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Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

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Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#111

Post by rtkwe »

bdamm wrote: post #102
toomuchtodo wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anytime I speak with someone on Messenger, I mention my cellphone # and email. Gotta prime that OOB comms pump, otherwise you'll never break free. If only there was a Messenger API to setup an autoresponder with alternate contact info...

It's nice that phone numbers are so stable these days.

Yeah used to be it'd be the opposite. We'd try desperately try to migrate everyone to using something like Messenger (eg: AIM or ICQ) because we couldn't count on our number remaining the same.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#112

Post by eiaoa »

dymk wrote: post #82
Symbiote wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. The app has enough permissions that when coupled with Facebook's data analytics it amounts to a similar invasion of privacy.

> I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. You might as well just admit to encouraging disinformation campaigns against things you don't personally like.

It's not really disinformation, just a slight inaccuracy. For years they were collecting text messages and call logs:

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/03/faceb...

Not quite "listening to calls," but not too different either. It shows you where their heart is.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#113

Post by universenz »

I deleted the app over a year ago as well. Best move ever.

I replaced it with a shortcut on the home screen to the mobile version of the Facebook website in Safari. I use the AdGuard plugin on iOS to remove the primary reason I was getting sick of the Facebook iOS app - the FORCED "Stories" banner at the top of the news feed.

Not only is the newsfeed much lighter and cleaner on mobile.. but ads are blocked, notifications are "opt-in" (the shortcut on the home screen doesn't show notifications), analytics are probably less detailed, and I don't have to deal with that shitty stories bar taking up the first quarter of my screen every time I open the Newsfeed.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#115

Post by Symbiote »

dymk wrote: post #82
Symbiote wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. The app has enough permissions that when coupled with Facebook's data analytics it amounts to a similar invasion of privacy.

> I wouldn't particularly discourage the rumor. You might as well just admit to encouraging disinformation campaigns against things you don't personally like.

Your friend's friend says the Facebook app tracks conversations. Do you

a) Vaguely agree that Facebook is awful, and removing the app is a good idea,

b) Start explaining how a detailed log of every app user's location, time spent reading each story, typing speed, searches, lists of other apps used (or in use), full lists of contacts, calendar events, text messages, phone call history, photographs, nearby WiFi networks and battery statistics can be combined with website-based Facebook use and tracking cookies on other sites, allowing Facebook to create a detailed profile of each user, and that's why they showed the creepily-relevant advert.

I would usually choose (a), unless the discussion is specifically about data privacy. (b) is not literally listening, but it's close enough for a casual discussion.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#116

Post by [deleted] »

cauthon wrote: post #88
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #42

I did this. In the following sequence, over a few years, and am now to step 5: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally 5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop. It took me…

I successfully did this ~2 years ago, but I'm still having trouble breaking the same habit with Reddit (and even Hacker News to a lesser extent)

[deleted]

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#117

Post by thelasthuman »

rchaud wrote: post #16
kozak wrote: post #2

"Deleted app" is not necessarily a good metric, considering that I prefer to use Facebook on my mobile phone as a web page instead of the app, simply because I like it that way. It's simply a more consistent and less intrusive experience IMO. Facebook is nagging me with Facebook Lite ads because it thinks that I don't have resources on the phone to run the app, but that's not the case at all.

I would say yours is the edge case. For US users, when they see an on-screen message saying "There's way more features in the app", they go ahead and download the app, and soon forget they ever even accessed it as a mobile website. FB has deliberately hobbled its mobile site in slow increments over the years to drive the maximum possible number of users to the app.

I stopped using Facebook because of their mobile site sabotage. Switched to the desktop version on my phone for a while, but at one point I stopped and thought "why am I fighting with Facebook to use it the way I want?" And just gave up.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#118

Post by te_chris »

TuringNYC wrote: post #83
brobdingnagians wrote: post #12

I realized I was checking facebook a lot each day whenever I had a spare moment, but didn't have anything really interesting happening, and I wanted to engage more with those around me and have more time for down-time thinking. So I deleted the app, knowing that making the threshold higher for checking it would reduce my usage, now I might check facebook once a month on my desktop, and still nothing happening, so it…

Slightly different scenario on my side -- I want to use it, but the timeline has gotten so limited it doesn't draw me in as much. (No, i'm not on blocked lists. But strange things happen, e.g., Facebook has decided that despite my brother and I being friends and being marked "close" and not blocking each other, we dont see many of each others' posts.) I'll confess I actually like using Facebook because it allows me t…

Honestly, I feel the same a bit. Like the company itself is cancerous - their complete lack of regard with the way they let hate spread on their platform is shameful. But...I've been on since the old days. I remember when it was actually a community platform and all your friends were there. That was pretty cool.

Not sure where that's going to pop up next.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#119

Post by taurath »

buboard wrote: post #41

Why is HN so eager to document the downfall of facebook? First, realize that for a large part of its demographics, facebook is the internet , and when they quit they 'll leave the internet altogether (provided that there 's not another new platform that absorbs them). Second, other social media are having far bigger leakages (snapchat) but that doesn't seem to concern anyone.

For me its the general sense that Facebook + most mainstream social media has been having a negative effect on society, both in terms of socialization and unethical invasions of privacy. The fact that for a large part of the world that facebook is "the internet" is a rather negative thing in my mind - its a devil's bargain that the US and the west is grappling with, while the benefits are still outweighing the costs for developing areas.

Re: Facebook exodus: Nearly half of young users have deleted the app

#120

Post by nickbarnwell »

johnchristopher wrote: post #84
davchana wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are not there some messenger bot which could do this?

You can't set up a bot or an automated message for personnal accounts, only for pages.

But you could use the Bitlbee FBMQTT Plugin [1] and WeeChat's scripting functionality to implement it for your personal account. Probably an afternoon's worth of work if you have a VPS or t1.micro lying around to run a daemon on for a few months :)

[1]: https://wiki.bitlbee.org/HowtoFacebookMQTT [2]: https://weechat.org/

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