I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now. Today as I was browsing I saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se - you have the money, they have the adspace - but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized.
Facebook will never change unless they are forced to. We have signed away perhaps one of the most important experiments ever in digital social networking to a behemoth that chips away at your humanity the longer you stay on it. People who think I'm being dramatic almost always underestimate exactly how much data Facebook, Google, et al. collect on you and the extent to which they use it to manipulate you emotionally or with your wallet. Every facet of Facebook is designed to coerce you into an addiction that results in you spending more and more time on the site while you consume ever more advertising content.
These enormous tech companies are kind of like the fast food of the Internet. They have erased individuality and served us an experience that is mass produced and shrink wrapped for our convenience. It's delicious and addictive, but we keep being told lies about the quality and safety of what we are consuming. We've become so reliant on it we've forgotten how to cook, if you'll extend the metaphor.
I increasingly hate a lot of the what the Internet is. I always feel watched and directed to the point where I have trouble trusting what I'm reading, like watching manufactured drama in a reality TV show. I'm planning on setting up my own website as an expressive space where I can go to be creative and try to consume thoughtful content and (hopefully) make thoughtful content for people in return. I'm hoping there's a world of expressiveness and fun to be had in interacting with people on the Internet on one's own terms.
> I have been mulling cancelling my Facebook account for a while now
Going 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 over a year since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)
I was amazed how well it worked to get off Facebook by removing the button from the phone's home screen. First few days it was weird - when between things I grabbed my phone, unlocked, moved my finger to the palace where I expected Facebook and then was confused "what was it I wanted to do? - oh nothing, damn" and after a week or two I got used to it being away and was mostly off Facebook. Now I use it only when specifically searching for information which (unfortunately) is exclusive there (for some businesses it's simpler to do a FB post than their own thing ...) and when I scroll over my feed quickly think "oh what a waste of time" and am happy for getting past my "addiction".
Won't say it works for everybody, but certainly worth to try. My life got better.
That's a good approach. On top of being easier than going cold turkey, it also lets you slowly migrate all your social needs elsewhere. For instance, having done step 2, you can start telling your friends that you barely ever check Messenger these days - they're more likely to accommodate that than you going all "Facebook is evil and I cleansed myself of it".
When I deleted my account, I went through one additional step:
6. Delete your account. Create a new account under a pseudonym. Add a single friend, who can add you to group chats.
At this point, you should have a near-empty news feed; Facebook is only for staying in touch with the group (eg, not missing out on social events) until people have gotten used to texting you to invite you to things.
You won't be able to comment on anything public because if your account gets reported as a fake, you'll be locked out of the account unless you provide ID (which of course you can't do, since it's not your real name).
I've not been on Facebook for years, and I tried doing this recently. It was relentless in pestering me for a phone number for "security reasons". It would not accept any of the online SMS services I found. I ended up abandoning it.
Right, but the "phone" part of a burner phone is essentially superfluous, it's the sim card that serves the purpose here. Of course you need to put it into something but it doesn't matter what. You can swap your main sim card with a "burner" sim, get the code to authenticate, then swap back. It takes 2 minutes.
You can get a free SIM, but even if you have to pay 5$ or whatever... many people still need to use facebook messenger to get in touch with some people, for instance.
Even if you take it literally as a physical phone instead of SIM, the SMS verification works equally well with 20 EUR Nokia dumbphone as with the latest iPhone.
Yes, but there's no way I'm investing neither money nor time in jumping through silly Facebook hoops. What's to stop them from suddenly requiring dental x-rays, or some other nonsense, for "security reasons"?
Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none.
You can get a "burner" phone number and even a physical phone (that's what I do for whatsapp), but you can't have a burner face to make selfies.
...so now I don't have a FB account at all, and it is very inconvenient.
>Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none.
Damn, I never would have made a Facebook account if that was what the sign up process was when I signed up. That's just fucking insane. How the hell did it get to that point?
If you must, it doesn't seem like a big problem still. Go to thispersondoesnotexist.com, hit F5 a few times to find a nice portrait, then Google "driver license template" and apply basic Photoshop skills.
It probably means you're using your real name and/or your real phone number. Or have an established account with photos of you.
I did not check if images from thispersondoesnotexist.com would work to pass the selfie check, but my guess is that they wouldn't. A professional portrait of someone from a Western country who has never been seen on any photos Facebook owns, not even in the background? That's a red flag. Also, my guess is that Facebook knows about that page and takes precautions.
Anyway, if Facebook tries that hard to make sure I'm not there, why should I join?
3. Unfollow everyone in order to disable the news feed.
I did this to reduce usage and force me to actually visit friends' profiles, but it did its job too well. In the end I noticed that I wasn't really interested in anything I couldn't know by chatting in some other app or in person. The only thing hooking me up was the news feed itself.
If unfollowing everyone is too much effort (or too much potential drama from people assuming unfollow = no longer friends), then there is another way. Someone mentioned the Newsfeed Eradicator plugin the other day -- it replaces the FB News Feed with a thought-provoking quote...!
I've found that to be a really useful extension as well, stops you getting distracted by all the news feed posts when you just logged in to check an event or something.
I know very well why I am still using FB: there is a single group that I am working with that uses it as its main channel of communication. And I don't want to invest the effort to make them switch right now.
What I did was an alternate plan that can work for many:
- Don't install the Facebook app, but the FB Messenger lite app. No access to the walls.
- Mute channels you don't want to be pinged about (most of them except two in my case)
- Logging out of FB on the desktop is a good idea but I really type faster on a keyboard so often when pinged I'll just open up FF (with all the fencing in place) for a quick answer.
>Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years
The main issue, at least for me, is that everything social that is happening is arranged through Facebook. My kids school events, social events in the town i live in, hell even the good old paper adds from our local grocery store has been replaced with posts on Facebook. Everything is announced and coordinated through Facebook.
So going "cold turkey" is not really an option unless i want to be left out of everything that is going on. That doesn't mean i don't care. I don't have the app installed, and usually don't browse it on my phone. Instead i limit it to "checking todays news" on Firefox (with facebook container) on my PC at home.
It starts with replying "I don't have Facebook and won't sign up to this thing" to everyone that explain that they are only on Facebook; even before you close your account. Just signalling that Facebook-only is not ok.
You're not so much being left out of everything as much as they are leaving people (you're far from alone) out of their events.
And that's part of the clever thing Facebook does to make you believe you have no option but theirs.
It took me 3 years from starting to reduce to finally deleting my account. I only wish I did it way sooner.
Being left out of social events is a significant reduction in my quality of life. I've got enough reasons to stay home all day without deliberately excluding myself from social events.
Organizers of these events have enough to manage without going to the effort of finding everyone who is not on facebook and contacting them. And let's stay away from "if they are real friends they will make the extra effort", as it is usually a good way to find out how few 'real friends' you have.
I haven't used my facebook account in over a year. Even if I logged in to follow something like this I'd never see it because I'd never remember to log in and look.
I'm not really worried about being on Facebook but only about wasting too much time checking the stream (or worse: integrating with it in even more stupid ways which could result from excessive browsing). I good surprisingly good results from adding the tiny bit of friction of removing the app from the Android launcher screens, relegating it to App drawer. (and careful push configuration of course)
I still have a facebook account for the sole purpose of messaging those people I only contact once a year. Honestly never really used facebook for anything more than a IM platform. I never felt comfortable posting anything since all family members would be seeing it. And I never liked consuming content on it because I found it all to be low quality shitposts and blog spam.
Before I deleted Facebook (and severely cut down on my Google usage) I imported the birthday list to my own calendars (on Nextcloud). I added all the contacts in my calendar as well (on Nextcloud). This gets synced with DAVx5 when I'm home on WLAN.
Now I keep contact with these people via WhatsApp (due to network effect it has in The Netherlands) and plain old telephone/e-mail as these are included in their contact info.
Don't quit Facebook right away. First, request your data and import this. Manually backup the data I mentioned above (and consider to remove people). Gradually delete all your posts (there's an addon for it, not sure which one I used). Then make a post you're going to leave Facebook. No drama, no reason required. You're just informing people about it. And then you do it: you go through the process of removing your account, and you never log in again. Ie. remove the password from your password manager.
I've also installed containers for GAFAM, and use a myriad of browser addons to protect my privacy.
I had a similar bad habit of mindlessly visiting sites I consider time sinks from the browser. I learned I could edit my hosts file to override the DNS lookup from a comment on HN. Just be sure to cover variants of the url you wish to block, otherwise if you're anything like me you'll start prepending 'www.' to bypass the block.
It's worth it. It is occasionally annoying to not be able to easily interact with some people or find a person or two to talk to, but other than that there isn't much downside. I got back time each day that I was wasting on FB, I found that I didn't care much about the content that I was missing, my privacy has improved, and I got away from the outrage culture that permeates most social networks. After I quit FB I was living with roommates who were constantly agro about random stuff that was ultimately irrelevant which they learned about through IG and Twitter. It was definitely making them less happy.
To be fair, the “ethical dubiousness” of Scientology isn’t much different from the chatholic church, Islam or other organized religions.
They’ve just been the target of specific bad press, which they’re naturally trying to rectify.
And I mean sure we can argue without end if preventing medical care to mentally disabled people is worse or less severe than harboring and protecting child molesters, or if it’s more unrealistic that we all have Alien soul fragments from a Vulcano explosion or that a superhuman beings once defied the laws of biology, chemistry and physics all in ways that are less impressive than what David Copperfield can pull off without assistance. But at the end of the day the all fit in the catagory of “Tax avoiding institutions based on a belief in obvious falsehoods harboring and protecting criminal behavior in their organizations”
At time it honestly seems that the Mobs biggest mistake was not openly proclaiming a belief in man-bear-pig to justify their operations.
Having deleted Facebook 3 years ago made my social life miserable. Any time I tried to join a real-life group activity I was always the one person being out of the loop and I had to pester a single person I chose, constantly, to get any updates. So after a few groups and gigs like that I finally chose to rejoin Facebook.
One thing I tried to keep me out of addiction this time, was to unsubscribe from everything, so my wall is always either empty or only showing updates from the current group I'm participating in. And thus I have no real desire to scroll FB, cause nothing really happens there for me - automatically.
What really bugged was that none of my closest friends really wanted to chat with me for those few years - they seemed to have a real mental barrier against switching to the regular Messages app.
I maintain a hosts-formatted blacklist for all Facebook owned services, like Facebook and Instagram. Combined with a PiHole, its a fairly effective way to reduce tracking exposure to Facebook. https://www.github.developerdan.com/hosts/
Step 1: Admit these people are not your friends and you don't actually have as many friends as you would like and that their lives are meaningless to know about
Step 2: Download your backup copy of horribly over-compressed images and videos that Facebook ruins on your behalf
> "...I saw several Scientology ads. I know Facebook doesn't have an agenda per se [...] but I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized."
scientology is certainly ethically dubious. it's a tax shelter and MLM to financially benefit it's leaders disguised as a religion, which attacks its detractors publicly. that some people find meaning and belonging there is incidental to it's purpose. so no love for scientology.
but why would you expect facebook to ban advertising from them? and why would that be the last straw that made you quit facebook?
facebook (particularly zuckerberg) itself has poor ethics, and that's as good a reason to quit facebook as one should need.
A few weeks ago I just logged out. I have since then never felt the need to log back in. Occasionally on autopilot I start typing the domain but when I realise I need to open my password manager and click a link in an email to log in, I lose interest.
I quit FB as a new year's resolution. The main problem is that it's evil and I don't want to be encouraging more friends into the addiction. Something like TikTok has its evil, but it seems more trapped by their choices. Facebook has had their clear ethical choices and they prioritized growth every time.
I feel we're approaching a sunset of companies that blatantly violate privacy. It's similar to how cigarettes and sugar were king once and suddenly society strikes back at them hard.
As time goes by, bad stuff will gain traction faster, like a global virus, but we'll also develop antibodies for them faster.
What an interesting timing. Just yesterday I got fed up with Facebook after I realized I was somehow angry about politics at 2am on the comments of a post that was 100% filled with bots. I can honestly take everything they (Facebook, Twitter, etc) do to a certain point to claw interactions out of me, but making me angry and my day worse is the breaking point.
Someone should write and maintain a library that can scrape Facebook accounts. This library could be used by software that can help people stay away from FB without the downside of missing out on things like events or groups.
This would be impossible to maintain. Facebook regularly changes the layout of pages, and mangles the DOM to defeat adblocking, and also likely take anti scraping measures.
Yes, but are you familiar with the tool Youtube-DL, which is open-source, runs on Linux, and allows users to download content from youtube? This tool is very useful, and is constantly being updated after changes on YouTube that break the tool. If the tool doesn't work, you simply invoke it with the "-U" flag and it updates itself. So far, this tool has not failed me.
I think a similar approach could be taken by this scraping library, though I admit it would be a lot of work to maintain it.
> I was still struck by the brazenness of advertising something whose ethical dubiousness has been so thoroughly publicized.
I actually don't entirely see the problem here. I mean taking money from Scientologists to fund services I use (I don't use facebook, but hypothetically if I did ...) is a good thing in my view.
I guess you are worried that people will convert to Scientology, but really if the only thing that is keeping people from being Scientologists is not knowing about it then I think the problem is in no way related to Scientology.
The real issue then is that large swathes of society have been advocating for completely abandoning any sense of objective values while they loudly shout value judgements at the top of their lungs like petulant children with no sense of propriety having temper tantrums.
Blocking Scientology ads won't change that. You can't fix a problem not caused by the visibility of Scientology adds by changing the visibility of Scientology ads.
Ads don't just inform people that Scientology exists, that's widely known. They try to manipulate them into joining. The "real" problem here is that people can be manipulated like that. But until we find a way to remove that vulnerability we must stop Scientology from exploiting it.
"Why does your goal of trying to limit their "manipulation" have more validity than their goal of limiting yours?"
Because Scientology's views aren't held in good faith and claims about society should be assumed to be pretexts used to justify the quoted excuse for predatory behavior. Scientology has a history of fraud, kidnapping, extortion, and other extreme exploitation and don't deserve any benefit of the doubt. Their views do have less validity since they're known bad actors.
I personally think they are kooks, and their views are less valid to me, but I also realize that it's just my subjective opinion. They also have the subjective opinion that their views are valid to them, and our views have less validity. No way to say who's "right", so they should be allowed to advertise until we agree on laws (still subjective) to possibly invalidate their views.
They are not mere kooks. They are an organized criminal enterprise. They've engaged in arson, kidnapping, extortion, attempted assassinations, money laundering, and other criminal acts. They are actively malicious and that's as realistic a line for dividing who is and isn't right there is.
Facebook will never change unless they are forced to. We have signed away perhaps one of the most important experiments ever in digital social networking to a behemoth that chips away at your humanity the longer you stay on it. People who think I'm being dramatic almost always underestimate exactly how much data Facebook, Google, et al. collect on you and the extent to which they use it to manipulate you emotionally or with your wallet. Every facet of Facebook is designed to coerce you into an addiction that results in you spending more and more time on the site while you consume ever more advertising content.
These enormous tech companies are kind of like the fast food of the Internet. They have erased individuality and served us an experience that is mass produced and shrink wrapped for our convenience. It's delicious and addictive, but we keep being told lies about the quality and safety of what we are consuming. We've become so reliant on it we've forgotten how to cook, if you'll extend the metaphor.
I increasingly hate a lot of the what the Internet is. I always feel watched and directed to the point where I have trouble trusting what I'm reading, like watching manufactured drama in a reality TV show. I'm planning on setting up my own website as an expressive space where I can go to be creative and try to consume thoughtful content and (hopefully) make thoughtful content for people in return. I'm hoping there's a world of expressiveness and fun to be had in interacting with people on the Internet on one's own terms.
Hope it turns out well!