People will always find ways to waste their time.
The least you can do is to do it of your own will instead of being pushed into it by conditioning from various social networks.
Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
161–170 of 210 posts
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah I'm pretty sure that the whiskey in the basement isn't spying on you It would be a truly messed up world if that was the case
> whiskey in the basement isn't spying on you Everyone important in the world already knows my SiL bought it for me, tracked at the point of sale using a loyalty card, tracked via her credit card, her highway pass shows she visited to deliver it to me on my birthday, it probably has a RFID chip somewhere either for theft protection or inventory tracking (maybe in the presentation box not the bottle itself "obviously"…
[deleted]
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#163[dead]
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#164How to I delete my HN account?? (not this throwaway account, but my real one)
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#165To protect my mental wellbeing, I find that carefully selecting who to follow on some of these services improves considerably my experience. For Instagram and Twitter, my rule of thumb is to prefer topical accounts to entity ones. That is, accounts that are dedicated to a single topic, no matter how narrow or large the scope, over those of people and/or companies. Personal and business accounts, no matter how focused…
Can’t endorse this approach enough. I blocked/unfriended about 15-20 people on Facebook and it got exponentially more pleasant. What’s more, I barely use it now because as it turned out…I was mostly using Facebook to have political arguments and I had no idea. I just thought I needed it to keep up with folks.
Frankly, it’s shocking how much mental energy some random dude you met once 8 years ago can occupy if you let him on your feed. We choose to not remove them due to some vague fear of “the social media bubble” as if we don’t filter out people and organizations we don’t like all the time with or without it.
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#166The only reason why I haven't deleted FB is because of the memories shared on there. I haven't posted on my timeline in years. A long time ago, I got spooked when I saw ads that tracked my Google search activity, that's what drove me away from social media in general; an utter lack of respect for the privacy of users. And then I got obsessed with finding out ways to avoid fingerprinting (it's nearly impossible). On t…
> And then I got obsessed with finding out ways to avoid fingerprinting (it's nearly impossible).
At that point it's worth considering heading to a university library and reading the periodicals and books that are housed there.
Obsession = 3+ hours a day attempting to defeat tracking in a category of software designed to track you.
I live about 40 minutes away from a decent university library.
In your first six days of failing to avoid fingerprinting, I would have gotten nine hours of private, uninterrupted reading time.
Even better-- if I chose to read a newspaper in the library, I wouldn't be distracted by a cheapo "companion scroll" taped to the bottom by Silicon Valley types so their underlings can paste "Gellman-Amnesia effect ftw" during breaks in some desperate attempt to misdirect the angst that must come from polishing someone else's ad tech for a living.
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Your statement is victim blaming. Really? You're going to equate this to crimes someone perpetuates against another? For weeks I've seen posts blaming Ukraine for being invaded and having genocide committed against them. That's victim blaming. Social media users aren't victims of anything except their own inability to limit and moderate usage. Back in the day people would sit in front of the TV, now it's just a dif…
The naïveté of this take is astounding for someone who frequents a technology message board. You’re just going to ignore the part where these services employ A/B tests to make their services more addictive? You’re going to ignore the countless stories about how Facebook knew that the content they boost is bad for mental health and is addictive but they did it anyway? You’re going to ignore .. the entire surveillance…
I largely agree with the thrust of your argument, but you need to ease off the throttle a bit man.
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> To protect my mental wellbeing, I find that carefully selecting who to follow on some of these services improves considerably my experience. For Instagram and Twitter, my rule of thumb This. These services aren't toxic if you don't follow toxic accounts. Also, I didn't think much about it in the past but now that I split my time between 3 countries and 2 continents, having FB (messenger) is the best way to keep in…
> This. These services aren't toxic if you don't follow toxic accounts Well. They do their best with recommendations and popular posts which try to lurk into your feed anyway. The whole TikTok is kinda based in that idea.
I just reported every post FB recommend to me (not from someone I’m following) as spam and blocked the user. Over time it stopped showing crap to me (at least it seems so..).
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#169Most people don't need to delete their accounts. I have a tasty bottle of rather expensive whiskey on the bar in my basement right now. Luxury consumables are a good gift, I guess. I don't want to drink it right now because I have things to do requiring sobriety, its a bit early in the day for that sort of thing, etc. I got my reasons, none of them terribly interesting. If I don't want to drink it for various reasons…
Unsure how this is so upvoted... It pretty much goes against anything evangelized in Deep Work or Atomic Habits - must reads promoted by most on HN. Y'all need to revisit those books I think ;)
Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
#170Don't delete the accounts, delete the data in the accounts. That way you can keep your usernames and logins for various services.
In 2016 I deleted all the tweets I had made over the previous 9 years, and soon after I backed up then cleaned out my FB profile and unfollowed all my contacts. There was a lot of manual labor involved in this because I had auto imported a bunch of stuff early in FBs life, and it was all sort of stuck in there. FBs crappy API and barely functioning admin UI made it slow going, but it was worth it.
As soon as Instagram shows any sign of its popularity waning with my contacts, I'll be deleting all the pics there as well.