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Why I deleted my Facebook account
301–310 of 327 posts
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#302Earlier 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…
> "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" The heroin analogy is lazy and irrelevant. The reason people say stuff like "try doing X to quit or cut down" is that, unlike heroin, a fairly large chunk of people who've recognized the problem have been pretty able to easily cut down or stop their "do…
The question isn't does it work, it's how long does it work for.
For example, diets work. But most have a fall-off-the-wagon rate in the couple of months range.
It's definitely easy to quit a social media platform cold turkey. The hard part is quitting social media. I have yet to see anyone who's actually quit social media as a whole (yes that def includes email and texting) and kept with it for more than a month.
Social media addiction in the modern world is a lot like food addiction. Sure you're addicted, but you still gotta eat or you die. Sure you're addicted, but without social media you can't be a functioning member of current society.
Hell, I had one of those "I quit the internet" articles on the frontpage of HackerNews a few years ago. You know what happened? I quit all social media, but I needed access to Github to do my work. So I started friending people and being all social media on Github.
[1] https://swizec.com/blog/my-ideas-are-shitty-so-im-going-on-a... [2] https://swizec.com/blog/the-end-of-my-internet-diet-experime...
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#303This might be an unpopular opinion in the tech-savvy crowd of HN, but while I agree with pretty much 100% of the points brought up in this article, I still disagree that leaving facebook is a net positive. I simply believe that as privacy violating as facebook is, as scary and orwellian their statistical analysis of my life and habits are, they have solved a very real problem for real people: social networking online…
These are fair points. I feel like it was a net positive for me, personally, but yeah, results may vary.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
HN at least has relevant and educational content, much more so than the stream-of-minions-memes-and-baby-pictures that is Facebook.
At least you think it's educational...
It depends on how you consume it. Often, very often, it's only infotainment.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say "friendships" but I don't believe that's the exact word. Real friendships will continue to survive and thrive, as they did before Facebook, as long as both parties keep trying. If a "friend" of mine won't invite me to a party because I don't have Facebook, he's not really my friend. It's as simple as that for me. Of course we probably differ on what we define as friendship, but I believe you'd agree that havi…
My main point is that the lack of Facebook affects the process by which these real friendships form. In a context where Facebook is used by most of your peers, the lack of it creates an additional barrier to socialization that has subtle negative effects which compound over time. The result is that you can miss out on forming real friendships because the cementing period is stunted by the reduced amount of unplanned…
Makes sense. It's the pressure from society to conform to it's standards, no matter how bad they are.
Pisses me off when I go to a place that requires you to "check-in on facebook" to get wifi... Not much I can do about it except not use their wifi
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
No good discussion/update flow, groups aren't really dynamic enough, and getting a google account isn't going to appeal to the kind of people who dislike facebook. (FWIW Meetup does completely replicate this use case, but they charge money)
exactly. Even with meetup, its not perfect for 'I want this specific group to come over.' In a lot of ways, mid-2000s evite would be perfect -- but there's the spam / nagging side of their business that spoils it. To be fair, I have no idea how one would monetize my dream events platform.
is monitization terribly necessary? The server costs of an open-source type of meetup should be negligible. Hypothetically a lot can even be done with plain email, provided users set up a filter to send all the invites into a separate folder if don't want to get distracted.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#307If you are not paying for it, you are probably the product.
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
Please downvote or flag instead of posting rude replies like this.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#308The article quotes someone saying: >One New York comedian had a SWAT team break into his house based on a joke post. could someone find a citation, I'd like to read about that case? I googled what I just quoted and a couple of variations and did not find it. Thanks.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
You say "friendships" but I don't believe that's the exact word. Real friendships will continue to survive and thrive, as they did before Facebook, as long as both parties keep trying. If a "friend" of mine won't invite me to a party because I don't have Facebook, he's not really my friend. It's as simple as that for me. Of course we probably differ on what we define as friendship, but I believe you'd agree that havi…
How many friends do you think a person would have if they refused to use a computer or telephone and required all communication to come by way of hand written letters or telegrams? People would think that person is strange and likely not interact with them or bother to invite them to events. Sadly, this is becoming partially the case with Facebook. I am not talking about existing friends, but making new friends, espe…
I signed up just to reply to your post.
What you see as true is based on your unique perspective of the world. And I have to say that I am struck by your strange, possibly normal view.
Perhaps what you say is true. Maybe society has technologically evolved to the point where we ought to care about what you've fear-mongered.
But I must say, your fear-mongering might be a result of your personal fears, and therefore might not be applicable to most other people.
Your first question is a strawman and hurts the general point of this discussion. Why include telephone with computers? I wonder how many people on this planet actually refuse both computer and telephone. Plenty rely solely on telephone and written letters, and they have plenty of friends.
I agree that people would find someone who refuses both computers AND telephones strange. That's because it's extremely rare - so rare that I have to ask you for examples of people you know of who act this way. I wonder if you're not just making up fairytales to make your fear-mongering more impactful.
"Sadly, this is becoming partially the case with Facebook."
You're attempting to compare the oddity of refusing telephone to refusing Facebook. Let's get serious about this. How many people do you know who can suffice as evidence for your above claim? You state that this is becoming the case with Facebook. How do you know?
People don't need lots of friends. They don't need 100s of possibly useful people on a website they have to maintain and update in order to "fit in". Based on what I've learned from history, people who keep to themselves and avoid fame live happier lives.
Social media has created the false illusion that you need to stay in contact with everyone you meet on a daily basis. Otherwise, you might lose out on opportunities to increase your social capital. It's a trick, and Zuckerberg has you by the balls.
Get out while you still can. Live a great life with a handful of phone contacts.
Re: Why I deleted my Facebook account
#310Earlier 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" The heroin analogy is lazy and irrelevant. The reason people say stuff like "try doing X to quit or cut down" is that, unlike heroin, a fairly large chunk of people who've recognized the problem have been pretty able to easily cut down or stop their "do…
The question isn't does it work, it's how long does it work for. For example, diets work. But most have a fall-off-the-wagon rate in the couple of months range. It's definitely easy to quit a social media platform cold turkey. The hard part is quitting social media. I have yet to see anyone who's actually quit social media as a whole (yes that def includes email and texting) and kept with it for more than a month. So…
> The question isn't does it work, it's how long does it work for. For example, diets work. But most have a fall-off-the-wagon rate in the couple of months range.
Off the top of my head, I have a friend who have been off of Facebook for 9 years, another for 7, and another who never made an account at all. These are all healthy, happy people with robust social lives: their friends just know they need to be texted to be looped into plans. I know still more people (myself included) who have always had a healthy relationship with social media: short periods of "maybe I'm mindlessly browsing this a bit" followed by minor habit tweaks and straight back to a fully healthy relationship. I eat extremely healthy but every once in a while notice that I'm eating a bit of junk food (perhaps due to stress at work or something). I notice it and fix it and go back to eating extremely healthy. It would be completely inaccurate to claim that any lapse means I have an unhealthy relationship with food, and this is exactly the same as with social media et al.
> I have yet to see anyone who's actually quit social media as a whole (yes that def includes email and texting) and kept with it for more than a month.
This is a beyond-absurd definition of social media, and you're now talking about something that no one else here is talking about. The idea that there's no value in email and texting beyond dopamine addiction is frankly just insane. When I get statements from my bank, or delivery notifications from my package receipt service or laundry service, or an update that my friend wants to move our dinner date back by half an hour, am I feeding my addiction? Because your bizarre definition doesn't leave any room for responsible e-mail/text usage.
Anyone defining "communication with other people" as an addiction that needs to be killed off is battling far worse demons than social media/dopamine-hit addiction. That may be interesting in and enough of itself but it couldn't be less relevant to this thread.