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.
> 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.
Is there evidence of a mass exodus? The parent post seems to me like kind of social media post driven by addictive emotions. It's an expression of strong emotions, but curious, exploratory, or providing knowledge.
> real technological progress for the nation
When was YC's motive to serve the 'nation'? They existed long before the recent surge in economic nationalism (a platform of some very bad people in history, BTW), are an international company in an exceptionally international business - one mainly driven by a free international WAN, and, I would have said, and I long heard from SV in general, a desire to change the world for the better. To help people, not some putative 'nation' - which always ends up meaning 'my power', and by talking about the 'nation' instead of people, they exclude other people from power and basic human rights. The purpose of government is to serve and protect people.
I think social media is just serving people what they want. We can argue if this is a good thing or not.
> Addiction is not healthy, and neither is social media.
Maybe I’m an old head, but maybe we need more self discipline in the world? I know this is not pragmatic but I feel there are lots of things that are addictive (even things that were not designed to be).
> We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections
Maybe I’m using social media differently, but what is in today's social media that makes it mutually exclusive to real social connections?
>Maybe I’m an old head, but maybe we need more self discipline in the world?
Quitting and staying off of toxic social media is a great exercise in self discipline.
>>We don't need social media, what we need is real social connections
>Maybe I’m using social media differently, but what is in today's social media that makes it mutually exclusive to real social connections?
That doesn't mean they're mutually exclusive, it means one is overwhelmingly superior to the other, and that the major shift over the past decade has been in the wrong direction.
Even if your take the full libertarian stance that all drugs should be legal, the parent comment did not seem to be advocating for outlawing social media. It was positing that people have realized that social media is an addictive toxin and are deciding, on their own, to bail out. If something is truly addictive, suggesting people develop some self discipline and partake just little seems misguided at best. It's way easier to just abstain completely. Nobody wants to end up like Doug Stamper dispensing three drops of whiskey from syringe onto their tongue.
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).
> 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 2016.
> Tiktok
Same as above.
> Spotify
I listen to music on my harddrive.
> Venmo
Still using Paypal since 2012.
> Twitter
Nope, in fact my life has been significantly improved since I've not had an account. I use Nitter when I want to read a Twitter thread.
Amazon and Google are the only ones that I find very hard to avoid, but Google has gotten increasingly easy to avoid as alternative services are popping up.
> I stay in touch with family and friends by phonecalls and Mumble.
You are a counter-example for sure, but this means that you don't have a group chat platform to plan coordinated events with your friends? Maybe it's an age thing, but getting my friends in a call at a given time to organise a social event is probably as hard as organising the event itself. Compare with Facebook/Messenger/Whatsapp where everyone is in a group chat I can just write "Anyone wants to have dinner at my place this Friday?".
More seriously... My wife has friends that she sees pretty regularly, because we still live in her home state near where she grew up, but I really don't. I'm not sure what they use to organize but I do know that it isn't Facebook or WhatsApp.
I have a couple of friends that I keep in touch with over text but we aren't a group of friends. One of my friends does have a large friend group and I happen to be in a group MMS because of him. But it's not a place where events are organized because his friends are also scattered all over the country.
I use Discord for the group that I play DnD and video games with but, again, we're scattered all over the country. Only one of them is nearby.
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 here unless you have a terribly unhealthy sense of FOMO.
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).
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.
Hilarious! But I frankly see a big difference between having a 1-on-1 conversation with someone, and always being able to see what conversations people are having with each other every minute of the day via Facebook feed.
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?
What really helped me was getting rid of the app and distracting my muscle memory. It was weird to realize how often I was looking at the screen in search for the icon when I was otherwise idle. Once the habit to fill empty time with those was broken life was better. (less "stupid" posts on my mind, more enjoying the outside by looking up instead of the screen etc.)
And once in a while I unfortunately "need" Facebook: Restaurants having current info only there etc. and each time I'm happy not to waste time there anymore
> What really helped me was getting rid of the app and distracting my muscle memory. It was weird to realize how often I was looking at the screen in search for the icon when I was otherwise idle.
This, 100%. I went dry for January and included social media in that. Deleted apps on 1/1 and still find myself occasionally instinctively going to where they were - much less often now, but it was startling at first.
they’re all legally obligated to actually delete your data, feel free to cite the ccpa or gdpr, they’d rather delete the data than contest your residency
you don’t actually need the accounts for anything, I deleted all of mine and felt the same way at first… but 3 years in and I have zero doubts that i’m better off without them, should have done it sooner
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 they are, tend to go off topic very often, and there's nothing to do about it. A designer or an art studio can still post about politics, religion, or whatever the controversy du jour is about. An account about logo design or some python framework, not so much if ever.
This allows me to have a feed whose content I sort of control. With Twitter, it gets even better with lists, so I have ones about dev stuff, others about business topics, etc. and the content there is almost on topic most of the time.
Since I started doing this, the impact of social media on my mood almost vanished, yet I'm still able to closely follow what's happening on topics I really care about.
When I want to see what's happening on the real world, I check my Facebook.
I'm sure aware of how bad these companies are with personal data. So it you think it'd be better to delete your account, then, yes, do it.
> 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).
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..).
>This. These services aren't toxic if you don't follow toxic accounts.
Your ability to moderate your usage of these services doesn’t make them not toxic. Your statement is victim blaming.
These services are still major proprietors of surveillance capitalism. They sell your future behavior to the highest bidder. This is toxic in itself.
Beyond which, your participation in these services is a signal to those who trust you that these services are safe for them to use. They are not, because they are not safe for anyone to use. That you have mitigated the harm through devoting even more of your attention to them doesn’t change that.
Really? You're going to equate this to crimes someone perpetuates against another?
For weeks I've seen posts blaming Ukraine for being invaded and having genocide committed against them. That's victim blaming.
Social media users aren't victims of anything except their own inability to limit and moderate usage. Back in the day people would sit in front of the TV, now it's just a different screen. That's on them. Many people also use social media constructively; to do things like run their business, keep in touch with friends and family, etc...
The naïveté of this take is astounding for someone who frequents a technology message board. You’re just going to ignore the part where these services employ A/B tests to make their services more addictive? You’re going to ignore the countless stories about how Facebook knew that the content they boost is bad for mental health and is addictive but they did it anyway? You’re going to ignore .. the entire surveillance capitalism aspect where an entire industry is predicated upon keeping people engaged?
Have a feeling you’d get a long with the Sackler family famously. Christ.
You can be an impartial observer of predator/prey behavior without considering yourself part of either group. But it doesn’t change the fact that there is a predator/prey relationship. In the case of social media, just like many addictions, there are too many variables at play to propose a simple solution like “just stop doing it.” So when you say people (who are indeed targeted) should “just” do the simple solution or else suffer the consequences, that is victim blaming.
> And commercial food producers make their products more addictive too... How about the tobacco industry? How about illicit drugs? Porn?
How about them? They also designed their products to be addictive.
“Personal Responsibility” is just the shield that powerful companies use to avoid being regulated.
Shift the blame to the exploited and make it clear that their problems stem from their moral deficiency. Pretty convenient all told —- the personal responsibility of the architects of these systems and products somehow evaporates.
Personal responsibility cannot overcome AI designed to addict you. These services are not your friends. You are not the customer or the product. Your future behavior is the product. The only way to win is not to play.
> Personal responsibility cannot overcome AI designed to addict you.
I agree with your general arguments but you're going too far here. Individuals can overcome addiction. That doesn't change the big picture of how additive substances and services effect society as a whole, and I agree corporations use personal responsibility rhetoric to stave off government regulation. But you're going too far by suggesting that individual addicts have no chance of quitting. Many people have quit, proving that it's not impossible. It's good to see the whole forest, but don't forget the trees.
> 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 microscopic and permanent ways, because they will know you more intimately than you know yourself.
Do not interact with surveillance capitalists. You will lose.
One should instead protect its behavioural breadcrumbs and try to use non surveillance ways of communication.
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 marketplace is very useful.
Being able to stay in contact with people is extremely useful. Cutting that out entirely out of spite doesn’t do any good.
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.
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.
Can’t endorse this approach enough. I blocked/unfriended about 15-20 people on Facebook and it got exponentially more pleasant. What’s more, I barely use it now because as it turned out…I was mostly using Facebook to have political arguments and I had no idea. I just thought I needed it to keep up with folks.
Frankly, it’s shocking how much mental energy some random dude you met once 8 years ago can occupy if you let him on your feed. We choose to not remove them due to some vague fear of “the social media bubble” as if we don’t filter out people and organizations we don’t like all the time with or without it.
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.
Same - and this is really the crux of the matter. You are in control of how toxic your social media experience is. Find that a group or particular person is making your world a worse place? Unfollow/Unfriend.
People bemoan the Facebook of old where it was updates from friends old and new, and family - but that's still the core of the product, groups are optional.
These companies hire psychologists in droves to make their products more addictive. There are certainly ways to combat their manipulation techniques, but let's not pretend this is some neutral product and try to pin the blame on the users. Cigarette companies used the same tactic and it hasn't gotten any less repellant.
I did exactly the same thing a few years ago - now it feels like a pull service that I'm in control of, instead of a push service with an algorithm controlling the content I view.
I have a tasty bottle of rather expensive whiskey on the bar in my basement right now. Luxury consumables are a good gift, I guess.
I don't want to drink it right now because I have things to do requiring sobriety, its a bit early in the day for that sort of thing, etc. I got my reasons, none of them terribly interesting.
If I don't want to drink it for various reasons, I merely need to not drink it; for me this is very easy to do, not having an addiction.
An alcoholic whom does not want to drink it, would absolutely need to perform the ritual of dumping it down the drain.
Note that the ritualistic act of pouring alcohol down the drain does not cure alcoholism, it just wastes time and money. And it is just so with social media addicts periodically deleting their accounts. Usually comes alongside a long rationalization and projection about privacy and paranoia about sharing information.
I think pouring the alcohol down the drain does more than just waste time and money: it increases the cost of pouring another drink and creates an opportunity for self-reflection for the addict when popping open another bottle. This can make the difference between pouring one more drink and abstaining for another day.
For the only moderately addicted social media user, the cost of recreating your accounts might actually be greater than abstaining.
And all it would take is a small burst of motivation caused by finding a website that 1. causes self-reflection towards one's use of social media and 2. reduces the cost of deleting your accounts.
Point being, pouring the alcohol down the drain increases the cost of further addiction and increases the likelihood of prolonged abstinence.
Or throws you in a new endless cycle of deleting and recreating accounts with each new account representing a new leaf / new you. I've seen people in this birth/death cycle.
Everyone important in the world already knows my SiL bought it for me, tracked at the point of sale using a loyalty card, tracked via her credit card, her highway pass shows she visited to deliver it to me on my birthday, it probably has a RFID chip somewhere either for theft protection or inventory tracking (maybe in the presentation box not the bottle itself "obviously"?). The bank has a record of what she bought which is probably legally or illegally shared with the health insurance company and/or medical care. Her fitbit tracked her walking thru the store.
But, yeah, the "real" threat to my privacy is people on HN now know I have an expensive bottle of whiskey, LOL. Or my cat-meme sharing account on FB, if I used FB, would know that I have a nice bottle. Because that distractor is the "real threat" not everyone in the paragraph above whom I have zero control over.
If an organization or whatever knows they're going to piss people off, give them a false sense of control. Maybe give them fake elections where both candidates are insiders. Maybe provide corporate oversight by a revolving door between the regulators and the regulated. Its all pretty standard propaganda stuff.
The one little nugget I'm gleaning is that for people who are able, not even volunteering that you're incapable of simply ignoring the account is also worth considering. Like setting up an email filter instead of clicking unsubscribe on a mailing list, since doing so is yet another piece of information.
Volunteer random information or targeted information for who you want your character to be. Never volunteer personal information unless you want your character connected to your person.
Binary thinking. You can ONLY actively consume or actively delete, unthinkable that you can passively not use it.
Its like claiming its impossible for that bottle of whiskey to sit, undrinking, on my basement bar top, whiskey can only either be chugged immediately or angrily poured down the drain. Its impossible that bottle is sitting there without my drinking it.
I assure you, despite your claim that its impossible, I have a mostly full bottle of whiskey on my bar and an unused Facebook account. Why do you believe I'm lying? It seems realistic, reasonable, and a wise course of action.
The other reason deletion is pushed is to provide the illusion of privacy. You have no privacy anymore. Everyone important or actionable has total access to your entire digital life and always has and always will; the government, the banks, the big corporations. Its a false illusion that deleting your cat-meme-sharing account somehow protects you from the credit reporting agencies or the NSA. Its important to provide that false illusion of choice so that people are distracted from the actions of the credit reporting agencies and the NSA and the IRS and the banks and ...
This isn’t binary thinking.
It’s clear you don’t understand people who need these extra steps, and thank god for that. This is a problem I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
However, your lack of understanding does not make it any less relevant or useful.
Ironic that you talk about binary thinking then proceed to think of Privacy only in the binary of having it from government or not.
Aside from you being factually wrong on your take (you have massively over stated the competency of government and big finance, their data is more wrong than it is correct)
That however is not the only, and in many cases not even the most important, realm for which one may want to protect their privacy
At this point I am not sure what is more ignorant, your thoughts on addiction or your thoughts on privacy... it is a pretty close race
No, most people should delete their accounts and go cold turkey. In time, they will begin to see that they never needed it, that human relationships necessarily require reaching out (aka work), and that social media was merely empty calories all along.
People are different. I, personally, find ownership of digital and physical things to “weigh” on me and so deleting something digital or giving something away physical is meaningful to me — it keeps my life simple in this moment, whether I acquire the thing again in future is not relevant. Not everybody is the same :)
> An alcoholic whom does not want to drink it, would absolutely need to perform the ritual of dumping it down the drain.
Nope. Iam an sober alcoholic and don't have any issues with alcohol in my flat around me. In fact there is a bottle of expensive wine standing on the table next to the front door for a few weeks now (kind of a tip for a favor I did) I just dont care. Ill hand it to my mom when I see her next.
I guess its a bit pedantic to point this out. I felt the need to do it.
Unsure how this is so upvoted... It pretty much goes against anything evangelized in Deep Work or Atomic Habits - must reads promoted by most on HN. Y'all need to revisit those books I think ;)
Personally I think it’s a bad idea to delete any of your accounts. It becomes a huge hassle to claim anything if there’s a situation in which you need an account that can show that you have ownership.
In particular if you see a photo of you or yours somewhere and want it modified or removed.
Not to mention there’s really no value in deletion. Log out, stop using all of the clients. The end.
Whether or not you have an account with a service should not matter here. If your country doesn't grant you the legal right to get a photo taken down, then a service won't take it down even if you have an account. And if you do have the legal right do have a photo taken down, then the service will take it down even if you don't have an account, lest they become victim to a lawsuit that they will easily lose.
> Not to mention there’s really no value in deletion. Log out, stop using all of the clients. The end.
I see value in deleting information about me on the Internet. Not to hide it from companies like Facebook (because they probably hold you data even if you delete them), but from other people. You never know who can use your pictures/profile for. Obviously, the first step would be to not publish sensitive information about yourself, but if that ship has already sailed, well, the least you can do is to remove it before you "log out and stop using all the clients".
You don’t need to delete your account to hide it. Deleting your account simply just stops your ability to prove who you are if you later find your stuff archived or mirrored somewhere.
I don’t really see what you gain by deletion. Better off running one of many scripts to delete all your data and retain the account
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).
Sure, but then we'll migrate somewhere else. "They'll be bad eventually" is by no means an argument in favor of instead using a service that is worse now.
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 didn't say anything about message privacy, but it's still strictly better than Facebook because Discord "profiles" feature nothing except a username (which, unlike Facebook, is not required to be your legal name), an avatar, a profile banner, and 190 characters worth of freeform markdown. And unlike Facebook, it doesn't pester you to ever add personal information. A company can't store private information that it never has to begin with. By all means, if you want message privacy, use a service that offers end-to-end encryption, which isn't Discord. (But keep in mind that end-to-end encrypted group chat (as in, not strictly one-to-one) is an impossible and unsalvageable UX boondoggle.)
> 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.
Some groups are really dependent on evidence the person is who they say they were - especially parent groups /Mom groups, health groups, where you’re looking for advice or legitimate local socialization / resource information.
Facebook has no way of actually verifying that you are a parent, so I hope nobody is relying on that to provide any sense of security. And my experience with Google+ is that a real-name policy is a woefully naive way of trying to filter out the maniacs; plenty of deranged people have no qualms about having their actions associated with their legal identities.
Facebook at least doesn’t force me to subscribe to a 5$ service in order to upload images from my phone.
It’s so annoying that they can’t just compress images and videos on the client. Right now I’m always sharing videos and photos to telegram first, since their client actually compresses most of the files below 8MB and then continue sharing it to discord once again.
I agree! But honestly, I prefer some ads which I can block over a monthly pay wall just to share some images in a closed group. Especially since I’m a student :)
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...
marketplace has almost completely replaced craigslist in my area. i do occasionally find some good deals on Craigslist but by far I have a better chance of finding something specific on Fb.
I'd much rather they figured out how to fix their sync service - or at least let me actually delete everything on it and start again! I still get temporary containers coming back months after I have deleted them!
firefox containers is both the killer feature of firefox for me (I can't leave it) and also the jankyest. I don't think mozilla knows they have gold on their hands (but do they ever know?).
I lived through the firefox extension debacle in 2019 or so when FF accidentally let a cert expire and it helpfully uninstalled all my "unverified" extensions, of which container tabs was one. When everything was fixed, my settings were erased.
Except they weren't. To this day, I still get random ghost-like behaviour from my old container tabs settings. Google-contained apps will try to open in my banking container, as I gradually realise all of my containers were deleted but the URL-to-container mapping wasn't, and it was by ID not name, and the IDs have been reused.
Containers should be a core feature because they are /the/ feature ff has over the chrome army right now. I know they were (are?) trying to prove that core features aren't necessary because you can write anything in a web extension (IIRC that's how they justified getting rid of RSS), but it just hasn't been so in my experience.
I suspect that Mozilla looks at the telemetry and very few people use containers. I'd guess because users don't understand what they're good for. Perhaps you, an enthusiastic user, could do a little writeup somewhere (here?) on why they are the cat's meow.
Not many people use any extensions[1], which is why it should not be an extension, even if it is actually an extension in terms of implementation. Certainly I wouldn't expect my parents to discover and install the extension, but I might expect them to be able to be taught to use a first-class feature.
[1]: As the Firefox base dwindles further to only a hard core of techies, this might not be true, but it's probably true of Chrome: only 13 extensions have over 10 million installs and Chrome is used by over 2 billion people.
> I suspect that Mozilla looks at the telemetry and very few people use containers
The UX for using containers is abysmal, so no fucking wonder. This is the problem with "data-driven" design, it falls for the McNamara Fallacy. It's an over-reliance on 'scientific and objective' quantitative metrics while aggressively ignoring qualitative considerations and analysis. You'll never achieve excellence like this.
Containers are simple to use and incredibly useful.
Temporary account containers: automatically makes a new tab isolated from the others. This reduces the data thieves tracking and it allows you to ignore sites that have a limit on the number of articles you read before putting up the paywall. For some sites, there is advantage in using the same container so I use Multi-Account containers.
Multi-Account containers: I have multiple webmail accounts and have a container for each one pinned in my main browser window. For me, these containers are aligned with different businesses that I run and personal stuff. Using them is so easy - right click on a tab and reopen in X container.
Containers (and uBlock and side tabs) should be baked into the browser.
Did it a few years back, trust me you won't miss out on anything important. In fact, the opposite: important things will find a way to you regardless. It's the unimportant things that will filter out.
I'm not even convinced deleting (and especially deactivating) your account does anything besides handing over control to Facebook and others. Perhaps it is better to obfuscate the data in your account and just not log in, even if emotionally less appealing than deleting.
No photo, some random DOB, location and obscure employement history for me.
I used to advertise on FB so had to maintain an account purely for this purpose but noticed a few times that 'people you may know' were usually a result of random encounters looking me up. Maybe because only facebook can verify you're not a creep or something?
One time I asked soemone out on a date and she seemed keen until the next day she had changed her mind. Probably pure coincidence that this person I didn't know until 2 days before was suddenly one of my 'people you may know' list.
Sure enough my blank FB profile was the giveaway that I am actually a serial killer. Now I'd rather these people just go down a rabbit hole of looking through 1000 possible matches and finding nothing instead.
The only reason why I haven't deleted FB is because of the memories shared on there. I haven't posted on my timeline in years. A long time ago, I got spooked when I saw ads that tracked my Google search activity, that's what drove me away from social media in general; an utter lack of respect for the privacy of users. And then I got obsessed with finding out ways to avoid fingerprinting (it's nearly impossible).
On the odd occasion I might log-in to see what people are up to, but for the most part I keep in touch with friends and family through text and sometimes Discord.
I deleted my linkedin because I kept getting nothing but spam emails, with no actual prospects of a job. Tbh I think that entire platform is a cesspool.
> And then I got obsessed with finding out ways to avoid fingerprinting (it's nearly impossible).
At that point it's worth considering heading to a university library and reading the periodicals and books that are housed there.
Obsession = 3+ hours a day attempting to defeat tracking in a category of software designed to track you.
I live about 40 minutes away from a decent university library.
In your first six days of failing to avoid fingerprinting, I would have gotten nine hours of private, uninterrupted reading time.
Even better-- if I chose to read a newspaper in the library, I wouldn't be distracted by a cheapo "companion scroll" taped to the bottom by Silicon Valley types so their underlings can paste "Gellman-Amnesia effect ftw" during breaks in some desperate attempt to misdirect the angst that must come from polishing someone else's ad tech for a living.
The hackernews comments section, populated by people who are looking to talk about their latest argument against social media (guilty), but who typically need to find an appropriate article for that rant to be on topic.
Though I haven't deleted my social media accounts, I don't use them at all even on an occasional basis. I have them for reaching out to my acquaintances/old friends, access content behind login(when I've been shared with their links), etc. After watching The Social Dilemma(1), I've grown even more averse towards social media.
Many regular social media consumers feel that they get useful info out of it along with their entertainment content. Consider this, there are specific sources to get entertainment-netflix,local newspaper website's movie/gossip section,etc. And if one is looking for useful info, the chance of finding the info that is really useful/timely in the specific moment of their life is more via a web search than their infinite feed in their Facebook/twitter/instagram. If you really need an info then you wouldn't rely on random chance/luck that's needed in finding that in your feed.
Here in India, WhatsApp is ubiquitous, it is kind of used as a work chat as well when people are logged out of work MSTeams/Skype. So I have WhatsApp installed but I don't go to it to browse the status messages/pics people post, no matter how tempting it is :). I use other more privacy friendly apps for messaging with family and friends.
It is hard to tell people to stop using social media, sometimes people find it offending/intrusive. But the perspective of life changes if you don't use social media. You seem to have time for more things in life.
We also have to admit that many don't have the luxury(work/professional reasons) to avoid social media altogether.
One thing to watch out for, is that on some platforms (those that are not doing correct email account ownership verification) account might get recreated either by accident or not, by a person using your email address. I think it is better just to remove as much personal data as possible, cleanup account and leave it with updated, more secure password.
One day I asked myself, after I use Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/other social media, how do I feel? The immediate answer was “not good.” Immediately deleted. This was 5 years ago. Not one day have I missed them.
Have a LinkedIn in for professional connections. Anyone that I see/communicate with regularly I just text.
Personally I don't see the value in deleting accounts. I just don't use a service if I don't want to. I have not used Facebook for many many many years. It doesn't matter if my account is active or not. Why do I care? If my account is alive, they have to let it take up some of their storage, sucks for them.
Twitter has been my main source of news. For the news I care about it has been more reliable than main stream media. But I do understand why some people want to stopping using it.
Google is really hard because of YouTube, which is my main source of passive entertainment.
Venmo is surprising to me---how do people use Venmo? Are they using it as social network somehow? I just open it when I need to pay someone, and close it when I finish, like using a wallet. Why are people bothered by it?
It’s pretty interesting to see so many people here suggesting that there’s no value to deleting your account.
Like the added friction of creating a new account doesn’t make it less likely for you to relapse, or increase the time it takes for it to happen.
Like social media applications won’t send you notifications however they can to keep you engaged.
Like it doesn’t affect the companies perceived value to lose real users.
Like it doesn’t diminish network effects to see fewer of the people you like on the platform.
Like retaining the data you’ve contributed doesn’t increase the performance of their machine learning models, broaden their understanding of consumers, or directly provide content for consumption. (okay this point is a bit shaky because it depends on their data deletion policy, or if you can take advantage of CCPA/GDPR, but you get the idea)
I agree that leaving or maintaining healthy use of these platforms ultimately requires developing some amount of self-control, but saying that there’s no value to deleting an account doesn’t seem grounded in truth.
I found it way easier to just delete the majority of my social media accounts than try to curate or moderate their use. Most social media platforms aren’t built with your best interests at heart, why risk it for some momentarily satisfying content/interactions that you could probably find elsewhere?
Don't delete the accounts, delete the data in the accounts. That way you can keep your usernames and logins for various services.
In 2016 I deleted all the tweets I had made over the previous 9 years, and soon after I backed up then cleaned out my FB profile and unfollowed all my contacts. There was a lot of manual labor involved in this because I had auto imported a bunch of stuff early in FBs life, and it was all sort of stuck in there. FBs crappy API and barely functioning admin UI made it slow going, but it was worth it.
As soon as Instagram shows any sign of its popularity waning with my contacts, I'll be deleting all the pics there as well.
I was in high school when FB came out, and man I got sucked into it, posting cringe things everyday. I was lucky I caught myself later on/stopped. Also means I didn't get sucked into TikTok (never used it).
I still partake in social media though just accounts not tied to my name.
I want to delete my FB account but it has all of my old pictures/videos from childhood. I closed it for now, made another one just for family.
The main reason I abandoned my main FB account is too many people that were asking me for money found me and I stupidly accepted their friend requests.
I spend most of my time alone though so social media still has a place for me.
How do you delete facebook if you're at the stage where they've requested you upload a photo ID, passport, SSN, lock of hair, and stool sample just to sign in?
I've been looking for a similar solution for deleting Facebook, though one with a checklist of "don't forget these things you want to keep."
Edit: I'd even pay >$100 just for a ZIP of "everything you might regret deleting." The connections are valueless at this point, but the pictures and my mom's priceless comments on them not so much.
That’s literally the export feature that Facebook had for a decade, for free. I use it regularly because I heard that sometimes it “forgets” older messages though.
The 'How to delete Google' section seems out of place and somewhat forced. The reasoning behind suggesting cleaning/deleting becomes weaker or absent further down the page. I think the page could have done with a bit more focus, just highlight the important ones rather than looking for filler material?
I'm not sure deleting an Instagram account completely removes it from Facebook's servers. I recently deleted an old account, and after it was completely removed, I wanted to create a new one with the same username, but it complained that the username could not be used because it still "exists".
The missing follow-up is how to stay in the loop with your friends and family who continue to use these services.
Many used to be actively helpful by serving web feeds of public content. Now, not only have they removed the feeds, but they actively sabotage their public website to pressure you back into their control.
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?
I deleted my Facebook account around 2017, then went back under a pseudonym (telling all my friends of this account of course), and then just recreating my old account again. Skip forward five years, I barely login to Facebook at all, even just to check up on friends.
There was a really good service like 10 years ago that auto deleted Facebook/Instagram and so on. Sadly (and obviously) Facebook and co were extremely unhappy with such a service existing and took devastating steps to kill it.
That said, it would be great to have some kind of service like that again. It shouldn’t be hard to erase a digital identity, that’s what GDPR stipulates anyway.
I have an Instagram account that I no longer own the e-mail or recovery phone number for. I have the password for it but every time I try to log in I get a ‘suspicious login’ warning and have to verify with said phone number. I want it gone but I cannot delete it. Loathe as I am I would even be willing to provide government ID.
Instagram literally has no contactable support if you aren’t a massive account (200k+ followers or whatever). I feel this should be highly illegal.
I have thought about retaining a lawyer and see if I can twist their arm legally (via GDPR), but I don’t want a simple account deletion to run in the tens of thousands of euros.
I once got my old username released through their generic support ticket system. I never received a reply, but instead found one day that they had processed my request.
Yes, but here comes the problem: where would I send this request? Instagram notes no public facing physical address for my country and their support e-mail just sends back automated replies.
I would send the request both online and by tracked post with a proof of delivery. In the end your lawyer would do the same thing and charge for this at an hourly rate.
The automated ID verification might fail for a variety of reasons (frankly if they don’t originally have a copy I’m not sure what they’d be comparing it to) but the GDPR process should work if you fight long enough. You might need to prove that you owned the email or number though - email might be tricky but number is easier as you can submit a bill or do another subject access request to your provider which should still have records about it.
I'm not sure why one would use this "backgroundchecks" redirection link, which just appears to add ads to the top of the page. The actual site is https://justdeleteme.xyz/
I quickly checked a few of those that say "impossible" and they clearly are possible - kinda makes me think I'd be better off searching for "[service] delete account" and just doing that.
(I did notice some said "subject to applicable law" - so I guess Europe!)
Mozilla, as in the foundation, is broader than the browser and that blog has been running since 2007 with plenty of privacy focused content on it. The point of Mozilla has always been to advocate for an open internet rather than a corporate one, so I don't see the change in objective here. Firefox is one means to that end. Not sure why "marketing", "political" or "activist" are supposed to be negatives.
the part "Whether you want to follow in Neil Young’s footsteps or are already streaming music and podcasts through another service, deleting your stagnant Spotify account is a good idea." has nothing to do with privacy, but with an specific agenda.
I'm slightly out of the loop on the Neil Young stuff but I assume this is about Rogan spreading antivax content or something, which I don't think is very compatible with Mozilla pushing for an internet that is civil, free of misinformation and factual, so it seems to me they're sticking to their principles, which I think are very reasonable.
Mozilla is very active on privacy advocacy and highlights Firefox’s privacy as a feature[0]. This makes some sense because the features of Firefox (cookie blocking, containers, first class ad blocking) all help preserve your privacy better than Chrome or Edge. As part of this advocacy space they’ve also done things like “privacy not included”[1] (the asterisk and lowercase are intentional, similar to the 1987 movie “batteries not included”).
Content-marketing / keyword stuffing, so when you search for "How to delete Instagram", you get on Mozilla website and get to learn about it and eventually decide to download Firefox, which will make money out of ads from Google Searches and other partnerships.
> While the tech giant will likely continue to loom large over our lives, from search to email to our calendars, we can delete inactive or unnecessary Google accounts.
This is a missed opportunity to recommend good alternatives, especially for email and getting people onto their own domains.
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.
My generation doesn’t use emails basically. I changed emails quite a lot through my younger years as did my friends so it wouldn’t have been useful. We used to ask for people’s facebook shortly after meeting them. It’s the best tool to create and maintain your social graph. I understand that not everybody use it this way, and that’s fine, but if you do please think about that. It’s really heart breaking how I lost contact with old friends due to this
Locating and contacting old friends is entirely within your means in 2022. What is most striking to me as someone in my early thirties is how much learned helplessness is associated with these communication technologies that supposedly enhance our capabilities.
Facebook makes it easy to curate the appearance of friendship, but meaningful relationships take time and effort in the real world to maintain. People have traded quantity for quality, and the true impetus for this transformation is that social graphs with more nodes are easier for facebook to make money from.
This enabled me reach out to an ”apparent” friend (someone I had very casual relationship with and didn’t talk to for 10 years) in 30 second. And that person helped my “true” friends evacuate from Ukraine and avoid being killed.
Extended social networks are integral part of humanity and communities. Being isolated and interacting only with handful of true friends is more modern invention.
I can tell you that facebook has allowed me to keep in touch with a huge amount of friends and there’s just no way to look for people in 2022 if they don’t have fb. At least the friends I lost. I travel a lot btw.
Perhaps hand out an e-mail address and/or something else that does not require people to agree to some corporate ToS/privacy policy where people can reach you to the ones you do care about staying in touch with, preemptively for when they or you stops using Facebook, be it by choice or force.
It is not acceptable that a single or a handful of corps should own the digital social room. If you rely only on them, then it is you who close people out, not the ones who choose to leave or get kicked out.
I get that it's a sad situation but you can not put the blame on the ones who left. Learn from that and you won't have to experience it again.
I guess I am part of your generation as well because I recognize your description.
I really strongly disagree with you. Before facebook mail was prevalent and yet it was impossible to keep in touch with people or to find lost friends. When facebook came about it was a godsend, and suddenly it made sense that a monopoly on social graph was the missing piece all along. You might not like facebook for some of the decisions they took, or what you read in the media, but it is still insanely useful to a lot of people however mad you are about it.
As if sending messages to an abandoned account they'll never check is any better? If they close their account instead of abandoning it, you won't waste your time waiting for a response to a message they'll never see. Instead you can ask mutual friends and acquaintances to help you establish contact. This almost always works and only requires a little effort.
Calls, letters, and in-person visits are still a thing, and they are all vastly superior to facebook. Besides, the alternative to deletion is a bunch of zombie accounts that appear to be real people but will never respond to messages. Best to make it obvious and not leave an account around to cause confusion.
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.