MFB
Banned
Crazy to think the same post made two different people delete their accounts
Nuked my facebook account (Long post)
- Thread starter will_shred
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Crazy to think the same post made two different people delete their accounts
TedEH
Cromulent
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
has terrible gear
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
Cromulent
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.
DudeManBrother
Hey...how did everybody get in my room?
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.
justin_time
has terrible gear
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.
Of course you can also have location tracking enabled on Facebook on your phone, but that is not an isolated facebook problem.
TedEH
Cromulent
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.
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
Forum MVP
wat
Well-Known Member
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.
Flappydoodle
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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.
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.
Drew
Forum MVP
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?
TedEH
Cromulent
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!".
There is this weird nagging feeling at times though that "I could be missing something important!".
DudeManBrother
Hey...how did everybody get in my room?
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.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?
Drew
Forum MVP
Nevermind, man, it was intended as a joke.
Jacksonluvr636
Well-Known Member
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.
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.
narad
Progressive metal and politics
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.
Flappydoodle
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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.
I'm just shocked that a person tech-savvy enough to post on an Internet forum doesn't use an ad blocker in 2018.
narad
Progressive metal and politics
Of course I use an ad blocker, but it's not the end to all advertisement.
TedEH
Cromulent
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.
Flappydoodle
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If I am seeing any at all, apart from on sites I've chosen to whitelist, I'm updating/replacing my adblocker
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.
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.
