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Why I deleted my Facebook account

blakewatson.com

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Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#121

Post by lmm »

Swizec wrote: post #65
avaer wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Impossible is hard to square with the people in this thread (myself included) that did it. You don't have to tell your boss you're not reading notifications. You just have to eliminate the notifications that serve no purpose except a high. Facebook still spams my email; it's filtered to the trash. Business carries on.

"You can totally quit heroin! Just stop taking it" "Oh and if all your friends are doing it and are wondering why you're not having fun with them, just ignore them" Sure you've quit Facebook. But did you quit dopamine-seeking technology use? What I've found in myself is that when I pry myself away from Facebook, I spend more time on Twitter. When I pry myself off that as well, suddenly my HN engagement goes up. When…

Quitting dopamine-seeking is called death. Dopamine is how the brain's reward system works, and eating or parenting is dopamine-seeking just as much as any other behaviour.

It sounds like technology isn't the problem - if you're doing these things with technology you'd be doing the same things without it. Perhaps you'd be spending a lot of time chatting around the water cooler instead of online, but that's not actually any healthier or better. Facebook has brought me a lot of fun in my life - on Tuesday I went to a gig that I only found out about because a casual acquaintance posted it there, and tonight I'm meeting up with another acquaintance because I saw on Facebook we're going to the same gig. I see it as like the gold medal in Cool Runnings - if you're not enough without it, you're not going to be enough with it.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#122

Post by NumberCruncher »

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.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#123

Post by babyrainbow »

hnarn wrote: post #97
babyrainbow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Social interaction between human beings has been going on well before these social networks. The manufactured requirement is the need to reach to every person we ever know and share every little detail of your life with them, possibly multiple times a day, in return for their some kind of acknowledgement... That is the manufactured need and that is what people are hooked on.

Social interaction between human beings was also severely limited for most of human history as soon as geographical distance was introduced. You don't have to look further back than the massive emigrations to the US from Europe, it completely shattered extended families. The need to communicate with the people you love is not "manufactured", what's always been missing is a well working and easy to use solution for it…

> The need to communicate with the people you love is not "manufactured"...

Again, the need is not manufactured. But the need for constantly in touch, is manufactured. No one before social network wanted that. There was normal mails, then we had telephones, emails etc etc..all of which have solved this pretty well, even across the globe.

But none of these are 24x7.

The need for 24x7 "networking" is manufactured.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#124

Post by onion2k »

rajadigopula wrote: post #112

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!

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.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#125

Post by palerdot »

grx wrote: post #10

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…

It is not entirely true that 10 years of past data is enough for fb to draw conclusions on a person. In fact fb is trying more to make people share. You can also try 'tools that fudge info' to confuse fb. If done cleverly, this is a major tool to put fb off the scent.

Also, Quitting fb for mental sanity is a worthwhile reason if not privacy

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#126

Post by colordrops »

djhworld wrote: post #102

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.

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 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.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#127

Post by colordrops »

hdi wrote: post #113

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.

It's way worse now. At least you were seeing pictures and text that your friends posted. Now it's over 90% viral content.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#128

Post by HealthGoth »

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.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#129

Post by jokoon »

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.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#130

Post by wuschel »

fastbeef wrote: post #17

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…

What about HN (Reddit and like)? May sound funndy, but there are the also reward mechanisms at play when we visit these sites, and they can be affecting work/private life negatively as well.
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