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Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

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Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#181

Post by ahmedfromtunis »

yywwbbn wrote: post #168
nicce wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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..).

I wish my experience was similar. About a month ago, Facebook started showing really low quality, and even spammy, content as "Recommended for you".

I spent a day or two reporting every recommended post that I didn't like hoping to tell the algorithm to leave me alone. To no avail.

I still see these posts on my feed whenever I check it. And it's very bad.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#182

Post by ryandrake »

toastercat wrote: post #174
DangitBobby wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not.

> Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. I really have not experienced this, but the several times I've had to interact with a company without a website, phone works wonders and is often quicker. > Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not. I really don't see the issue he…

People have a really weird definition of "need". Nobody needs Facebook. A handful of things might be moderately more difficult without Facebook, but not impossible. I bet if Facebook started charging $1000/hour to use, people would suddenly find it is in fact not really a necessity of life and would somehow find an alternate way to contact their families.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#183

Post by DangitBobby »

ryandrake wrote: post #182
toastercat wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. I really have not experienced this, but the several times I've had to interact with a company without a website, phone works wonders and is often quicker. > Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not. I really don't see the issue he…

People have a really weird definition of "need". Nobody needs Facebook. A handful of things might be moderately more difficult without Facebook, but not impossible. I bet if Facebook started charging $1000/hour to use, people would suddenly find it is in fact not really a necessity of life and would somehow find an alternate way to contact their families.

Really it's difficult to say you "need" much more than a cardboard box and a supply of food and water.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#184

Post by warner25 »

ryandrake wrote: post #182
toastercat wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. I really have not experienced this, but the several times I've had to interact with a company without a website, phone works wonders and is often quicker. > Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not. I really don't see the issue he…

People have a really weird definition of "need". Nobody needs Facebook. A handful of things might be moderately more difficult without Facebook, but not impossible. I bet if Facebook started charging $1000/hour to use, people would suddenly find it is in fact not really a necessity of life and would somehow find an alternate way to contact their families.

If Facebook started charging $1,000/hour to use, all these entities (including government offices... for me, it's not about my family at all) that have de facto chosen to conduct all their public-facing business on Facebook over the past few years would reverse course, and then we really could ditch our accounts with no problem. Let's hope.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#186

Post by warner25 »

toastercat wrote: post #174
DangitBobby wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not.

> Some events or even companies don't have a website, they just have a Facebook page that you have to be logged in to visit. I really have not experienced this, but the several times I've had to interact with a company without a website, phone works wonders and is often quicker. > Also, if your family uses Facebook, they will interact with each other on it whether you are there or not. I really don't see the issue he…

I see it mostly with very small businesses and government offices, especially in small towns or rural areas. Years ago, they might have employed someone part-time to maintain their domain name, server or hosting service, website, etc. Then it became free and much easier to just create a Facebook page, and any layperson in the office can manage it as the social media coordinator. Sometimes they still have a real website, but it hasn't been updated in years. All the recent and relevant information is on their Facebook page.

There was an item on Hacker News a few months ago about the crisis of water contamination at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. As commented on that item, I was there. For a while, a couple Facebook pages were the only sources of timely information for affected residents. All the town hall events, in which US Navy and Army officials answered questions, were streamed live on Facebook, and being logged into a Facebook account was the only way to ask a question if you couldn't attend the town halls in-person (which had limited seating due to COVID). It was probably two weeks before they started putting all the information onto an official non-Facebook web page after people complained about this (during the Facebook town hall events, on behalf of friends and neighbors without Facebook accounts).

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#187

Post by p1peridine »

dicknuckle wrote: post #180
AdvancedCarrot wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thing is I'm not convinced that discord is really any better from a privacy perspective. They still retain all of your messages (including DMs) unencrypted indefinitely with no easy way to remove them. Deleting your account doesn't remove messages either.

I'm not really worried about Discord keeping all my messages about a Robot Lawnmower or a couple pieces of software / games I discuss on there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

> The nothing to hide argument states that individuals have no reason to fear or oppose surveillance programs, unless they are afraid it will uncover their own illicit activities. An individual using this argument may claim that an average person should not worry about government surveillance, as they would have "nothing to hide".

> Edward Snowden remarked "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." He considered claiming nothing to hide as giving up the right of privacy which the government has to protect.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#188

Post by klabb3 »

toastercat wrote: post #82
thenerdhead wrote: post #75

I've found myself between deleting, deactivating, and moderating my use of these apps for many years of my life. I never found deleting or deactivating to be very helpful. At some time or another you're going to need said account for something. While deleting is a bit extreme, some of these services will respect the actual deletion and others will not. I suppose the question at the end of the day is...why bother? I'v…

> At some time or another you're going to need said account for something. Nope for almost all of these. Different strokes different folks. > Facebook Nope. Haven't had one for more than 10 years now. So easy to live life without a FB account. I stay in touch with family and friends by phonecalls and Mumble. > Instagram Used it for maybe 10 minutes in 2013, haven't touched since. > Snapchat Same as Instagram, but in…

> Venmo

The fact that venmo is on this list is hilarious, but yes it is deserved. It's genuinely exciting to see where the limit of shameless growth hacking is, if there is any. Will there ever be a dialysis machine that invites all your friends?

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#189

Post by LB232323 »

People are realizing that social media is draining, predatory, and entirely superfluous.

Of course there are employees here of social media corporations who would want to stem the tide of this mass exodus, but it's useless. Social media corporations have overstepped their boundaries and become a net negative on human society.

Deleting your social media accounts results in an immediate improvement of quality of life and mental wellbeing. These sites are intentionally designed with predatory psychological mechanisms, they are designed by hackers like ourselves, but the hackers who see "social engineering" as a perfectly ethical practice and not simply psychological manipulation.

These services are designed to be addictive, full stop. Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media. Maybe this will bring SV back to its roots, real technological progress for the nation and not desperate bids for data mining based on cheap psychological tricks.

People are growing sickened of the endless scrolls of psychological disturbing viral content combined with the false positivity of human interest stories. It is deepening social divisions, racial conflicts, political partisanship, and general misery. We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections in an increasingly isolated society, and social media stands in the way of this.

Re: Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts

#190

Post by Forgeties79 »

andrewzah wrote: post #178
micronova wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This. These services aren't toxic if you don't follow toxic accounts. This is so wrong, on so many levels. They will capture your clicks, your usage patterns, your interests, and the internet will present to you in a non-neutral way, in a way which will not be in your interest, but in the interest of whoever is paying for the results of your data analysis. A way which will influence your perception of reality in mi…

No. The parent comment’s viewpoint is fine, whereas your absolutist viewpoint is not helpful. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are what you make of them. There’s nothing to “present” if you don’t mindlessly scroll but use them the way they were originally intended: to keep in touch with contacts. For some people it’s just easiest to keep in touch with them on Facebook, etc. There also a lot of good Facebook groups, and m…

I don’t know about you, but when I cut out the toxic folks I actually discovered I wasn’t using Facebook for keeping up with folks at all. That was a side-benefit of the arguing I was doing with folks I hadn’t seen in years. I didn’t realize how insane that was of me, just giving all of these people my emotional and mental energy, until I stopped. And yeah, you can point to me and say, “see? Just stop! It works!” but it took MANY years for me to realize what was happening.
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