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Comment by pfarnsworth | Hacker News Reader

I'm actually getting pushed away from Facebook. Nothing in my feed is particularly interesting anymore to me, it's about 50% political opinion, 20% ads, and the rest is usually nonsense. Facebook is generally a place where people post to show off about something, it's not entertaining anymore. I'm sure over the next few years, there will be alternatives that will schism the markets so there is always an opportunity for a startup with a good, catchy idea.

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After I unfollowed all the irritations, I too found myself simply irritated with my facebook feed. I started asking myself, "Did this experience make my life better in some way?". After a few uses, I determined quite quickly that my life was indeed not better with it.

I haven't deleted my account, but I did remove it from my phone because it started aggressively notifying me of bogus status updates after it noticed my absence.

After a few days, I asked myself, "Is my life better without it?" Yes, no irritations from ego, politics or ignorance anymore.

Facebook has its uses (acquaintance address book, private message with people you know or knew, local groups) but don't try to make sense of the feed because it's hopeless, no matter how many tweaks they do to their algorithm it can never be more than an amalgamation of the lowest common denominator, IMO. Though I guess YMMV if you have extremely interesting acquaintances, but I'd be surprised.

Heh, I still remember how much I disliked the Feed when they introduced it. In retrospect, of course, I was wrong: no matter how much I thought it was a disaster, it was a huge reason for Facebook's rapid growth.

It'd be a bit amusing if what has been the reason for their growth eventually ends up being the reason for their decline.

I imagine even if you have extremely interesting acquaintances with interesting things to say, they are more than likely saying those things places other than Facebook.

I only follow groups where people post pictures of their pets. After a few weeks of exclusively interacting with posts from those groups, my feed is 95% cute dogs/cats and 5% close friends. My life is __definitely__ better for seeing all those animals, the happiness I derive from it is palpable.

Similarly, FB has kept me due to its platform for music. Not music itself, but most artists use FB as a central hub. Further, the events are spectacular for me. I have found no better way to discover events than crowdsourcing it, aka scrolling my FB feed.

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