Goodbye Facebook
thetechblock.com
Goodbye Facebook
1–10 of 19 posts
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#2I think more and more people will be leaving Facebook in the coming years. However, what it's the only company that ties in a bunch of services together. Sure, Twitter, I think is better for messaging, and Instagram (for now) is better for photos, but nobody is doing them all. And even though it's not GREAT on FB, it's going to be hard to take them down.
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#3I think more and more people will be leaving Facebook in the coming years. However, what it's the only company that ties in a bunch of services together. Sure, Twitter, I think is better for messaging, and Instagram (for now) is better for photos, but nobody is doing them all. And even though it's not GREAT on FB, it's going to be hard to take them down.
With the right amount of willpower you can stop using these services... I haven't been on facebook in over 2 years, and it's increased my productivity drastically. I also avoid services that require me to sign up with Facebook, I hate lock-in and I won't be a part of it. Long live the open web!
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#4Facebook is the one your family is on, and your family's news and personality emissions are quite literally priceless for many, many, many people. Most, even.
If you want to come for Facebook you'd better bring a bigger gun than "I'm an East Coast technopriest in my twenties who doesn't particularly care to know what browser game my great-auntie enjoys".
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#5it's about time, this article really convinced me to get rid of mine.
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#6When I first heard of Facebook, I was in high school.
Spoken like it was ages ago.. does this mean I'm old now? (to juxtapose, when I was in high school, I first heard of the WWW)
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#7On a side note, I'm a regular Facebook user who just stopped using the service completely. Trust me, you should quit Facebook, if you are-
1) Working on a product/idea/startup
2)Trying to be more productive
3)Wanting to spend some time with REAL people
This advice is from a fellow HN member who fell for the addiction and would update an average of 1 status per day.
BEFORE you quit Facebook, you need to find the pointers that lead you to it.
Pointer #1 - Frequently visited links
If you are on Chrome (or Firefox or Opera or IE), find out a way to delete the Facebook shortcut that appears the moment you open a new tab. By doing this, you will be able to reduce approx. 60% of your urge to use the service. Meaning, if you thought about visiting facebook 100 times on an average a day, you would visit it only 40 times (previously you visited it all the 100 times).
What you're doing here is basically making it difficult (or rather creating a tiny hurdle or bad user experience) such that you would have time to think twice before you visit the service.
Pointer #2 - Deactivate your facebook account temporarily
(Under Account->Security->Deactivate->This is temporary, I'll be back)
This way, even if you typed www.facebook.com in your address bar, you would be taken to the login page (or homepage) instead of being taken directly to your feed (your worst enemy!). since there's nothing engaging about the homepage nor the login page, you would feel hesitant to login (with due course of time) and you would come back to doing whatever you were doing before. Promise yourself that you will spend no longer than 2 seconds on the login page.
You will be surprised, how such a tiny action could help you overcome this addiction for a LONG period of time.
NOW. Wait for about 3-4 days. The temptation to login would have gone, but not completely. So, to erase it completely, login again AFTER 4-5 days. Look at your feed. By now, you would start to feel it's become (sort of) irrelevant since you were no longer staying updated with it. You will also have NO notifications. Generally, the motivation to login is to look at that tiny red piece of notification icon. But now that that is gone, you will feel 'disappointed' (I swear you will) and you will lose interest in the service. Now deactivate again. Login after a good 10-12 days. Repeat this and rinse. But increase the time period from 10 days to 20 days and keep on increasing. In a matter of 1-2 months, you would have learnt to ignore the service and master yourself. Just keep this in mind, whenever you login to the service, promise yourself not to spend more than 5 mins. If you do so, 'punish' yourself by de-activating your account and not logging into the service for a couple of days.
Hope this helps! It worked well for me :D
Cheers!
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#8I think more and more people will be leaving Facebook in the coming years. However, what it's the only company that ties in a bunch of services together. Sure, Twitter, I think is better for messaging, and Instagram (for now) is better for photos, but nobody is doing them all. And even though it's not GREAT on FB, it's going to be hard to take them down.
No problem if people want to leave FB, don't use it too much myself anymore. Just don't understand why everyone has to write a blog post like they are doing charting new ground when they leave.
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#9Facebook is the one your family is on, and your family's news and personality emissions are quite literally priceless for many, many, many people. Most, even. If you want to come for Facebook you'd better bring a bigger gun than "I'm an East Coast technopriest in my twenties who doesn't particularly care to know what browser game my great-auntie enjoys".
Like it or not, FB is ubiquitous for many. People will use it to make important announcements. "What do you mean you didn't know I was engaged? I announced it on Facebook!" The counter is that it's rude to assume everyone is on Facebook. The same, however, can be said of email or SMS.
Re: Goodbye Facebook
#10Facebook is the one your family is on, and your family's news and personality emissions are quite literally priceless for many, many, many people. Most, even. If you want to come for Facebook you'd better bring a bigger gun than "I'm an East Coast technopriest in my twenties who doesn't particularly care to know what browser game my great-auntie enjoys".
"your family's news and personality emissions are quite literally priceless for many, many, many people. Most, even."
I wouldn't go that far. Its the technological equivalent of being shown an absolute flood of your aunt's cousin's brother's kid's meaningless crayon scrawls on construction paper and feeling socially obligated to click the like button, err, I mean pat them on the head and say that's very nice art, junior. I know very well what the "socially correct" action is, but its certainly of no actual interest to me, and frankly I'm enough of my own man to be strong enough to ignore it.
That's why most people who quit sound wishy washy in person about it, however brave they sound on the net, in order to keep the peace. Um, well, I had to quit facebook because err, ah, its blocked at work, or I used up my phone data plan or it crashes on my phone too much or whatever. Not the truth, that its really boring and I've got better ways to waste my time.