I'm now over one year Facebook-free. As with most things (especially online things) I don't even remember why it was so appealing in the first place. The fear of missing out fades really fast. And as someone else mentioned in this thread, I feel like I value actual friendship a bit more.

If anyone's interested in really ditching Facebook and preventing it from injecting junk into the sites you visit and tracking you, here's a list of URLs I've added to my hosts file. As the repo's name suggests, it helps make the internet suck less.

https://github.com/riebschlager/make-the-internet-suck-less/...

Good work. More here

https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...

http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/

Some lists in ublock origin cover this use case, can't remember last time I saw facebook comments on a web page.

Nice post! I deleted my Facebook account about 2 or 3 weeks ago and I haven't been happier. Before pulling the plug though, I spent a couple days babysitting a post deletion script that wasn't as autonomous as I've hoped. However, I was able to delete my first 3 years and last 5 years of Facebook posts and a decent amount of recent likes/reactions.

I think if you really want to make sure Facebook doesn't have data directly from you, you'd need to take the time to delete every possible interaction you can, delete browser cookies, wait a couple days, then initiate account deletion (Facebook makes you wait 2 weeks until your account is actually deleted, just enough time for you to change your mind).

You're assuming the deletion actually deletes stuff. I doubt it does.

I'm hoping it does, that's why I did it. At least I have piece of mind, which may very well be false.

Strange; I've done the opposite. I engage with Facebook now more than ever.

I'm 38 years old. I plan events with friends, I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent..

There's never been a platform so emotionally engaging. It makes me feel in sync with their lives, even when I haven't seen them in a while.

It's such an amazing platform.

I think Facebook is the ultimate realization of the American concept of "friendship" (maybe not your specific case) contrasted to the German version of friendship. In Germany, to call someone your friend, it is a great honor, it means something, it is an investment. Here in the states, "everyone is friends!" Yet it feels so superficial. Now we can just check in on them a couple times a day on their posts without the huge investment. It's perfectly American.

Also I am sad to see your thought is being down-voted.

Strength of friendships in Germany can't be granular?

Aren't there just people that have been good to you in the present or past, that you want to see succeed, that you want to root for? Those are the perfect candidates for Facebook.

I'm generalizing something fierce here, but generally speaking, friendship in Germanic countries is highly non-linear. Either you're friends or you're not. My theory is that it's about geographical mobility. When people move around a lot a sliding scale of friendship makes sense. When you and everyone around you are mostly stationary you know who you want to spend time with and everyone else is just noise. Doesn't really explain the Irish, I think, though I don't know much about their geographical mobility.

The Irish aren't Germanic. There's your explanation.

Well, there's nothing magic about Germanicness. If the Irish move about as much as Germans, then that can't be the (sole) explanation for the difference in niceness to strangers.

German language (or more precisely, idiom) maintains distinct meanings for "mein Freund" versus "Freund von mir," the former being far more intimate.

Acquaintances? FOAFs? Former colleagues? A DJ you used to go see 20 years ago? In the US, all of these people get swept under the rug of "friends" in the FB era, and it's in this way that they are less granular if "friend" can mean just about anybody you've ever come across.

> In the US, all of these people get swept under the rug of "friends" in the FB era, and it's in this way that they are less granular if "friend" can mean just about anybody you've ever come across.

"FaceBook friend" maps roughly to "Anyone I have had some form of contact with and either don't actively hate, who says things I'm interested in hearing, or who I haven't gotten around to deleting". It's a completely distinct concept from "friend", in my mind. A FaceBook friend could be more accurately be described as a "contact", the way that I usually see it used.

I know some people who are deep in the FB Kool-Aid, or who label all acquaintances as "friends", but that doesn't accurately describe most of the people around me.

This was none other more apparent in college

See someone from your hallway in your dorm in the library you never spoke to before? Oh dude that's my boy from my dorm right there!

See a classmate out at the bar that you only asked for homework a few times? "Sup dude! It's your boy from chem class!"

And hundreds of other examples similar to this.

I'm from Romania and we kind of do the same thing as they do.

The people you mention are not friends, they're people you know ("cunoștințe" in Romanian). We might casually call them "friends" occasionally but most people only truly call "friends" a handful of people.

This is completely untrue. What you are describing is how Facebook has colloquialized the word "friend." The American concept of actual friendship is no different than the German or the Japanese one. A "true friend" is a pretty universal concept. Nobody mistakes a "FB only friend" for a true friend. There's no reason for you to bash Americans. Frankly you are unlikely to make meaningful connections with any other nationality when you're making cultural superiority judgements like that.

I didn't read GPs comment as passing judgement, just that the American concept seemed different to what they are familiar with. The word "friend" is overloaded here, we just don't have a problem with that because lots of words are overloaded.

Especially on FB, it's like pokemon - gotta catch 'em all!

> I get to see their children grow up, new jobs, comfort them when they lose a parent..

Do you though? I mean do you really get to see all those things? Having been through the loss of a parent and the arrival a new baby in the past couple of years I can tell you from this end of things there is no value in any online "presence" of friends and family.

The people who come to meet our new baby, who brought food, and who attended the funeral are the ones that actually impacted our lives and improved us and themselves. A DM or post in Instagram meant nothing - it feels more like the person is signaling human emotions than engaging in them.

So after the death of a parent, an old, close childhood friend that lives far away sends you a message saying "your mom was a second mother to me" and it means nothing...?

It means something to me. So I continue to use the service.

Those people sent letters and sympathy cards - actual handwritten ones! And they called too - actually spoke on the telephone. I know, it's a little wacky, but it works.

It's the quality of the thought, not the medium for which it's conveyed.

Maybe he means that the person who said "your mom was a second mother" also came to the funeral?

Apples and Oranges. Do you live 1000s of miles away from friends and family so that your baseline is never seeing the people rather than seeing them in person. If you are starting from the former and building up the ways to stay in touch a platform like Facebook can be a nice tool. Modern communications tools make living away from Family much better than anytime in history with email, unmetered long distance phone, video conferencing, chat, sites like facebook, etc.

Nice try NSA!

Facebook is the creepiest site ever. It's way more than the Stasi could have ever hoped for.

On top of that, the interface makes my brain hurt.

You're addicted, you just don't know it yet.

> it's the fear of reduced social contact (or dopamine withdrawal more likely) that was stopping me.

Yeppp. I know exactly how you feel, brother. I gave up Facebook for New Years and will be deleting my account after I set up a blog so I have somewhere to blow off steam and tell bad jokes.

The compromise that helped me overcome the feeling of being cut off was that I will have an open comments section and email address, if my friends really want to stay in touch then they will take time out of their week to come say hi.

It's a lot harder than people think. And the last season of South Park was no joke... When I announced I was leaving Facebook, many people were shocked and genuinely concerned for me. They asked me if it was really necessary, if I couldn't just use it less.

But that isn't an option, it's all or nothing and within a few months I will never let Facebook save another cookie on my computer again.

But I know the concern is partially because they understand exactly what is going on in my mind but they don't see a way out. It's really depressing.

For the hell of it I briefly checked my feed last week and I felt like a recovering junkie, visiting their old friends and seeing for the first time what their lifestyle really looked like from the outside.

> will be deleting my account after I set up a blog so I have somewhere to blow off steam and tell bad jokes

The following is not meant to be critical - honest.

Why don't you channel your desire to be heard in to live interactions instead of an online one which is ultimately one way? It is much more fulfilling, and admitting/accepting that you don't deserve & need to share every thought that pops in to your head is healthy.

I spend a lot of my time around a computer. I work on one and spend most of my free time coding or discovering new things online. So a blog naturally fits into my lifestyle. I don't have to make big life changes to run one, and it's been years since I've had a journal so it will be nice. If I lose interest in it, that's fine.

But, I don't really understand why you assume that I don't participate in much live interaction. Why do you think I left Facebook?

I love hanging out with people and discussing a variety of topics. But I also like to write down my thoughts. I figure some people might like to see them from time to time.

I am currently working remotely from a very rural area so I don't get to see friends much, and I am about to move to a new state. So a blog / online journal will definitely help keep me from going bonkers without the level of social contact I desire.

I recently sent round an event-organising email and slipped in the facebook thing. Not everyone who replied mentioned it, but everyone that did said that they were thinking exactly the same thing.

And if you need an extra kick, you can download an archive all your data. It had previous girlfriends, employers, places I signed in, private messages, ad agencies they passed my details on to, etc etc. All stuff I'd rather let fade away, but I know it never will.

I downloaded an archive, for sure. I was actually just searching it for a specific message before I got on HN.

Sadly I lost the archive from my previous account. Lots of gems in there.

It's amazing the amounts of conversations we have on a weekly basis that we soon forget. We are just passing too much information through our body and mind to catch even a tenth of it permanently.

> Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social contact (or dopamine withdrawal more likely) that was stopping me. If you have a plan to replace the social interactions with other forms, you realise that the rest is just dross.

This is the problem for me right now. I don't have a plan for replacing the social contact of facebook (and facebook isn't giving me anywhere close to what I need). I'm also struggling with depression right now and pretty socially withdrawn. As soon as the current blues pass and I'm able to come up with a real life third place [1], I hope to start limiting how much time I spend there and eventually quit altogether.

[1] From the article - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

I feel lucky in that I have a job that involves social interaction, but moving to a new city left me without any "third place". I definitely empathize with the loneliness that can stir up and so many public spaces seem designed around creating new social interactions between people who aren't already associated.

I read an article not long ago about upscale private clubs. I'm strongly attracted to the status/networking aspect often involved, but the idea of a place gather and socialize that doesn't require buying alcohol/coffee/food is appealing. Place it in a neighborhood. Keep the membership fees accessible to the people who live in that community and then offer some small perks that bars/coffee shops don't (e.g. free billiards on a real table). Hopefully, membership would make people a little more open to socializing with whomever show up, rather than the typical bar in which most people stick to their own group.

Does anyone have experience with private clubs (of any kind)? Did they open up social interaction in this way?

Community radio serves this for me-- people uniting over common interests, volunteering together to keep the outfit running, and interacting in unexpected ways.

I feel very fortunate to have this in my life, and really wish there were more things like this for more people--

That sounds a lot like a hackerspace.

It might not be your cup of tea, but religious organizations like churches are one of the most accessible sources of socializing in many communities. In my experience, that's a primary reason that many people actually attend them.

That's a cool idea, yep. My thing used to be volunteering at bike shop. It was free as long as I was working (which I enjoyed) and there was a lot of interaction. Having it fee-based instead of work-based would be cool too.

Volunteering is definitely a good way to meet people (as is joining a dance group or sports team) - but just having a space to hang out, play a social game, and/or talk with people would be nice. I imagine having a small membership fee could strengthen the "in-group" mentality causing people to open up a little.

I found meetup.com is a pretty good place for this, depending on where you are. It's a bunch of people looking for some kind of communal group based on shared interests (programming, political philosophy, SciFi, religion, learning Italian, hiking, etc.). Of course you have to find the right group that fits you, but when you do it's great.

Other places I've had success is with local political/activist groups and hobby groups (dance groups, martial arts groups). Again, you have to try a lot of groups to find the right one, but it's worth it.

It's not always true. In San Francisco the people I meet in meetups are often broken and puts little trust in strangers.

TBH, I never met so many lonely broken people in other parts of the world.

<I don't have a plan for replacing the social contact of facebook

Get a fun job. Like at Walmart. People are invigorating. You have real relationships with fellow workers and the regular customers. Human interaction. Just don't have it be your real job so you can ignore drama.

Partner dancing is fantastic for this, IMO. Any sort of social hobby works, though. The less digitized the better - the fundamental problem is probably something like "by default, what I do is stare at a screen."

I didn't have a plan for replacing the social contact of Facebook when I quit. I lost contact with a lot of people. But it turned out that most were acquaintances, not friends, and I could do without them. My acquaintances now are the people I see every day, the doormen and baristas I meet but don't become close with, and I find this means my acquaintances include more variety of people as a result. And the real friends, I've kept in contact with; there are only maybe 10, so it's not hard to text them occasionally.

Facebook prevented you from becoming acquaintences with doormen and baristas?

Yes. Your experience might be different, but I have a limited capacity for the number of people I can remember basic facts about to be polite, so when I was keeping track of 100+ people on Facebook I didn't have the mental space to keep track of people who I met in my day-to-day.

>"I thought it would be difficult. Turns out it's not so hard, and it's the fear of reduced social contact (or dopamine withdrawal more likely) that was stopping me."

Agreed. People fear they will socially ostracized if the leave Facebook. My experience has been the opposite. I found that FB is a good excuse to be socially lazy. Going to actual social events and meeting new people and having spontaneous conversations is far more gratifying and important. It's easy to delude yourself that you are getting your "social fix" via your FB feed and sending and accepting "friend requests."

There was a time when if you were in a public place waiting for a friend, you would strike up a conversation with a person next to you. Now if you are in say a bar waiting for your friend to show up most people are more likely to use that time to look FB on their phones, rather than interact with unknown people around them. I find this kind of sad.

I also just took the plunge. I guess I'm at about 3 weeks (late next week is one month).

For the past several months, I spent some of my free time going through my history, deleting almost everything I ever posted (note, there's a way to view your timeline by specific year, which seems to include more than the regular timeline view). The few things I couldn't delete (because it didn't give me an option) or that I didn't want to delete (e.g, photos I want to download later), I set to viewable only by me. Then without a peep, I deactivated my account. I probably should have written a script to do this rather than taking all the time. But to be honest, doing it manually was a nice jog down memory lane, even if it was really time consuming.

At this point, I have no plans to reactivate my account, with one exception. At some point, when I decide that "it's time," I'll reactivate my account, download an archive of the remaining items, delete what I can of what remains, and use the "account delete" option (for whatever good that actually does). Then that will be it.

Out of habit, I still frequently catch myself saying "ooh, interesting article, I should post that to facebook. Oh, wait..." Hopefully it's only a matter of time before that stops.

I did the same as you about the same amount of time ago...interesting. A month prior, I requested an export of my Facebook data so I at least have that should I feel the need to look at old pics.

Just unfollow everyone, you won't have a feed. There's nothing to do on there without a feed and you won't miss anything. It takes some time to do it but it's worth it. I still login pretty much daily but leave quickly.

I deactivated my account over a year ago. Facebook will not delete your account, deactivate is the best you can do. Interestingly I went to a Facebook event at their headquarters and when I signed in, there was my profile picture staring back at me. I thought pulling it out of my deactivated account was in poor taste.

Anyway, I can say I'm happier without it. I'm now seriously considering deactivating my Twitter account. Twitter really will delete your account after I believe 30 days of it being deactivated.

It is possible to permanently delete a Facebook account. It's not known whether this truly deletes it, but it's a more permanent measure than deactivation: https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674?helpref=relate...

This is a nefarious dark pattern though - I don't think there's any way to find the delete option through menus, you have to search through Google or Facebook's help center.

Ah, I did not know that. As far as I know the UI only offers deactivate as an option.

Thanks, I just deleted my account.

I thought Facebook does delete your account. Do you have a source?

Facebook can remove it from public view however any posts you make are the property of Facebook and so they continue to hold onto it.

My guess is that they don't delete anything due to regulatory and legal reasons.

What possible regulatory and legal reasons would there be that they can't delete your account?

It's not like it's financial information.

Any other service (eg Google) expressly says in it's TOS that they may delete your account whenever they feel like it.

My guess is they don't delete it because your data is valuable to them and they don't want to lose it, though they may use fake regulatory and legal excuses.

I flat out deleted Facebook (the hidden option that truly deletes you). Turned out to improve my social life. I focused on and nurtured the friendships that truly mattered to me.

the hidden option?

Well,the less obvious option I had to Google to find. It doesn't just set my account as inactive, it deletes it so that I no longer appear in friends lists as a referencabl e person.

I would so love to do it, but my use of Facebook is for a specific cause and I login and participate only in a few groups (always with a browser equipped with an ad blocker and tracker blocker). I don't browse time lines or participate on people's time line posts and comments. I don't use the app. I do use the messenger app for one of my FB accounts for convenience (with minimal permissions).

Since I don't use WhatsApp (because it's an FB company and because chat is not a substitute for groups), it'd be very hard to engage with others for my use, find new people, etc.

Personal anecdote: I concluded it was making me slightly depressed, so manually unfollowed everyone (but kept them as friends) and un-liked every single page. Use it basically to reply when someone comments on a post (effectively trying to make it a "write-only" log)

Turns out you apparently cannot do that, as every time I log in, I find myself re-following a few people (2-10) - some of which I had unfollowed long, long before my "isolationist" move...

These 'made the switch' stories always surprise me - seems like an over-reaction. I guess I've never been so 'in' to Facebook that I've felt a pressing need to get 'out'. Sometimes I go weeks/months without engaging much at all, sometimes I browse it daily just to see what everybody's yakking about. I don't really feel like it has a net-negative impact on my life.

I found it interesting for the opposite reason: I've avoided Facebook up to now, but there are enough inconveniences that my resistance is wearing down.

They might be clunky, but I'm sure there are adequate means of doing everything you'd want to do.

The problem many people have is convenience. For example if you are forced to use Facebook in order to log into a Hotel Wifi (as I recently was) then you have to say "I don't want the Wifi more than I want to log in with Facebook". It's not an essential.

Or, it might be more difficult to spend the effort keeping in touch with people on a personal level, but it's not impossible. It just doesn't have the convenience that Facebook gives. But it also doesn't have the costs.

I'm not trying to convince anyone. But I do find it increasingly interesting (as I pay more attention to it) how many people confuse 'convenient' for 'essential'.

I keep a dummy Facebook account for precisely this purpose.

It has taken me almost 8 years to cut Facebook from my life, mainly because I used to log on to tend to my business page. However, like you, I decided enough was enough and went cold turkey 2 weeks ago.

Now 2 weeks later, when FB crosses my mind I am actually happy and sometimes grin thinking of how much I've benefited from quitting it!

> I'm not at the point of deleting the account yet. Small steps.

I'm in the same boat. I hardly use it, but I keep it around because it is the favored way to contact certain people and organize events, and I don't want to miss out.

I console myself by deliberately injecting noise into my profile (e.g. fake likes) every once in awhile.

I've also been out from Facebook over a month now. The last time I did it I was out three years, but needed to join back when I moved to a new country.

This time I also stopped drinking alcohol, quit nicotine (in the form of snus) and deleted several of my accounts, e.g. Gmail and Linkedin. This feels suspiciously easy...

Nice!

I did something similar. I deleted the facebook app from my phone (originally due to battery usage). Then eventually I deactivated my account. I believe I have been facebook free for two weeks.