Facebook – You are the Product

Re:Facebook – You are the Product by abyssin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @04:02PM (#15030786)

I stopped using the harmful part of Facebook, ie the newsfeed, which is designed to create an addictive behaviour, using the following technique. On every single post in my newsfeed, I tell the application I no longer want to see content from the source. It takes some weeks to dry up, but you end up with an empty page. You still get notifications related to your events, group activities, and you can still use the messages. By the way, here's another tip, if you want to read and send messages on mobile without installing the app: use mbasic.fb.com instead of the default m.facebook.com URL.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by tucif on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @04:56PM (#15031311)

I also adopted a similar approach, where I unfollowed ALL my firends so that none of them will show up in newsfeed.

Then I added the few ones I truly wanted to know about to the "Close friends" list which allows you to activate notifications for everything they post.

Now when I log in I only see a bunch of notifications which have a very handy "Mark all as read" link, and I only click further when I see a non-meme status update or an interesting share from them.

I can always search someone and go to their profile, or click on a firend list and see what certain group is up to. And I still find messenger useful, except for the forced "Add to your day" part, from which I daily hide any friends "day" as they post it without opening it (hold click to show that option). I'm about 1 year like this and it has been great, don't feel like I'm missing anything.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by alexman on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @07:12PM (#15032137)

This is similar to what I did too but the newsfeed is still polluted with lots of "likes" (e.g. liking a page, liking a post) by my close friends which are irrelevant to me 99% of the time. I wish Facebook let me hide "likes" from my friends.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by provost on Thursday August 17, 2017 @03:33AM (#15034524)

If it really bothers you, a simple Greasemonkey script can fix that.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by mattnewton on Thursday August 17, 2017 @09:37AM (#15036629)

Or just don't visit the newsfeed ever.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by deftturtle on Saturday August 19, 2017 @01:16AM (#15051812)

Problem solved....

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by pyman on Tuesday August 22, 2017 @12:23PM (#15073934)

Facebook is the new Yahoo!

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by rdruxn on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @04:54PM (#15031298)

There are dozens of browser extensions that just hide the newsfeed. No need to go through all that labor.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by j_s on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:32PM (#15032971)

Make Hacker News Your Facebook Newsfeed

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14755217

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by barbs on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:56PM (#15033708)

I made one for Firefox on Android (should work on iOS too).

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hide-mobile-f...

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by unicornporn on Thursday August 17, 2017 @12:23AM (#15033803)

Relying on extensions on every browser on every browser I use seems cumbersome? I've unfollowed everything and everyone, and it works on every device without extension. There was a way to batch this.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by ck425 on Saturday August 19, 2017 @06:55AM (#15052717)

None that work with Chrome Android though. :(

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by tripzilch on Monday August 21, 2017 @07:06AM (#15063600)

But Chrome Android doesn't let you use extensions, period. Not really sure why you'd want to use it :-)

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by tarr11 on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @04:23PM (#15031040)

this is really cool!

FWIW - mbasic.fb.com does not work. But mbasic.facebook.com does.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by flangillion on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:39AM (#15035129)

You don't need to do that. Simply use Adblock to block the newsfeed element (the infinite-scroll column in the middle of the page).

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by billysielu on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:49AM (#15035185)

I achieved this by unfollowing everyone and changing my browser bookmark to my most commonly used group. I never visit the news feed anymore because there's nothing on it besides adverts.

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by chrisper on Thursday August 17, 2017 @01:10AM (#15033959)

Can't you just use messenger.com? It is what I do

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Re:Facebook – You are the Product by jackocnr on Thursday August 17, 2017 @05:45AM (#15035165)

This is amazing. Facebook messenger without the temptation of the notifications icon. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

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