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

blog.mozilla.org

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

#71

Post by AdvancedCarrot »

kibwen wrote: post #44
amin wrote: post #33

I have friends and family, and groups in which I discuss highly specific topics. I don't think there's a better tool than Facebook that allows me to stay up to date on things that are important to me. The equivalent subreddits are of much worse quality. I know this will get downvotes, but this is my opinion.

Discord has taken over this role for me and all my social groups. And unlike Facebook there's no ads, no viral bullshit, no astroturfers, no personal information, and you can keep your identities separate across multiple social circles (all of which are private and invite-only by default).

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.

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

#72

Post by nathias »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #46

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 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…

Yea, I have followed a lot of philosophy professors and when COVID started the accounts started to behave like a botnet really aggressively retweeting anti-trump and covid mainstream media. I really don't know if that was actually a set of hacked accounts or if people really started to behave like locust. But just unfollowing people that just have opinions about 'current thing' will do a lot for the quality of your timeline.

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

#73

Post by Mikeb85 »

ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #46

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 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…

> 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 touch with people without bugging them with my several phone numbers (and charges that may occur, thanks Canadian telecoms).

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

#74

Post by dicknuckle »

derwiki wrote: post #30
Chernobog wrote: post #25

I communicate with a lot of people on Facebook, but I hated that I ended up scrolling my feed. So I unfollowed everything and now I have an empty feed and nothing to scroll. I realize many have reasons to get rid of Facebook entirely, but for me this was a reasonable compromise.

I’ve been using Beeper to use Facebook messages without using Facebook directly.

I've been using Disa.im but every few years FB breaks the API it uses for a few days or weeks at a time.

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

#75

Post by thenerdhead »

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've found it much more easy to "declutter" by following digital minimalism practices of getting rid of apps, only using browsers, practicing mindfulness of said platforms, and only using said platforms with a specific intention.

There's a laundry list of tips you could use to make social media harder to use or even more bearable, but the most effective approach I've used is simple moderation and mindfulness.

Also why is Mozilla writing articles about this? I get the privacy angle, but aren't they also willing to put ads in front of people and other partnerships sacrificing that privacy for users? Like how does Mozilla make money outside of Google search engine being the default? I do know they lay off many of my friends who work on dev tools or even mobile apps there(i.e. browsers).

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

#77

Post by FYYFFF »

leros wrote: post #62
amin wrote: post #33

I have friends and family, and groups in which I discuss highly specific topics. I don't think there's a better tool than Facebook that allows me to stay up to date on things that are important to me. The equivalent subreddits are of much worse quality. I know this will get downvotes, but this is my opinion.

I've been without Facebook for a decade now. Given what I know, it sounds like I'm missing out on some good stuff going on in Facebook Groups. I also hear Facebook Marketplace is the new Craigslist but Craigslist has been good enough for me still.

Marketplace is a mess. Absolutely unusable. The sheer volume of paid ads mixed with volumes of scams and really, really obnoxious creative (think borderline porn)makes it impossible to use with any clarity. Or even to use to find something specific.

It shows how awful FB is at design and UX. They really are the Fisher Price of the web. Its seems as if they build for stupid people who have no tech skills... In other words: the majority of people...

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

#79

Post by jiffygist »

I have an old facebook account registered using the email address that no longer exists so it is impossible for me to log into it. Yet it still exists and appears in google search results.

I would've written to the support, but I can't find any way to contact facebook. Any suggestions?

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

#80

Post by crossroadsguy »

I deleted my Facebook account. Good decision. The username - my first name (very common in my country) - was then used by a guy who regularly posts sexist, religious hatred, general ultra right wing posts - he’s kinda high up in a state committee of the ruling party. I kinda feel bad about that. (Same guy got my Instagram handle as well - I think he was waiting for it)

Then I had to open a Facebook account anyway, because house hunting here became next to impossible without it. So that’s there.

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