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

shogan.co.uk

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

#71

Post by fnenrjfkdke »

anukriti wrote: post #60
stevage wrote: post #35

Scientifically, it's not a robust conclusion. The kind of person who wants to delete FB etc is the kind of person who will feel better after they do it. Personally, I just use FB in a pretty restricted way. I unfollow most friends unless they post stuff I like engaging with. I give FB the bare minimum of my own personal data, and block all the ads they serve. I mostly post questions for discussion, rather than highli…

> I don't use WhatsApp by choice, but occasionally it's someone else's preferred way to communicate. I don't have a problem with it. I think this is a good point, just like you are expecting people to contact you on telegram there must be some people who would like you to contact them on whataspp.

On the contrary, _refusing_ to honor others' choice walled garden may eventually make it enough of a problem to warrant renewed efforts towards interoperability.

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

#73

Post by peterburkimsher »

I have accounts on many platforms, including those 3. If you feel like you can't give something up, that's a good reason to spend a few weeks breaking the addiction.

When I did that for BBC News and 9gag, I decided that I didn't want to go back to reading those sites (although I do click through sometimes from HN).

I still use Facebook messages through mbasic.facebook.com on an old phone. I don't use 3G (or 4G or 5G), but read books on my phone or offline Wikipedia when on the bus. The news feed never interested me; it was all about having contact Lists, organising Events, and discussing topics in common-interest Groups.

WhatsApp won't work on my old iOS 6, so I use it on Bluestacks and check it only when needed. The group chats on there would drive me crazy if they actually made notifications on my phone. Instagram seems to be full of pretty girls and memes, which I guess isn't that different to 9gag in some ways.

Instead of complaining about data being sold, why don't we try to build a better social network? CouchSurfing put up a paywall. The community is moving en-masse to BeWelcome, a donation-funded, volunteer-driven, open-source, ad-free platform.

The BeWelcome site is managed under a French non-profit, BeVolunteer: the same structure as Wikipedia and Wikimedia. I think that other projects could be part of the same organisation. Why stop at hospitality exchange? I think that if BeWelcome can get critical mass, a related site could then break into mainstream social networking.

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

#74

Post by deviation »

I'm getting quite sick of reading these blanket templated "I stopped using X and I feel great!" blog posts.

Don't get me wrong, having more freedoms is an extraordinary thing. But everything has a valid use-case, including Facebook. Blanket deleting social media at this point just feels like a cheap-shot to get clicks and overshadows the more realistic benefits such as reconnecting with old friends, talking to tech illiterate family members, etc.

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

#75

Post by imgabe »

cambalache wrote: post #69
imgabe wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dam…

No, you don't have to wait for everything else in your life to be perfectly arranged in order to take charge of your own feeling of self worth. In fact doing so makes it far less likely that it will ever happen.

This trend of telling people that they are helpless victims of their circumstances comes from a place of compassion, but it is ultimately causing more harm than good. Yes, some things that happen to you, beyond your control, may put you at a disadvantage compared to others. This is not usually insurmountable, and it does not mean that you aren't capable of overcoming it.

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

#76

Post by standardUser »

WhatsApp is a popular communication interface. Giving up WhatsApp is like giving up email or texting or phone calls. In some countries, it's a more dominate form of communication than any of those.

If you want to give up communicating remotely with humans, OK I guess. Have fun. But giving up one specific interface? That's meaningless. It's like giving up Sauvignon Blanc but drinking Pinot Grigio everyday.

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

#77

Post by standardUser »

johannes1234321 wrote: post #12

I got off Facebook 1.5 years ago as well. Removed my special Facebook browser I used (removed the app long ago) and at first it was weird as I was used to hitting it, whenever I had a few minutes of nothing. But after a week or so it felt great. Less screen time, less mental burden from seeing "stupid" posts, less useless discussions, ... Couldn't get of WhatsApp, yet, as it's too often the default for friends and fa…

I lived in a foreign country recently and Facebook groups were far and away the most important tool I had for meeting people and establishing myself. WhatsApp was the dominate form of communicating with people who lived there. And Instagram was the primary way I kept in touch with my closest friends on other continents.

These things are useful, and just because they can be misused does not make them any less useful.

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

#78

Post by commoner »

celestialcheese wrote: post #29

It's tough for me to get rid of facebook these days, purely because of FB marketplace. It has almost completely eliminated craigslist in my area for a lot of used items and is significantly nicer to buy/sell things in your area. I got rid of the timeline by unfollowing _everyone_. Timeline is completely empty. It's bliss

There are other local marketplace platforms, such as OfferUp, that offer the same experience as Facebook Marketplace without tracking users as severely as Facebook does.

https://offerup.com

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

#79

Post by ciarannolan »

diego_moita wrote: post #46
ciarannolan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Genius. How large and active is that group chat?

Not too big, about 50 people. It is not a perfect solution, sometimes people send images with political memes. For these I made another bot that temporarily puts the offender under quarantine. Also, remember to use regular expressions to filter out common letter substituions. So, in Brazil, to filter out our very stupid president (Bolsonaro) I use: b[0o][1l][5s][0o]n[a4]r[0o]

>>family group

>Not too big, about 50 people.

Your country has a different definition of "big family" than mine :)

My family WhatsApp is 5 people.

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

#80

Post by ImaCake »

kilo_bravo_3 wrote: post #37

People who get sad looking at other people's lives on Instagram are likely so emotionally fragile that they'd probably get sad reading a book about other people's lives. Burn all books. "I burned my books, magazines, and eReaders and I FEEL FUCKING AMAZING OH MY GOD IF YOU COULD EXPERIENCE THIS LEVEL OF PURE UNADULTERATED JOY AND CONTENTMENT YOU WOULD SHIT YOURSELF."

This is incredibly callous and ignorant. Anyone who isn't a sociopath is subject to their emotions being manipulated by the content they view. Puppies make them happy. Dead people make them sad. Same with basically anything in between (but harder to measure small effects). The reason to stop browsing curated feeds designed to deliver advertisements is because these will effect you, and they are likely doing so in a way that is not in your best interest.
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