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Why I deleted my Facebook account

blakewatson.com

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Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#141

Post by rajadigopula »

onion2k wrote: post #124
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.

I know what I talk on phone and what I search online. I have observed this so many times - not once. So I am confident in what I imply.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#143

Post by piyush_soni »

breakingcups wrote: post #23
notliketherest wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does that even mean? Do you even know what you're talking about? I don't pay for a lot of things of which I'm certainly not the product. FYI resorting to such banalities is rather pathetic

Not the original poster, but I think he is quite right. IF you are getting a product or service for free, continuously, the company providing it usually has a different motive, a different way to make money. Usually that means selling your data, thus you are the product being sold in the statement the original poster made. Can you explain why you consider the statement a banality instead of a rule of thumb? What kind…

It has just reduced to the new "cool kids" thing to say "if you're not paying for the product, you're the product". You are saying it usually means "selling your data" - while most of these websites clearly state in their policies that they DON'T sell your "personally identifiable" data in any manner to third parties. So that's that. Of course, it means they could aggregate the data and sell that, but then it really doesn't void my privacy much. Is Google getting benefited from my data? Definitely. Am I getting benefited from Google's services? Definitely. Does Google know much about me? Yes. Is Google selling my personal data? No. One just needs to be aware of what they are sharing with these service.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#144

Post by beefield »

Gluek wrote: post #139
beefield wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Done that. If only somebody told me how to disable facebook (and slack and gmail etc) starting blinking the browser tab when they think something happened that I need to note, that would make my desktop life much less distracted.

Just close these tabs. Or use something like The Great Suspender.

Great suspender looks promising. Thanks.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#145

Post by [deleted] »

2845197541 wrote: post #62

I deleted my Facebook, created a new one with 0 friends and now only use the messenger as a second email to communicate with my actual friends if I have a message that's too long for text. And I'm so glad to not care anymore what ____ who I met at a St. Patrick's day party five years ago is doing on vacation in ____. I also enjoy not seeing my good friends falsely display their lives. There's been so many times where…

[deleted]

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#146

Post by aninhumer »

lmm wrote: post #121
Swizec wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 actual…

Different activities provide differing reward for differing efforts.

Water cooler chat, which requires active social engagement and is time bounded, is not as addicting as an endless stream of content accessed with a twitch of the finger. You might not use Facebook in that way, and I similarly don't find it that engaging, but I've certainly experienced it with reddit and HN.

And I don't think this is some intractable personality flaw, I think people get used to the comfort of frequent dopamine hits, and find it very difficult to drag themselves away from these sources as a result. Cold turkey can and does make a difference.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#147

Post by Tehnix »

While I certainly get why you’d get off Facebook for privacy reasons, I feel like a lot of the “addiction” comments here and in similar posts as OP’s are a bit of a weird thing to me.

Are people nowadays not capable of moderation? Purely anecdotally, but I mostly see older generations being the ones that hop off. Is it because they didn’t grow up with this kinda of social media and can’t seem to balance what is a perfectly fine way to interact with friends and stay updated without pulling a cold turkey on it?

I personally mainly like to have my FB profile as a catalog for my pictures, and might casually browse it when I got nothing else to do. There’s a lot of value in various FB groups, for example, I’m currently in South Korea for a year, and there are communities in the different areas for posting apartments and asking questions for expats and internationals.

I don’t know what I’m trying to get at, but I feel that the cold turkey approach is rather an indication of a persons lack of self-control and moderation - you don’t have to choose an all or nothing approach, simply disable notifications if that is what’s bothering you, unfollow people that annoy you, and a ton of other methods to handle these things other than going nuke-all.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#148

Post by agumonkey »

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…

I'm quite surprised with everything the internet is teaching us on a personal and social level.

I noticed on reddit I seek for shallow agreement too. And if a comment gets 0 I'm a bit disappointed. It also taught me that sometimes you get a few downvotes at first but later some people upvote, some even comment. Patience ..

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#149

Post by kvgr »

I unfollowed every page and all of my +-400 friends. Now I follow only my wife, mother and brother. They do not post much. This cleaning helped me a lot. But every time I add new friend, I need to remember to unfollow him, because than my wall is constantly cluterred with random post from viral pages and friends interaction on the site. I wish there still was the option to deactivate facebook and keep messenger. I don't want to delete facebook and then recreate the friends on messenger only again.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#150

Post by sasvari »

Tehnix wrote: post #147

While I certainly get why you’d get off Facebook for privacy reasons, I feel like a lot of the “addiction” comments here and in similar posts as OP’s are a bit of a weird thing to me. Are people nowadays not capable of moderation? Purely anecdotally, but I mostly see older generations being the ones that hop off. Is it because they didn’t grow up with this kinda of social media and can’t seem to balance what is a per…

  Are people nowadays not capable of moderation? Purely
  anecdotally, but I mostly see older generations being the
  ones that hop off. Is it because they didn’t grow up with
  this kinda of social media and can’t seem to balance what
  is a perfectly fine way to interact with friends and stay
  updated without pulling a cold turkey on it?
95% of the people I see on the subway every day are glued to their smartphones without interruption the moment they enter the carriage until they leave. And around 80% of the time I get a glimpse of the screen of those it's facebook/instagram/snapchat/. This is somehow independent of age. So moderation? Balance? Probably depends on the definition.
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