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Deleting Facebook

robertheaton.com

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Re: Deleting Facebook

#41

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

justinclift wrote: post #27
Abishek_Muthian wrote: post #12

Those who are planning to delete all Facebook activity(posts) instead of deleting FB account itself, please note that FB seems to be hiding posts at random in the activity log when it detects unusual deleting spree and pops it up on a later date at a random interval. I still find some 10 year old cringe post being the only post in my timeline occasionally, something which should have been deleted several years ago wh…

Wonder if this is just an example of how their particular "distributed, eventually consistent" platform operates due to CAP tradeoffs?

I gave that benefit of doubt to FB but still doesn't explain why random posts turn up at random intervals. Even it was to with CAP, I'm convinced that there's some amount of dark pattern involved just from the fact that 'user is not allowed to perform intended action'.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#43

Post by least »

On Facebook I can (passively) keep up with people I might otherwise rarely speak with. I don't have to call someone to see baby photos, or big life events. A lot of the posts point this out as a negative but frankly I couldn't disagree more. Being able to stay connected with people that I care about, regardless of how I do so, is a positive for me. I have neither the energy nor the extraversion to call up every person I occasionally think of, but on Facebook I can at least stay connected with them on some minor level. And it's the same for other people, too. Many people that I care about but we're both very introverted I've managed to maintain or even improve my relationship with them because Facebook exists.

It's also the hub for my family. Everyone is on it (for better or worse) and ultimately it's the easiest way for us to communicate with each other. Could this be done on an external bulletin board? Sure. Is that at all convenient or even a better solution? Probably not. The older folks aren't really interested in moving platforms, particularly when the one that exists already works perfectly for their use case.

I get it. They don't respect your privacy at all and likely never will. The writer of this post didn't get the same value out of it. He acknowledges that some people might find more utility in it than he does and that is fine. But to gain traction on Hacker News of all things feels peculiar to me. To read all these posts about how positive an impact deleting facebook has been on their lives when they're discussing these effects on another social media website, with even more questionable added value.

I have no connection with anyone on this website. I don't know any of you personally (at least as far as I know) and I've never developed any meaningful relationships with people on here either. The value to me perhaps is occasionally about finding new and interesting articles but more often than not it's largely tied to the discussions about technology with, if not actually, effectively anonymous folk. Those discussions are rarely fulfilling though, and it's often just a platform to try and point out why my point of view is correct or to argue with someone about theirs. I find value in it, but it's definitely not as valuable to me as Facebook.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#44

Post by inglor_cz »

I deleted my Facebook on July 30, 2019. They just rubbed me the wrong way all the time.

I was afraid that disappearing from FB will negatively impact visits to my blog and revenue from selling my books via e-shop, but it actually slowly increased.

I have a nagging suspicion that paying for FB ads was worthless.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#45

Post by hshshs2 »

least wrote: post #43

On Facebook I can (passively) keep up with people I might otherwise rarely speak with. I don't have to call someone to see baby photos, or big life events. A lot of the posts point this out as a negative but frankly I couldn't disagree more. Being able to stay connected with people that I care about, regardless of how I do so, is a positive for me. I have neither the energy nor the extraversion to call up every perso…

It’s about more than privacy, for example, in the past they’ve secretly experimented with manipulating users emotions and weren’t even self aware enough to expect pushback.

They’re manipulating who you see content from and how much and you don’t know how they’re prioritizing it.

It’s one thing to expect this with ads or editorial, but now you’re letting an incredibly untrustworthy company filter your friends and family in the way that they prefer. Most people aren’t even aware this is happening.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28051930

Re: Deleting Facebook

#46

Post by zucked »

gambiting wrote: post #9
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally…

I don't have any of those. Never did in fact. Yet I still visit Facebook several times a day in the browser, because I'm a member of several automotive groups that I find really useful and I help people out there too. That's my main problem - the big automotive forums you had 10 years ago have all gone empty, everyone just migrated to Facebook groups. Some forums still hang on(MBClub for instance) but the attendance…

I'll echo this sentiment - the age old 'get a new car, join a new forum' has been short circuited by FB. That part, I'll concede, is actually not that awful. Having all my old forums email me on my birthday reminds me what a pain it was to have a unique account of half a dozen forums.

The worst part, though, is that searching through the groups on FB is terrible. Like, atrocious. There is a lot of really good knowledge present, but due to the way FB displays it, finding information is a real chore.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#47

Post by zucked »

FriedrichN wrote: post #16

The only downside to deleting your FB account is that you'll have to explain to people why you don't have an account.

I'm finding that this isn't as much an eyebrow raiser as it would have been 2 or 3 years ago.

Source: haven't been "on" Facebook in probably 5+ years at this point. I have a dummy account with bunk info for Marketplace and a few FB groups, but have no friends.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#48

Post by idrios »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #2

Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally…

I quit Facebook 5 years ago when it started getting really toxic for me, but I also have a very addictive personality.

I deleted my Facebook account, then edited my computer's hosts file with 127.0.0.1 facebook.com so that the website would redirect to a "this page could not be found" screen. This prevented me from accidentally reactivating my account and eventually the muscle memory faded

Re: Deleting Facebook

#49

Post by encom »

monkin wrote: post #13

I deleted my main Facebook account in 2012. Two years ago I need to test out some business features and API’s, so I made a new one. They needed my phone number, my gov ID, and my full name. I did everything but shortened my last name so it was “John S.” as I didn’t want it to be searchable. After a day they banned my account, they are dropping my requests to verify or delete it because name on ID isn’t the same as on…

Just imagine the sheer fucking arrogance of demanding people submit government ID for a social media account.

I hate that company with a passion. My mother is addicted to that garbage, and I don't know what to do about it.

Re: Deleting Facebook

#50

Post by willxinc »

yakubin wrote: post #33
willxinc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more likely the case then some conspiracy against users.

Software bugs in practice are rarely caused by fundamental problems. Sloppiness, incompetence and, in this case, different priorities are much more likely. Removing data is not a priority for Facebook. People like to invoke all those theorems from computer science. That gives them an air of being knowledgeable. But at the end of the day, it's much more common that the program malfunctions not because of the halting p…

Did you mean to reply to the parent comment?

But also, going by your logic, whatever is going on here is because something was depirioritized in favour of profit. The issue with that though, is that improper deletion would be detrimental to metrics in my opinion, not positive.

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