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Anyone else here delete their Facebook?
- Thread starter cinnabun814
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Couldn't agree more with you.
It seems to be for those who wish the world to know that they are busily playing starring roles in their own life story.
Now, I do get the arguments for staying in touch with distant relatives - that is my brother's (perfectly reasonable) explanation for having an account - or renewing contact with old school mates, (but, sometimes, you come to the belated realisation that a common context or setting is all you share, or have ever shared, or have ever had in common, and, once that has been removed, there really is very little else to justify retaining the link; you still wish them well, you just don't need to have them a part of your life).
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Yeah I remember the accident because there's been a few notable artists who've died in such accidents. That and you tend to remember questionable 70s-90s Euro "disco." You know, such as your mobile's alarm being a Modern Talking song.
2010 for me. I didn't like it upon reading the first privacy terms update. I think that might have been within a couple weeks or a month of having opened the account. I spent part of my career trying to deter hackers (and lazy devs looking for root access lol) from my company's databases and now I was reading Facebook's fine print telling me more or less this:
we don't call it hacking we call it ours if you upload it even if you turn all those little switches to private because see private is for other people but your data, she is ours when you upload it and we'll only put it to good use so don't you worry OK?
And while I was still absorbing that info I was remembering Zuckerberg wandering around in his silly phase earlier that same year saying for attribution that privacy was largely dead and so no longer a social norm. This became part of his justification for privacy alterations that removed various user options.
Really? I thought. How extraordinary. Next move: delete FB account.
I still do have an account on Twitter but I use it mostly just to access media outlets to which I subscribe. The papers and magazines usually post links to their featured articles du jour, or announce that a periodic new issue is online, and I just springboard off those links to log into my accounts and start reading whatever I want to invest of my time in their offerings for that day.
Once in awhile I might retweet something I find interesting and relevant to a hashtag I might temporariiy be following. I don't use Twitter on a mobile and I loathe their iOS-like web page design they just rolled out. So I've been dropping in less often and resorting to media outlet homepage bookmarks in a browser again to get to my subscriptions when I'm using a laptop. I do use the media outlets' own apps preferentially to a browser anyway, when I am using a mobile device to read news or arts reviews etc.
Glad to see that someone else loathes (that is not too strong a verb) the new iOS-like web page design that has been recently rolled out on Twitter: I detest it, too much distraction and too much clutter.
Same here. The only Apple products I have left are a 2014 Mac mini running Linux now, and an older iPad.
I'm keeping the iPad mainly for Twitter and the fantastic Tweetbot app and for Instapaper. Tweetbot is how Twitter should be and it's by far the best app I've used for the platform. If it weren't for Tweetbot I'd have stopped using Twitter altogether a long time ago. Once in a while I'll use the Twitter website, but not too often.
In common with your good self, I find Twitter very useful for directing me to articles in publications and periodicals that I ought to take a look at.
Some of the better journalists (and politicians) write thoughtful tweets on Twitter - tweets where they can be open about their own thoughts or concerns on some issues - and often link to interesting and thought-provoking material; for political literature (for not all my reading is political - there are links and pointers to some very good literary and historical stuff on Twitter) Twitter can be excellent.
I find it good on literary criticism and also on food and wine. (Twitter - thanks to Gary Usher - is where I finally mastered the art of poaching an egg properly). And excellent when you travel to a country for insights into local political - and actual - culture.
But, I loathe the new look of the thing; this is an awful design.
That Tweetbot app sounds most interesting.
I still have my Facebook account. I have older relatives who joined, when it became popular, and it's the only social media they are comfortable with. So I've kept my account to communicate with them & a few 'friends' that I'm not willing to give my number to for instant messaging. 
This was my major problem. It got to a point that I was blocking just about everyone, including family members because I just didn't want to hear what they were spewing.
FB is a platform that allows you to choose what you want to see, hear and experience while shutting out anything you don't. It alienates people and magnifies problems and arguments, turning 'friends' against each other. It's your own little fiefdom where you control what and who can be there and what can be said or done. It allows people to be the dictators of their own small world, elevating their own perspective above everyone else. It's the perfect place for narcissism and anyone challenging you can be summarily invalidated and dismissed.
Not that everyone on FB is this way, but a majority are.
In my case, there are family members I still see. Leaving Facebook was the better option. I've already alienated some of them and some of them have already alienated me. The worst was a former friend I knew in childhood who told me that I could not post on her wall if my opinion was not the same as hers. Truth and facts are ignored because people want to believe what they want to believe and not be challenged.
So, I guess if all your 'friends' aren't really 'friends' or family then yeah, blocking works.
Interestingly I think that's what Facebook brought home to many & illustrated painfully.
Truth & facts nowadays are more based on opinion for many. What's one's 'truth' isn't necessarily the same for another. On the internet, everyone's strength of convictions is raised up to Herculean levels, so no one can ever be wrong.
The person I mentioned who would not let me post on her wall anymore was on a rant about drivers licenses. I forget what the context was, but she was coming from a viewpoint that driving is a right.
I pointed out to her that driving is a privilege and that the state can revoke your license. I pointed out that the state requires you to register your vehicle and carry insurance. Doesn't sound like a right to me.
Whatever argument she was on a tear about was instantly invalidated. It was truth and facts and she was pissed that it shut her down.
So, yeah, her truth was an opinion only. And that is the problem now, particularly on FB. People don't like their opinions challenged (most people) and now they are choosing to ignore any facts or truths that invalidate their opinion.
I have opinions too. But I'd like to think that I'm not so in love with myself that when presented with facts or a challenge to my opinion I cannot change.
100% agreed. I permanently deleted my account for the same reasons
The last time i signed onto FaceBook was in November last year. I quit cold turkey, and im wondering if its worth the effort to go back in and “delete” my account.
I signed up due to peer pressure in 2010-ish and hated it from the start. “Social networks” are just not my jam.
PS>> i feel better now that i’ve given up on FB.
I signed up due to peer pressure in 2010-ish and hated it from the start. “Social networks” are just not my jam.
PS>> i feel better now that i’ve given up on FB.
I still have (and use) my FaceBook account.
I have 54 friends listed (oh the humanity!)… of those, 6 are in the UK — the rest are scattered around the globe.
That is the consequence of living my adult life (24 - 50) away from my country of birth.
We keep in touch — nothing earth shattering, just convenient communication.
Would I "Friend" someone living in the same city as me? Nope.
Now, do I wish FaceBook wasn't such a cesspit of crap and as secure as a leaky sieve? Yes!
But on the other hand I don't over-share — and believe me, whatever privacy I delude myself into thinking I have, is long, long gone.
*shrug*
Oh, and it also keeps me in touch with local ANTI-Brexit movements…
@Scepticalscribe TweetBot is definitely worthwhile. The only way I use Twitter.
I have 54 friends listed (oh the humanity!)… of those, 6 are in the UK — the rest are scattered around the globe.
That is the consequence of living my adult life (24 - 50) away from my country of birth.
We keep in touch — nothing earth shattering, just convenient communication.
Would I "Friend" someone living in the same city as me? Nope.
Now, do I wish FaceBook wasn't such a cesspit of crap and as secure as a leaky sieve? Yes!
But on the other hand I don't over-share — and believe me, whatever privacy I delude myself into thinking I have, is long, long gone.
*shrug*
Oh, and it also keeps me in touch with local ANTI-Brexit movements…
@Scepticalscribe TweetBot is definitely worthwhile. The only way I use Twitter.
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This is pretty much me except with more "friends" and quite a few are family as well. I hate what modern tech has done to privacy though we all a partly responsible too. There are a few neat historical and sci-fi pages I follow too.
Life was busy and complicated during the early Facebook (social media) stage so I was never sucked in. Plus I have no friends and limited family so those sites pose no value.
I deleted my FB last year. I didn't use it much except for some social groups I was involved in and keeping in contact with family.
Then my account started getting weird posts - so I decided to get out. Same with IG (part of FB), deleted that too. As well as my Google account.
Then my account started getting weird posts - so I decided to get out. Same with IG (part of FB), deleted that too. As well as my Google account.