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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

#91

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

anukriti wrote: post #54
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…

Agreed. Platforms like facebook are very easy to find and contact with old friends, but when people delete the account it becomes 10x tougher to find them again. I wish people improve their self control when it comes to using apps like instagram and facebook.

How can you expect people to have self control over a system which does everything in its power to weaken/stop that self control?

Facebook in 2010 was what we all loved. It's garbage now, and we all know it.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

ImaCake wrote: post #84

Whenever this topic comes up, there are always a lot of comments to the effect of "facebook isn't the problem, you are". Maybe it is best to think of facebook like sugary food. Many people have no trouble having one piece of chocolate and then leaving the rest for later. Many other people are unable to stop themselves from downing the whole 200g block. I think these comments come from people who have no trouble engag…

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by anta40 »

I still use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Why?

Facebook: I met lots of elementary/junior high school friends many years ago who have been lost contact with more than 2 decades via this platform. Useful, isn't it? Remember, it was before 2010. And I don't spend much time scrolling on my timeline because I prefer group discussions. Remember that Google had shut down it's consumer version of Google Plus.

WhatsApp: My de facto messenger app. Many years ago, it was BlackBerry Messenger. Now Whatsapp. I like this app because it's essentially just a messenger app without useless stuffs like news, job search etc (yes Line, I'm looking at you). Telegram is also cool. It's open source so you can make your own modified version.

Instagram: Ahh Instagram. I don't want to sound like an grumpy old man. Do you remember that in 2010 till 2012, it was a "privillege" only iOS users can enjoy? And when they announced Android version, we Android users shouted in joy? I'm a photography enthusiast so I purposefully post my photos on it. You won't find my latest dinner photos or selfies on beautiful beaches there, promise. I also follow the accounts of some famous photographers and photographers hashtags to provide me more visual references.

People some also to forget that many many years ago, back in the film era, gaining recognition is harder: you need to build years of reputation, publish your works on magazines, do exhibitions on gallery etc. Now? We have social media. Waaayyy easier. Post your photos and in less than 5 minutes, people in Africa or Alaska can enjoy them. Even any kid can do that.

Despite the useless craps, I'm glad that there are people who still use social medias in a sane way :)

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

#94

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

Barrin92 wrote: post #40
ipsum2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>What's the distinction? persistent identity and status, that is to say the 'social' part. A lot of damage of social networks arguably is rooted in the competition for status and attention that you get when you get twitter likes and people complementing you, and the horror when you end up in a shitstorm and your reputation is suddenly ruined. It's also what makes it addictive. Most people on HN just seem to post more…

Anonymity is a major key why older forums were much, much better than our social media of today.

Most forums were based around a hobby or a particular subject, and communities formed around that. Sure, you'd have arguments, or someone stepping out of line, easily solved by a moderator. Sometimes moderators got to powerful and people left and joined another or did something else.

Most of my forum days were based on PC building or video games. Most of them had a bunch of boards with varying topics - and possibly a politics one. You could always separate it out easily because it wasn't visible by default.

Social media today everything is visible by default without anonymity. There is no effective way to filter content - only people, or profiles.

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

#95

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

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

More evidence that Facebook should be broken up. Or, I should be able to create a separate FB Marketplace account.

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

#96

Post by GuiA »

anta40 wrote: post #93

I still use Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. Why? Facebook: I met lots of elementary/junior high school friends many years ago who have been lost contact with more than 2 decades via this platform. Useful, isn't it? Remember, it was before 2010. And I don't spend much time scrolling on my timeline because I prefer group discussions. Remember that Google had shut down it's consumer version of Google Plus. WhatsApp:…

As a photographer, i can guarantee that spending 10 hours on preparing an exhibition will be much more useful than 10 hours “engaging” on Instagram.

A gallery show will bring people to you and your work, let you sell prints, collect emails, potentially meet publishers/other curators/etc. Good luck getting noticed in all the noise on Instagram, or making any money.

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

#97

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

nso95 wrote: post #65

Unfollowing all news sources on Facebook has improved the experience for me. I would see an article, and before long be reading comments from white supremacists and/or SJWs.

Yep, Facebook in my day (I deleted it in 2014), was a lot better. It was just people saying what they did, sharing photos. It seemed a lot less political. And companies weren't fully onboard yet in using their ad campaigns, and politicians weren't either.

And perhaps too bad actors weren't involved.

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

#98

Post by bigbugbag »

dgfitz wrote: post #16
nogabebop23 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what do ya call HN, @manawyddan?

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

A forum is an online place or media where you have social interaction, hence a social media.

You control idea by controling the language. It turns the internet is actually the social media and each and every thing online is de facto also a social media.

Email is a social media, a blog is a social media, bbs is a social media, usenet is a social media, a forum is a social media, a wiki is a social media, and so on.

The name social media is a marketing ploy akin to the "cloud" to manipulate opinion and mind into thinking a certain way about large companies whose business is massively collecting user personal data without providing any meaningful service other than sitting in between the people wanting to interact.

It's a good old switcheroo. When you hear "social media" you could actually revert it back to "the internet" as it used be. But when you hear social media you actually think facebook / twitter, which means the marketing ploy succeeded in its attempt of replacing the internet by facebook/twitter.

And it's not only the word, facebook has actually tried to replace the internet in several countries, notably with the facebook basics program outrageously disrespecting net neutrality. But a few companies are also quite literally replacing the internet infrastructure by their own and the decentralized distributed design by a centralized one.

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

#99

Post by zhoujianfu »

esperent wrote: post #83
teetertater wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

I went a step further and used a script to unfollow everything - all friends, pages, and groups. Once you do that the news feed is completely gone and Facebook becomes a much better experience. I left it this way for about six months and then re-followed my family and ten or so close friends.

Yeah, I manually unfollow all my “friends” that I don’t really know that well/care about the first time they post something annoying. Done!

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

#100

Post by bigbugbag »

dgfitz wrote: post #25
ipsum2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The term "social media" seems to have arrived a good time after forums did on the internet. I remember standing up websites and paying for a vBulletin license in order to add forum functionality a decade before I first heard the term "social media." I could entertain the idea that those old forums were "social media" the whole time, but they sure didn't feel like the cesspool of anger that twitter and facebook seem t…

The explanation is simple, twitter and facebook rely on ads to make profit. to maximize their profit they need to have people spend as much time as possible on their websites.

The most efficient way is to infuriate people. Hence the business model of these companies is to have people outraged and infuriated.

This is a similar strategy to using the media spread fear so people consume more. Simply said someone who's happy, live a fulfilling life free of worry does not feel the urge to buy and consume.

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