Delete facebook for the good of humanity!

jonescg

100 MW
Joined
Aug 7, 2009
Messages
4,213
Location
Perth, Western Australia
I feel I need to do this too.

[youtube]BCTlcj5vImk[/youtube]

At 10 mins in he nails it, but do watch the whole lot.

Will give everyone fair warning and get out of the machine this month.
 
Thanks Chris, I enjoyed that, especially the Gaelic flute. probably going to have my YT flooded with flute playing in Ireland now I've said that. Deleted fb off my phone. Going to have to look into getting rid of the rest of it but want to make sure I have all the data/photos first.
 
+1, they're getting into virtual currencies now too (banking licence was issued in 2016) so they'll have transaction data available to the highest bidder before long too. Rule of big business and social media, if you can't see what they're selling then what they're selling is YOU.
 
MJSfoto1956 said:
Pretty much all social media has been taken over by bad actors. Real folks don't stand a chance.

There's tons of social media sites that have 0.5% of marketshare that don't abuse their users, don't have algorithms controlling what you see and don't see, don't have censorship, and have lots of friendly people - i'm on a few. I even run an ebike group on one.

The problem is not really facebook - it's that people aren't mad enough to branch out and try new things. They'd rather complain about facebook, twitter, etc than be a pioneer and try MeWe, Minds, Mastodon, Gab, Voat, etc etc - "because my friends aren't there"..

The behavior of facebook, et al is just a symptom of internet users granting them a monopoly. Any company with a majority marketshare in their field is nearly guaranteed to abuse their customers. And facebook continues to find new limits in what human beings will tolerate. Personally, i would have thought that the site running psychological experiments on their users in 2014 would have been enough for the public to hit the brakes, but no..

I would call this phenomenon an expression of stockholm syndrome, but it resembles drug addiction more - IE, you know it's bad for you, other people know it's bad for you, you know that alternatives exist, but you keep coming back anyway, because it tickles the pleasure center more than it sounds the alarm bells about your own mental health. And it's specifically engineered to do so.

I've been facebook free since late 2018 and am loving it. I would have nuked the site sooner if i didn't run so many groups on it.
 
Yeah, it is an addiction and I'm able to say I am a functioning addict :oops:

Like you I stick around on it because I wanted to keep up to date with all things EV, and that's where everybody was. But now even those groups are becoming hyper partisan, and descending into all-caps battle zones over the dumbest shit.

So I plan on quitting at the end of the month. If anyone needs to find me they can find me here, or you know, email, maybe pick up the phone? :)
 
I dumped Facebook about 5 years ago, after a few unpleasant reminders of pack behavior. The last straw was when the group owner (that's right, most FB groups are run like little kingdoms by owners") of the local EV group started editing and deleting my posts for no apparent reason. I had been mildly critical of Nissan dealerships (I drove and still drive a Leaf), and it came to light, after the fact, that this little man used to be a Nissan service tech. Yikes. As already noted, not all social media groups are bad, on balance. It's the ones that give power to people who either don't care about fairness, or who view social media users as cash cows, that need to be shunned. That has to start with Facebook.
 
There are an incredible amount of shitty 'group' owners across all social media sites. Endless Sphere is a rare gem in that moderation and ownership are generally a hands off affair. We err on the side of intervening too little. Nobody on the moderation team likes banning anyone; it's less like 'frock you, dude', and more like putting old yeller out to pasture. Because this forum is 12 years old now, some of us have known each other for an appreciable chunk of our lifespan.

I worked incredibly hard for almost a decade to keep endless sphere facebook a shining city on the hill, but it's hard when all your immigrants come from the digital slum that is the rest of the site. In the end i lost the battle to the demographics of what kind of people use facebook. There was no way to keep discussion on the place as intelligent as the ones we have on slow-cooked mediums such as this one.

The problem with facebook is that life is cheap. There is too much noise. As in a large city, people become numbers instead of individuals. But one thing you'll notice about how facebook is designed is that this effect is intentional. Facebook wants as much attention as it can get, so it can profit from advertisements. It is the internet equivalent of a diet made up exclusively of candy bars and ramen. Fast, convenient, exciting on the tastebuds, and despite being malnourished, you keep coming back for some reason.

I'm loving that we're finally starting to see a backlash. MeWe is beginning to grow pretty quick, and is free from the user-abusive/manipulatory elements FB has. The little ketogenic diet group i run on there get 3 join requests a day. I keep meeting interesting and genuine people on there. Facebook escapees are some of the best e-friends ever.
 
jonescg said:
I feel I need to do this too.
Wow, a lot of angst here. I use it to see what friends are doing and see their pictures. I can ignore stuff that bugs me.
 
neptronix said:
There are an incredible amount of shitty 'group' owners across all social media sites. Endless Sphere is a rare gem in that moderation and ownership are generally a hands off affair. We err on the side of intervening too little. Nobody on the moderation team likes banning anyone; it's less like 'frock you, dude', and more like putting old yeller out to pasture. Because this forum is 12 years old now, some of us have known each other for an appreciable chunk of our lifespan.

I worked incredibly hard for almost a decade to keep endless sphere facebook a shining city on the hill, but it's hard when all your immigrants come from the digital slum that is the rest of the site. In the end i lost the battle to the demographics of what kind of people use facebook. There was no way to keep discussion on the place as intelligent as the ones we have on slow-cooked mediums such as this one.

The problem with facebook is that life is cheap. There is too much noise. As in a large city, people become numbers instead of individuals. But one thing you'll notice about how facebook is designed is that this effect is intentional. Facebook wants as much attention as it can get, so it can profit from advertisements. It is the internet equivalent of a diet made up exclusively of candy bars and ramen. Fast, convenient, exciting on the tastebuds, and despite being malnourished, you keep coming back for some reason.

I'm loving that we're finally starting to see a backlash. MeWe is beginning to grow pretty quick, and is free from the user-abusive/manipulatory elements FB has. The little ketogenic diet group i run on there get 3 join requests a day. I keep meeting interesting and genuine people on there. Facebook escapees are some of the best e-friends ever.
Enjoy mewe, but can't get away from FB, because of the type of business I'm in. :)
 
Facebook, BLOCK. As good as the old Usenet killfile!
 
Facebook hate is real.

I deleted my account, with my real name on it, however I rarely ever used it and would only log in 3 or 4 times a year to do the "Hey how are you doing?" rounds. I had no pictures of me on there, just of someones dog.

Airbnb uses social media to establish trust between Airbnb, its renters and its rentee's.
I've noticed a chat forum do the same as Airbnb.

What bugs me, is people always on their phone and they dont even bother to look up to see where they are walking.
Even out in large nature parks and reserves people are on their phone, its pathetic!
Even on the commuter train, I noticed one time I was the only person relaxing to music with my eyes closed and every single other person was on their phone. Its rare to even see people reading a book while they are on the train.
 
https://www.amazon.com/Zucked-Waking-Up-Facebook-Catastrophe/dp/0525561358


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markz said:
Even on the commuter train, I noticed one time I was the only person relaxing to music with my eyes closed and every single other person was on their phone.
So .. . uh . . . how did you know, then?
Its rare to even see people reading a book while they are on the train.
I read everything on my phone now. Less to carry.
 
Open the eyelids and look up then down the train, everyone was on their phone. :lol:
A little meditation on the train cant hurt.
Others prefer to medicate.
 
It's done.
I have escaped the matrix.
Facebook account deleted. I have a twitter account which I don't use a great deal, and I'll never leave this place. But at least that major distraction is gone.
:bolt: :bolt: :bolt:
 
congrats on quitting, Jones :thumb:

i am still enjoying mewe myself because it has a small, intimate, and respectful userbase, which is pretty cool.
 
I figure I don't need to join another community, my issue was not just the algorithm manipulations (although they are significant) it was more that I was wasting my precious hours just scrolling, looking for something to do.

Not that this place prevents me from doing that :)
 
I consider i saved myseglf several years of blood pressure issues, stress,, and wasted time,...by never joining FB , or Twitter , instagram, etc.
One of my increasingly reliable “gut feelings” kept me from even exploring the options, despite much social/family pressure.
Even so, i have not been immune from the effects of these insiduous “social drugs” since so many people insist on quoting references and links to pages on those sites. Needles to say, much will power is needed to train oneself not to even bother following those links.
Im sure i am not the only “non adopter”, but i am surprised that so many intelegent , rational, people have stayed involved with “FaceTwitGram” for so long. !
 
You may have deleted your account, or never joined under your real name or ever clicked on a fb link but Mark SuckerBurger (no spelling error there) surely (is a fact actually) has a mountain of info on people who have never been on fb.

I am off it, never was really on it but I did use my real name but never used it.

What I did see on fb was people being too open about their problems in life.
That kind of info is a treasure trove of gold nuggets for Mark SuckerBurger.
 
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