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Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

bradfrost.com

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Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#81

Post by gk1 »

Gaelan wrote: post #46
gk1 wrote: post #10

They also ensure there's ALWAYS at least one notification when you sign in. Even if nothing of importance happened, they find _something_ to notify you about just so you can see the red notification count every time. I deactivated my account yesterday and look forward to a FB-free life.

Did you deactivate on purpose? Unless you still use Messenger or are considering changing your mind, you should delete your account instead. Deactivation just flips a bit; deletion actually removes your data.

I did it on purpose because I didn't want to be forever locked out of accounts that required a FB signin. Case in point, just hours after deactivating (the first time), I realized I couldn't log into Airbnb without Facebook. So I had to reactivate, change Airbnb settings, then deactivate again.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#82

Post by gertef »

convery wrote: post #78

Ye, Facebook is Facebook, which is creepy. Some friends asked me to sign up for it because they wanted to use the messenger service for a groupchat. When I registered it immediately propagated my profile with information about my highschool (10 years ago) and suggested a lot of people I knew from back then as well as some devs I've collaborated with on Github. All this from a new email. So I went into the settings an…

it's possible they rejected your photo because they did a reverse image search and it matched the magazine?

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#83

Post by jf »

fnovd wrote: post #51
lamby wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less Facebook == more happy More productive, less distracted, etc., sure but was FB really getting you down that much? Am I just using Facebook "wrong" in that it's not upsetting me the same way it upsets others?

Think about Facebook the way you might think about alcohol. For many (if not most) people, even the occasional overindulgence isn't going to cause too much harm. But for some, it has an insidious effect and sometimes the best strategy is to simply swear it off completely.

For me, it was more like cigarette usage: "I can quit any time" I thought, even as the constant demands for my attention distracted and upset me. Recognizing how much I disliked Facebook, then quitting cold-turkey was the only way I was able to break my addiction.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#84

Post by cchurch »

kotrunga wrote: post #72
bg4 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me: The best thing I ever did was delete the Facebook.

Same. Full deletion, and it's been amazing.

Same. This sounds drastic to people who are in the habit of Facebooking, but I still have friends and a social life and the hours of mindlessly scrolling through low-info-density posts, likes, links, and whatnot is all gone.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#85

Post by blahedo »

Reading the comments here reconfirms that I had a good idea not using the FB app on my phone—using inside Firefox it is, of necessity, less pushy. If you want to use FB messages without the crapfest, note that using the url mbasic dot facebook dot com will get you a text-minimalist version of the site (designed for very old mobiles) where you can receive messages without the app. (No push notifications, but afaic that's a feature.)

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#86

Post by milcron »

psweber wrote: post #44

If you want to delete Facebook from your phone but your friends use Facebook Events, there is a stand alone Events app. That being said, I wish my friends didn't use Facebook for events. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/events-from-facebook-find-th... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.facebook.S...

Better yet, use the https://mbasic.facebook.com website designed for feature phones. It doesn't even require javascript!

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#87

Post by dreamcompiler »

tucif wrote: post #41

"I’m likely not going to delete Facebook entirely since I do genuinely enjoy staying in touch with the people in my life, and for better or worse Facebook is where those people hang out" Is it likely that most people are willing to move and the only problem is there are no compelling options?

No option is compelling until everybody you know is on it. And there is no such option besides FB.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#88

Post by tankenmate »

For those who want to go a step further and block all Facebook traffic on their Linux machine

# for net in $(whois -h whois.radb.net -- '-i origin AS32934' | grep '^route:' | sed -e 's/.* //') ; do ipset add block-facebook-ips $net ; done

and if you have ipset-presistent

# /etc/init.d/ipset-persistent save

The same for IPv6 is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#89

Post by dmalvarado »

I removed Facebook from my phone because I didn't like how impulsively I was using it at any moment of waiting or downtime.

It was hard-ish at first, and it took a lot of "Do I or Don't I?" before I actually did it. I didn't delete my account or anything, so I could still check it from home, but as time went on and I was _only_ able to check it from home, I would frequently find myself thinking, "wow, there's really not much good here." which is one of those things that only occurs to you after taking time away from it.

I realized I replaced my Facebook habit with an Instagram habit, so I deleted that too. The only remaining distraction is Reddit, but I've never been as impulsively hooked into Reddit as I was the other two.

When people say that it's better without Facebook, they're not kidding. You should try it.

Re: Facebook, You Needy Sonofabitch

#90

Post by warcher »

This ties into a phenomena that I've noticed with a lot of social networks lately-- fake content.

What I mean by that specifically is putting things into your feed that nobody actually intended to share. e.g. "XXXX liked this thing!" Or generating notifications of non-events, like "Hey, share a thing!"

The share button is literally right next to the 'uplike' button. And they specifically did not press it. But you're gonna press it for them, because you gotta have content and folks keep pretty mum on facebook (and everywhere else) lately. There is very little I'm interested in sharing with every single person I know. And even less I'm interested in sharing with strangers a la Twitter.

To say nothing of the overall click-baity trollish quality of aformentioned articles. Every time one of my dear friends gets triggered and feeds the trolls, facebook is dutifully shoving it in my face. There is a high correlation between virality and unredeemable shit stirring.

Facebook is doing it. Twitter is doing it. Reddit is perhaps the most shameless of all with their mobile app working hard to spam you with posts that you.... haven't commented on, or even upvoted. (I can't say one way or the other about Snapchat because I'm not a millennial.)

I do believe this is the intersection of 100% social media saturation and the public markets' relentless demand for growth. This is peak social media. They're flogging live video hard, but news flash: I grew up when you had to make plans to watch your favorite TV show, and it's the worst. Live video sucks. I got shit to do. I can't even be bothered to DVR things any more.

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