- I didn't miss anything. Turns out there wasn't any real quality content on there anyway.
- My battery lasts 2x longer.
- I seem to be happier. No joke. With all the rage articles and click bait headlines gone, I am far more happier.
- I am way more informed now. I visit allsides.com and get the news there. I quickly get up to speed and find well written articles that inform me about what is really going on.
- I am more productive. Without all the garbage Facebook puts out, I have more time to get actual work done.
- I feel accomplished. I go home feeling more accomplished. I am happier, more productive, and more informed. It is a win-win-win all around.
Every once in a while i like to see what events my friends have invited me to, so I log on to facebook on my browser, check my notifications, and leave. How do I prevent myself from getting sucked in by the news feed? I block it, with News Feed Eradicator, a Chrome extension. If someone posted a picture of you or tagged you in some way, you know, the things that in your news feed that are actually useful/concern you, you get a notification without any clutter to block it up.
It's lowered my stress level and I still get to stay in touch with the things I care about.
To come with another data-point, I have the app on my phone, but don't open it every week. I have turned off most notifications, so if I get a notification on the phone I know it is worth it to use 30 sec to check what it is. Instead I check FB a couple of times a day on a PC where I can set the feed to show most recent post first and in a minute or two go through the list of new post from peoples I keep in the feed. Some times it is something interesting there, some times not. For me it is strange how others manage to use hours at a time on FB (except messenger which I use to keep in touch with friends and family).
My point is that you cannot only blame FB for getting addicted, you is the only one that is responsible for how you spend your time. It is getting so "normal" to blame external forces for own behavior
You don't see all the stuff you don't want to see if you don't keep opening the app all the time. So back to it is how you use the application that is the problem, not the application.
That frees you up to use Facebook for its actual useful function: Handling events and possibly the most genuinely important updates from your friends, without the bloat.
The pared-down user experience in the mbasic version is the entire point. I already filter out everything I don't consider important, and using the mbasic version is another step in the direction of reducing distractions. It also doesn't do the weird re-arranging of discussions and broken infinite scroll that the app does.
It's simply a much easier and less annoying experience.
The only reason I still have facebook is for group chat messenger during the day, and to keep track of underground parties. One of those chats is moving to discord, and other kind of moved to iMessage. Messenger now has intrusive ads on it as well, I would leave it if I could.
This might be just specific to very international people like me who travel and work in many different countries so our phone numbers change often and keeping track of that is almost impossible.
I guess this also varies tremendously by region. WhatsApp completely dominates non-work communication in Argentina; we don't use SMS, nor phone calls, and FB is pretty much is second place.
AFAIK, in the US people actually use SMS a lot, and I'm sure it's a bit different everywhere else.
More on topic though; you can use Messenger without an FB account and still find people by username.
It seems that you have phone number that is in some way associated with you.
I'd say www.residentadvisor.com does a better job!
Jokes aside, I did the same. Its a healthy move, I also forgot my FB password on my main computer and have not gone through the trouble of using chrome to look it up.
I think life is a bit better not having facebook -- considered everything is already alright.
I think, however, if someone is depressed, being on Facebook is a huge problem. Which is ironically what I resorted to when I was depressed. It was like living in hell.
Wow, I've been looking for something like this. Wish they did more than just the USA.
They're mostly either partisan drivel, or bland statements of fact that don't explain why this news is good/bad/important.
The ability to do the latter in a neutral manner is what's valuable – to me, at least, – and I don't see it here.
I am now using Messenger Lite, as I am in some personal friend groups (muted) that I sometimes catch up on, and I will say that it hardly uses any resources at all. Would highly recommend it for anyone who still wants Messenger but without the bloat and battery loss.
It was costing me >0 resources (i.e. my time) and was having a net negative effect on me. I was just so irritated by the mind numbingly dumb things that I'd consume while browsing the news feed. Which unfortunately over time became close to 100% of the content on my feed.
I have also stopped using the main FB website. I only use messenger.com to talk to my friends but no need to go to the main website anymore.
The only reason why I haven't deleted my FB account completely yet is because I got a lot of pictures on FB and haven't found a convenient way to export them yet. So I might keep my FB account just as free cloud storage for my pictures, that's all.
Click the triangle on the right in the menu bar, and go to Settings. Under "General - General Account Settings" there's a light-grey link that takes you to "Download a copy of your Facebook data". From there you can request an archive of your profile.
It doesn't include all the 'shadow profile' info they keep of you, but it gives you and easy way to download all of your photos at once, easy to import in your photo management app.
EDIT: I've just done a fresh export of my profile, and it seems that sadly the photos don't get exported at full resolution, so this might not be the best option if FB is your primary photo storage at the moment.
Before I deleted the app on my phone recently, I scrolled through my feed for about 5-10 minutes with a simple test: if I encountered something that genuinely improved my life, I'd keep it installed. I didn't. I can (and do) get my news and politics elsewhere, the comic strips I follow I'll figure out another solution for, and if I want to see photos I can log in through the website whenever the urge hits me.
Why in the hell is this so hard?
install it from the Github repo and you can use it load a custom host file (the playstore version doesn't allow this) it functions as a VPN. Free service that also lets you block trackers and individual app analytics
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
https://github.com/jmdugan/blocklists/blob/master/corporatio...
Now just to block HN most hours of the day...
Browsing the site always made me a bit angry (at the politics) and a bit sad (because someone else always seems to be on some impressive vacation). Then I'd close the browser be angry at myself for wasting time I could have invested in learning something or creating something.
My #1 fear was that I'd feel out of the loop, but I honestly don't. I've yet to have anyone mention something with a "didn't you see that on Facebook?" A friend of mine tried the same experiment and says he's also happier. If you catch yourself left with a bit of pensive sadness after using the site, try taking a hiatus and see how it feels.
Any chance this is because you don't know what you've missed, and hence you don't talk to people about them?
I do like and use events on Facebook, but I wish it was any other service at this point. It's all about the network effect though, it doesn't matter how many better options there are if no one has an account there.
And if it wasn't important enough to mention, why care about it?
1. Events. For discovering events, there really is no good substitute to seeing where other people are going. I often get good event suggestions from Facebook through distant friends who would never invite me in real life.
2. Groups. For discussing stuff related to hobbies, people often use Facebook groups. E.g. a painting class, where people post their work, and post things like "let's visit this gallery tomorrow morning" or "there's a masterclass this weekend, who joins?".
Snapchat is low-stakes and more playful for throw-away stuff in people's day-to-day life.
I don’t even have some fairly close friends on FB!
With Snapchat I don't see such trend. It has no website, only a confusing mobile app with horrid UX that most people can't figure out and is mostly used for adding pig noses and cat ears to pictures by teenagers.
The whole point of Facebook is to "record personal history".
The whole point of Snapchat is to maintain "privacy". It fills a void that Facebook was never meant to do nor intends.
Before someone says "you can still screenshot" on Snapchat. While that is true, the platform strongly discourages it and millions of users do not screenshot for every single photo. Whereas FB, is default "save"
The way a platform facilitates interaction is very important.
Sending pictures that disappear and are not recorded is a valid use case but it's a very narrow one in my opinion. It might be useful for dating or "flirting" conversations so maybe 10% of human interaction.
Therefor I think the way Snapchat works it will never become mainstream like Facebook did because it doesn't work well for normal interaction between friends & family which is 90% of most peoples' social interaction.
Snapchat is already mainstream, it has 178 million daily active users. Tons of celebrities use it too. It's not some unknown app. Facebook is still more popular by a large margin. However, that doesn't deny Snapchat being labeled "mainstream".
>I think people want to keep personal history in most cases. Like all normal conversations with friends or family, you would want to keep history of it so you can go look up things in the future.
Again, Facebook and Snapchat are two different apps. Snapchat was never meant to become a Facebook copy-cat. They both fulfill two different purposes.
Your comment is similar to watching a horror film and complaining that it wasn't a comedy film and explaining how horror films do poorly compared to comedies. They are not mutually exclusive.
I’m amazed at how easily people obey the challenge memes. I’m guessing a lot of them are instigated by Facebook to increase engagement.
* Do not install it on my phone. My long, complex password isn't even stored there, so I couldn't log in if I wanted.
* Open https://mbasic.facebook.com/ in a private tab on my computer when I want to post something or check in, then close it when I'm done. This greatly reduces tracking surface (no JS), and provides just enough friction to eliminate compulsive checking or interaction.
It's like not buying a giant bag of potato chips every time you go to the store.
Useful for emergencies to non-daily users like me.
I recommend deleting your account. Facebook wants people to think that everything happens on Facebook, but really almost nothing happens on Facebook. It's basically a useless recreational drug that is wasting the lives of many people (and severely damaging human civilization with its reality distortion -- time will tell us the full effects).
I’d really recommend trying it if you have the same feeling of wasting time as the OP - it’s a bit less drastic than removing your account, but it does the job. I thought I might refollow certain people after a while but six months later I haven’t bothered and I now only check the site once a day for messages usually.
You can either do the process of unfollowing manually, or using JavaScript - there is a settings page where you can list all your contacts (by pressing load more a lot) then automate clicking “unfollow”. I can try to find the script I used if you are interested. Sounds like another option is to use a browser extension.
Another piece of advice that others have mentioned is to delete the app - if you want access messages, you can use mbasic.facebook.com. It really sucks that they removed messaging from the mobile site to push users to their sucky apps.
I’ve got respect for people just deleting their account but for me messenger still has enough social use that this is a perfect compromise for now!
If a "friend" posts something political or something that annoys me, I just Unfollow them. That means I've unfollowed most of my friends, but I have no interest in partaking in the outrage.
Thinking about it more, all media should be in the running, from HN to Netflix, because it's really about time spent.
I've been seeing the same thing, almost everything is links, clickbait or "tests" that everyone just re-shares. Very few people are posting any original content any more.
Currently I think Messenger is what's keeping people from abandoning Facebook.
Best decision I’ve made. Just make sure not to logout or Facebook will hammer your email to entice you back in.
Since when did Facebook become a news outlet? Oh wait...
I have never in 10 years clicked on a single ad and I've removed the apps so I don't get autoplaying videos so I'm not bothered by the future ads on there. Messenger is important to me and the Birthday list is too. Without those I wouldn't deCtivate since you need it as social proof for Tinder, but I'd never go back on.
Honestly, I was busy for just 3 days and didn't log on and the "addiction" completely vanished. We need to have a no shave novemebr for Facebook, maybe a no Facebook February and I guarantee millions would get off the addiction and vastly limit daily social media use.