Eliminating Facebook from our lives?

[TopHatFox]

hah, you hopped on just when everyone seems to be hopping off.

I still don’t have any social media, even started blocking Youtube, or at least removing all recommended videos. Most of them seem to have devolved into clickbait that makes you feel bad or wastes your time (e.g. « Living on 1.2 M dollars/yr in LA » or « 21 ways to hack tying your shoes »).

[2Birds1Stone]

I've pared down my FB "friends list" by over 80% in 2019, and left most of the groups I was in. Now I just use it for coordinating real life training sessions with my triathlon team, group MTB rides in various MTB groups I'm part of, ditto for road cycling and running club. The other use I have for it is messenger for chatting with family that's on the other side of the world. I hate txting, and prefer typing on a keyboard. It's also nice to keep up with the lives of a very select few people whom I wish to do so with.

[2Birds1Stone]

Oh, and for YouTube......I absolutely love it. I watch 100x as much YT as regular television. Subscribed to dozens of really interesting channels on topics I'm interested in. Many are related to MTB, bicycle touring/bikepacking, minimalism, thru-hiking, live aboard sailing, low cost travel, van/skoolie conversions, etc.

@THF, I think you might be referring to the last CNBC Make It video featuring Graham Stephan.....whose channel I actually love. Dude makes $1.6M/yr and has a 99% savings rate.

[oldbeyond]

My solution has been to disable notifications for everything but private email and messaging apps (texts and messenger). Without them I'm rarely sucked in. For websites, I've blocked them in my Adblock app on iOS (on android I believe you can edit /etc/hosts), which affects Safari. I have Firefox Focus installed too where I can access them, but having to manually type out the url (no history saved in FF) seems to be enough to dissuade me more often than not.

[theanimal]

I see YouTube as the aspiring renaissance man's greatest tool. You can learn EVERYTHING on there. It's amazing that it is free.

The only social media I use now is Twitter. I curate it in hopes of achieving a high signal to noise ratio and try to avoid politics like the plague. It offers interesting link and book recommendations that I wouldn't otherwise come across. However, I don't think it adds a ton of value as I find that i don't enjoy going on it at all after returning from multi day outdoor trips.

[daylen]

You can learn EVERYTHING on there.

Excluding second year graduate education and beyond.

[theanimal]

*Everything worth learning

[TopHatFox]

^ agreed

[black_son_of_gray]

I just went to a developer conference yesterday where we discussed privacy/data issues, and it was absolutely horrifying.

FWIW, a few months ago I went out to dinner with my SO and a group of her friends. One of the friends use to be a corporate lawyer for tech firms in Silicon Valley. After dinner we got to talking about privacy concerns, and she mentioned that she knew other lawyers who had first-hand knowledge of how privacy is handled at places like Facebook who said that it is (paraphrasing) "much worse than anyone currently knows." Not altogether surprising, but it sure did raise the hackles.

[DrakeFrst]

I don't really get the complaints about memes and ecards and such. It's 'social' media. Isn't that the point? I can't imagine having a serious discussion about anything on FB. Maybe it's just me.

Not that it matters. We had to get off all social media when DH switched jobs a few years ago, and I don't miss it.

Agree completely. Don't expect anything super serious out of it, if you don't really like the content you can just stop using the site and connect with people that you need in your life with other methods!
That's what i actually did and i can't stress enough how much better i feel and how much spare free time i've got from doing so.

[jacob]

Judging FB by its content is weird because the content is posted by one's friends&family. Saying that the content is stupid is saying that certain friends&family members are stupid. An unfortunate truth in many cases. FB has likely unveiled a few depressing facts about one's relations that were previously kept hidden.

I've started using FB more. One thing that makes idiot relatives or coworkers more tolerable is the ability to snooze or unfollow individual people or groups. For example, the racist uncle who can't be unfriended because you still need to deal with him at thxgiving can be snoozed or unfollowed. When it comes to memes and shitposting, the few people who seem to enjoy it can also be unfollowed. This clears things up remarkably. In particular, one starts seeing posts in the feed that are otherwise drowned out by the loudmouths or those bored souls who share (I absolutely hate that function) everything.

FB also hosts groups which can be pretty active and/or large. Compare to this forum. One downside here is that the format is limiting which discourages more detailed conversation. However, there are certainly groups that aren't dominated by stupidity and emotional affirmation. Unlike myspace back in the day there's less tradition for friending random strangers because one's profile tends to be rather non-anonymous. Some people do it, some don't. I don't. I think FB could grow if it was possible to have a more anonymous avatar for some activities.

[reepicheep]

Deleted Facebook couple years ago.

Very happy.

Sometimes (very rarely) dance moves locations and I find out about it via sign on the door.

This can be annoying or an opportunity to evaluate how much my expectations are running my life.