Author Topic: Break Up With Facebook  (Read 14033 times)

DebtDerp

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Break Up With Facebook
« on: February 22, 2013, 11:06:02 PM »
Dear Facebook,

It’s not you, it’s me.

I just don’t care anymore. I just don’t care about what my friend had for lunch or what my aunt is saying about Downton Abby or whatever the latest cat youtube sensation is or that a kid I once knew in school just checked in at taco bell. I also really, really don’t care how many of my friends ‘like’ Doritos or Verizon Wireless or Ford Trucks.

I’ve tried to fix it. I un-friended over 200 people over the past few years and un-liked so many pointless brands. I just wanted to care about what was actually popping up in my feed. I wanted to care about the conversation that was going on in the site. But no matter how hard I tried you still became more and more of a bitch.

You want me to pay you so that my friends can see what I post. You bombard me more and more with mindless advertising.

You sell my data to marketing firms that connect my Facebook activity with my credit card purchases. You readily hand over my entire history to law enforcement agencies. You’re planning ways to only show me an internet based on how to extract every last dollar from me and to then connect that to how I act in the real world.

You want to track my every move, physically in the real world. Ultimately, you want to tell me what to care about and you want me to only care about what you tell me to.

I tried to adapt. I thought I could just ignore the corporatization of your site. I thought there was still some good in you. But I can’t ignore it anymore and I’m tired of all the time I waste on what is really just an interactive commercial.

So we need to go on a break. I may come back to you in the future. I may try this again. But it is going to be a long time before that happens. For now I am going to get back to basics, in fact tonight I have a date with a real life book. With paper and ink!

Don’t take it personally; you knew this was going to happen when you chose the dollar over your friends.

Sincerely,

Just another derp
 

michaelrecycles

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #1 on: February 22, 2013, 11:39:22 PM »
I'm trying to muster the will to do this too, or at least try the mass-defriending first. Your awesome summary might have done the trick.

Prof Penny Pincher

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2013, 08:19:22 AM »
I think social media has next to no value. Period. As someone whose Girlfriend checks fb and twitter I find it frightening to think what the future holds.

anastrophe

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2013, 08:40:19 AM »
I did it a couple of years ago. Thought it would be hard but...it wasn't. I don't miss it at all.

Kriegsspiel

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2013, 09:24:50 AM »
Personally, I think you are all missing the forest for the trees.  Everything on facebook is voluntary.  Don't want facebook to track/geotag you?  Don't volunteer that information!  Don't want to see what someone had for lunch?  Turn off the whatever-thing-it-is that makes that stuff pop up.  Social media is about connecting with people, if you don't like the games and apps on facebook, don't use them.  Facebook is awesome for its original purpose (connecting friends, no matter where they are).  It's like email for our generation (do you email your friends, or facebook message them?  I facebook message them). 

Remember when facebook came out?  I was in college, and facebook was AWESOME.  It worked just like "Mark Zuckerberg" said it should in The Social Network: you could see who was dating, find out who people were you met at a part (facebookstalking), etc.  If you still just use those features, I don't see HOW you could hate facebook. 

Maybe the real problem is how you are using facebook.

anastrophe

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #5 on: February 23, 2013, 09:43:02 AM »

Remember when facebook came out?  I was in college, and facebook was AWESOME.  It worked just like "Mark Zuckerberg" said it should in The Social Network: you could see who was dating, find out who people were you met at a part (facebookstalking), etc.  If you still just use those features, I don't see HOW you could hate facebook. 

Maybe the real problem is how you are using facebook.

I do remember when FB came out, I was in college too and it *was* awesome. You had to have a valid .edu email address and the only people there were your friends and potential hook-ups. There was almost no advertising, no corporations, no games, it was all about the people.

But I'm not against social networking, I just use G+ now because it's where my peoples are and it isn't so commercialized.

Kriegsspiel

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #6 on: February 23, 2013, 11:27:45 AM »

Remember when facebook came out?  I was in college, and facebook was AWESOME.  It worked just like "Mark Zuckerberg" said it should in The Social Network: you could see who was dating, find out who people were you met at a part (facebookstalking), etc.  If you still just use those features, I don't see HOW you could hate facebook. 

Maybe the real problem is how you are using facebook.

I do remember when FB came out, I was in college too and it *was* awesome. You had to have a valid .edu email address and the only people there were your friends and potential hook-ups. There was almost no advertising, no corporations, no games, it was all about the people.

But I'm not against social networking, I just use G+ now because it's where my peoples are and it isn't so commercialized.

Yup.  The Social Network covered this bit really well. 

clutchy

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #7 on: February 23, 2013, 06:43:54 PM »
I think social media has next to no value. Period. As someone whose Girlfriend checks fb and twitter I find it frightening to think what the future holds.

my wife surfs FB, instagram and uhhh... oh yeah pinterst.

She just sits there at night and likes and jabbers...

Reminds me of when I used to play world of warcraft.  zombie.

Nords

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #8 on: February 23, 2013, 07:37:20 PM »
Personally, I think you are all missing the forest for the trees. 
Maybe the real problem is how you are using facebook.
Bingo.

We may be the product of Facebook, not its customers.  However it's a lot better than having to log into Classmates.com, and then TogetherWeServed.com, and then EarlyRetirement.org, and then HawaiiThreads.com, and then... you get the idea.

I see Facebook as a fantastic way of vicariously sharing my college daughter's life without having to pester her for the updates (let alone the details).  Ironically she disabled her account three days ago, so she must be having a hellacious life this week.  Maybe next week she'll "call" us on the "phone" to update us old-school style.

Otherwise I use Facebook as a giant funnel for directing readers to my blog and selling books.  A decade ago I would've had to spend a huge pile of bucks to do so, but today all of that money can go to military charities.

Erica/NWEdible

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #9 on: February 23, 2013, 08:06:28 PM »
I have a love/loathe relationship with FB. I use it almost entirely as my Page, which is to say my Brand/Blogger Public persona. In this role, FB has allowed me to connect to more people than I would have imagined to spread the word about the awesomeness of gardening. And yet, the cost is that I maintain a social interface with somewhere over 10,000 people. I'm an introvert, happiest at home, with my plants and, like, five real-life people, so occasionally I can find that degree of public availability very, very tiring. As a Page content generator, I feel the pressure to be consistent about "feeding the beast" with updates and photos and talking points. But it's my primary way of communicating with my readers, and I value that a huge amount. Like I say, love/loathe.

Sparky

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2013, 11:50:28 PM »
Me and Facebook kinda like each other. It's cheap entertainment, I use it to connect only to people I actually like and not just random people I've met. 3 years of travel and I've got just over a 100 people on it (there was a mass delete a few years back I'll admit and half of them don't use English regularly or even have legal access to it).  I think thats pretty impressive.





onemorebike

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #11 on: February 25, 2013, 10:24:58 AM »
I'm currently broken up with Facebook. I hate that bitch. I love that bitch. No, I mean I hate that bitch!

This is probably the fifth time I've deleted my account, for me the place is a vacuous time suck. Although it gives you an outside view into your friends' lives, for me it ended up decreasing the quality of all my friendships. I would update a lot (as a dad of very young children, this felt like my lifeline to the real world for awhile) and as a result less people would call to see how I was or to hang out. Now that I'm off, I notice that people check in more often, ask me more about what is happening in my life and I do a better job of intentionally reaching out to those I care enough about to call/meet/catch up.

The downside is that the rest of the world seems to be using FB to keep up with each other and so I often miss out on things that have happened because I'm not on there. A friend's baby was just in the hospital and I found out through another friend almost a week later. When I asked, they said they put something on FB. Argh.

Anyway, it is definitely counter-culture at this point, but man the extra time I have devoted to think about things that are important to me is insane. I can't believe how much time I spent browsing the lives of people I barely keep in touch with or checking the comments/likes on things I had posted about.

momo

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #12 on: February 25, 2013, 12:59:47 PM »
FB was a waste of time for me.

Been there done it and I still prefer the human interaction that comes from having conversations with live people and creating memories with them based in reality.

FB does serve some purposes (promoting consumerism, Joneses, and constant privacy invasion, etc).

I found FB just is not worth investing my finite time or energy.

I prefer LinkedIn simply because I use it for the news feeds which help me stay informed on topics I find useful to advance myself and not for mindless consumerism. I also use LI to track companies, developments, HR/job changes, and as potential investments. Your mileage may vary.

Cheers!
« Last Edit: March 01, 2013, 09:31:42 AM by Stashtastic Momo »

DebtDerp

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #13 on: February 25, 2013, 05:02:12 PM »
Relevant article on CNN today: http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/25/opinion/rushkoff-why-im-quitting-facebook/index.html

This passage caught my eye:

Quote
The true end users of Facebook are the marketers who want to reach and influence us. They are Facebook's paying customers; we are the product. And we are its workers. The countless hours that we -- and the young, particularly -- spend on our profiles are the unpaid labor on which Facebook justifies its stock valuation.

Nords

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #14 on: February 26, 2013, 11:04:03 PM »
Well, our college daughter got through her mid-terms from hell, got a weekend of sleep, enjoyed an hour on the phone with us, and decided to bring her Facebook account out of suspension. 

It'll be interesting to see what she does with it now.  At 750 friends, even for a college student I think she's a little above her Dunbar Number.

keith

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #15 on: February 27, 2013, 05:09:52 AM »
@DebtDerp - I quit it mostly for the same reasons you outlined (about 2 years ago).

The one thing that I missed was updates from artists/musicians/bands that I followed. Announcements like new albums, tour dates, etc.

So I ended up just adding all the public artists pages I cared about to my RSS reader, using the method outlined on this page for how to locate the secret/hidden RSS feed of public pages.

Problem solved! Facebook free and still don't miss the updates I want - no more "facebook will show you the updates that we think you would want to see" garbage, where you miss out on relevant posts from pages that you rarely visit.
« Last Edit: February 27, 2013, 05:12:14 AM by keith »

GuitarStv

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #16 on: February 27, 2013, 06:42:33 AM »
At first, facebook seemed really cool.  Connect with old friends, see what people are up to, share photos!  Over the last three or so years it's come to my attention that you're not really connecting with anyone or anything on facebook . . . and people appear to be so preoccupied with getting photos and posting them online that they're more interested in posting the appearance of fun than having fun.  I've logged in to facebook three times in the past two years.  :P

Matte

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #17 on: February 28, 2013, 02:01:36 PM »
I have been without it since September, really have not missed it.  I also disliked the constant marketing, and just have a bit of a big brother fear.  It really is like one big commercial, life is better, the sky is bluer, I get more done, its like losing 50lbs.


tylerherman

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #18 on: February 28, 2013, 02:25:31 PM »
Deleted my account about a year ago. You only think you'll miss it or can't live without it. Once it's gone you forget you ever wasted your time on there.

kolorado

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #19 on: February 28, 2013, 02:52:14 PM »
Funny! I'm sure the break will do you good! I can think of more than a couple people I know who need to break up with FB too.
I don't have personally any issues with FB. I joined exactly 2.5 years ago after my littlest was born. My motivation was to be able to chat with my long distance siblings and share pictures. None of them like talking on the phone or using email. I just got so sick of family gatherings where my own mother and siblings started every conversation by asking if I'd seen their such and such post on FB. They had so many FB "friends" that they failed to notice that I, their own close relative, wasn't one of them. :( I was always out of the loop on my own family's life before I signed up. I even had to find out about my mother being taken to the hospital in an ambulance when she posted it on FB instead of calling anyone. What a world. :/ I was actually lately thinking about partially blocking my own wonderful brother. He was appointed a Deacon for the Youth Ministry in his church recently and the steady stream of where he is and with who, funny shares and all is getting to be too much for me. You really can tell the ones who use the platform to simply keep in touch and those who are mindlessly addicted to the attention/information. :/
Anyway, I'm not a social creature. I have exactly 11 friends, two of whom aren't currently active. They are my brothers, sister, SILs, BIL, parents and one close cousin. I deny everyone who isn't my close friend in real life. Yeah my social circle is small. Doesn't embarrass me. I want my interactions online to have real meaning like a RL relationship.
I like less than 100 things and they're almost all causes, classic literature and classic musicians. I hope they do use my data, maybe it will bring some class and compassion back into popular culture. :P
I have my privacy settings set to the extreme and most feeds from my likes turned off. I only "need" to check FB once or twice a week to keep up with my family and that's the way I like it.
I think it actually saves me time since I don't have to chase down my relatives by email or phone messages anymore to stay in touch. 10 minutes a couple times a week and I'm done.

smalllife

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #20 on: February 28, 2013, 04:03:58 PM »
I managed to not use my Facebook hardly at all for almost a year, but I don't think I'll delete it.  It is the one place where you can search by name and plan get togethers with people you may not have a phone number or e-mail address for, reply to all, add friends, etc.  The party planning utility of Facebook is unparalleled - and in my generation not having one would be a serious social handicap. 

Stachsquatch

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #21 on: March 03, 2013, 06:40:17 PM »
Should we scrap phones and snail mail in favor of going back to carrier pigeons and smoke signals because they have some inconvenient features? Communication evolves and it's worth evolving with, so long as you keep away from the stupid stuff that costs money. Steer clear of that and there is little if any harm using it as a tool to connect with. Hell, I've seen people make money using it as an "in network" Criagstlist where you can see the creepy people selling things before you buy them.

Viv A. Stache

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #22 on: March 10, 2013, 07:19:33 PM »
I'm surprised so many people are still in "like" with Facebook. I used it a lot when I moved out of state, but I ended up being judgmental of who's having a baby, who got crappy Christmas presents, etc., and jealous of people's vacations. Then I realized I only saw/called to 5 of the people from back home when I visited, and forced myself to check it less and less often. Last month I got rid of the unlimited data on our phones, and I log in once a week or so now. It really can't be matched for party planning though...

Taryl

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #23 on: March 16, 2013, 01:55:05 PM »
Good for you!  Since I discovered Pinterest, I don't give a darn about Facebook.   I'll be the next person to sign off FB forever.

StashinIt

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #24 on: March 16, 2013, 08:55:00 PM »
I got rid of facebook because the value it provided wasn't worth the life it was costing. I'm terrible with keeping up with friends, but FB was an inefficient way of doing it.

daverobev

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #25 on: March 20, 2013, 11:21:26 AM »
I killed my account last week thanks to this thread.

I hate the advertising - and even if you use Adblock (I do), you are still a statistic.

I did like posting status updates, though.. not that anyone read them that much.

Today would've been something like "Spring is in the... no.. wait.. Snow is in the air!"

Maybe that's why nobody commented on them!

smedleyb

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #26 on: March 20, 2013, 05:36:34 PM »
"Fuck Facebook in the face!" Seth Rogan once exclaimed.  I agree. 

aclarridge

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #27 on: March 21, 2013, 11:30:43 AM »
Deactivated my account a while ago, don't miss it.

Bearblastbeats

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #28 on: March 21, 2013, 11:54:19 AM »
I've toyed around with the idea of deleting the thing. I just recently obtained an Instagram (over a year of making fun of it and the people who use it.)

I go through phases of having a lot of "friends" then going through and deleted them all. Now I hardly use it, only talk to a hand full of people on it when I'm actually at a computer outside of work (which is seldom) The FB app on my phone sucks and instagrm is boring.

If I didn't have real friends on the other side of the planet and if I didn't use it for networking with bands and musicians I probably would terminate it as well.


giggles

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #29 on: March 21, 2013, 12:45:44 PM »
My spouse and I dumped facebook about 3 years ago.  It's good to have a little bit of mystery about what is going on in our lives, and the people we want to keep tabs on we do by phone, email, text, or.....SEEING THEM IN PERSON!

DebtDerp

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #30 on: March 26, 2013, 03:59:16 PM »
Another reason to quit: Facebook is now inserting targeted ads right in the middle of your news feed.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/26/facebook-now-posting-retargeted-ads-right-in-the-middle-of-your-beautiful-new-news-feed/

As Facebook gets more and more pressure to increase revenues this will come at the expense of the users. Get out while you still can! ;)
« Last Edit: March 26, 2013, 10:44:10 PM by DebtDerp »

Miss Stachio

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #31 on: March 27, 2013, 08:33:32 AM »
I slowed way down on how much I use facebook a few years ago and now check it less than four times a year.  Interestingly enough, so far the rate at which I make friends has been inversely proportional to rate I which I log on to fb.

jpo

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #32 on: March 27, 2013, 08:48:44 AM »
It's the way the neighbors communicate/party plan, so I am still on it.

atxgirl

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #33 on: April 25, 2013, 09:15:29 AM »
Great post, you should write about this kind of stuff on your blog instead of just blogging about your debt payoff.

Freda

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #34 on: April 25, 2013, 09:27:18 AM »
I love facebook.  I use it to plan my social calendar. It's gotten me connected to my local music scene, so instead of $50 at the movies I'm spending $5 on root beer at a no-cover show. 

ace1224

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #35 on: April 25, 2013, 09:46:28 AM »
i got rid of it a year ago and haven't missed it.  i am tired of the "OMG!!! you don't have a facebook????" but other than that i'm good.  i honestly do not give a shit about how your lunch was, what you bought on sale, who is mad at somebody, or you just ranting, and i don't want to see pictures of your house, your yard, or your baby.

facebook served its purpose when i was in college but with my dumbass "friends" on my news feed it turned into a narcissists' wet dream.  if i'm not good enough friends for you to have my phone number/email address to contact me then i don't care what you're doing.

Freda

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #36 on: April 25, 2013, 01:14:14 PM »
Another reason to quit: Facebook is now inserting targeted ads right in the middle of your news feed.

http://venturebeat.com/2013/03/26/facebook-now-posting-retargeted-ads-right-in-the-middle-of-your-beautiful-new-news-feed/

As Facebook gets more and more pressure to increase revenues this will come at the expense of the users. Get out while you still can! ;)
Why do people always act like it's so difficult to ignore an ad?  It's like, one flick of the thumb and it's gone.  Why is this a big deal?

AJ

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #37 on: April 25, 2013, 02:20:09 PM »
Why do people always act like it's so difficult to ignore an ad?  It's like, one flick of the thumb and it's gone.  Why is this a big deal?

If advertising didn't work it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry.

Anyone ever seen the IT Crowd episode where everyone gets sucked into "Friend Face"? So funny! I miss that show...

mobilisinmobili

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #38 on: April 25, 2013, 02:52:51 PM »
Way too useful for me.. such an easy way to find out about parties, events, concerts, what friends are doing, etc.

I do agree that we need to spend more time connecting in person than just on Facebook (you don't deepen/improve relationships using it), but as an extrovert that goes to a lot of events, it's an invaluable one-stop shopping point.

rockstache

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #39 on: April 25, 2013, 02:56:56 PM »
Why do people always act like it's so difficult to ignore an ad?  It's like, one flick of the thumb and it's gone.  Why is this a big deal?

If advertising didn't work it wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry.

Anyone ever seen the IT Crowd episode where everyone gets sucked into "Friend Face"? So funny! I miss that show...

True, but if you are aware of it and it actually annoys you, you are probably not the targeted audience.

kit

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #40 on: April 29, 2013, 07:12:19 AM »
I did this for a year and a half up until 2 years ago. I didn't really use it before then, though, and there wasn't anything I cared about on there.

Forward to moving overseas- I live in a completely opposite time zone to my friends so asynchronous communication is the only way I'll hear anything about their lives. Facebook is just the only way it's going to happen. My cousin's band just got signed and is going on tour? I have the dates, and I can try to arrange my next trip back around it.

I can't stand the people who post crap like pictures with inspirational quotes all the time, though. I really wish there were a stupid filter to save me a lot of scrolling.

oldtoyota

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #41 on: May 05, 2013, 05:31:25 PM »
I usually take a month off of FB every year. My old mobile phone stopped allowing FB to work, so I've just gone with it. Now, I rarely check it on mobile. I see this glitch as working in my favor.

My mobile battery died, and I've barely used it all weekend. I've barely checked FB for two days. It's tricky, though, because people use it now to send invitations. DH asked if I wanted to go to "the party." He thought I knew all about it. Turns out that we'd been invited to a party and I did not know because I had not been looking at FB. Oh, well. I did not end up going anyway.

Ashcons

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #42 on: July 15, 2013, 01:58:47 PM »
I used to keep a pretty small friends list (relatively) of around 150 people. Probably about half of those were just old acquaintances. I accepted the marketing deal as my "payment," for using their site to post updates for my family and friends about what I'm up to these days, since I had to move away from almost everyone, but the constant privacy setting changes were very annoying and after the PRISM story broke, I decided to lighten my presence on the Internet. My life and thoughts can't be too interesting to anyone, but that was the straw that made me re-think even the minimal amount of information I was putting out on the Internet, which is public space.

charles_roberts

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Re: Break Up With Facebook
« Reply #43 on: July 16, 2013, 05:53:29 AM »
I think social media has next to no value. Period. As someone whose Girlfriend checks fb and twitter I find it frightening to think what the future holds.
I'm worried for all the children in the world and what kind of world they will grow up in.
To be fair, I'm much happier with my Facebook feed. It's not perfect but a VAST improvement- it's great that my grandmother knows how to use it so I can see what she's up to living the life in Spain.

But you're right. They dumped their 'friends' a loooong time ago..