Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters • Hacker News Board

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#11

Post by pcunite » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:28 PM UTC

nothrabannosir wrote: post #9

pcunite wrote: post #6

An account created 40 minutes ago can post something that appears on the front page?

Fot a more zen perspective, consider the upside down: It’s not the poster that got it to the front page, but the people who upvoted it. If those were all fresh accounts, it would have been detected as a voting ring.

Interesting. I guess HN looks at that. It could still be a voting ring from established accounts. Sleeper accounts in fact, some created years ago.

Another serious concern is we have down-voting going on that does not seem to be moderated. I have 4 for simply asking this question!

It requires effort on my part to game the vote system to counter that effect, like saying something funny in one of the casual "techy" threads.

HN is becoming work, and not so much fun anymore. Mob voting mentality is starting to take over ever since Trump's election. Did all the CTR (correct the record) drones come here to where we can't ask a question without punishment?

Notes: Use the down-vote button on this post so that dang can find out who you are.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#12

Post by nxc18 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

I deleted my Facebook to the best of my ability about a week ago.

Fun facts:

* They switch around button colors to trick you into undoing your actions

* They are very eager to log you back in if you, for example, try to access help. This reactivates your account.

* You cannot delete your account on Messenger. They removed the option. Deleting your Facebook profile does not delete your messenger account

* Their doc for deleting your messenger account lies/is out of date.

* There is no shortage of dark patterns in their account delete process.

I ended up manually deleting all my content, unliking everything, and deleting all my posts.

More fun facts: they don't show you all of your content. If you go back and try to clean up your account, do it multiple times. Keep doing it until Facebook can't find anything more to show you. I assume this is a technical optimization, but it means that there is no reliable to see everything you've posted (from the web UI).

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#13

Post by pcunite » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:33 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #8

pcunite wrote: post #6

An account created 40 minutes ago can post something that appears on the front page?

Why not? What matters is article quality.

Thank you for a good point. Would you please look into who is down-voting the heck out of me? I've been here for years and enjoy the good times. What is making this place so touchy?

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#14

Post by hueving » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

pcunite wrote: post #11

nothrabannosir wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fot a more zen perspective, consider the upside down: It’s not the poster that got it to the front page, but the people who upvoted it. If those were all fresh accounts, it would have been detected as a voting ring.

Interesting. I guess HN looks at that. It could still be a voting ring from established accounts. Sleeper accounts in fact, some created years ago. Another serious concern is we have down-voting going on that does not seem to be moderated. I have 4 for simply asking this question! It requires effort on my part to game the vote system to counter that effect, like saying something funny in one of the casual "techy" thr…

>I have 4 for simply asking this question!

That's because it was an awful question implying a voting ring or some other collusion. If you are truly concerned about it, message the mods or flag the post. Don't pollute the conversation with voting conspiracies.

>Notes: Use the down-vote button on this post so that dang can find out who you are.

Don't tempt people to downvote, don't whine about downvotes. Those are both horrifically boring conversation topics so people downvote those comments.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#15

Post by kelnos » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

pcunite wrote: post #13

dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? What matters is article quality.

Thank you for a good point. Would you please look into who is down-voting the heck out of me? I've been here for years and enjoy the good times. What is making this place so touchy?

Meta-discussion in articles is generally discouraged and considered off-topic. Downvoting is pretty common of comments that question why an article is on the site or on the front page. If you don't agree that an article should be here, there's a "flag" link for that. No need for discussion; all that does is detract from the people who do think the article belongs here and want to have an interesting discussion about the article itself, and view comments such as yours as noise.

None of this has anything to do with people being "touchy"[0]; we just want to keep comments that further discussion of the article at the top, and off-topic meta discussion out of the way.

[0] I really dislike characterization of most moderation actions with such emotionally-charged language. The vast majority of my downvotes involve little to no emotion at all.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#16

Post by hcnews » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:41 PM UTC

neurotech1 wrote: post #4

Obligatory non-Paywall link http://archive.is/FVdrM

I guess fullwsj.com got shutdown because of recent facebook limitations. Does the twitter referrer still work for wsj.com?

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#17

Post by jasonlotito » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:43 PM UTC

pcunite wrote: post #13

dang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? What matters is article quality.

Thank you for a good point. Would you please look into who is down-voting the heck out of me? I've been here for years and enjoy the good times. What is making this place so touchy?

There are a number of individuals who will downvote meta comments like this. I, for example, almost always blindly downvote any comment complaining about down votes. The reason is usually fairly simple: it's usually not a worthwhile discussion and off-topic, and I want to strongly discourage that sort of behavior. If you don't think something should be on HN, flag it and leave it at that.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#18

Post by amelius » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:44 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #12

I deleted my Facebook to the best of my ability about a week ago. Fun facts: * They switch around button colors to trick you into undoing your actions * They are very eager to log you back in if you, for example, try to access help. This reactivates your account. * You cannot delete your account on Messenger. They removed the option. Deleting your Facebook profile does not delete your messenger account * Their doc fo…

> If you go back and try to clean up your account, do it multiple times. Keep doing it until Facebook can't find anything more to show you. I assume this is a technical optimization, but it means that there is no reliable to see everything you've posted (from the web UI).

I'm surprised nobody has written a (thirdparty) browser plugin for that task yet.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#19

Post by sorenn111 » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:53 PM UTC

How commonly accepted of a best practice is it to only shadow delete items in a DB. Will GDPR in Europe stop this? As a US user, I always fear that the internet is 100% written in ink. Either because of some caching mechanism, archiving protocol, or general reluctance to delete.

Re: Extra Technical Obstacles for Facebook Quitters

#20

Post by amaccuish » Thu, Apr 05, 2018, 10:55 PM UTC

nxc18 wrote: post #12

I deleted my Facebook to the best of my ability about a week ago. Fun facts: * They switch around button colors to trick you into undoing your actions * They are very eager to log you back in if you, for example, try to access help. This reactivates your account. * You cannot delete your account on Messenger. They removed the option. Deleting your Facebook profile does not delete your messenger account * Their doc fo…

It was when I clicked cancel because they switched the darker blue colour meaning affirmative on to the cancel button that I knew I was making the right call. Just sneaky.

"Delete my account" (dark blue), "Cancel" (light blue). "OK" (light blue; i.e. yes delete my account), "Cancel" (dark blue)