Deleting Facebook
robertheaton.com
Deleting Facebook
1–10 of 60 posts
Re: Deleting Facebook
#2Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years:
1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then
2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next
3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then
4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally
5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.
It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been years since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)
Re: Deleting Facebook
#3I've not gone as far as delete my account, it's still got the network effect for some friends and family but I have deleted it from my phone and now soley use it in a facebook container in firefox.
I find it's actually improved my attention and quality of engaement and I'm more focussed. Plus now I don't check my phone every 10 minutes for a dopamine hit.
Re: Deleting Facebook
#4I did the same a year ago. I wasnt really engaged with it though.
Re: Deleting Facebook
#5Just delete cold turkey and realize in a few days it is not missed. Not really. Do you really care about that inane chatter?
Re: Deleting Facebook
#6I've not gone as far as delete my account, it's still got the network effect for some friends and family but I have deleted it from my phone and now soley use it in a facebook container in firefox. I find it's actually improved my attention and quality of engaement and I'm more focussed. Plus now I don't check my phone every 10 minutes for a dopamine hit.
> Plus now I don't check my phone every 10 minutes for a dopamine hit.
And here we're, on HNs :)
/s
Re: Deleting Facebook
#7If someone can post a script or something that lets you extract all of your friends' birthdays into a Google calendar, it would go a long way towards making deletion more palatable
Re: Deleting Facebook
#8I did the same last month after 13 years on Facebook. I first deleted every data I could manually over the last months. I migrated my only active Messenger contacts to Signal (I was surprised a lot of people I know were already using it). I am not missing it, it was consuming a lot of time and really - in the end it was not worth it. I have seen a lot of old timers leave FB and there is much less activity or anything that could be considered quality content. Just lots of ads and political never ending comment wars. For the record - I am located in EU (Slovakia).
Re: Deleting Facebook
#9Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally…
I don't have any of those. Never did in fact. Yet I still visit Facebook several times a day in the browser, because I'm a member of several automotive groups that I find really useful and I help people out there too.
That's my main problem - the big automotive forums you had 10 years ago have all gone empty, everyone just migrated to Facebook groups. Some forums still hang on(MBClub for instance) but the attendance is miniscule compared to any Mercedes Facebook groups. Like, if someone has a question it probably gets answered within minutes because the discovery is so good, compared with days on a traditional forum.
I just have no idea what to do about it. Facebook has consumed parts of the "old internet" and even if I break with facebook it won't bring those parts back.
Re: Deleting Facebook
#10Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years: 1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; then 2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; next 3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; then 4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally…
I can also offer this advice, as someone who uses Facebook (mainly Marketplace and groups) but is not used by Facebook: limit the number of your Facebook friends to the absolute minimum you can, people who you don't talk to or talk to elsewhere, remove. And also unfollow everyone in your news feed. This will make the news feed show you content only from pages and groups (and possibly a handful of people you actually want to see content from). I never struggled with Facebook addiction, Facebook is so nasty I couldn't even get into it to begin with, but it has some utility which I like to take advantage of so I keep my account around gutted in this way which is so utilitarian and unexciting at this point I don't think I could even get addicted to Facebook if I tried.