The thing that holds me to Facebook is that it's become the town square for my local community. It's where people go to discuss the community's political challenges. So many important dialogs about local issues happen on Facebook, and it's the only real way to be a part of those conversations. Things like zoning, planning, city and county budgeting, ordinances, and so on.<p>If I leave, not only do I lose the ability to participate in those conversations in a significant way - I lose awareness that they're even happening. The newspaper (what's left of it) certainly doesn't cover them. I have many friends who I see on a regular basis in person, but we don't always talk about all of them. And when we do, it's often inspired by conversations that were already happening on Facebook and a continuation of the conversations happening there.<p>We need a good replacement for this piece of it. Having an accessible, local town square where all the local activists, citizens, and officials can interact and dialog about local issues is really invaluable.
I just passed my two year anniversary with no FB, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat and I've never been happier. I convinced my wife to cut the cord about a year ago and she completely agrees. For me it was an addiction. I was compulsively checking FB many times an hour to stay caught up with people. This was after culling my friends list multiple times. Turns out, life goes on just fine without a constant water hose of relationship/political drama.<p>Ultimately, it is no more difficult to stay in touch with my real friends than it was with FB. I rely on text, phone calls, and emails. Occasionally, I will use LinkedIn to touch base with people, but primarily, I just text/call. And honestly, it's great.<p>I highly recommend cutting the cord.
To me, Facebook provides enough value that I don't feel the benefits of deleting it outweigh the benefits of keeping it.<p>Without it, I have no connection at all to some of my old friends. While I don't necessarily need to be connected to them, it's nice to see how people are doing every once in a while.<p>LinkedIn fulfills this desire in some ways, but I don't typically connect with my "outside-of-work" friends on LinkedIn. Plus, LinkedIn has its own host of privacy issues, so it's not really a great replacement in the sense of improving privacy.<p>There are also the useful community aspects. I often find out about local events through Facebook. I suppose Meetup or similar sites could replace that function. But my friends also use Facebook's events to organize parties and stuff - I don't know any good alternative that's nearly as convenient.<p>I'm not convinced that deleting your account helps all that much anyways. You do make it harder for Facebook to listen in from your phone and things like that, but I'm sure they still keep a detailed profile on you. And you can get those benefits just by deleting the mobile app, without deleting your account.<p>I think the better reason to delete Facebook is the mental health issues with the whole spotlight effect or whatever that's called (where you only see the highlights of other people's lives which makes you feel like your life is boring). As long as you regulate your usage in a healthy way, I think whether you delete your account or not doesn't make much of a difference.<p>For now I just throw on a handful of privacy extensions (uBlock Origin, PrivacyBadger, Decentraleyes, Facebook Container, etc.) and accept that Facebook is going to know many things about me.<p>As a point of reference - my age group started using Facebook around middle school. So I have a lot of "friends" that I would have no way of keeping up with otherwise, and I'm not used to not having that ability. I suspect the sentiment is different for older generations who are used to losing touch with people. My parents, for example, have a couple old friends from whom they haven't heard anything in many many years. That concept doesn't mesh with the lifestyle I grew up with. It's not that there are many specific people I want to keep up with all the time - it's just nice to get random updates on random people you used to know well.
Seconded. I found that I didn’t lose anything by leaving Facebook. The “social network” I thought I had was just a list of names I was familiar with and begged the question about any real relationship which had manifested. I had many relationships which were paper thin and folded the moment I left Facebook.
I deleted FB 4 years back and at that time I had around 1000 'friends' on FB. Needless to say I didn't miss a thing and life has been only better.<p>But there was one subtle interesting thing I noticed that nobody missed me on FB. Nobody was like, "wait, where did that guy disappear".<p>The people who mattered were always around me and are still around me.<p>Only after deleting FB I realized what a cancer FB was. I hear it has become even more cancerous.<p>The only thing I seriously want to give up is this Whatsapp app, especially because it is now FB product. Otherwise, the way I use Whatsapp, it doesn't pose much problem.
I recently deleted Reddit from my life. That was huge. I can turn off Twitter and would never know it was gone. But FB won't be that easy.<p>It's important to me for a number of reasons:<p>- Communities use it to communicate with their groups. I'm in business owner groups, collectives, local theater group, and some gaming/social groups that aren't as active.<p>- For many of these groups, FB is the ONLY way I'll get info about anything that is going on with them. And honestly, I don't mind. It works well.<p>- Businesses use it to send deals to their customers, notify them of events, post pictures, etc.<p>- I manage business Facebook pages as part of my business, so I can't get rid of my personal account.<p>- I also use the Marketplace a lot to sell off stuff from my house and it works brilliantly.<p>HOWEVER - I have technically stopped "using" Facebook.<p>For the last 3 years now, I've made my profile totally private. I haven't posted photos or shared stupid things. I un-followed (but stayed friends with) EVERYONE except my wife and parents and a close friend.<p>My news feed is empty except for posts from the groups I'm a part of and stuff from close family members.<p>And there's an added benefit - when I DO post something now, on a rare occasion, people actually take notice.<p>If everyone would only post when it's really important, the system would be useful and interesting. Otherwise, it's full of garbage.<p>Facebook is not all bad, but certain people ruin it with their constant garbage posting, and that's too bad.
I respect Woz and his contributions to computer science. Tbh tho every time I see an article like this it makes me scratch my head. It’s always something along the lines of “Woz says you should do something that has been old news and most anyone who would care is already doing or agrees with”. It’s not that he’s wrong. It’s just... why is this news? He’s just making a very safe statement for the audience being targeted.
Left 4 or 5 years ago for employer/work reasons. Had a couple of hundred friends, and a started few groups that accumulated thousands of members. Not surprisingly, everyone I mattered to managed to find me and reconnect via email, sms etc. I don’t miss it at all, and I’m happy I don’t waste time like that anymore!<p>Community argument is compelling, but there are so many ways for communities to stay in touch now. I don’t think it has to come at the cost of so many Facebook negatives (privacy, addiction, mental health, etc.)
While a great idea the problem of course is there isn’t a ready replacement for what Facebook provides.<p>Where would families migrate to for communication/collaboration/community? The closest free alternative is of course Instagram, owned by Facebook.<p>Who can build a privacy oriented alternative that charges and also gains a sufficient network effect?
Paying for privacy sound nice but I never had a Facebook account and am 100% sure I got a profile.<p>Facebook goes through all the data of Facebook users I know.<p>So I am sure I am tagged on photos and they might already know a lot about me.<p>And that's what I think is most evil about Facebook. Even people without an internet connection might have a profile.
The aggregation of local events on Facebook is second to none. I tried leaving that behind and found I was missing out on a litany of events not broadcast elsewhere. As long as that holds true, I maintain a spartan, unconnected, minimal account there.
I imagine a good number of people are like me and would <i>like</i> to close their Facebook account, but are afraid of losing that circle of friends and family that they have no other easy way of contacting.<p>A useful feature (albeit one that Facebook would never, ever implement, as it would facilitate people leaving their platform) would be to have closure page with a final statement or forwarding address, e.g.:<p>"I've decided to close my Facebook account. You can still reach me at: myname@emailprovider.com"
> “People think they have a level of privacy they don’t. Why don’t they give me a choice? Let me pay a certain amount, and you’ll keep my data more secure and private then everybody else handing it to advertisers.”<p>I think advertisers are offering more money ;-)<p>Maybe the taxes should be higher for companies that make money from selling data.
Woz admits that there are benefits to FB. What he's talking about is the privacy angle. So what's the optimal usage pattern here to enjoy the benefits and still keep your privacy safe?<p>I think it's actually pretty straightforward with regards to FB.<p>First of all if you find yourself scrolling through the news feed for anything that isn't relevant to your daily life, the argument is more about mental health than privacy here to stop excessive use like that. Same for Instagram, it's highly addictive, but you'll find you don't really need it in your life.<p>Secondly, use an alternative messaging platform for the small group of people you tend to talk to very often and closely with. Preferably encrypted. For everyone else, it matters a lot less that people might spy on your conversations so just be careful to not talk about radical or illegal things. The benefits of FB messenger are pretty nice in terms of convenience, but if you don't like having to censor yourself get the other person to join WhatsApp, signal, or iMessage.<p>Thirdly, if you're using FB in the sort of community oriented way with groups and the like, continue to do so freely! There's nothing wrong with doing this on FB, it's a great platform for that and rarely is your privacy going to be violated in this way. And if you think it might, then there are alternatives like a group chat on Signal, or an anonymous/private message board. Those are more sensitive cases which surely exist but I can't think of many situations where one needs to go to these lengths.<p>I think the way FB and IG make money incentivizes them to violate your privacy through clicks tracking. This only works if you're on the platform like a zombie, clicking for hours on news or influencers or whatever. Maybe some of that truly is useful to you, for example my girlfriend follows a lot of people who do physical activity and exercise routines on IG. And from a privacy perspective maybe it's not even that big of a deal, but I think most people might find they don't need to waste so much of their time on these apps anyway.<p>So at least for the case of FB, it isn't too hard to protect your privacy the ways it really matters and still get the benefits of FB apps.
I wonder if reddit and facebook can be compared, because I go on reddit a lot, even though I only read comments, save wallpapers and articles to read later, I very rarely upvote.
Even if you don't have a Facebook account, Facebook still has your browsing history via the their SDK that is usually used to implement the "login with facebook" button. The sdk actually injects a iframe on the hosting website, allowing Facebook to know every time you go to this website.
Wow. What I would do to be a fly on the wall in the impromptu, perhaps slightly anxious meetings at FB HQ right now. I imagine they're discussing whether or not they should be worried, what they should do about it, or whether they should do anything at all.<p>This has to be an insane position to be in. If you're responsible for the PR (or anything else) of a company that an ever-growing number of people are starting to suspect shouldn't exist (at least in its current form), what do you do? Where you do you even start?<p>The only other such case I can think of is big tobacco. Facebook is (probably) not quite that harmful or toxic, but I imagine FB and Philip Morris would have a few things to talk about over dinner.
Question for people who have nuked Facebook: what do you do about a job that needs you to have Facebook for, e.g., API keys or group moderation? Did you just create a new, “friend-less” account and transfer the credentials over to it?
People have mentioned in this thread why an FB account might be worth having. There's also business reasons.<p>Maybe an alternative would be to setup a dedicated device with no video or audio for all your dealings with evil empires.
Facebook is really the only place I'm able to connect with most of my extended family and friends. I'm active on a few FB groups by interest, but also with old friends from H.S. and a lot of other groups of people it would be difficult to break or migrate from.<p>If there were a social network that charged an active fee, that I could say pay $20-40/year for myself and be able to invite maybe 10-15 others whose fees are covered by my own, that might get people to move. No ads, no selling customer data, minimal intrusion.
I recently realized that Facebook is addictive like cigarettes.<p>Why? Think back 10 years ago when everyone was designing their apps to be engaging, sticky, ect, and judging success based on how long people stayed on their app.<p>Facebook has turned into the internet equivalent of cigarettes.<p>What's really strange is the way we all make excuses to continue to use it, kind of like how many smokers make excuses about why they continue smoking.<p>We're all hooked, even me!
I login here and there to Facebook.<p>I see usage among my circle of even older folks fading fast. Updates are way less frequent.<p>Having said that, I kinda miss it being an option, for some of these folks I'll probabbly never know what is going on with them again.
This is one of those cases where you should definitely consult woz on how to build a hobby computer but take light any advice he gives you on how to live your life.
The things that hold me to Facebook are:<p>- It is how I know what's going on in the lives of all of my friends. While the bulk of us still live within 20 miles of each other, we might see each other once a year (if that) because most of them are married with grade school aged children and when they do have free time, they're using it to take family vacations or day trips. With Facebook we know what is going on in each other's lives and still interact just like we did in high school, shooting the shinola on each others posts just like we used to in the hall between classes.<p>- As a strength athlete, it is how we find out about events. Take strongman, there are 200~ ish of us that are all mutual friends with the bulk of those being here in the United States. When someone creates a new FB event page for a competition, you find out about it because you see "friends a, b and c have expressed the are going/are interested in going" or someone tags you "you going to this?" or when the person putting the event on creates it, they tag 20-50 people that they know are likely to either compete or volunteer to work it. And during stuff like Arnold, those that are of the caliber to actually compete at the Arnold, we get play by play from the people competing and their coaches/handlers and those of us that aren't competing but went. When Jessica Fithen won the SHW championship belt in 2017, I was messaging her congratulations (and getting a reply) from my bedroom in Indiana about a minute before the online online feed even got to it.<p>There just isn't a way to replicate either of those things without a social media platform. I like know what is going on in my friends lives even though we just don't get to see each other that often. Do we trade some privacy for that? Sure. Do we waste more time on the platforms than we should, for the most part yes, but considering I do get to see what is going on in their lives without having to schedule months in advance an hour where we <i>might</i> get to cross paths if something doesn't come up, then it is worth it to me. And with the strength sports thing, we might be in the same location once a year, even those that are here in Indiana with me we might see each other a few times a year because we are spread out 120-200 miles but Facebook lets us bust each other's chops and support each other and carry on just like we do in person on our phones all day long.<p>A few weeks ago I was at an event volunteering and had a couple people walking by me "hey Mercer!" that I've never actually met but have this genuine friend/camaraderie connection with because we have this digital space where we are there for each other and do bust each others chops in a fun way.
Do people really care what Steve Wozniak has to say on anything these days? He did some excellent hardware work in his day, but not sure that carries much weight on Facebook usage in 2019. He just seems to be a reliable rent-a-quote for journalists to go to when up against a deadline.
While I do not care about / immune to FB, Twitter, etc etc, I liked the first comment I saw on that page: "I really don’t need Woz or anyone else telling me what I need to do!"
it's just fearmongering pointing the finger at facebook. If you're that worried about eaves dropping then you shouldn't have an apple smartphone or an android smartphone or any kind of smartphone. I think the chances are pretty remote that they're recording you.
why not just unfollow everyone?<p>You can still message people but it isn't addictive because there will be nowhere to scroll outside of messages.