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Why I deleted my Facebook account

blakewatson.com

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Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#181

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

sasvari wrote: post #150
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 in…

I think the grandparent author is simply not possessed by the same personality traits that generally define the type of person who gets a lot of value out of HN. I tend towards OCD, which caused getting off Facebook to take about 8 tries. It wasn't until I found a "last straw" that I finally managed it permanently, and that was the runup to the recent US election. I simply did not want to find myself at odds, politically, with a certain couple of family members, and feel like I could not say anything in response to their posts without damaging a relationship I otherwise highly value. With my all-or-nothing personality and approach to things, "the only winning move is... not to play."

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#184

Post by lmm »

aninhumer wrote: post #146
lmm wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If you're talking about dopamine you're already /inside/ what makes up someone's personality. "Dopamine hits" are called being happy.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#185

Post by WesleyLivesay »

colordrops wrote: post #126
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…

My solution was to Hide all from , gotta take care of the problem at the source.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#186

Post by robertcope »

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.

That's why I'm on Facebook: family and friends. We live away from most of our family and friends. When we had our first child, we discussed it and decided that it would be best to very actively share pictures and stories via Facebook with our family and friends. I do a pretty solid job of posting almost daily updates and whatnot.

This strategy has worked great. People "know" her. When we go to the race track (my hobby), everyone knows who she is. Many, many people comment on how much they love watching her grow up, etc. This is exactly what I was hoping for. She isn't some random kid at the track now, she's my kid, and everyone knows her.

Maybe Facebook is evil. I have no idea. I don't really care. I care about the bridge that it provides between me and other people.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#187

Post by lloeki »

eludwig wrote: post #163
Swizec wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too feel exactly this way with almost everything. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Email, Messages ... it's kind of tough to escape. Impossible even. And here's the worst part: We grew up with this shit. My generation was one of the first (1987) to have their formative social years immersed in this shit. That means we'll never escape. Ever. We're literally wired to seek approval of strangers on the internet instead of the…

I watched the video and the speaker spends a great deal of time making some very elegant (if somewhat obvious) points. But then at the end he comes to the wrong conclusion, Imo. He blames the corporations where millennials work and passes the responsibility for fixing their attention/relationship deficits off to them! This is totally backwards. Every generation has their dopamine hits. Of course, as society creates m…

> He blames the corporations where millennials work and passes the responsibility for fixing their attention/relationship deficits off to them! This is totally backwards.

He does blames them, but only as part of his point, not as the whole conclusion. He blames the corporations for focusing on reductive, short-term metrics† instead of people, which is precisely what's lead to this[0] and that[1] abusive situations. As a company you're not hiring robots, you're hiring people.

> Every generation has their dopamine hits.

Indeed it has. The trouble starts when it reaches such heights, recurrence and omnipresence that it throws whole lives off balance.

> If being born at the time when the length and quality of life (health-wise) is at its longest, then deal me in! There are many, many benefits to being born in this time and as alway

Strawman. Life expectancy does not invalidate the new challenges we have to face. If anything, with modern discoveries about happiness vs hardship, people may literally have been happier in spite of such matters (shocking!). I'm suddenly reminded of Gladia's tirade in Robots and Empire: would you rather live a long, dull, purposeless life endlessly being bored to no end or a shorter life full of brilliance? But we digress.

> it is up to us to find the life we want and the balance we need

This is the kind of attitude that reviles me. You can't blame someone for becoming alcoholic/depressive/etc. If you do then you don't understand what those are: illnesses. Nobody breaks his leg or catches a flu on purpose. If a company refuses to take such humane matters into consideration then you're just a tool and it's parasitically just sucking onto you till you're dry. When you're in situations of illnesses, all the good will of the person is not sufficient: help is needed, from everywhere it can come[2].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703661

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14711621

[2]: https://medium.com/@OlarkLiveChat/its-2017-and-mental-health...

† ironically, themselves being addicted to that very same dopamine (or rather its ethereal corporate equivalent) rush.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#188

Post by throwawaymanbot »

Once Facebook changed their algorithm that hid people I didn't communicate with regularly further down my feed, in favor of the few that I did being in my face more, I have to say, I lost interest.

So, about 4 or 5 years ago I quit Facebook. Privacy concerns aside, I'm happy to say my social life has not suffered. I feel saner, more informed, (No "obama needs to be locked up" posts for me) and I feel like I have more mental energy for REAL things I interact with, such as colleagues and friends, which are more important to me.

Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account

#189

Post by yequalsx »

tvanantwerp wrote: post #175
grx wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, nice reference. Of course I am exaggerating. But IMO people vastly under estimate how similar their own behaviour is to other people. Meaning, if Facebook "knows" me since 12 years (!) it can very precisely categorize me into a group of people. And those other people do not leave Facebook but feed it more information.

Funny how Facebook can have all of this information about me, my preferences, my social groups, etc., and has not once served me a remotely relevant advertisement.

I think it most likely has but you currently aren't consciously aware of it. Partly this is due to your desire to make a point. Partly due to our inability to off the top of our heads to recall any but a few specific adverts. We see thousands of them. It is very unlikely that none of them have been relevant to you. There are also the adverts that subconsciously manipulate you. The stuff that you aren't aware of.
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