Those who are planning to delete all Facebook activity(posts) instead of deleting FB account itself, please note that FB seems to be hiding posts at random in the activity log when it detects unusual deleting spree and pops it up on a later date at a random interval.<p>I still find some 10 year old cringe post being the only post in my timeline occasionally, something which should have been deleted several years ago when I deleted all activity from my FB account. This has happened about 3-4 times now, it's no fun when the only post on your timeline is a 'liked' photo of a girl from your school whom you don't even remember now.<p>This dark pattern has been corroborated by others using an automated script[1], <i>not that I'm agreeing to using any such script</i>.<p>[1]<a href="https://github.com/weskerfoot/DeleteFB/issues/88" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/weskerfoot/DeleteFB/issues/88</a>
Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years:<p>1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone; <i>then</i><p>2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone; <i>next</i><p>3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone; <i>then</i><p>4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; <i>and finally</i><p>5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.<p>It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?" (It's been years since I've cared to log into Facebook. Feels more like trudging through spam in an old e-mail inbox, now, than anything compelling.)
I deleted my main Facebook account in 2012.<p>Two years ago I need to test out some business features and API’s, so I made a new one. They needed my phone number, my gov ID, and my full name. I did everything but shortened my last name so it was “John S.” as I didn’t want it to be searchable. After a day they banned my account, they are dropping my requests to verify or delete it because name on ID isn’t the same as on Facebook account. My phone number is still attached to account. I even contacted a head of Facebook in my country to which she replied “sue us or be gone”.<p>Now, when I try to open a new one it’s deactivated second after confirming gov ID. So I’m banned for life. It’s sad what they have become, but I’m happy with the result. They could just stop profiling me on the internet thought. :-)
I did the same last month after 13 years on Facebook. I first deleted every data I could manually over the last months. I migrated my only active Messenger contacts to Signal (I was surprised a lot of people I know were already using it). I am not missing it, it was consuming a lot of time and really - in the end it was not worth it. I have seen a lot of old timers leave FB and there is much less activity or anything that could be considered quality content. Just lots of ads and political never ending comment wars. For the record - I am located in EU (Slovakia).
On Facebook I can (passively) keep up with people I might otherwise rarely speak with. I don't have to call someone to see baby photos, or big life events. A lot of the posts point this out as a negative but frankly I couldn't disagree more. Being able to stay connected with people that I care about, regardless of how I do so, is a positive for me. I have neither the energy nor the extraversion to call up every person I occasionally think of, but on Facebook I can at least stay connected with them on some minor level. And it's the same for other people, too. Many people that I care about but we're both very introverted I've managed to maintain or even improve my relationship with them because Facebook exists.<p>It's also the hub for my family. Everyone is on it (for better or worse) and ultimately it's the easiest way for us to communicate with each other. Could this be done on an external bulletin board? Sure. Is that at all convenient or even a better solution? Probably not. The older folks aren't really interested in moving platforms, particularly when the one that exists already works perfectly for their use case.<p>I get it. They don't respect your privacy <i>at all</i> and likely never will. The writer of this post didn't get the same value out of it. He acknowledges that some people might find more utility in it than he does and that is fine. But to gain traction on Hacker News of all things feels peculiar to me. To read all these posts about how positive an impact deleting facebook has been on their lives when they're discussing these effects on another social media website, with even more questionable added value.<p>I have no connection with anyone on this website. I don't know any of you personally (at least as far as I know) and I've never developed any meaningful relationships with people on here either. The value to me perhaps is occasionally about finding new and interesting articles but more often than not it's largely tied to the discussions about technology with, if not actually, effectively anonymous folk. Those discussions are rarely fulfilling though, and it's often just a platform to try and point out why my point of view is correct or to argue with someone about theirs. I find value in it, but it's definitely not as valuable to me as Facebook.
I've not gone as far as delete my account, it's still got the network effect for some friends and family but I have deleted it from my phone and now soley use it in a facebook container in firefox.
I find it's actually improved my attention and quality of engaement and I'm more focussed. Plus now I don't check my phone every 10 minutes for a dopamine hit.
I deleted my Facebook on July 30, 2019. They just rubbed me the wrong way all the time.<p>I was afraid that disappearing from FB will negatively impact visits to my blog and revenue from selling my books via e-shop, but it actually slowly increased.<p>I have a nagging suspicion that paying for FB ads was worthless.
"I’ve never been asked to do anything particularly grimy at work, but if I was then I’d probably try to change teams and I like to think that if that wasn’t allowed then I’d leave immediately, without delay, as soon as I’d finished vesting."
Made me chuckle.
I took all of the anti-fb steps (removed the app, deleted IG account, logged out of the fb app on my phone and desktop browsers), but I couldn't bring myself to actually delete my account. I still haven't deleted it, but last fall I got a new phone and my google authenticator app (for 2fa) lost all of my accounts (i.e. google and fb). Luckily I was able to login to my google account, but FB requires that I send them a photo of my drivers license. I know that I wouldn't be sending them any information that they don't already have, but something about that act just offends me. I haven't been able to log in since September and now I've pretty much forgotten about it.
I deleted my Facebook account last month and I haven't missed it at all. Sure, I get the occasional "is everything okay" text message for leaving, but so far, everyone has completely understood, with the majority saying something similar to "I should get rid of mine too" usually followed by some reason why they won't (old friends, relatives, all of their photos etc).<p>It's not that hard. You can download your entire profile. It even takes 30 days for the deletion to actually occur. If you think you should delete your Facebook account, just do it. If you change your mind after a few days you can stop the deletion process until you're ready.
I check Facebook maybe once a week at most. I don't really use it anymore but I have a handful of contacts that still use it as their main social networking platform so I use it to see if I've gotten a message from them or if my D&D group wants to get together (hasn't been an issue for about a year, sadly). Sometimes if I'm not expecting anything from them I'll go a month without looking at it.<p>I've been kicking facebook out of my life by accident simply by the virtue of it becoming less and less useful for me.
If someone can post a script or something that lets you extract all of your friends' birthdays into a Google calendar, it would go a long way towards making deletion more palatable
After reading the TOS, I never understood why people were okay with even using it. To this day I still don't know what exactly Facebook even is or what the point of it is. People always gave me the same line of "It's the only way I can keep in touch with family and friends." That sounded like nothing beyond a bogus excuse to me, I call and message my friends and family and for my whole life the only thing to change was going from mail to email to messengers.
I remember watching a PBS Frontline episode about Facebook and they mentioned how they're able to create a profile of anyone basically because they purchase profiles from credit card companies and credit agencies. So even if you delete it, they still have your profile and match it with these other companies and are able to sell the data like nothing happened.
I closed mine 3 months ago. Among many positive changes this has had in my life, one I havent been seen mentioned is that now I call/msg people I care about often.<p>Before I would never feel like I missed someone and just call them. Its like fb artificially satisfies this need for human connection. Its interesting to notice these kinds of effects you weren't aware of.
Disabling/deactivating your FB account is a good way. Your automatically off FB but can come back if you want.<p>Been off for about 3 years and its great. Log in once a year or so.<p>Seriously what is the point of Facebook? Chasing likes? Getting into angry political discourse. Watching cat videos? no thanks.<p>You can use what's app or meet up for groups /family stuff. FB is so pointless.
That’s some of the reasons why I made <a href="https://nomorefacebook.xyz/" rel="nofollow">https://nomorefacebook.xyz/</a> with privacy-friendly alternatives. I hope the list gets bigger as new things emerge.
Somehow I’ve never had a Facebook account this entire time, is there anything I’ve been missing with it? I keep seeing posts like this, but I haven’t really understood what makes quitting it so hard.
My kid's school and my apartment building sends out updates on Facebook. Its kinda sad there is nothing else that majority of people can use to listen on (other than email).
I only stay on Facebook due to one important group using Messenger exclusively. They’ve built their (small) business community and communications around it. It’s disappointing.
i just trimmed my friends to actual friends, i'm not sure of my other settings. Maybe i'm just lucky but i don't have any issues with my account.
Deleted mine years ago also. My only issue is trying to join other systems that only allow "login with facebook" and no other means of authentication