# Nuked my facebook account (Long post)



## will_shred (Mar 23, 2018)

Due to privacy concerns, I am going though the process of running a program that systematically deletes everything in my facebook history, and after that I will be closing my account. Part of it is wanting to erase all the awful posts I made when I was younger, but I am also uncomfortable with the growing field of data mining. I think this election cycle has really revealed how much special interests can use social media to manipulate people, and do more than just swing elections, but really shape the culture in a myriad of ways. Orwell himself could hardly have come up with a more genius method of mass social manipulation.

Silicon valley has created a network where people willingly, and gleefully, share intimate details of what they think and feel. This isn't just what you post to your public profile, but every comment you've ever written, every post you've ever liked. This information is all stored and sold to companies for the purposes of predicting your desires, thoughts, and actions, and swaying them to benefit a special interest, whether its Sweetwater selling you microphones or a politician wanting trying to get your vote. I think that social media has contributed to the increasing polarization and extremism that is tearing our country apart.


The combination of AI selecting more and more extreme posts that reinforce your bias, and ideologues, politicians, and government entities, biased media outlets like fox and MSNBC, and psudo media outlets like infowars, create distortions, half truths, and outright fabrications that make for easily shareable headlines, and hence more ad revenue, but contain very little relation to something that resembles reality. It seems to me like the country is having an epistemological crisis, where few bother to read beyond the headline, and actually critically analyze the torrent of information that they are bombarded with every day, which has made it so that the notions of speaking truth to power, attempting to see past your bias to get at a deeper understanding, and critical thinking are on the decline.
This is a problem on both sides of the isle, but I think that the core supporters of our president are the largest portion of the population where this problem has become most apparent. I don't want to make this a political discussion per se since there is already a 200 page thread all about Trump. Instead I want to have a discussion about social media's role in increasing polzerization, and a contribution to a sort of national epistemic confusion where all facts are relative. Many of them understand that the president hardly if ever makes truthful statements, but they just don't care because its a middle finger to "the establishment/political correctness/communism/whatever) 
In the last year I have seriously cut down on the amount I use social media, and I rarely post on any of the major networks. I just want to unplug myself and my brain from these things as much as possible. Facebook is a huge part of my online data, and probably my most revealing. But I still have oodles of information with google and reddit. And I rely on google for a lot of services that I could hardly manage without. (Google calender, maps, drive, ect). I'm not too worried about my SSO post history lol.

(Note on epistemology, "facts" and "truth" are shaky claims to make on any basis, when I talk about a fact I mean something like "the most accurate statement about something". When I talk about truths I am referring to "Statements that are generally supported by evidence". When I think about distortions, untruths, and lies, that is things that are not generally supported by evidence. Assuming that an absolute truth is unreachable once you get out of pure logic and pure math, the next best is saying that statements are more or less accurate, and the more accurate ones we say are facts, and the less accurate ones we determine to be false.)


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## Drew (Mar 23, 2018)

will_shred said:


> I think this election cycle has really revealed how much special interests can use social media to manipulate people, and do more than just swing elections, but really shape the culture in a myriad of ways. Orwell himself could hardly have come up with a more genius method of mass social manipulation.


In some ways I'm actually glad I work for a traditionally "conservative" industry, because it forces me to take in news from a whole range of sources. CNBC isn't quite the right wing propaganda network that Fox is, but there are a whole slew of (predominately economically, but also occasionally socially) conservative talking heads that I spend 50 hours a week listening to.

So, I'd say that social media CAN increase polarization... But I think that was already happening. There's a little bit of a disconnect between surveys and actual viewing patterns, but the conservative echo chamber dates back to at _least _Fox, and MSNBC is doing much the same on the left, and I'm sure much the same could be said of "conservative" and "liberal" newspapers. We've seen a fair amount of geographical political sorting for a few generations now, as well. So, if anything, I'd only call social media a continuation of a long-running trend, and one that makes it easier to get more granular than it was in the past. That can both be good - I know WAY more guitarists than I did before social media - and bad - look at the recent rise of white nationalism.

I think the biggest change I've seen isn't from social media, its the (for lack of a better word) weaponization of news. Fake news in the traditional sense, either simply making up stories ("The Pope endorses Donald Trump!") or taking a few grains of truth and wrapping them up in a whole swath of constructed context (every Project Veritas video ever), and using largely artificial stories not to enhance knowledge of current events among the general populace, but to attack and smear political rivals. I think _this_ is why truth as a ipso facto concept is dying, the fact we're being conditioned to think of everything in terms of bias and objective, because now so much of what we see in the news DOES have a bias and objective, especially - and very ironically - as you move away from mainstream media sources.

PS - I'm still on facebook, and have no real plans to go anywhere.


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## vilk (Mar 23, 2018)

I sometimes speculate that one of the many roots of these issues is that in the United States we have no educational standards for Logic & Reason. Admittedly, I myself have no formal educational background in Logic whatsoever, having gone through public schools in Indiana...

...that's why I think so many people cannot begin to wrap their heads around _whataboutism_ and why it is not a logical defense. People point out whataboutism and logical fallacies all the time in internet debate, but I'm not convinced that most of the people being called out for it really understand _why_ a whataboutism isn't actually a defense of Trump/etc. They hear "that's a logical fallacy" but they've never actually stopped for a second and thought about the notion of whether there can be objectively incorrect logic. They hear the whataboutism and they mistakenly believe that it is indeed a good defense... Because they're ignorant, but only for having never been educated... so I don't want to judge them too harshly for that specific ignorance. Even I wish I had a better background in it. I regret not taking any courses in university.


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## wankerness (Mar 23, 2018)

I think an equally good reason to delete your facebook account is that facebook is terrible. The only reason I keep it open is that facebook messenger is a convenient, free way to "text" with the handful of people I know in other countries.

I can't say I'd miss out on the endless stream of pictures of food, babies, and weddings. And I DEFINITELY wouldn't miss any political posts. Political posts on facebook are horrible, no matter who does them.


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## narad (Mar 23, 2018)

People over-estimate the importance of the social data they create. The only thing I worry about to the point where deleting facebook might be an appropriate response/countermeasure is the thought of everyone's FB chats getting released in some public dump. Kind of like the leaked cables but with just everyone's cattiness and backstabbing put out for the world to see.


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## jaxadam (Mar 23, 2018)




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## Drew (Mar 23, 2018)

Is that Tom from MySpace?


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## TedEH (Mar 23, 2018)

I sort of get the impression that increased connectivity (not social media specifically, per-se) has simply lead to people being much more confident about their beliefs, since the internet can "confirm" just about anything, true or not. What social media gives us is self importance that we didn't have previously. Everyone is important and worth "following" and has their own tiny little stage that we've tied to our self worth. When you pair that with the overconfidence of having access to any (true or not) knowledge in your pocket, you end up with a huge barrier to critical thinking.

I think staying away from facebook for decent period of time is a good idea, but not because it's any more manipulative or shady than any other part of the world we live in, but because the bombardment of data is a huge stressor. All of the information in the world is competing to get funneled into your eyeballs, from ads, to friends posting their opinions of things, to everyones wedding and baby photos, to youtube videos about everything, reviews, memes, etc. and it's too much to process. And social media is GREAT at funneling stuff at you. Everyone always says they're anxious and stressed all of the time -> well of course you are. Go outside and relax for a bit. Turn the brain off for a while. Go camping with no phone. Stop trying to be important. Stop trying to take everything in. Stop comparing yourself to everyone else. Stop spending your time with activities that aggregate all of this stuff you need to process. It sounds like an "old man yells at cloud" argument, but I think it's the truth. It's way too much to handle all at once and all the time.


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## JSanta (Mar 28, 2018)

It's also a wider spread issue of people not having a foundation in critical thinking. It's not even something that I encountered in traditional education until I got to my doctorate. In "good" research, you're just laying out facts, but you don't have skin in the game with respects to the outcome. Collect data, analyze data, share data, repeat. Social media I think to an extent just exacerbates what individuals already intrinsically believe and then provides a confirmation bias because of the community nature of social platforms.


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## narad (Mar 28, 2018)

I don't know... my hunch is 2 things are getting conflated: social media, and the rise of average people as information sources. I guess by definition, that's "social media", but we used to compartmentalize the types of information we wanted from the social aspect (friends) and from traditional media. Like... sure, Brian, show me your news about your vacation to Italy. New York Times, tell me about the gun control policies being pushed in the wake of Parkland.

Now these are all scrambled up. The media is partly to blame. You didn't used to have actual news agencies like CNN taking a timeout to be like, "Tell us what you think. @FartsOrSharts says, ..." It's supposed to be like, who cares what a random twitter account says. They're the news. Their opinion is supposed to totally eclipse that of the random uninformed person on the internet.

And then once we started to legitimize the opinions of everyone as a valid source of news, then all these micro-Alex Jonesy people popped up. And now you can follow dozens of different liberal or conservative nodes if you want, and I feel like that's where the real echo chamber comes from.

That and public comments sections on FB. I was very tempted to take a week off and write some sort of chrome extension to just clear off all the political hatred that saturates any news link I click off the FB wall page.

But ya, to me there's not a lot of negatives to social media, but separately there's lots of issues about what information is factual and who you can trust, etc., that haven't been dealt with much. If I were to leave FB it'd be because I just had it with all that stuff... not any real concern for use of my data.


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## TedEH (Mar 28, 2018)

narad said:


> "Tell us what you think. @FartsOrSharts says, ..."



It does bother me on some level when twitter content makes it onto the news. There are lots of people and people have opinions. None of that is news to anyone vaguely tech-savvy.


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## narad (Mar 28, 2018)

TedEH said:


> It does bother me on some level when twitter content makes it onto the news. There are lots of people and people have opinions. None of that is news to anyone vaguely tech-savvy.



I'd at least sort of be okay with it if it was like Quora,

@TomMM, Professor of History at Ohio State says, 

But with no qualifications and complete anonymity...whose greatt idea was that?? I mean, The Onion always kills it with those "Tell us what you think" and has 3 people giving their opinion on the issue. But now reality is not far removed!

Or like, late night talk shows used to really like to go out on the street and ask everyone some question and basically highlight how stupid everyone is (hopefully a byproduct of a lot of interviews and heavy editing). Yet, that is precisely what a lot of media is doing now, without any mention of the stupidity.


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## TedEH (Mar 28, 2018)

It sort of strikes me as a case of someone seeing it happen on late night shows, not getting the joke and thinking "this is a great idea"!


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## Grand Moff Tim (Mar 28, 2018)

Not having a FB account is the new "I don't even own a TV."


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## StevenC (Mar 28, 2018)

narad said:


> People over-estimate the importance of the social data they create. The only thing I worry about to the point where deleting facebook might be an appropriate response/countermeasure is the thought of everyone's FB chats getting released in some public dump. Kind of like the leaked cables but with just everyone's cattiness and backstabbing put out for the world to see.


Well, time to delete Facebook.


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## vilk (Mar 29, 2018)

Grand Moff Tim said:


> Not having a FB account is the new "I don't even own a TV."



I have this friend who refuses to own a TV for what to me is pretty transparently identity posturing and it bothers the shit out of me (especially because I know that his wife really wants to have a TV). 

Then I go to visit him and we're chillin havin a doob and he's like lets watch some Star Trek and I'm like hell yeah... and then we're sitting crouched over some 8" Acer notebook, the volume at max is so low that even speaking quietly totally obscures the ability to hear the show. I tell him _See? The situation we're in right now. This is why you should have a TV_. And he's like _nahhh man, all I need is a computer_. He's so concerned with identity posturing that he won't even admit the reality of the situation he was presently living. I try to explain to him that there are things it's good to have in your house that aren't necessarily _for you _as much as they're for _your house_... if that makes sense. That many people have things even though they don't use them every day. That he's keeping from his wife a privilege that's even afforded to incarcerated convicts. 

I realize that's all off topic. I was a little triggered I think  That guy's my friend but sometimes he's... well nevermind.

But there are some comparisons that can be made to Facebook, if you live far away from friends and family. I used to live in Japan and I know a lot of people there, and they probably have no idea that I enjoy seeing them on the rare occasion that I open my facebook. It makes me realize that maybe I'm being slightly socially negligent by never ever commenting or posting anything on fb for them to see me too. Luckily my wife kinda does it for me 

If you and everyone you care about live in the same town then it's probably a lot more tempting to not have a fb. But for those of us with close international connections, it sometimes feels like deleting facebook isn't really an option.


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## will_shred (Mar 29, 2018)

update: it took like 2 days for the script (social book post manager) to fully run, and it didn't work


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## ramses (Mar 29, 2018)

Haven't read this thread, nor will I read it. However, my 2 cents:

I joined facebook when it was restricted to college students. Since day one I have been sharing information in it with the assumption that facebook is a public forum, and that anyone can read anything I post or send through its messaging tool. Why? Because facebook is someone else's computer.

You should apply the same logic to any other "social media" or "cloud application."

Source? I'm a Computer Scientist.


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## Grand Moff Tim (Mar 29, 2018)

ramses said:


> Haven't read this thread, nor will I read it.



What a strange thing to post.

...Especially since the thread is still only one page long.


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## ramses (Mar 29, 2018)

Grand Moff Tim said:


> What a strange thing to post.
> 
> ...Especially since the thread is still only one page long.



Agreed.

It is just that too much nonsense has been propagated everywhere in the last couple of weeks. I don't even know what am I doing here right now.


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## Handbanana (Mar 29, 2018)

ramses said:


> Haven't read this thread, nor will I read it. However, my 2 cents:
> 
> I joined facebook when it was restricted to college students. Since day one I have been sharing information in it with the assumption that facebook is a public forum, and that anyone can read anything I post or send through its messaging tool. Why? Because facebook is someone else's computer.
> 
> ...



Yeah screw FB! I'm good with instagram, twitter, reddit, etc... They wouldn't do the same. Right?


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## TedEH (Mar 30, 2018)

ramses said:


> I joined facebook when it was restricted to college students. Since day one I have been sharing information in it with the assumption that facebook is a public forum, and that anyone can read anything I post or send through its messaging tool. Why? Because facebook is someone else's computer.
> 
> You should apply the same logic to any other "social media" or "cloud application."


1000x times this. My brain always does backflips when people refer to social media and things like that as "spying on them" when they're literally broadcasting themselves out there for all to see. It's a public place. It's someone else's computer. Don't do anything on there that you wouldn't do out in public in the real world.

How DARE companies have access to the vacation photos I explicitly uploaded to them! I understand the idea of personal/identifiable information in terms of purchase or sign in details or things like that, and yeah, it's a bit creepy how much google analyses where you are and what you're doing, but I just can't get bent out of shape at things like targeted ads. You're using someone else's systems for free and expect to give zero back in return?

Vaguely related: I think the whole "you're using the internet wrong if you don't use a vpn" wave lately is pretty ridiculous. 90% of people don't need a vpn, let alone know what one is.


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 8, 2018)

We gotta be like that stupid iPad commercial...

“What’s a Facebook?”

Realistically I haven’t had a Facebook for five years, the only social media I use is Instagram. I miss being in middle school and thinking MySpace was the tits, with my top friends and music. I didn’t have just one song, nah, I had this super cool music player where I had 5 songs available to listen to 

Or you’d click on someone’s MySpace and be bombarded with all sorts of crazy stuff, flashing backgrounds and shit.

Pc4pc?


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## Spaced Out Ace (Apr 8, 2018)

will_shred said:


> update: it took like 2 days for the script (social book post manager) to fully run, and it didn't work


Sorry, but... 

Maybe you need to go back and watch South Park. There is no escape.


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## Spaced Out Ace (Apr 8, 2018)

TedEH said:


> Vaguely related: I think the whole "you're using the internet wrong if you don't use a vpn" wave lately is pretty ridiculous. 90% of people don't need a vpn, let alone know what one is.


Imagine getting tech support calls asking what it is and how to set it up. It'd be like teaching my grandma how to use certain features on a new remote besides vol/channel up/down.



QuantumCybin said:


> We gotta be like that stupid iPad commercial...
> 
> “What’s a Facebook?”
> 
> ...


I never found MySpace remotely interesting, and resisted social media for the longest time, and still only have one social media account. I couldn't stand people's godawful MySpace pages that looked and loaded like Homer's webpage before he adopted the Mr. X persona.


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## TedEH (Apr 9, 2018)

I dunno if this is straying from the original topic a bit, but I find I'm really annoyed with instagram. Not because I use it, but specifically because I DON'T use it, but it keeps trying as hard as possible to wedge itself into my day. It sends me facebook notifications and emails and texts all the time, and I don't want to use it. I've never uploaded anything to it and I dunno how it got my cell number, but it's just the most intrusive service that I don't even use.


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## Drew (Apr 9, 2018)

QuantumCybin said:


> Realistically I haven’t had a Facebook for five years, the only social media I use is Instagram.


I mean, this has been a running joke in this thread for a while now, so I assume you know this...

...but you DO know Facebook owns Instagram, right?


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 9, 2018)

Drew said:


> I mean, this has been a running joke in this thread for a while now, so I assume you know this...
> 
> ...but you DO know Facebook owns Instagram, right?



LOL do they really? That is amazing. I legit had no idea  I’m more of a pawn than anyone who uses both hahaha


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## Drew (Apr 9, 2018)

QuantumCybin said:


> LOL do they really? That is amazing. I legit had no idea  I’m more of a pawn than anyone who uses both hahaha


 Yeah, Facebook bought Instagram maybe a little more than a year ago. Maybe two, now.


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 9, 2018)

Drew said:


> Yeah, Facebook bought Instagram maybe a little more than a year ago. Maybe two, now.



If my life was Pink Floyd’s Animals record, I’ve spent the last five years thinking I’m a dog when really I’m a sheep


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## Drew (Apr 9, 2018)

QuantumCybin said:


> If my life was Pink Floyd’s Animals record, I’ve spent the last five years thinking I’m a dog when really I’m a sheep


I mean, awesome record.


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 9, 2018)

Drew said:


> I mean, awesome record.



Really is one of my favorites by them, I think it’s underrated because it’s sandwiched between two of their most famous works. Don’t mean to derail the thread but the Floyd is always a worthy subject for derailment lol


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## Drew (Apr 9, 2018)

QuantumCybin said:


> Really is one of my favorites by them, I think it’s underrated because it’s sandwiched between two of their most famous works. Don’t mean to derail the thread but the Floyd is always a worthy subject for derailment lol


Shit, after the old admin team split off from here and started MG, derailing threads became a specialty of ours.  

I bought that one the day Richard Wright died. I'd been a fan of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall for years, but hand't gotten around to picking up that one... and it's since become one of my favorites. Pigs on the Wing Pts 1 and 2, and the breakdown in Dogs ("And when you lose control...") are unbelievable tracks.


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 9, 2018)

Drew said:


> Shit, after the old admin team split off from here and started MG, derailing threads became a specialty of ours.
> 
> I bought that one the day Richard Wright died. I'd been a fan of Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall for years, but hand't gotten around to picking up that one... and it's since become one of my favorites. Pigs on the Wing Pts 1 and 2, and the breakdown in Dogs ("And when you lose control...") are unbelievable tracks.



Oh yeah, definitely. I love the cowbell funk-esque riffage in Pigs as well. So fucking groovy lol


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## vilk (Apr 10, 2018)

I don't listen to Pink Floyd very often but on the rare occasion that I do, Animals is always my go-to album


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## QuantumCybin (Apr 10, 2018)

vilk said:


> I don't listen to Pink Floyd very often but on the rare occasion that I do, Animals is always my go-to album


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## dreamchaser (Apr 25, 2018)

If this is based on political crap, then it really depends on the crowd you keep. Best to just avoid all political posts as much as possible, and forums are almost as bad in terms of volume, and that's only because social media is where that stuff is concurrently circulated.

If you have a brand to promote, then use social media just for that. Don't add family or friends on there. It's very simple. People make too many dumb excuses, so as to not potentially "upset" anyone.


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## Flappydoodle (May 16, 2018)

QuantumCybin said:


> LOL do they really? That is amazing. I legit had no idea  I’m more of a pawn than anyone who uses both hahaha



FYI, they also own WhatsApp

They claim no data sharing, but if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you


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## wat (Aug 12, 2018)

I didn't delete my account but I deleted the app today. The thing that made me do it was pretty random--it wasn't even negative or political. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent haircut for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why do I look at is mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.


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## jaxadam (Aug 12, 2018)

wat said:


> I didn't delete my account but I deleted the app today. The thing that made me do it was pretty random--it wasn't even negative or political. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent haircut for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why do I look at is mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.



Pretty much the same exact thing happened to me. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent job for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why does Trump post this mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.


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## MFB (Aug 13, 2018)

wat said:


> I didn't delete my account but I deleted the app today. The thing that made me do it was pretty random--it wasn't even negative or political. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent haircut for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why do I look at is mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.





jaxadam said:


> Pretty much the same exact thing happened to me. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent job for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why does Trump post this mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.



Crazy to think the same post made two different people delete their accounts


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## TedEH (Aug 13, 2018)

I find it tempting to delete my facebook account, or take the app off my phone, but I never do it. There are people that it's my only connection to. And I make a lot of use of the messenger app. Maybe I should just move the icon off the front page of my phone?


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## justin_time (Aug 13, 2018)

TedEH said:


> I find it tempting to delete my facebook account, or take the app off my phone, but I never do it. There are people that it's my only connection to. And I make a lot of use of the messenger app.


I deleted the app off my phone, primarily as a way to avoid looking at facebook randomly throughout the day when I could be making better use of time.

From a privacy perspective, I feel if I do these things I will be in a much better situation than the average Facebook user and still be able to use the convenience of what facebook offers:

- change the default privacy settings to restrict access and harden security
- stay away from using any kind of Facebook app
- be conscious of what you post, understand that deleting a previously uploaded picture/video will *not* delete it from Facebook servers

I hardened my Mozilla Firefox configuration on my PC(took about 10 minutes) and I use the duckduckGo browser on my phone.


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## TedEH (Aug 13, 2018)

The security bit kinda confuses me though - what about facebook is reaaaaaaaally a privacy concern unless you're posting things that are sensitive in the first place? Which you probably shouldn't be doing anyway. I mean... it's literally a *social* app. As in, it's not intended to be a private place to put sensitive information.


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## DudeManBrother (Aug 13, 2018)

TedEH said:


> I find it tempting to delete my facebook account, or take the app off my phone, but I never do it. There are people that it's my only connection to. And I make a lot of use of the messenger app. Maybe I should just move the icon off the front page of my phone?


Have you ever considered sending these people a message letting them know you’re deleting Facebook, but leave them your number if they ever want to text/call sometime?
I’ve never used any of these social media sites, and I can promise you that I get along perfectly fine without them. You can too; unless of course you’re in the group that think spending more time photographing your food is time better spent than eating it and talking to the people at your table. I fear there is no hope for that group.


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## justin_time (Aug 13, 2018)

It depends on what you consider private, I don't consider my email address(associated with my FB account) private but I also don't want it provided to advertising companies to spam my email or be targeted in any way.

Of course you can also have location tracking enabled on Facebook on your phone, but that is not an isolated facebook problem.


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## TedEH (Aug 13, 2018)

I don't consider anything on the internet to be private. Once it's left your home on a cable or via wifi, it's out of your hands and there's nothing you can really do about it. If I reaaaally care about peoples access to information, I don't put it on a computer.

Edit: I kind of get what you mean though. On some level I'm a lot more willing than some to accept the trade-offs of giving up that information in exchange for what I benefit in return. I don't hate targeted ads as long as they aren't too intrusive. Some of what google does about reading the content of your email creeps me out a bit, but stuff like fingerprinting and click-through attribution etc don't bother me.

I think part of my "cognitive ease" (for lack of a better word) regarding online security comes from having a reasonable level of understanding of how that kind of thing works. I can understand how a lot of fear could come from not understanding any of it.


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## Drew (Aug 13, 2018)

jaxadam said:


> Pretty much the same exact thing happened to me. I just happened on a post from some guy I barely know that went "Finally got a decent job for once lol" with a picture. And I was like "why does Trump post this mundane shit every day" and just decided to delete it then and there.


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## wat (Aug 18, 2018)

TedEH said:


> I find it tempting to delete my facebook account, or take the app off my phone, but I never do it. There are people that it's my only connection to. And I make a lot of use of the messenger app. Maybe I should just move the icon off the front page of my phone?




About a year ago I moved the icon off the front of the app. The other day I finally deleted it. 

The messenger app still works though if you remove the Facebook app so I still use that.


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## Flappydoodle (Sep 10, 2018)

Deleted mine years ago.

1. It's a total waste of time.

2. It taps into the worst aspects of human nature - narcissism and jealousy especially

3. It is all fake anyway. People put fake versions of themselves online.

4. The whole experience is designed and optimised by Facebook to be as addictive as possible, to keep you glued to the screen, to keep you re-opening the app. I don't like the feeling of being manipulated.

5. Those three previous points make it very bad for mental health.

6. Online friends are not real friends anyway. No point keeping or "hoarding" friends who you never talk to.

7. Facebook is one of the largest, most powerful companies in the world, and yet they have almost no oversight. Big oil, big pharma, the "military industrial complex" are all demonised. Why is Facebook seen as ok? I don't want to support them and their "goals".

8. And now Facebook is being manipulated by outside parties - other countries, political parties, etc who want to cause chaos and division by upsetting people (showing pro-LGBT ads in Texas, pro-gun ads in CA etc), organising protests etc. I don't want to be exposed to that.


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## Drew (Sep 10, 2018)

DudeManBrother said:


> Have you ever considered sending these people a message letting them know you’re deleting Facebook, but leave them your number if they ever want to text/call sometime?
> I’ve never used any of these social media sites, and I can promise you that I get along perfectly fine without them. You can too; unless of course you’re in the group that think spending more time photographing your food is time better spent than eating it and talking to the people at your table. I fear there is no hope for that group.


Missed this earlier, but can I just pause and point to the irony of 1) getting off a social media platform because of privacy concerns, but 2) before you do, blasting out personal information to all of your friends and acquaintances before you delete your profile on said platform?


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## TedEH (Sep 10, 2018)

I recently removed the shortcuts for Facebook and Twitter from the home screen on my phone. I'm not sure it's had the big revelatory life-changing impact that some people seem to suggest will happen when you reduce the role of social media from your life, but I can at least say I'm spending a little bit less time getting annoyed at things that really don't matter to me.

There is this weird nagging feeling at times though that "I could be missing something important!".


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## DudeManBrother (Sep 10, 2018)

Drew said:


> Missed this earlier, but can I just pause and point to the irony of 1) getting off a social media platform because of privacy concerns, but 2) before you do, blasting out personal information to all of your friends and acquaintances before you delete your profile on said platform?


I didn’t see him state anything about privacy concerns; in fact, I’m pretty sure he said he understands the social nature of the platforms and considers it public info. Having never used Facebook or MySpace or whatever, I don’t claim to know how they work. I assumed the “messenger app” he said he uses could be used to tell the specific people he wants to stay in contact with, and not share his info with anyone he doesn’t want.


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## Drew (Sep 11, 2018)

DudeManBrother said:


> I didn’t see him state anything about privacy concerns; in fact, I’m pretty sure he said he understands the social nature of the platforms and considers it public info. Having never used Facebook or MySpace or whatever, I don’t claim to know how they work. I assumed the “messenger app” he said he uses could be used to tell the specific people he wants to stay in contact with, and not share his info with anyone he doesn’t want.


Nevermind, man, it was intended as a joke.


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## Jacksonluvr636 (Oct 24, 2018)

Made it to page 3 before I stopped reading. Had this huge drawn out reply. Decided to finish reading then I saw this by Flappydoodle and he pretty much says it all.

I also agree with TedEH. 

I used FB exclusively for browsing gear. I appreciate the easy access to everything but overall I think advanced tech is bad, including social media and I would trade that in for a second to go back to the pre internet days.

Yes I am a hypocrite typing here online, yes this post became long and drawn out anyway but I dislike how people are being raised by the internet this day and age and not their parents. Go outside and throw a football kid, put the ipad down.



Flappydoodle said:


> Deleted mine years ago.
> 
> 1. It's a total waste of time.
> 
> ...


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## narad (Oct 24, 2018)

justin_time said:


> It depends on what you consider private, I don't consider my email address(associated with my FB account) private but I also don't want it provided to advertising companies to spam my email or be targeted in any way.



FB doesn't do that though -- if you get targeted email it's because you logged into some other service using your FB account, gave them privilege, then they emailed you or sold the email off (in violation of ToS).

Apart from the possibility of FB data breaches, a real concern, it's really easy to manage who uses what data via FB if you take a few minutes to read it over. 

I'm always confused why people get so antsy over giving away data like your likes / demo / preferences. It only helps you to get served ads that are relevant to your interests. It's win-win. Some of my concert ticket service ads have gotten so honed in on my preferences, I'd call it a service more than it is spam/advertisement. Probably go to 2x more shows because of it.


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## Flappydoodle (Oct 24, 2018)

Jacksonluvr636 said:


> Made it to page 3 before I stopped reading. Had this huge drawn out reply. Decided to finish reading then I saw this by Flappydoodle and he pretty much says it all.
> 
> I also agree with TedEH.
> 
> ...



I have a young kid, and it's crazy seeing other parents just giving their kid an iPad when they sit down at the table in a restaurant. Then they wonder why the kid is screaming, misbehaving etc. It's because the parents are also just buried in their phones. If you actually spend time and talk to your children and interact with them, they aren't little shits all the time.

That's a larger point though. The worst aspects are what I wrote in my post - the exploitation of our minds, designed to be addictive, designed to tap into narcissism and our desire to be approved by our peers. Fuck that.



narad said:


> I'm always confused why people get so antsy over giving away data like your likes / demo / preferences. It only helps you to get served ads that are relevant to your interests. It's win-win. Some of my concert ticket service ads have gotten so honed in on my preferences, I'd call it a service more than it is spam/advertisement. Probably go to 2x more shows because of it.



I'm just shocked that a person tech-savvy enough to post on an Internet forum doesn't use an ad blocker in 2018.


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## narad (Oct 24, 2018)

Flappydoodle said:


> I'm just shocked that a person tech-savvy enough to post on an Internet forum doesn't use an ad blocker in 2018.



Of course I use an ad blocker, but it's not the end to all advertisement.


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## TedEH (Oct 25, 2018)

Flappydoodle said:


> I'm just shocked that a person tech-savvy enough to post on an Internet forum doesn't use an ad blocker in 2018.


I also don't use an ad blocker in the same sense that others do. I keep an up-to-date hosts file that blocks things that are particularly bad or malicious, but I don't use adblock plugins or anything like that -> and I'm a software/web kind of person by profession.

Reasons?
- If you can't avoid ads altogether, I can see the value in having them targeted for you instead of just random.
- I'm aware that a lot of the sites I frequent basically live or die by their ads, so blocking them does nobody any favors
- Removing ads sometimes breaks the intended layout or functionality of a site
- Some sites detect ad blockers and stop you from accessing content.
- I sometimes have to work on websites myself. It's difficult to work on a site that has plugins messing with it as you work.
- The best way to avoid malicious content online is common sense, not ad blockers (  )

The current "common sense" seems to be that if you don't use a VPN and a dozen ad blockers then you're using the internet wrong- you really don't need that stuff 99% of the time.


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## Flappydoodle (Oct 25, 2018)

narad said:


> Of course I use an ad blocker, but it's not the end to all advertisement.



If I am seeing any at all, apart from on sites I've chosen to whitelist, I'm updating/replacing my adblocker 



TedEH said:


> I also don't use an ad blocker in the same sense that others do. I keep an up-to-date hosts file that blocks things that are particularly bad or malicious, but I don't use adblock plugins or anything like that -> and I'm a software/web kind of person by profession.
> 
> Reasons?
> - If you can't avoid ads altogether, I can see the value in having them targeted for you instead of just random.
> ...



For me, adblocking was/is a response to overly aggressive advertising, and not particularly about avoiding malicious content. Ads increase the load times of pages, and sometimes don't let pages load at all if the ads don't go first. There are often auto-playing videos (not technically ads, but I still block them). I block all the facebook/twitter/etc share buttons too, since I don't have any social media and they pointlessly fill the page. And most of all, they're just annoying, interrupting whatever I am trying to do. And it's particularly cancerous on mobile.

In fact, I try to use the Safari "reader mode" as much as possible (such as news websites), which strips pretty much everything except text and embedded images.

Luckily I don't work on a computer for a living, and really it doesn't break that many websites. Some won't load at all (such as Forbes), so then I just don't read their content. 

I appreciate that it is somewhat selfish, but I do whitelist some sites (including SSO), and I also pay for subscriptions to websites such as Financial Times, Wall Street Journal etc.


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