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Get your loved ones off Facebook

salimvirani.com

11–20 of 310 posts

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#11
I'm off of it and I could not be happier about the decision. Concerns about privacy aside, I realized how much time I was wasting scrolling through ads and news stories instead of photos and thoughts from friends and relatives. I didn't mind the Facebook of old where the content was mostly interesting to me, but today it is mostly full of ads, memes, fake news, and clickbait.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#12

Delete timeline for me: - Delete account - 1st week, open facebook tab close facebook tab. - 2nd week, visit facebook once a day by accident don't login - 3rd week, visit facebook once a week, don't login - 4th week, stop visiting altogether It's been about 6 months now without an account and my wife and I are really happy about no longer have it. Try it!

It's been since 2009 since I deleted my Facebook account, and my timeline was roughly like yours for weeks 1-4. Then: - 2nd year, wonder if I should get back on to 'stay in touch.' - 3rd-5th year, never think about it - 6th year, wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids. But, my wife does Instagram. - 8th year, smug comment on HN to show how long I've been off Facebook :).

I never had Facebook. Ha!

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#13

Delete timeline for me: - Delete account - 1st week, open facebook tab close facebook tab. - 2nd week, visit facebook once a day by accident don't login - 3rd week, visit facebook once a week, don't login - 4th week, stop visiting altogether It's been about 6 months now without an account and my wife and I are really happy about no longer have it. Try it!

It's been since 2009 since I deleted my Facebook account, and my timeline was roughly like yours for weeks 1-4. Then: - 2nd year, wonder if I should get back on to 'stay in touch.' - 3rd-5th year, never think about it - 6th year, wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids. But, my wife does Instagram. - 8th year, smug comment on HN to show how long I've been off Facebook :).

You do know Instagram is owned by Facebook right?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#14
Queue the onslaught of "I haven't used Facebook in.... years!" comments. You're probably already hitting the down-vote button.

I wonder why there's so much anti-fb commentary on HN? Maybe it has to do with the software engineers tending to be less social and introverted, therefore a social service appears to have less worth? Just speculating.

As for me, Facebook creates an emotional connection unlike any other service out there. I get to see my friends kids grow up, comfort lost friends when they lose a parent, share with my family when something great has happened. It's absolutely amazing and there's nothing out there that comes close to its reach.

If Facebook were suddenly gone tomorrow, I would feel devastated (so many memories of my kids, deceased father, mom, all would be gone). The only other sites that would provoke a similar emotional response from me would probably be Google and maybe Github.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#15
Back in 2013, I decided to delete my account because was spending more than 8 hours per day on it (mostly on groups and managing pages for fun).

Back then there was no option to remove it - the only option was to convert it to a page with the mention that all your friends will become page likes. Then you will lose all your content posted (statuses, pictures, messages, etc). It was written red on white as a warning prevention. They said it was not possible to revert back.

Id did that, and the next day I felt so good afterwards. No guilt or fear of missing stuff. There were other means to stay in contact with people.

Forward two years later I wanted facebook back because I moved to another country.

I searched if there is an option to recover an old profile, and it was (even before they explicitly said there is none, and all your data is lost). I got back all that I've posted, only friends I needed to add back manually.

Now I use news feed eradicator and I don't see anything. Also, I don't have that urge to scroll feeds anymore. Basically, I wanted only messenger, but back then there was no such option.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#16

Delete timeline for me: - Delete account - 1st week, open facebook tab close facebook tab. - 2nd week, visit facebook once a day by accident don't login - 3rd week, visit facebook once a week, don't login - 4th week, stop visiting altogether It's been about 6 months now without an account and my wife and I are really happy about no longer have it. Try it!

It's been since 2009 since I deleted my Facebook account, and my timeline was roughly like yours for weeks 1-4. Then: - 2nd year, wonder if I should get back on to 'stay in touch.' - 3rd-5th year, never think about it - 6th year, wonder if I should get on Facebook so my family can see pictures of my kids. But, my wife does Instagram. - 8th year, smug comment on HN to show how long I've been off Facebook :).

[deleted]

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#17
Unfortunately, none of my friends and family members who are on Facebook really care, and the reasons cited in this article aren't going to sway them. They don't take privacy seriously, and view people who worry about privacy as paranoid kooks.

They also see Facebook as the way to stay in touch with their own friends and family, and that's probably the biggest draw to staying on. Until that changes, I don't see them leaving.

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#18
I have a question regarding this: "tracking everything you read on the internet"

I recently disabled third party cookies in Chrome and it's had no negative effect. Can someone tell me if this will block the Facebook code that's embedded in nearly every web page from reading my Facebook cookie and identifying me?

Re: Get your loved ones off Facebook

#20
I want to be listed on their site so people can find me (and don't think I'm a serial killer because I don't have an account), be able to SSO log in through Facebook when unavoidable, and be able to add people to my friends list if want to have them in my address book and reach out to them through Messenger.

Outside of that I actually never want to log into facebook or use any of its other functionality. How do I accomplish that?

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