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I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

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Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#61

Post by gitgud »

ericol wrote: post #14

I lived in Spain for 5 years and then I returned to my country 13 years ago. Some 8 years ago, Facebook was something that I really enjoyed using. I left way too many friends, close friends, and well, lovers behind. Facebook allowed me to have a healthy relationship with them, even if at a distance. I went back to Spain on 2010 for the wedding of a close friend, and it was like I've been out of the country for 2 mont…

> "I think that fact that people can't easily share other people's post, and are kind of forced to post their own material still makes it an interesting place."

That's an interesting observation, this is one of the reasons I don't enjoy Twitter, everything is retweeted (maybe I just don't get it).

I find Instagram to be a bit too addictive though. It feels like an endless magazine of glossy images, which learns what you want to see, to keep you engaged... forever

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#62

Post by thekyle »

anukriti wrote: post #52

Try using Signal side by side with telegram. Telegram has more features but it works the same way as whatsapp. On the other hand signal is trying its best to provide privacy which whatsapp and telegram never do

I think you're being a little harsh on WhatsApp. Although I use Signal personally, I consider WhatsApp to be a good middle. It has more users and features than Signal but also much better privacy than Telegram.

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#63

Post by drannex »

gitgud wrote: post #61
ericol wrote: post #14

I lived in Spain for 5 years and then I returned to my country 13 years ago. Some 8 years ago, Facebook was something that I really enjoyed using. I left way too many friends, close friends, and well, lovers behind. Facebook allowed me to have a healthy relationship with them, even if at a distance. I went back to Spain on 2010 for the wedding of a close friend, and it was like I've been out of the country for 2 mont…

> "I think that fact that people can't easily share other people's post, and are kind of forced to post their own material still makes it an interesting place." That's an interesting observation, this is one of the reasons I don't enjoy Twitter, everything is retweeted (maybe I just don't get it). I find Instagram to be a bit too addictive though. It feels like an endless magazine of glossy images, which learns what…

I used a tool (Blindfold) to disable retweets on all accounts, and it has made Twitter infinitely more enjoyable to use. Link: https://blindfold.social/

The code is opensource as well: https://github.com/matthewmorek/blindfold

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#64

Post by Lammy »

Baeocystin wrote: post #10
trophycase wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with reddit. I don't want to use your damn app!! Guess I won't use it at all. Reddit just infuriated me anyway so that was just the nail in the coffin

The day they get rid of old.reddit.com is the day I quit for good. And I'll be honest, although the writing is on the wall, I really don't want that to happen. I like BBS-style forums! But I refuse to subject myself to the dark-pattern morass that is modern social media design.

I assume the plan is to add enough b̶l̶o̶a̶t̶ features to New Reddit that they "have to" kill the old one to "provide a consistent experience" or something along those lines. I dread that day, but it wouldn't be called "old" if it wasn't coming.

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#66

Post by Lammy »

ipsum2 wrote: post #21
dgfitz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always considered it a forum more than social media.

What's the distinction? They both have a community and social features. Commenting, upvotes/liking, posting links, user profiles. HN mainly lacks private messaging and groups.

(IMHO) It's a forum when the "destination" is certain topics, but a social network when the destination is certain people.

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#67

Post by klipt »

amatecha wrote: post #48
ericol wrote: post #14

I lived in Spain for 5 years and then I returned to my country 13 years ago. Some 8 years ago, Facebook was something that I really enjoyed using. I left way too many friends, close friends, and well, lovers behind. Facebook allowed me to have a healthy relationship with them, even if at a distance. I went back to Spain on 2010 for the wedding of a close friend, and it was like I've been out of the country for 2 mont…

I haven't used FB regularly in about 3 years now (after being an early adopter and heavy user), and honestly the times I logged in to see all the "happy birthday!" notifications, I couldn't believe how far the platform had devolved since I last logged in. It's one of the biggest disappointments of modern technology for me. Such amazing unity of entire communities and families, worldwide, being turned into such an exp…

The way the social media hivemind works these days, it seems halfway to China's "social credit" system, where people can be fired for liking the "wrong" kind of tweet. For now it's safe to just ignore the noise, but I wonder how long before people will be fired for not liking the "right" kind of tweet.

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#68

Post by Scarbutt »

ccktlmazeltov wrote: post #51

Recently I went to Milan and remembered that I had a good friend there. I tried to reach out to him on Facebook and it turns out that he had deleted his account. I couldn't reach out to him again because I never knew his email, or really had much friends in common. It was pretty sad when I think about it. I'm happy that with Facebook I can still keep in touch with most of my friends that I made around the world trave…

Why didn't you ask him for his email?

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#69

Post by cambalache »

imgabe wrote: post #41
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

False equivalence. Images and written text have different effects on the brain and emotions. You follow famous people on social media, who have 1,000x your wealth, travel all the time, get adequate sleep, meals, and exercise -- and it can chip away at your self-worth in a way books just can't.

If someone else's good fortune makes you feel bad, this is a problem with you that you need to remedy in yourself, not a problem with the fact that other people have good fortune. Sorry, editing to clarify because this sounds unnecessarily combative. What I mean is your self-worth should not be externally determined by where you stand in some (mostly imaginary) ranking system compared to random strangers or celebriti…

Sure, if you are a self-sufficient adult with health and your life more or less in order. But these apps dont prey on that kind of people.They prey on naive teenagers who still are maturing, they prey on technologically clueless senior (and not so senior) citizens who believe everything that is on the Internet, they prey on people disenfranchised, the losers in the dating game in the job market. The mental health damage to those kind of populations is huge.

Re: I deleted my Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram accounts, and felt great since

#70

Post by teetertater »

amatecha wrote: post #48
ericol wrote: post #14

I lived in Spain for 5 years and then I returned to my country 13 years ago. Some 8 years ago, Facebook was something that I really enjoyed using. I left way too many friends, close friends, and well, lovers behind. Facebook allowed me to have a healthy relationship with them, even if at a distance. I went back to Spain on 2010 for the wedding of a close friend, and it was like I've been out of the country for 2 mont…

I haven't used FB regularly in about 3 years now (after being an early adopter and heavy user), and honestly the times I logged in to see all the "happy birthday!" notifications, I couldn't believe how far the platform had devolved since I last logged in. It's one of the biggest disappointments of modern technology for me. Such amazing unity of entire communities and families, worldwide, being turned into such an exp…

A measure that could significantly improve your Facebook experience (as it did mine) is to curate the content that you want to see.

A few years ago I started actively clicking "not interested" on every type of content that I didn't want to see, and slowly but surely I managed to get rid of all memes, news, and uninteresting bits.

Now I'm left with discussions about AI papers, local events that friends are attending, and updates from friends in other countries. And even then, my feed is so uninteresting that I'm not tempted to scroll through it every day. Of course, this doesn't remove the million other issues with Facebook but at least it doesn't mess with my happiness

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