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I deleted my social media accounts

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Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#221

Post by coldpepper »

jmspring wrote: post #197
nindalf wrote: post #38

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…

It’s funny, a few groups I belong to solely use FB. One group is for the preservation of weatern history and a friend digitizes and uploads thousands of pictures (if not 10s of rhoughsands) yearly. The only actual digital copies are on FB. It bugs me that he won’t archive elsewhere. The reason is fb is a commons and an additional backup would be a magnitude more work. I’ve offered to buy hard drives.

Why not upload to archive.org?

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#222

Post by [deleted] »

angoragoats wrote: post #169
paularmstrong wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be taken immediately. Source me, former Twitter employee pre 2021

It must have changed between when you worked there and now, because I just checked and I can't sign up with my old handle (despite it returning a "this account doesn't exist" error when attempting to view it).

[deleted]

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#223

Post by throwaway290 »

angoragoats wrote: post #169
paularmstrong wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be taken immediately. Source me, former Twitter employee pre 2021

It must have changed between when you worked there and now, because I just checked and I can't sign up with my old handle (despite it returning a "this account doesn't exist" error when attempting to view it).

As of 2023 the model was to allow taking a handle even if it already exists but did not post for a while: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-inactive...

So it seems unlikely they would keep deleted handles forever. I bet they become part of this marketplace program a la "premium domains".

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#224

Post by Semaphor »

nindalf wrote: post #38

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…

> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on.

I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#225

Post by davidclark »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #96
angoragoats wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does keeping the account actually do to prevent scamming? They’re going to scam regardless.

That's pretty much the only upside to that blue checkmark these days. Making anyone able to buy one was a huge mistake, but they will at least do the minium check to see if someone else with that name already has a checkmark.

Is this a thing? Why would it be? Look at my username - how many people with that name exist in the world?

Only one of us can have a blue check on Twitter? Which one?

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#226

Post by scarface_74 »

I think commenters here are missing out on one beneficial part of social media - Facebook groups and communities of interest especially private, moderated groups. Broadcast and discussions are a perfect use case for it.

And people talk about how bad Facebook is, LinkedIn is far worse. Everyone is trying to be a “thought leader” and no one is genuine on it.

I have a decent LinkedIn Profile with recommendations, up to date career information. But I never post to it.

I’m only really active when I’m looking for a job. I will respond to messages and try to keep my network somewhat warm.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#227

Post by brightball »

Semaphor wrote: post #224
nindalf wrote: post #38

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…

> Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I wish I would still see those. While I have an account, I rarely use FB nowadays, because the algorithm thinks I’ll be more interested in stuff I don’t care about. So when I go to FB I tend to close the tab again a few seconds later…

I just started aggressively unfollowing and hiding stuff I really didn’t want to see. I used to hate the idea of doing that, but I realized if not doing it was making me want to cut off everybody then I was probably better off just filtering aggressively.

Now my feed is very pleasant. Family updates, sports news, friends vacation pictures and jokes.

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#228

Post by throwawayq3423 »

dehrmann wrote: post #137
amikaeel wrote: post #42

I deleted social media around 2.5 years ago. After feeling extreme anxiety and withdrawal for about a week I realized this was the right move. I gained massive amounts of productivity, felt more awake than ever, and realized just how many HOURS I was killing browsing. It sounds like the usual rant, but I truly think that in 10-15 years there will be a huge anti social media movement after we fully realize the damage.…

What if I told you Hacker News is social media?

It's too boring to be social media (in a good way)

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#229

Post by scarface_74 »

llm_nerd wrote: post #134
nindalf wrote: post #38

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…

Lots of other replies already so apologies for adding to the clutter, but this sort of message always appears and it feels super dated. Like, 2003-era sentiment about the Facebook heyday. Facebook is like a ghost town now from the "social" and family perspective. I imagine some circles might be strong on it, but from every time this comes up it's clear that the vast majority of normal people have largely abandoned it…

> Facebook is like a ghost town now from the "social" and family perspective.

I looked at my Facebook profile with 400 friends and they are mostly ads, memes and inspirational sayings. It’s really useless.

I have four SMS groups of friends/family I care about. My wife gets more value out of it than I do because she is part of a few groups that she cares about

Re: I deleted my social media accounts

#230

Post by ofcourseyoudo »

nindalf wrote: post #38

This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…

Thinking you can blast something on social media and your friends and family will see it is an old mentality. Even non super tech-savvy people know now what the algorithms are, and they know that everyone regularly misses updates from everyone else.

And that light connection to people through social media wasn't a thing that created "close friends" anyway. It add to those weak connections that do have value but I doubt many people create intimate friend relationships solely through social media.

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