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Comment by lbotos | Hacker News Reader

I'm gearing up for a 2018 "no social media on weekends" and I tested it this weekend. When I logged in to FB this AM, I had 10 notifications:

Most were:

Britt added a new photo.

You have a new friend suggestion: Gloria.

Tiffany updated her status.

Jeff updated his status.

June updated his status.

Lily updated her status.

These are people that I assume the algorithm thought would "suck me back in". It was really fascinating to see how the algo was stuffing my notifications to fuel that dopamine release.

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I notice that these re-engagement notifications tend to do an absolutely terrible job predicting which people I would care most when they post something.

Maybe my Facebook posts drive people to close their Facebook window or otherwise engage with ads less, so Facebook is encouraging me to stay away.

After a few weeks without checking your notifications, they start emailing you things like this.

And then follows the text messages.

I haven't logged into my FB account in a few years at this point. The emails I get are annoying AF. "Did you see {your aunt}'s comment on {your cousin}'s status?", so I click only to be taken to a login page. And I fall for it too often. The kicker is the email summary has more info than the body when you click on it. It has a little tease of what the original status was or something.

The lesson to learn here is: "if something in your computer environment annoys you, spend a few minutes to permanently fix it." I configured my email client to trash pretty much all email from "@facebook.com" years ago, and this is no longer a problem for me.

I agree. I've been slowly unsubscribing from all the annoying email lists I'm on for just this reason.

Twitter and LinkedIn do this too. And the kicker is: they know it's not actually important, or they would include it in the body of the email!

Good for you. I am completely off Facebook and feel much happier. I no longer needed to see people broadcast how happy or smart they are.

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