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Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

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111–120 of 161 posts

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#111
post #52

I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose o…

This is great for you! Keep in mind though that some of us never fell in to the trap of compulsively checking FB constantly. I am quite certain that dropping FB wouldn't move my happiness barometer in either direction, it's just not a big enough part of my life to matter. I would lose touch with some people that I'm not keeping very closely in touch with anyway, and that's about it. This is like a recovering alcoholi…

Same here. I use messenger occasionally to speak to some friends who use Facebook almost exclusively for that - I stopped posting anything or paying attention to the feed thing years ago.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#112

To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it. Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while. LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on Link…

> I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people.

It's actually the opposite for me. Facebook started nine years after I graduated high school. I was on it in the first year by using my college alumni email address, but most of my high school friends didn't show up until about five years after I joined.

And let me say that it's been amazing for me. I got to reconnect with a ton of people I'd lost touch with! We chat on messenger sometimes, have lots of interactions in each other's comments, and I get to see all the posts about their kids and what they are doing these days.

Some of these people were really good friends in high school but we had no easy way to keep in touch (no cell phones, only phone number we had was their parent's land line, etc).

I would be really sad to loose touch with them again by ditching Facebook.

Yeah, I could collect their current contact info, but as has been said elsewhere, Facebook is a more of a broadcast medium. If I have an update about my life, I'm not going to call 15 people to tell them about it. I'm going to put it on Facebook and let them see it when they have time.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a facebook login active then facebook is still tracking you and able to advertise to you, so you are using facebook for the only things they care about. You are still generating content (your web traffic via like buttons) and revenue (via ads).

I use Firefox containers (and before that I used a totally separate browser for Facebook) so they haven't been tracking me around the web for years. It's quite easy to avoid their tracking actually.

So you hope. Just because you don't appear as "logged in" doesn't mean they can't tell you're the same person.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox containers (and before that I used a totally separate browser for Facebook) so they haven't been tracking me around the web for years. It's quite easy to avoid their tracking actually.

So you hope. Just because you don't appear as "logged in" doesn't mean they can't tell you're the same person.

Sure, they can cluster me by IP address, but they can do that whether I delete my Facebook account or not.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#115
post #5

While a great idea the problem of course is there isn’t a ready replacement for what Facebook provides. Where would families migrate to for communication/collaboration/community? The closest free alternative is of course Instagram, owned by Facebook. Who can build a privacy oriented alternative that charges and also gains a sufficient network effect?

I don't friend family on fb, so we ended in that situation when g+ shut down. I have used e-mail with multiple receivers a couple times, but in general people seems reluctant to answer them.

I don't have a good suggestion, except if we could find somewhere to run a private forum.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#116
post #81

Question for people who have nuked Facebook: what do you do about a job that needs you to have Facebook for, e.g., API keys or group moderation? Did you just create a new, “friend-less” account and transfer the credentials over to it?

Even if you want to keep a personal account, definitively don't use it for work purposes! We created a shared FB account for registering an app, and just manage it like any other company account.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#117
post #52

I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose o…

This is great for you! Keep in mind though that some of us never fell in to the trap of compulsively checking FB constantly. I am quite certain that dropping FB wouldn't move my happiness barometer in either direction, it's just not a big enough part of my life to matter. I would lose touch with some people that I'm not keeping very closely in touch with anyway, and that's about it. This is like a recovering alcoholi…

Same here, moreover: I've got friends and acquittances in Serbia, Bulgaria, Germany, UK, US, Spain among other countries, as well as through several states in my home country. Given that I have lived in 6 different cities around the world, and have made good relationships on each of those, I really like maintaining a "thin" contact thread with them.

Facebook does this really well for me. Before Facebook, I would have to "remember" to send an email, a MSN chat or even a postcard (around Christmas) to some of them. And the typical conversation through chat went "q: hey, anything new", "a: no.. no really". With FB I see when this people have had a noteworthy moment, and I can interact with them on that, even if it is just to say a quick hello.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would do the same but I have a board games club which is organized via Facebook....and I have one or two friends who still organize events through FB. Otherwise I would certainly shut my account. I do not post photos or interact with others except occasionally through messenger. I have started unfollowing everyone although I do enjoy Humans of NYC.

Have you tried just asking people to move a group chat off of fb?

This is pretty antisocial behavior to force others to use a service that you deem acceptable.

Re: Steve Wozniak Says People Should Get Off Facebook Permanently

#120
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square Yep, but most social platforms are not really tuned to being a town square, and instead are optimized for feeds and stirring emotions. They often rewarding behavior that's counterproductive to finding common ground. We need platforms like DinnerTable.chat [1] that is built around the idea of bringing people together across the spectrum and local…

I say this with respect and for your benefit: this is the most cringe inducing product description I’ve ever read.

Ah, thanks for that feedback. Would you like to try your hand of writing a better summary here? It would be appreciated, as it's hard to improve from just a single word criticism (cringe).
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