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Comment by fastbeef | Hacker News Reader

I quit Facebook right around the time my son was born. It wasn't for privacy reasons (and frankly, it never bothered me), but rather for the enormous energy and time sink it had become. Truly, it was as if I was a dopamine junkie and Facebook was the pusher of those sweet, sweet red circles with a number in them that meant someone, somewhere vaguely agreed with something you posted. I noticed I was not present in the moment with my newborn son, but rather my brain was hunting for the next quip to post or cute/smug/humblebragish picture to upload.

I quit cold turkey and have never looked back.

I'm off all social media today (except LinkedIn) and have weeded out a lot "friends" who really were just co-enablers in the dopamine rush hunt.

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I felt the same - I was alarmed when I realised how much time I spent scrolling through a feed of inane posts, and how Cmd-T, f, down, enter had become almost a reflex.

Most of my "real" friends seemed to have stopped posting on there, yet I was still addicted to scrolling through the feed while waiting for code to compile or whatever (clever design on their part, I guess!).

However, also like you, the privacy side doesn't worry me too much (although as time goes by I do start to think about it more), and I still get some value from communicating with certain people on FB Messenger and being able to access photos from events etc., so instead of quitting, I unfollowed everyone (using a bit of Javascript - I'll try and dig it out).

My feed is now totally blank, so I now only visit maybe twice a day for a few seconds to check for messages (I refuse to install their app - mbasic.facebook.com all the way!). I did think I could refollow people if I felt I was missing out, but surprise surprise, I don't at all.

Of course, I've now replaced reading Facebook with reading Twitter while stuff compiles but at least that's relevant to my work ;)

I'd highly recommend this approach if you feel uncomfortable with your use of Facebook but also value your network of friends on there.

I think I wrote my own Javascript in the console to do this, thinking about it, but the basic idea is https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28 (I've not run this so do check it before doing so)

Like you I also dropped it and never looked back for the following simple reasons:

1. It offers nothing while it takes a lot.

2. When something is free, then YOU are the product.

3. Massive violation of privacy (that "like" button on most websites and any other facebook element which now I block with ABP and NoScript)(and all known FB URLs on my hosts file).

4. I can still be in touch with my friend without informing FB (via facebook, instagram, whatsapp) who is my friend and when are we texting.

5. FB is the devil :)

> 2. When something is free, then YOU are the product.

Debian Linux, Firefox, gcc, visual studio... The list goes on. I think the "you are the product" quip has become an overplayed meme of late. Mutually beneficial / co dependence and such themes are more applicable in more cases than not when it comes to free products and services, in my own view anyways.

I think it gets twisted partially because the quote is wrong. It should be "if a _service_ is free", not "when something is free." I don't think any of the examples you've listed would be considered a service, but rather either a platform (OS) or product.

The quip is certainly overplayed, but I think the notion still stands. It is important to be aware of what intentions service providers and product sellers have. It's not so much a dig on libre / free software.

The USG provides the GPS service for free. You can argue that connecting to it isn't free (since you need hardware that can do so), but then connecting to Google and Facebook isn't free either.

This took literally two seconds to think of off the top of my head. The quotation is _still_ not accurate. It's a useful perspective on how to think about free services, but it's not a substitute for thought.

In what way are tax funded services free?

Dude, are you kidding me? "If you're not paying for it, you're the product" is taking about free for the user. There's so many ways in which this question is incredibly stupid, but here's an easy one: In what way is usage not free for every one of the billions of people who are untaxed by the USG? Or are you under the impression that GPS only works if you show your US passport first?

GPS is an outlier case. Unlike almost everything else, GPS has perfect scaling. No matter how many users use it, it will not be adversely affected.

Other services like that are public radio and TV.

It would likely cost more to make GPS non-free because extra users don't increase the cost of running the service and keeping people locked out (until they have paid) would be a potentially very expensive technological arms race.

That doesn't apply to most services like facebook for which each active user creates extra bandwidth and processing load.

> I think the "you are the product" quip has become an overplayed meme of late.

It's been overplayed for years. The problem with pithy phrases, even when true in their original narrow sense, is that they allow those who aren't willing (or capable) of thinking for themselves to substitute something that superficially looks like wit without having to actually think about what they're talking about.

A key difference with something like Debian versus Facebook is profit. Debian is an open-source project supported by a community of volunteers and donors. Facebook is a corporation that banks billions of dollars. That money doesn't materialize out of thin air. It comes from advertising, your personal information and data gathering. We know what something like the Debian project is doing, we don't know what Facebook is doing. Debian and open-source projects are "mutually beneficial", Facebook only benefits Facebook.

I too feel exactly this way with almost everything. Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Email, Messages ... it's kind of tough to escape. Impossible even.

And here's the worst part: We grew up with this shit. My generation was one of the first (1987) to have their formative social years immersed in this shit. That means we'll never escape. Ever. We're literally wired to seek approval of strangers on the internet instead of the people around us. It feels more ... correct? Real? True?

That red circle with a number literally gives more enjoyment than a close friend saying "Heh that's cool". The worst part is that there's likely no cure. Rehab, maybe. But rehab for this shit doesn't exist yet.

Plus try explaining to your boss that you're not reading email and slack and you're never coming back because you're in notification rehab.

Simon Sinek explains it perfectly: https://youtu.be/hER0Qp6QJNU?t=195

Impossible is hard to square with the people in this thread (myself included) that did it.

You don't have to tell your boss you're not reading notifications. You just have to eliminate the notifications that serve no purpose except a high. Facebook still spams my email; it's filtered to the trash. Business carries on.

"You can totally quit heroin! Just stop taking it"

"Oh and if all your friends are doing it and are wondering why you're not having fun with them, just ignore them"

Sure you've quit Facebook. But did you quit dopamine-seeking technology use?

What I've found in myself is that when I pry myself away from Facebook, I spend more time on Twitter. When I pry myself off that as well, suddenly my HN engagement goes up. When I manage to ignore all those, then I check Slack every 2 minutes. If I avoid even that, then I refresh my email all the time.

The medium isn't the problem. The behavior is the problem. There's always another medium you can switch to.

I mean, it's not like I was on Facebook when I got hooked to social media at 14, 15, 16. I was on internet forums and MSN Messenger. The draw was and still is that it broadened my horizons, exposed me to different people, and sometimes I learned really useful things. Hell, it helped me build my entire career.

You're being hyperbolic, and it diminishes your argument. Not everybody in your generation suffers from the same addiction as you. I could be persuaded it's a large problem and is generational, but I don't believe we have the same kind of biological responses to social media as we do to something like sunlight.

I also believe there is another side of the argument, and people just consume media differently today. The internet came and it was the death of media, the TV came and it was the death of books, the books came and they were the death of the bard, etc. Maybe some people actually enjoy Facebook?

Watch the video I linked. Sinek does a good job of explaining how most (many?) of us have a similar problem with social media as alcoholics do with alcohol. For much the same reasons.

Quitting dopamine-seeking is called death. Dopamine is how the brain's reward system works, and eating or parenting is dopamine-seeking just as much as any other behaviour.

It sounds like technology isn't the problem - if you're doing these things with technology you'd be doing the same things without it. Perhaps you'd be spending a lot of time chatting around the water cooler instead of online, but that's not actually any healthier or better. Facebook has brought me a lot of fun in my life - on Tuesday I went to a gig that I only found out about because a casual acquaintance posted it there, and tonight I'm meeting up with another acquaintance because I saw on Facebook we're going to the same gig. I see it as like the gold medal in Cool Runnings - if you're not enough without it, you're not going to be enough with it.

Different activities provide differing reward for differing efforts.

Water cooler chat, which requires active social engagement and is time bounded, is not as addicting as an endless stream of content accessed with a twitch of the finger. You might not use Facebook in that way, and I similarly don't find it that engaging, but I've certainly experienced it with reddit and HN.

And I don't think this is some intractable personality flaw, I think people get used to the comfort of frequent dopamine hits, and find it very difficult to drag themselves away from these sources as a result. Cold turkey can and does make a difference.

If you're talking about dopamine you're already /inside/ what makes up someone's personality. "Dopamine hits" are called being happy.

Dopamine triggers satisfaction, not happiness. Otherwise we just fond the magic recipe for the whole world to be extremely happy! Instead it turns out that just makes everyone feel miserable.

> Otherwise we just fond the magic recipe for the whole world to be extremely happy! Instead it turns out that just makes everyone feel miserable.

What is it you're saying makes everyone feel miserable? AIUI the artificial substitute for dopamine is cocaine, which only makes people miserable when they run out (and more generally as tolerance kicks in)? Social media seems to make some people miserable, but despite how much people love to throw around "dopamine" in Internet arguments ("skinner box" is another good one) there's no scientifically demonstrated connection AFAIK.

Being happy is more of a serotonin/oxytocin thing. Or, it's not a chemical thing at all and happiness is self-determined.

You should maybe read up about what addiction really is. What it is caused by. I think you misunderstand what is meant by "dopamine hit".

Yes dopamine is part of a loop or cycle that is a survival strategy. In a healthy individual in a healthy situation.

When this loop works properly then yes, it is called being happy (there's more things to being happy but a properly functioning dopamine loop is part of it).

Think of a dopamine release and its causes like a particular message in a protocol that runs inside our body.

Our bodies aren't perfect or tested against every possible situation.

Sometimes the combination of the dopamine protocol and the environment causes a weird feedback loop that is no longer beneficial to this survival strategy.

In most of those cases, this results in a state called an addiction. (and in that case we call the dopamine release a "dopamine hit", to emphasize the role of addiction)

Fighting this bad feedback loop can be a constant struggle. A daily, constant struggle that lasts a lifetime once you get stuck in it. If you compare that to "being happy", then I can only assume you've never experienced it (and I hope you never will, but you can still learn compassion).

Sometimes these faults are exploited on purpose, very often for the commercial purposes of the amoral corporations.

It's also the case that certain people are more susceptible to these exploits. For instance ADHD is well-known to be co-morbid with susceptibility to addiction.

Peace :)

> "You can totally quit heroin! Just stop taking it" "Oh and if all your friends are doing it and are wondering why you're not having fun with them, just ignore them"

The heroin analogy is lazy and irrelevant. The reason people say stuff like "try doing X to quit or cut down" is that, unlike heroin, a fairly large chunk of people who've recognized the problem have been pretty able to easily cut down or stop their "dopamine addiction" to the level that they're comfortable with.

If heroin had such a high success rate from going cold turkey, you can be damn sure that people would be saying "try going cold turkey" or "try this specific path to quitting", because it's worked for so many others. There are successful suggestions on this thread that amount to "I deleted my dealer's number from my phone and poof problem gone".

That isn't to say that these will definitely work for everyone: some people have a more severe problem when it comes to their relationship to dopamine. But it's awfully self-centered to complain about people talking about things that have been successful for them and others.

The question isn't does it work, it's how long does it work for.

For example, diets work. But most have a fall-off-the-wagon rate in the couple of months range.

It's definitely easy to quit a social media platform cold turkey. The hard part is quitting social media. I have yet to see anyone who's actually quit social media as a whole (yes that def includes email and texting) and kept with it for more than a month.

Social media addiction in the modern world is a lot like food addiction. Sure you're addicted, but you still gotta eat or you die. Sure you're addicted, but without social media you can't be a functioning member of current society.

Hell, I had one of those "I quit the internet" articles on the frontpage of HackerNews a few years ago. You know what happened? I quit all social media, but I needed access to Github to do my work. So I started friending people and being all social media on Github.

[1] https://swizec.com/blog/my-ideas-are-shitty-so-im-going-on-a... [2] https://swizec.com/blog/the-end-of-my-internet-diet-experime...

> The question isn't does it work, it's how long does it work for. For example, diets work. But most have a fall-off-the-wagon rate in the couple of months range.

Off the top of my head, I have a friend who have been off of Facebook for 9 years, another for 7, and another who never made an account at all. These are all healthy, happy people with robust social lives: their friends just know they need to be texted to be looped into plans. I know still more people (myself included) who have always had a healthy relationship with social media: short periods of "maybe I'm mindlessly browsing this a bit" followed by minor habit tweaks and straight back to a fully healthy relationship. I eat extremely healthy but every once in a while notice that I'm eating a bit of junk food (perhaps due to stress at work or something). I notice it and fix it and go back to eating extremely healthy. It would be completely inaccurate to claim that any lapse means I have an unhealthy relationship with food, and this is exactly the same as with social media et al.

> I have yet to see anyone who's actually quit social media as a whole (yes that def includes email and texting) and kept with it for more than a month.

This is a beyond-absurd definition of social media, and you're now talking about something that no one else here is talking about. The idea that there's no value in email and texting beyond dopamine addiction is frankly just insane. When I get statements from my bank, or delivery notifications from my package receipt service or laundry service, or an update that my friend wants to move our dinner date back by half an hour, am I feeding my addiction? Because your bizarre definition doesn't leave any room for responsible e-mail/text usage.

Anyone defining "communication with other people" as an addiction that needs to be killed off is battling far worse demons than social media/dopamine-hit addiction. That may be interesting in and enough of itself but it couldn't be less relevant to this thread.

> And here's the worst part: We grew up with this shit. My generation was one of the first (1987) to have their formative social years immersed in this shit.

Yeah, I am only a year away, born in 1988. Our family's first home computer was put in my room when I was 6 years old and my parents were hands-off about using it, so I grew up on multi-player gaming, forums, chat rooms, porn, etc. It's difficult to express how strongly the internet shaped the direction of my life, and I'm not even as addicted as most people.

Not having a phone helps with staying off Facebook...

I watched the video and the speaker spends a great deal of time making some very elegant (if somewhat obvious) points. But then at the end he comes to the wrong conclusion, Imo. He blames the corporations where millennials work and passes the responsibility for fixing their attention/relationship deficits off to them! This is totally backwards.

Every generation has their dopamine hits. Of course, as society creates more leisure time, the number and (arguably) complexity of these increase. That is the trend. But, as always, the responsibility should be squarely on your own shoulders! You were not "dealt a bad hand." If that's a truth, then everyone ever born was dealt a bad hand. If being born at the time when the length and quality of life (health-wise) is at its longest, then deal me in! There are many, many benefits to being born in this time and as always, it is up to us to find the life we want and the balance we need.

> He blames the corporations where millennials work and passes the responsibility for fixing their attention/relationship deficits off to them! This is totally backwards.

He does blames them, but only as part of his point, not as the whole conclusion. He blames the corporations for focusing on reductive, short-term metrics† instead of people, which is precisely what's lead to this[0] and that[1] abusive situations. As a company you're not hiring robots, you're hiring people.

> Every generation has their dopamine hits.

Indeed it has. The trouble starts when it reaches such heights, recurrence and omnipresence that it throws whole lives off balance.

> If being born at the time when the length and quality of life (health-wise) is at its longest, then deal me in! There are many, many benefits to being born in this time and as alway

Strawman. Life expectancy does not invalidate the new challenges we have to face. If anything, with modern discoveries about happiness vs hardship, people may literally have been happier in spite of such matters (shocking!). I'm suddenly reminded of Gladia's tirade in Robots and Empire: would you rather live a long, dull, purposeless life endlessly being bored to no end or a shorter life full of brilliance? But we digress.

> it is up to us to find the life we want and the balance we need

This is the kind of attitude that reviles me. You can't blame someone for becoming alcoholic/depressive/etc. If you do then you don't understand what those are: illnesses. Nobody breaks his leg or catches a flu on purpose. If a company refuses to take such humane matters into consideration then you're just a tool and it's parasitically just sucking onto you till you're dry. When you're in situations of illnesses, all the good will of the person is not sufficient: help is needed, from everywhere it can come[2].

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703661

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14711621

[2]: https://medium.com/@OlarkLiveChat/its-2017-and-mental-health...

† ironically, themselves being addicted to that very same dopamine (or rather its ethereal corporate equivalent) rush.

>This is the kind of attitude that reviles me. You can't blame someone for becoming alcoholic/depressive/etc. If you do then you don't understand what those are: illnesses.

Waaaait a minute. This is another strawman. My comment did not blame illnesses on the individual. But I think we need to define carefully what an illness is. I don't doubt alcoholism is an illness, but I would reasonable argue that browsing Facebook on your phone is not an illness. Do you really believe that? I don't. There may be people at the far end of that spectrum that cannot help themselves, but there are plenty of others that are just bored.

> My generation was one of the first (1987) to have their formative social years immersed in this shit. That means we'll never escape. Ever. We're literally wired to seek approval of strangers on the internet instead of the people around us. It feels more ... correct? Real? True?

I don't think that's really true. I'm about your age, and you were ~20 when the iPhone came out, right? Facebook was just settling in as the tool of choice for every college student, but even then it was mainly just photo-sharing and event-planning. The fact that we missed out on social networking in our entire teenage and preteen years means that we narrowly escaped this.

If you spend any time around people a bit younger than us, the contrast is particularly stark. My cousins are about a decade younger than me (just started college), and throughout high school, Snapchat/Twitter/etc were simply a must-have. The amount of time they spent sharing content and scrolling through others is insane, and if you talk to them about it, they're very aware that it's somewhere between a chore, an addiction, and good ol' fun.

That's the kind of "hardwired into your formative social years" thing that we never really had to deal with.

> those sweet, sweet red circles with a number in them that meant someone, somewhere vaguely agreed with something you posted

Now, you get those whenever you join a group, save an event, have a friend like a post from someone you don't even know, etc etc etc.

I've seen several of my "friends" leave Facebook over the last year simply because the platform isn't a "face book" anymore, but a rough media consumption platform susceptible to manipulation by advertisers, political opponents, nation states, and [dank memes]. It's basically become internet middle school in terms of post quality, and people are noticing.

LinkedIn is perhaps the worst of the bunch though. I see people in "people you may know" that I've already tried to add but LinkedIn will show them to me because I assume they're not the ones spamming if it happens due to me clicking a button. All for a blip in user engagement.

definitely agree for linkedin. another thing about linkedin is that people lie on there all the time and exaggerate their accomplishment

The thing is, with Facebook, we all knew it was mostly public information and that you'd be a dolt to reveal everything sensitive about yourself in your profile. Most people instinctively know to leave certain tidbits about themselves off of their FB profile.

Whereas with LinkedIn, we are willing to give up much more sensitive and accurate profile data, such as all of our past employers, addresses, phone, email, birthdate, professional experience, headshot, school information, coworkers, etc.

The initial content of a typical LinkedIn profile is much more rich than a starter FB profile. There is no need-to-know for Facebook to have as much "real" information about you as LinkedIn has. I feel that LinkedIn got in through the backdoor with the information most people have provided to it. Though Facebook undoubtedly has more of your day-to-day activities than LinkedIn, which might be more dangerous.

I never personally got suckered into a Facebook profile, one of those (lucky) few that have continued to live on planet earth without a FB account. But LinkedIn is another story, I totally got swooped up in that one for sure.

In my experience, people do not always "instinctively leave certain tidbits" off of Facebook - in fact, people often feel like Facebook is in many ways a private space. Like "it's just my friends," even though the friends and friends of friends circles are massive, not to mention privacy controls that make many things public by default. Also, FB prompts for things like employment history and educational history in the same way as LinkedIn, but goes further to ask for personal info, geographic history (where all have you lived), etc.

Combine all this with the fact that there are so many FB users and many of them are children who wouldn't otherwise have a LinkedIn account (and are more comfortable with sharing personal info online).

So, while I agree that LinkedIn is in the group of data collectors, I don't think they're quite on the scale of FB.

Except Linkedin is boring, inane drivel from "thought leaders" so I'm not even tempted to have a look. At least FB has the occasional picture of someone I care about, or a political link (that inevitably agrees with my already-established view of things)

> inane drivel from "thought leaders"

I think you mean "innovators". Even though 9/10 times they claim ownership on things they've contracted out on their parent's cash.

What about HN (Reddit and like)? May sound funndy, but there are the also reward mechanisms at play when we visit these sites, and they can be affecting work/private life negatively as well.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people here are confused by the notion of Facebook addiction because they don't personally find the content on Facebook particularly engaging. I certainly don't, but I have experienced the same time sink addiction on reddit and HN.

HN at least has relevant and educational content, much more so than the stream-of-minions-memes-and-baby-pictures that is Facebook.

At least you think it's educational...

It depends on how you consume it. Often, very often, it's only infotainment.

I quit my Facebook account around ten years ago, but somehow regretted it because I've got out of touch with many people - especially those I never knew so well. FB is definitely nice to somehow superficially keep in touch with acquaintances and old friends.

However, in my opinion their EULA is totally unacceptable, so I cannot use it.

Forget "friends". Sharing with your family/relatives is a different thing though. No wise "quips" required. A picture says a 100 words :)

Good point... for this, I'm still using Google+. One circle for immediate family, another for wider family... I don't think I bother sharing photos to any wider circles than that at the moment.

except nobody has any family on google+!

the whole world uses whatsapp exactly for that use case you describe.

Sadly both options are awful.

I have all of my family on g+ actually. In the beginning, we just said "if you want to see baby pictures, sign up here and add us to your family circle".

Blackmail works :)

I'm quite surprised with everything the internet is teaching us on a personal and social level.

I noticed on reddit I seek for shallow agreement too. And if a comment gets 0 I'm a bit disappointed. It also taught me that sometimes you get a few downvotes at first but later some people upvote, some even comment. Patience ..

Heh, I _only_ keep Facebook around because it's the most efficient way to provide images of my daughter to our extended family members. Email is just too unwieldy, with many of our family claiming that they've long since forgotten their account credentials.

I find the posting, sharing, and status updates on Facebook to be not valuable, outside of keeping up to date with some family members. I've found the real value of Facebook to be Messenger and groups.

When I first starting FB, as one of the very first schools as part for the site, it worked really well. Now for some reason there are bugs that allow info I don't want not from my friends. I can't figure out how to turn the junk off. Does anyone know how? All I want is info from my FB friends.

I've stopped using it because of all of this junk.

They took something that worked well and made it not work well. Brilliant.

>I'm off all social media today (except LinkedIn)

You really should quit linkedin as well. Their security is like a screen door on a submarine.

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