I have an interesting follow-up: they have rejected every ID that I have sent them. I took a photo of my passport and sent that to them, and then they rejected it. Same with my drivers license.
I'm left in limbo: I want to delete my Facebook account, but they insist that I first have to send them an ID, and they reject all the IDs I send them. They reject that ID with a form letter, so I'm not clear why exactly the ID is being rejected.
You need to sue them. Simply filing the lawsuit should be good enough. Feel free to self file and make it messy, it doesn’t matter — your only real expense should be the filing fee.
It will cost them so much money to simply look at what you’ve filed that they will immediately delete the account because you’re a nuisance. Customer service reps cost a tiny, tiny fraction of the per-hour rate of their legal team, even when you’re dealing with people who are in-house.
They don’t care about that. They’ve already co-opted the attorneys general and the politicians. It’s when you file a lawsuit and hit them in their earnings margins, which affect their share price, that they actually freak out.
Why would anyone, trying to preserve their privacy and limit PII collection, send a passport page to a company like Facebook? It feels like a variation on the Nigerian prince scam where they keep asking for more info to see how far you will go.
You could always go the route I go with uncooperative corporate entities. Send signature-verified letters about your frustrations and ensure them that your state’s attorney general is receiving copies.
Not OP, but I've had much success with making complaints to my state's Attorney General Office. I wrote about my experiences in a LPT [1] recently. Some states' Attorney Generals are more helpful than others, but in Ohio, any resident can make a consumer complaint in a few minutes online, and in my experience, businesses big and small suddenly take your greivances very seriously once the AG's office is put in the loop.
Does anyone know if there's anything similar for the UK? As far as I know there's small claims court but that would only work if you can demonstrate monetary loss or damages which would be tough in this case.
Have you used your Facebook credentials to create an account anywhere? That can reactivate a Facebook account automatically, and it can be a pain to decouple them.
> They reject that ID with a form letter, so I'm not clear why exactly the ID is being rejected.
That's so bizarre, though having dealt with corporate and governmental bureaucracy not too surprising. I wonder if you could go another route and see if you can post something controversial enough for them to close your account but not illegal, so you don't get in real trouble. Sometimes the best way to fight an bureaucracy is using its own irrationality against itself.
While I'm no longer a Facebook user myself, I do understand that deleting the two largest social networks from your life can seem daunting and detrimental.
If you find deleting those accounts too drastic, I highly recommend simply deleting the apps, and moving to browser-only consumption and browsing those sites in private mode.
It doesn't cut off your social networks, and if you want to check them, you'll have to login every time. Simply having to do that will naturally wean you off the networks, with the huge added benefit of not being tracked all the time!
If you do this just make sure you don't have any of their apps left on your phone, this includes WhatsApp (in fact the only reason FB bought them is to use it as a backdoor against privacy-conscious people who might uninstall the main FB apps or deny them permissions like contacts/location).
Funny thing. I had basically no problem deleting my facebook. Everyone I still actually wanted to keep in contact I have their numbers (and quite a few I moved to Signal). But some people are EXTREMELY persistent about WhatsApp. Only 2 people on Facebook told me that messanger was the "only" way to contact them. Of my friends that use WhatsApp 90% of them just won't move.
Maybe things will change when Facebook actually starts monetizing the app.
> Maybe things will change when Facebook actually starts monetizing the app.
I feel like Facebook is happy with the status quo, leaving WA ad-free in order to have a persistent backdoor in people’s lives so they can use it to “improve” ads on their other platforms.
Note that Facebook can still track you across any websites that embed Facebook content or use the Like button, and associate those information with your account. A good adblocker will remove them and make sites load faster.
I've done the same. I nuked my instagram account and removed the facebook app from my phone (never had twitter or snap chat). I only pop on facebook every now and then to check for messages from family members. Most of my friends have followed suit to various lenghts. The younger people at work have all moved on to snapchat and Instagram almost completely ignoring Facebook.
One missing step is to completely block all Facebook IPs (their entire ASN actually) at the network level to make sure none of their toxic sludge reaches your network, and spyware embedded in other apps (like FB’s “free” analytics products) can’t continue to stalk you either.
I wish ISPs provided a “pest control” button that automatically blocks this kind of vermin at the network level.
I just set one up on Friday. I bought the $75 Raspberry Pi Canakit (has everything you need except a USB mouse and keyboard that you need to temporarily plug into it while you set it up) and had it up and running in less than an hour for my entire house.
It makes a noticeable difference, notably on page load performance especially on my iPhone, which has always had a sorry adblocking situation.
Looking at the stats at http://pi.hole/admin (the internal URL admin page) it's blocked 5,151 requests out of 27,168 (~20%) in just two days.
Next step is to set one up in the cloud as a VPN/DNS server so I can route my outside-of-home traffic through one as well.
you mention that your iPhone has a poor adblock story - Mozilla's focus seems to do a great job for me (when enabled as a content filter for safari), and was one of the primary reasons I personally moved to using iOS.. did you give that a go?
I deleted my IG a few days ago. I needed my degree in CS to manage it.
First, you can't delete IG from the app, only on the web. But, to log into the web site you need a password, which you probably don't have since you probably signed up with FB Connect. So then you have to go through the "forgotten password" route, log into your email to click a link to actually create a password. Then you can log into the IG web site to delete your account. When you finally do that, you keep seeing these dark patterns to reactivate your account. It took me about half an hour.
It seems to me they've clearly tried to make deleting your IG account technically possible but as difficult as possible for the average user. I'm almost surprised they don't require you to send something by snail mail it's so difficult.
Going through the process when someone else signs up using your email is also not a walk in the park, even though they have "not your account?" link at the bottom of their Welcome email.
This happened to me at different times on FB and IG, and it was such a drawn-out hassle that I just went the other route, signing in with my own email, saying I forgot password, getting a new one, then deleting accounts that way.
This is so wild, I'm thinking back to 2005-2007 when people were doing everything possible to get on Facebook. Waiting for Facebook to open up to their school or network so they could sign up and start updating their profile. Now there are so many attacks on the company politically, technically, and socially that I wonder if Facebook will be able to recover its trust with the community?
That cycle sums up all of my emotions about the Internet, from wild-eyed optimism and hopeful idealism circa 2000, to the modern reality where I feel heart broken, disillusioned, and disgusted with the way it all turned out.
Don't loose heart, it's still turning. Although the fraction of privacy-conscious, technically involved, and non-evil users has plummeted, the absolute number of them is much higher and still growing.
I never signed up for Facebook. I've been made fun of "oh but I thought you did computers, how come you're not on all these cool sites?". I've missed meetings and social events if they were organized over Facebook. I skipped on sites that only accept Facebook logins. However looking back, I feeling more and more justified and happy with my choice. Wish there was a place to pick up my free "I told you so about Facebook" t-shirt :-)
> This is so wild, I'm thinking back to 2005-2007 when people were doing everything possible to get on Facebook
Not everyone. Everyone I knew shunned facebook, laughed at myspace, looked down on youtube, you get the idea. For us, it was so odd that people would use their real identities and put their lives online. I think that period marked the true shift of the internet from a tech oriented population to the "normie" population.
I've never had a facebook, myspace or youtube account and never will.
> Now there are so many attacks on the company politically, technically, and socially that I wonder if Facebook will be able to recover its trust with the community?
There were similar attacks on social media back then too but not as vocal or widespread. Facebook, instagram and whatsapp are still growing so I'm guessing they will be fine.
Though I think facebook ( and the nytimes for that matter ) are toxic useless enterprises that humanity would be better off without, I don't think it or the nytimes are going anywhere anytime soon.
Also, keep in mind that facebook is banned in china and if zuckerberg can get his foot in the door, they may have another decade of significant growth.
Facebook should be replaced by a public service providing the same functions.
User would be required to signup with their id card ; and in case they screw up, would be hold accountable. It would allow to purge the network from a lot of shady practices, from users as well as advertisers and the organisation itself.
It makes no sens a private company owns the public sphere and the public discourse.
Well, saying things like "I think that period marked the true shift of the internet from a tech oriented population to the "normie" population" as if it's bad that other people get to enjoy the Internet, comes off as pretty damn smug.
I think it means that someone achieved what most of us wish we could have achieved: not getting dragged into getting used by social networks that mine our data and use it to manipulate our behavior. Seeing that someone has successfully done it increases the chances that other people will be able to do it.
Most people don't use those sites out of educated choice -- they got manipulated into using them and would want to leave if they knew what the sites were doing.
One thing to consider when deleting your FB account is that someone can then create a new profile with your name and pics and start adding your friends etc. Most will believe it's you and accept. It's a goldmine for personal information gathering for social engineering attacks.
Firstly, your friends are more likely to notice it's a scam because they're still connected to your legitimate account. Second, if this does happen to you and you've deleted your account, you can't report it to Facebook. Reporting this issue to Facebook requires either:
1) You (the victim) report the cloned account from the legit account. Or;
2) One of your friends reports it but they must select the victim from their list of friends.
Can't do either if your account is deleted.
That being said, I followed their process for several clients and Facebook refused to do anything about it.
I actually use neither but I waste just as much time online on other sites, youtube, HN, news sites.
sometimes I wonder if it would be better for me to actually use Facebook and Instagram MORE, just like everyone else.
For many, it has become the norm in how one shows interest in other people.
Anyway, I tried browser plugins and they're surprisingly effective for me. But I always manage other means to distract myself with, that is ultimately non-productive and unfulfilling.
The problem is that time spent online is not equal no matter where or what. Instagram/Facebook have engineered models against healthy psychology though and littered with ads, hence why they are worse than many places. Youtube has ads, but at least most are clearly marked. HN has neither.
I've found the best way to fix the non-productive problem is to find something you think is worth your time and also fun. I post a lot online helping people with the college search/admissions process because I enjoy it and it helps people. I probably spent more time with that than others do Facebook, but I don't think it's a problem. HN I would classify as a mix of keeping up with my industry + news + general interest.
To be clear, there are also ways to use Instagram/Facebook healthily, but it's much harder when it's literally made to be unhealthy because it's what the company wants.
I definitely hurt my social life a lot by leaving Facebook. I don't try to hide it by saying "only real friends that will send me mail or call me matter!" because as someone in their mid 20s/college, a lot of serendipitous social stuff happens on Facebook (maybe now IG). Some people I've met even give you their IG username rather than their phone if they just met you.
It is entirely normal to have friends you aren't super close with but still want in your life. A lot can be reached through iMessage/SMS but a ton of stuff happens on social networks nowadays.
> It is entirely normal to have friends you aren't super close with but still want in your life. A lot can be reached through iMessage/SMS but a ton of stuff happens on social networks nowadays.
I am in a similar position, and have no social media. To echo some of your points, when I first left FB there were some events that I missed out on that I would consider high importance to me. At first, I was shocked, I tried to hide it with the "real friends with mail me!" excuse, but I was still "disappointed" (for lack of a better word)
I'm lucky enough where a observant extrovert in my social circle noticed my preferences, and now they email/text me about most events. I try to keep in touch with the rest of my friends over phone, and people i'm not super close with over email. I don't do the best job, but I don't miss FB
I did that for a while, but it’s also feels kind of shitty to be the one friend everyone has to go out of their way to invite to everything.
I know it’s a chicken and egg situation but I eventually rejoined Facebook to not be the hassle.
I don’t use any of their apps though, and I only check fb a few times a week to see what events are happening, and if someone messages me it’ll have to wait until I’m on the desktop version.
I made my birthdate private on Facebook and now I only receive congratulating from family and a few close friends.
I don’t think it’s because people don’t remember you though, I think it’s because Facebook has trained us to let it be our assistant for birthdays. It’s also made you used to having tons of people “remember” you, even though they would have never done so before Facebook. It’s really a lonelyness machine in that regard.
When I left Facebook for a period I didn’t remember birthdays either though. I’ve since added birthdays to my contacts so my Callander app is now responsible for being my birthday assistant instead of Facebook.
I also always send a SMS or call and never congratulate on Facebook, exactly because it’s so shallow.
As someone in the same age bracket I can definitely relate. I still think Facebook is toxic and should die, but I'm considering keeping a pseudonymous profile with very little personal information on it on a separate device just for stuff like this.
The internet is a tool. You can use it well, or you can use it badly. Facebook, Instagram, and other sites make it easy to use it badly. But ultimately, whether your time online is positive and productive, negative and wasteful, or somewhere in the middle is not about specific sites, but about what each of us does with our time. So you are absolutely correct to take accountability for it upon yourself, and I'd commend that attitude.
I believe that the long-term trend we are starting to see is more people coming back to seeing the Internet as a tool to enhance their lives, not a medium by which to live them. When that trend fully evolves, FB, Instagram, and all social media will either change along with it, or fall away.
I've found that the most effective strategy was to unfollow (not unfriend) everyone except close friends and family. Now my Facebook feed only has people I care about and takes me max 5 min a day before it's the same content.
I've been taking a slightly different approach after the breach. For context:
1) I was one of the lucky 1 million who had their token compromised but their account "wasn't accessed".
2) I've had this account since middle school, so there's a lot of interactions there that are at best use a lot of txtspeak and at worst are a reflection of values I no longer hold.
3) Most of my family is on FB, and a lot of my communications with my friends are at least partly reliant on the existence of FB.
I made the decision to pull all my data as this author suggested, and try to systematically remove content that was outdated or just looked bad, regardless of whatever content filter I had applied to it. In effect, this breach ruined my trust in the individual filtering that I had applied in the past for a number of my posts.
With that said, removing posts one by one is a HUGE pain because it forces you through a "Are you sure" dialog for EVERY POST YOU WANT TO DELETE. Comments were less evil- there was no dialog but I would have vastly preferred a "checkbox then delete" type of experience- bonus points if they let you check off by month to trim down on clicking.
I intended this to be a weekend project and I've already realized this "audit" is going to take much more time than I intended.
The 30 day grace period is a dark pattern. It's user-hostile and relies on Facebook's addictiveness to get you back on Facebook. Just like with quitting any drug, quitting Facebook causes powerful withdrawal symptoms and for some it might be almost impossible to go the full thirty days resisting the urge to log back in.
So here's a solution:
Change your Facebook password to something you will not remember, like a random sequence of 20 characters. Copy this string. Click "delete Facebook". Paste the string when it prompts for your pw. Now copy something else, overwriting your clipboard. If you use an advanced clipboard system manually delete all clipboard items. Reboot your computer.
Now you won't be able to log in even if you want to, and Facebook will be safely gone from your life in thirty days.
Probably you'll be able to reset your password. In my case I deleted my phone number associated with my account to make recovery as difficult as possible.
I should say it's not a complete solution, just another line of defense against the urge to log back in.
To be real, how do you keep in touch with your friends and family? I live 2100km away from them. God damnit, I wish to get rid of this cancer, but I just can't.
If it's a cancer, where is the urgency? Somebody with actual cancer would cut the tumor out and worry about everything else later.
Anyway one important point is that you won't "keep in touch with your friends and family" the way you do now; that's called "being on Facebook." By insisting that things always be exactly as they are now, you get yourself stuck in a rut.
I believe you're already familiar with all the different ways of keeping in touch with someone. Tell them you're leaving Facebook, get their contact info, and leave. I keep in touch primarily through email and text (either of which can include photos or other attachments), and very infrequent voice calls. I have fewer relationships, of higher quality. Not everybody is a special unique snowflake who deserves my attention. Nor am I so special that they need my validation. The entity that sold everybody on that whole idea is Facebook, the one that wants to own the channel of communication. Use a different channel, and the problem is solved.
I call them. Like people did in the olden days of 15 years ago. This isn’t hard.
Not to mention I feel an actual connection with them when I’m talking to them over the phone. I never once felt a real connection with them or anyone else by their Facebook wall or Twitter feed.
He mentioned he's 2100km away from them which may cost extra. I'm not sure why he doesn't call with whatsapp, but perhaps his parents are too oldschool besides using facebook.
You've already got a lot of replies, but here's my 2c from someone who moved away from his home country.
Facebook allowed me to be comfortable in not contacting the people who I cared about. All I had to do was "like" a post, or very rarely comment. Hell, I didn't even have to do that. I knew they were doing well.
However the truth of it was that I was not really engaging with them, I was mostly checking their pages sporadically and not actually talking to them. As it turned out they were not doing so well but were curating their social media persona so that extended family would not worry. The knock-on effect obviously being that I was unable to help them and because I was lulled into a false sense of connection I believed I felt that I didn't need to directly 1-to-1 engage with my friend.
This is anecdotal, sure, but after talking with others they also share the feeling of "connection" but lacking depth, and intimacy. It's just enough to make you numb to the desire to chase it.
I've deleted facebook now. I am a stoic and independent independent person but it has forced my hand more to reach out to family and friends. Now; I definitely have a better relationship with my Mother for example.
Christmas cards are the best! My Mum used to keep hers from previous years and make decorations with them. A pretty good quality of life metric is how many Christmas cards you get (and send).
>> A pretty good quality of life metric is how many Christmas cards you get (and send).
Funny you would say that. When I first got married my wife was in an absolute stress about making sure we sent Christmas cards to everybody who had come to our wedding. The fact I didn't have addresses for some of them was a source of much frustration.
After rationalising our card list to the 5 to 10 people we are actually friends with, Christmas is a lot more calm. I'm sure some of the people we used to send cards to are a lot happier too, as they now no longer feel obligated to send us cards in return.\
I suppose my point is that in my experience most people only have 10 to 20 people (if that) they would consider friends. It's only since Facebook and the like that we have considered great numbers of followers our "friends".
Email and text messages. Just a text every once in a while is a good way to keep in touch, and is more personal and real than anything Facebook has to offer.
Voice/Video connections. Start with all the free or low-cost VOIP solutions to do voice and video calls. Skype is great for a lot of interpersonal stuff, and can do conference video easy.
Email - that's what I primarily use with my family, including both parents as long as they lived. None of my family has ever been on FB.
Text/Mobile. Works great, its more direct, and if the conversation gets thicker, you can just ring & use voice.
Post -- send physical letters and objects! all kinds of fun, even tho it isn't instant...
If you really need a central place to post images, just get a website of your own, there's dozens of hosting providers, or use some other photo sharing service.
Seriously, there is zero reason to actually use FB. It is toxic, just dump it.
Signal needs a phone, even with the desktop client. A better alternative is Wire (wire.com), which you can signup for with your email address OR phone number. It doesn't mandate a phone number. All chats are end-to-end encrypted, just like Signal (not with the exact same protocol and implementation). You can have group chats, just like on messenger or any other chat platform.
Wire also syncs conversations across devices, unlike Signal that's tied to one device (a phone).
You can have multiple accounts on Wire, just like you would use multiple email addresses, each one for different purposes.
Wire is still way behind Telegram on UX, but is a good option for those who don't want to use a phone number or give their phone number to some centralized service. You set usernames and can @mention them (a recent addition to the client — I'm mentioning this as an example to indicate how far behind it is from Telegram, which had this a long time ago).
Lastly, Wire also allows you to backup your chats and restore them on another device. Signal explicitly blocks this from being done.
What's the funding situation like for the company? The GPL/AGPL model does offer some protection, but it's cold comfort to the typical user if the central server goes away and we're left with a fragmented ecosystem of free replacements.
Part of the appeal of Signal is that it's supported by a well-endowed non-profit.
I have no idea about the funding situation of Wire. I thought I'd read about it being VC funded. It also has paid subscriptions for businesses, though how big that is and how fast it's growing are not known. Signal's funding is only a recent event, and one could ask how long that would last too, since Signal doesn't even have a paid service.
Having seen may messaging services come and go, I wouldn't in the least bit be surprised if either of these disappeared in a decade or a decade and a half from now.
That makes Wire an especially hard sell, since it risks not just going away, but also being converted to something more nefarious.
> Signal's funding is only a recent event, and one could ask how long that would last too, since Signal doesn't even have a paid service.
Recency doesn't make a difference for users considering joining it now (only for why they may not have joined previously). $50M should be plenty to run a service for, say, 10 years, assuming they don't hire a huge number of employees.
As Wikimedia has demonstrated, a paid service isn't required to survive long-term. Certainly, users (and maybe companies) would be willing to donate to a non-profit foundation, whereas doing so to a for-profit company like Wire seems implausible.
Especially in the context of the OP article, the source of the funding of the app and service is pertty important, as it informs the motives, and for-profit motives generally seem to have been, historically, not in the best interests of the users.
I'm aware, which is why I specified "primary/signup device" in my original comment.
Is the desktop client a "first class" one? Can I use it exclusively, including for initial signup?
A sibling comment implies the answer is "no", but it's ambiguous, since "linking" could just mean the SMS validation, which, IIUC, need not actually match the phone number on the device [1].
[1] presumably a tablet would work and does not necessarily even have an associated phone number, but that's still not a desktop.
Use messenger. I use it exclusively unless I need to look up who lives where I'm visiting.
Recently i was traveling in some part of the world and remembered that an old friend might be living there. I then found out he erased his facebook account. And so I ended up not being able to reach out to him. It's really hard nowadays to keep in touch with international friends without Facebook.
They do, but not everyone has the same email they did the last time you connected with them. I recently had to google pretty hard to find an accidentally published work email address for an old friend to whom I wanted to send condolences.
I call every once in a while. People I don't feel comfortable calling I probably shouldn't be stalking on Facebook anyway. And having even a 30 minute phone conversation every six months with an old friend will do amazing wonders for that relationship that years of vapid Facebook shadowing won't.
(And if the above makes me seem old, I'm young-ish: 28.)
I find that fb stuff sometimes doesn't translate well into real life relationships when I don't interact with the person often. For ongoing friends it's just another source of smalltalk, but if I don't see them often I don't know if I can make fun of that one facebook affirmation gif.
Something different from what everyone else is saying, though I agree calling, email, and text are good.
Liking a post isn't "keeping up". It is you being aware of their actions. But that doesn't count as keeping up. Keeping up requires the emotional connection, like what you have with friends and family. Liking or seeing posts doesn't make this emotional connection grow, but it makes you think it is.
That being said, I've found that catching up with people I haven't seen in awhile is actually nicer without facebook. You end up having more to talk about. They will tell you about their events in the recent time. There is the emotional response with this too.
The other thing is that you can still be friends with someone you haven't seen in a year. I think the only thing Facebook accomplishes in this respect is making it feel more difficult to reconnect with someone (because "you're already connected").
Why not just use email, text messages, VoIP, and videocalls? I live in Japan and all my relatives live in the US. I don't use facebook, twitter, instagram, or any other ad-based social media, but still communicate with them a few times a week.
I mean, I just email and text my family. They are on Facebook, but I removed myself. Sure, I may miss some rant about some politics or a photo, but I still know when the family events are occurring and attend.
Phone and email, though my situation is likely different from yours, so that may not work for you.
Maybe start a group blog or private forum or something and try to let folks know they can find you there, but you're phasing out participation from FB?
I really wish there was a good alternative for Instagram. I use it a lot to post my pictures, mostly as a journal to look at old memories. For browsing pictures and sharing with people it still has a relatively uncluttered interface. Lately they added a lot of cruft like IGTV that I would disable if I could but I haven't found a better app so far. Maybe Flickr?
Yeah, I used to love Flickr. It became another great victim of attention economy apps whose business models are based on exploitation of one of the basic human needs (I would say) - the need for drawing an attention. Pity.
Photos on iOS. It has shared and sharable galleries, even has the Memories app along with a lot of other cool stuff. If you want Snapchatty type stuff, there’s Clips.
Yea, I use this app already. Mostly for the editing part but the whole interface feels like an art project and for me always seems to be pretty annoying to navigate.
I'm carefully optimistic that at some point we'll get a IG alternative based on something like ActivityPub with different clients to connect to. One can always dream.
I’m already watching the Github project, I’m very excited about the project. I really hope there’ll be a good app at some point. Thanks for posting that again.
I think the app is the important part, building the best backend doesn’t help you if you don’t have any decent apps for iOS and Android.
That’s the problem that most new social networks have. I’m not using Mastodon because there’s no good looking iOS app. If Tweetbot would ship an app that works with Mastodon I would probably use it. Back when App.net was around some famous Twitter apps did just that but I think they got burned because it never took off and now nobody is doing it again until it’s more established.
Call me old fashioned, but if you don't like the services, just stop using them.
I have a facebook account - I haven't posted there in 5-6 years. What data are they going to harvest from me that would be at all useful or relevant? I guess they can find the fake email address I signed up with 15 years ago if that's useful for them.
WhatsApp is much worse. Here in Europe we use it like TOO MUCH. We just can't switch to Signal, we need it to text/chat friends, people we don't know yet, businesses, etc.
Why do you think WhatsApp usage is worse than IG and FB? (honestly asking).
While I’ve no doubts that people at FB are actively thinking about ways to monetize it, right now the product doesn’t seem to contain any of the toxic crap from IG/FB (ie: algorithmic timelines, attention-grabing dark patterns, promoted content, etc).
I’m wondering if it’s somehow already there and I simply haven’t noticed :(
Because WhatsApp is part of Facebook and I don’t trust Facebook. It’s that simple. People act like they are different companies. You can’t use WhatsApp and then be intellectually honest when you criticize Facebook. They are one and the same. The goal with #deleteFacebook isn’t to stop using Facebook, but to diminish the power and nastiness of Facebook the company. You can’t do that if you are using WhatsApp: you are feeding the same beast.
It's all about what briandear has pointed out: it's Facebook.
I simply don't trust Facebook. I know WhatsApp doesn't contain any of that "toxic crap" (yet), I know WhatsApp is e2e encrypted and as a developer I really know what it does mean, but it's just too much power for a single company..
The worst part of WhatsApp is that it seems to be designed to maximize contact. People will add you to groups, and you can't do anything about it. Suddenly your number is distributed with many others, who may have who knows what data collection apps on their phones...
And once in, you will be forced to either leave and offend people, or stay and bear the consequences.
I wish I could remove it, but as you say, everyone depends on it.
Yeah, medium to big companies don't advertise a WhatsApp contact number but local businesses do. With the new WhatsApp Business API I'm pretty sure this will change in the near future.
Texts are fine, but as I said above, there're good reasons to not use SMS:
> (1) 0 encryption (2) ISP's full control (3) Doesn't support videocalls (4) Doesn't support neither complex files nor previewing files (5) Doesn't support groups (6) Doesn't support voice messages (7) There're plans which don't include texts so they're not always free
And as I mentioned earlier, here in Spain if you don't have WhatsApp you're literally isolated. I end up using WhatsApp + iMessage but I just.. can't quit WhatsApp.
To sum up, I think it's much harder to ditch WhatsApp than Facebook itself and WhatsApp is too much power for a single company, that's my point :)
Cross-platform rich content over SMS is a bit of a mixed bag. You’re never sure the other party is going to be able to read it properly.
Also SMS doesn’t do group messenging very well.
iMessage would be a great alternative to WA were it cross platform.
In EU especially, you’re bound to have a critical mass of your contacts on Android :/
Well, I do have danish friends which use WhatsApp a lot, but I guess you're right. Here in Spain you must have WhatsApp. Otherwise, you're literally isolated. I have free texts too but we don't use them at all. Also, it may worth mentioning they're not even encrypted and ISPs have full control on them.
So at the end of the day there're good reasons to not use SMS:
(1) 0 encryption
(2) ISP's full control
(3) Doesn't support videocalls
(4) Doesn't support neither complex files nor previewing files
(5) Doesn't support groups
(6) Doesn't support voice messages
(7) There're plans which don't include texts so they're not always free
The only apps I use here are WhatsApp and iMessage and I'd love to ditch WhatsApp in favour of signal but I can't.
In a current western world state I think it is impossible to avoid your PII collected and sold (or as they call it - "bartered"). Every single company is probably doing it, starting with FAANG and down to the tiniest startups. Therefore deleting two profiles (already populated btw) out of hundreds will do nothing to your privacy. You will still continue to use Google or Twitter or Apple or any cell/broadband operator or whatever else, and they will still continue to sell/exchange your info, or just use it themselves.
Without a cast-iron guarantee that your shadow profile is also gone, deleting your FB just removes what minimal handle you had on their file on you. I stopped using FB a year ago, but I just walked away. If GDPR has teeth I want there to be no ambiguity about which account I am referring to.
Does anyone have advice on how to export the saved links from Facebook? It is not included in the archive that they let you download. I have way too may saved links over the past few years. They are the only thing that is stopping me from deleting the account.
At what point will posts like these begin to be called, in reddit parlance, “shitposts”? I can’t count how many of these identical articles I’ve read in the past 6 months. Give it a rest
How is it that I will have any interaction with Facebook if I stop visiting it? I have a Facebook account, never use it, never hear anything from Facebook.
Even if you don’t have an account, FB cookies and tracking are everywhere. You see a « like » button ? FB just update the cookie on your browser and noted it somewhere!
Of course, if you have browser plugins blocking that it’s better.
But else, as soon you’re browsing the web, you have a good chance that Google and FB knows about it
Can you please cite a source that confirms what you are saying about like buttons being used for tracking?
I am asking because while I am aware that Facebook could in theory use these buttons to track you, I am not aware that they actually do! We need to be careful when criticizing (and demonizing) these companies that we stay with the facts!
I am all for calling them out for their shit...but let’s keep it real please!
There has been plenty of reports of people not having a Facebook account, then signing up and suddenly having ads regarding stuff they've seen on the internet before, showing that Facebook keeps tabs on people who aren't even on the network yet, just in case they decide to join (or if they find another way to advertise to them without them joining).
That is simple ad retargeting and has nothing to do with like buttons!
Many ad platforms offer this feature and it’s fairly simple todo from a technical stand point.
Really the technology that enables it is not even something Facebook built! It’s your freakin browser! If you don’t want to get retargeted, just start using a different one...vote with your browser folks!
I can’t believe I am saying this, but the html web browser is not the ultimate sophistication! There was a world before it and there will be a world after! And what propels this process is users voting with the choice of browser!
I know this must be obvious to everyone else, but:
No, NYTimes is not spamming HN. People are submitting stories from the NYT every day because the NYT is full of great journalism and interesting stories. I've submitted a bunch of them. Sure, it contains a lot of junk, too - doesn't make the good stuff spam.
Do the letters nytimes bother you for some reason? HN lists the domain next to each link which makes actually visiting the site easy to avoid. Some people here find it interesting to read.
http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/facebook-activated-my...
I have an interesting follow-up: they have rejected every ID that I have sent them. I took a photo of my passport and sent that to them, and then they rejected it. Same with my drivers license.
I'm left in limbo: I want to delete my Facebook account, but they insist that I first have to send them an ID, and they reject all the IDs I send them. They reject that ID with a form letter, so I'm not clear why exactly the ID is being rejected.