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Comment by JumpCrisscross | Hacker News Reader

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JumpCrisscross

I did this. In the following sequence, over a few years, and am now to step 5:

1. Turn off notifications for the Facebook app on your phone;

2. Turn off notifications for the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps on your phone;

3. Delete the Facebook app from your phone;

4. Delete the Facebook Messenger, Instagram, et cetera apps from your phone; and finally

5. Log out of Facebook on your desktop.

It took me 2 years to go through from step 1 to step 5. It has made me happier and more productive. I still have a Facebook account. But the friction of grabbing my laptop and logging in forces me to consider "is this what I want to do? Or am I thoughtlessly reaching for the crack pipe?"

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I wrote a script:

  #  ~/unfuckfacbook.sh
  #!/bin/bash

  sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts
  sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts
  sed -i '' s/'^127.0.0.1 m.facebook.com'/'#127.0.0.1 m.facebook.com'/ /etc/hosts

  sleep 30
  say "Hey asshole, get off Facebook"
  sleep 30
  ~/fuckfacbook.sh

~/fuckfacbook.sh just undoes the hosts file work

It helpped for a while but at some point I had to just commit to not checking it. I have some legitimate business I have to do on there sometimes (I'm a musician and I need more side-guy gigs), so I post updates from insta (which is less addicting to me) or if I open it I commit to not scrolling and browsing but just checking alerts.

It's so fcking creepy though... I mean, I'm legitimately an alcoholic but I can (when I want to, which is usually all the time these days) at least not _start_ drinking... but if I stopped drinking for a couple of days and the bottle of scotch in my cabinet sent me an email trying to get me to drink, I'd have to pour it out.

This is brilliant! Thanks a lot. Are there more such scripts that you use for some other purposes?

How does this work? I get an error?

sed: can't read s/^127.0.0.1 f....

If you're using macOS, you'll need to do sed -i "" ... (put an empty string argument after the -i flag). If the second to last argument on the command line is -i, I think on the version of sed that ships with most distros, sed assumes that the argument to -i is the empty string and that the last argument in the command is the pattern. The version that ships with macOS, on the other hand, always treats the argument after -i as the extension to use for the backup file.

No, I use ubuntu

sed: can't read s/^127.0.0.1 facebook.com/#127.0.0.1 facebook.com/: No such file or directory

If it's helpful, I have to run this as su on macOS. I got no idea if it works for anyone else.

I successfully did this ~2 years ago, but I'm still having trouble breaking the same habit with Reddit (and even Hacker News to a lesser extent)

Same here. Logging out made me stop and realize that I was compulsively opening new Facebook tabs.

One extra step you can do (somewhere between 2 and 3) is change your profile pic and your cover photo to messages advertising your intent to disengage from Facebook. That serves two functions: 1) it lets people who want to reach you know they shouldn't use Facebook to do so, and 2) it makes the withdraw visible and social, which may encourage others to follow.

I've been wondering...is there a collection of preformatted 'facebook sux!' banner-size images somewhere I can use? :)

I'm logged out on my phone. Logged in through desktop in Chrome but have the "News Feed Eradicator for Facebook" chrome extension installed and am only logged in from my specific "personal" container in firefox, and all of that is enough of an obstacle for me to not spend much time on it.

I’m at step 5, except for messenger because there is no way I can keep touch with my friends (from all around the world) without messenger.

Step 5 is tricky to accomplish as I need facebook to login to a bunch of websites.

I'm on step 4. Already feeling liberated. On Twitter, I unfollowed any political accounts or accounts which were overly toxic. My mood is better and I feel far less distracted.

Great, now you have one less company selling your data out of thousands. And remember that FB will still retain your profile forever and continue build on it via shadow profile - from everyone you know, and probably from bartering data with other companies you still use. From Google/Apple powering your OS, from Cell operator collecting info with baseband chip, thousands of them.

I'm not saying FB is good, I just say that this fight is already lost, delete FB account or not.

The goal of parent's disengagement doesn't seem to have been privacy but rather sanity and productivity.

facebook owns whatsapp too. I already did all 5 of thsoe steps some time ago... but I have friends in certain parts of the world where whatsapp is the only app. Not sure how to curtail that one.

You could try and get them on Wire or Signal. But it's an uphill battle, unfortunately. Let's wait and see until Facebook fucks up WhatsApp, then try again.

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