Facebook for me is mainly a self updating address book. So is there any other recommended service that could possibly even import all or some of my FB data and is able to help keep in touch with my acquantances?
Call a good friend for a coffee face to face.<p>I quit Facebook months ago, and guess what, no one cared. I keep contact with REAL friends far away via email or Whatsapp. For local friends I use Whatsapp and meet in person. There is no NEED for a true Facebook replacement.<p>But to be honest, I created a new account, with a fake name and won't add anyone to it. The goal is to track some events and key communities I like to interact with. But I've added no personal data to this account and only log on to it on a less used web browser and don't use it in my mobile. I also use the following add-ons to prevent any Facebook tracking: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and uMatrix. Probably overkilling it.
While I am not a fan of Facebook myself for the all reasons recently talked about and the addicting nature of it, yes the self updating address book part is nice. Here's what I did: I got a Chrome extention[1] that unfollows all my friends. I've also unliked every Facebook Page that I used to like. This means my feed is now totally empty. When I login from anywhere there is nothing in my feed. Also I rarely ever get notifications, except when someone adds me as a friend. This way the feed is gone, there's nothing to be addicted to (feed was my main addiction), its very hard to get back because it involves re-following 100s of people which my lazy mind won't do and Facebook doesn't make any money off me (no feed, no ads). So I still get to use it as a address book.
Google! I joke, I joke.<p>Just send them all an email or a last FB message with your contact information. Seriously... you are not that important for 90% of the people in your FB contacts to care about. Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. the people who you really matter to will either email or call you.
OP here:
"Call a good friend for a coffee face to face."
"Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. "<p>This kind of advice came up repeatedly but it doesn't answer the initial question at all.<p>I'm fairly new to active HN but I followed passively and had the impression, that we are supposed to interact with reason and logic. These were emotional responses which triggers an emotional answer because it implies OP would be anti-social and the question would be unnecessary at best.<p>I am not a FB addict. I don't use the apps I hardly use the timeline, I scroll around when I'm really really bored (and that didn't help, ever), but my hoarder soul feels relieved to know that my past encounters with people from all over the world are listed somewhere and even when phone numbers changed due to country hopping or emails changed due to finishing university I'm still able to say hello when I feel like it or need a place to crash.<p>Maybe this context helps to stop the lecturing bullshit.
A potentially messy way to use that zip file is to find the page with your contact info in a big HTML table. You can copy and paste that table from a web browser into a spreadsheet program, edit the data into a useful format, and then export it as CSV. The CSV file can be imported into a local or online mail app.<p>Outlook.com used to have a feature that would import your Facebook contacts directly. I can't find that feature in the current version of the site though. Yahoo.com still does have one. So you could make an account there, import your FB contacts, then export them as a CSV file.
Scuttlebutt, a decentralized social network protocol. Currently a small niche community that is reminiscent of early internet communities.<p><a href="http://scuttlebutt.nz/" rel="nofollow">http://scuttlebutt.nz/</a><p>Since it is a protocol, there are several clients that behave differently and you can create your own. ( <a href="https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/" rel="nofollow">https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/</a> )
I have deleted facebook years ago and didn't really need a replacement, it was just never useful to me.
WhatsApp: This is tougher since everyone is expected to have an account there. I really like Threema as alternative, it has most of the features of WhatsApp (video chat is currently missing) and is self-financed, so being bought by some evil company is not a risk (unlike Signal).
Instagram: That's where I don't have a real good alternative.
Hey this is off-topic, but since you recently dumped your FB data, could you see if this kind of thing is in there? <a href="https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/dylanmckaynz/status/976368845635035138</a>
As I still want to use FB (I use it for following bands I like to know when they make new music or where they play their next show), but am concerned by all those privacy issues, I use a Firefox extension by Mozilla :<p><a href="https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-containers/" rel="nofollow">https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...</a><p>You can then use a container system. I've got one for all the google stuff (might be worse than FB on the privacy concern in my opinion), one for Facebook, one for some online site I don't want to cross data with anything else.<p>That plus uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc...
Well, if you mostly use it as an address book of sorts, you can use something like Sync.ME and pull data from LinkedIn or Twitter instead. You'll get (somewhat) updated information if you're connected with them directly and whatever public information they reveal about themselves if not (same as Facebook). It even syncs contact photos!<p>This is what I do, except I also use Facebook as an information source, since people post their "fun" contact photos through there.
If its a self updating address book, then LinkedIn would essentially serve your purposes, but one could argue that LinkedIn has the same problems that Facebook does.
Why not build it rather than "going to it"?<p><a href="https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-with-e2e-encryption-f90505b2ff8" rel="nofollow">https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi...</a><p>YOU are the next Zuck.
Slack and discord for daily talks with friends. Everyone else I email, call, or sms. I haven't had facebook for a few years and haven't had an issue with keeping in contact with anyone.<p>I want an encrypted chat service thats convenient as slack and discord.
Surely the power of Facebook is in how the data they have on you can be used to influence you. That is, it's about what you are fed. You just need to be a conscientious consumer.
I wanted to remove facebook, but i can't I will lose connections to friends I met outside my home country. Its kind of the internal person-service that i can't live without currently.
Well, you could try: <a href="https://kuende.com" rel="nofollow">https://kuende.com</a> - still not mature as a product, but not far from it<p>I'm part of the team, we are running a token sale somewhere around the next couple of months (<a href="https://ico.kuende.com" rel="nofollow">https://ico.kuende.com</a> <- easier to understand the vision from here) and planning a "paradigm shift" of social media, so to speak.<p>I guess, given the current drivers within traditional social media and all the associated bull<i></i>*t, we might have a shot at fulfilling our vision.