Agreed. Platforms like facebook are very easy to find and contact with old friends, but when people delete the account it becomes 10x tougher to find them again. I wish people improve their self control when it comes to using apps like instagram and facebook.

How can you expect people to have self control over a system which does everything in its power to weaken/stop that self control?

Facebook in 2010 was what we all loved. It's garbage now, and we all know it.

You think the IPO in 2012 made things worse?

Why didn't you ask him for his email?

Because he had his facebook.

When you outsource you usually lose in resiliency.

The same reason no one else on these platforms asks for backup contact details...

These platforms make everything so easy, so additively easy, and it's awkward and difficult to ask for methods of contact outside of the platform or even any other kinds of backups.

Almost as difficult as someone who's never used, and refuses to use these platforms.

Because no one uses email anymore? How old are you?

Wechat/Line/Kakaotalk handle this without the damages of Facebook and the like. At least for KakaoTalk, it's not a "social network" in the same way your contacts list isn't one, but since everyone [in Korea] is on Kakaotalk it makes adding and maintaining friends easy. You don't have to worry about people deleting their accounts because there's nothing -to- delete an account over; it's just a chat app that everyone uses.

It would be nice if there were a similar app in the US with that kind of market share, instead of everything being scattered among various apps, etc.

The only real issue I felt with deleting my facebook was losing access to facebook groups. I was very close to making a burner account to participate in some groups, but I never ended up wanting it that -that- badly as meetup sufficed.

> Wechat/Line/Kakaotalk

not really, nobody use these apps outside of their respective countries

Well, yes. But -inside- those countries, everyone uses them. Obviously it only really applies if you live there.

You seem to have a healthy relationship with FB. Issue is...FB is actively optimizing the experience to achieve an unhealthy relationship that is effectively an addiction. That’s the evil part.

As someone who clearly saw the shortcomings of facebook from the get go and as a consequence never bother to register, I wonder what are the upsides you mention.

Facebook is mostly a birthday reminder feature hidden in a glorified walled garden email, its whole point is vacuuming personal data and find ways to make as much profit as possible with it.

IMHO email is vastly superior to facebook as it is open and offers interoperability.

I guess you need friends to understand this

that's, why I ultimately decided to not delete it (as well as Instagram) - they'll keep their shadow profile anyway. Good idea about unfollowing most people though (some other post herr) - makes visiting it stupid unless to check if someone contacted you/contact someone.

I deleted everything I've posted and stopped logging in and just kept my shell profile as I figured they were keeping a shadow profile on me. I log in an check messages every few months or whenever I randomly remember. I have all notifications turned off because I found they were sending me fake sketchy random notifications to get me to log in more when I stopped logging in, so now I only log in when I choose to.

For me, LinkedIn, surprisingly, has been very useful in such situations.