluding regulatory action against Facebook. I'm not. I just also think it's better not to use it.

FabHK 4y ago

Just like the ideal solution for climate change is to stop eating meat, stop flying, stop driving, stop heating, stop air conditioning, and, for good measure, stop using computers. Heaven forbid that we seek a political/regulatory solution.

kareemsabri 4y ago
Seek whatever you like. I don't think those are comparable examples.

anigbrowl 4y ago

That's like saying 'stop being poor.' I'm not personally invested in FB, but people with large extended families, businesses, political campaigns etc. don't have the option of just ignoring it. Every HN thread about social media has one sub-thread like this, and it never produces anything of value because the premise is trite.

kareemsabri 4y ago
It's not like saying that at all. God I wonder what people with large extended families did before Facebook was invented! Surely they were all isolated and out of touch, how sad. This comment was not directed at people running Facebook business accounts or political campaigns. The reason this thread produces nothing of value is because of pedantic comments such as yours bringing up irrelevant edge cases.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Yes, it's exactly like saying that. Your sarcasm is misplaced; once people adapt to a benefit, many understandably don't wish to forgo it, and leveraging such network effects is the core business model of social media. As for who the comment was directed at, it was so broad as to be inclusive of all users, because it didn't qualify its suggestion at all; that's why it's trite. You're just making a 'not true Scotsmen' argument.
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- mjreacher 4y ago
  Large extended families used the best option they had before Facebook. Now they have Facebook, they use Facebook, because it's the best, most useful option for the vast majority of them. This thread is full of people saying that if people aren't willing to switch to other platforms for you then you should cut them out of your life. This might be fine for some acquaintances or even friends, but no normal person is going to cut their close family out of their life because they didn't switch to Signal. Nor does this even begin to take into account people who live in countries where Facebook or WhatsApp are the internet to the average person. Making an individualistic moral stand is nice and all, but to the majority it isn't a realistic solution, Facebook is too in-baked to society and how it functions. Thus the solution needs to be regulatory/political.

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