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Comment by mrweasel | Hacker News Reader

I believe that is how Facebook dies. Not people deleting their account, they’ll just stop checking their feed, because it’s spam and stuff friends likes or share and no longer posts about their life.

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I stopped posting because of the whole thing about social media written in ink. I'm not posting something which may be held against me, or have me randomly shamed in the future because the nuance of my joke was lost in text. When I last posted in 2007, the internet seemed to be a much different, friendlier place.

Facebook in 2007 was also mostly about friends, and not selling me stuff that it couldn't possibly know I was interested in unless my movements over the entire internet were being tracked.

It is frightening how the internet outrage culture is getting people fired and destroying their lives over some stupid tweet.

The risk/reward of posting humor on the internet nowadays is terrible. Reward is maybe a few of your friends find it funny, maybe it gets ignored. Risk is someone is offended, you lose your livelihood and become an internet pariah because someone organized an angry mob against you on some Discord. Maybe someone doxes you, finds your address and starts harassing you at your home. The internet in 2018 is kind of a terrible place.

Or society is just showing how barbaric it's ever been. See the elections in Brazil yesterday.

> The risk/reward of posting humor on the internet nowadays is terrible.

Doing so under your own name, yes. That's why I think places like Reddit are better suited to these kinds of silly things, assuming you don't get doxxed, which can happen.

Unless they sit in the Oval Office; then they can tweet whatever they want.

>"I stopped posting because of the whole thing about social media written in ink."

What are you referring to here? Could you elaborate? Newspaper coverage of social media?

S/he's updating the phrase "written in stone" for the internet age.

I think he means "written in ink" in the sense that something you post cannot be erased, much like how if you write something with a pen, vs with a pencil.

Same thing as HN btw. Ive known a few European citizens asking for their posts and account deleted, and was refused point blank.

Remember that. We're being used here just as much as on the FAANG platforms.

HN have a stated (though difficult to find) policy of removing content on request:

We don't delete comments outright except when the author requests it.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16698937#16728471

They're referring to social media being permanent, no take backsies. Everything you share is going to be on the internet for all time

I am careful about what I let get out on the Internet. I’m more concerned about being embarrassed about some of the juvenile arguments I got in using my real name on Usenet back in the day than what I post on FaceBook.

Any company that wouldn’t want to hire me because they find my bleeding heart libertarian pro-capitalist views offensive is not a company I would want to work for. Hell they would probably be confused about where I stand on most things.

I barely log in any longer. Maybe once a month.

I honestly do like seeing pics of my friends and their many animals. I like knowing what events people are going to. Other than that, I don't care.

I can't post without feeling like an attention seeker; because that's how I see most people who do post. It's to the point where I stopped sharing things I think my friends might actually find interesting... I'm out here all by myself in the end.

I'm just done with it.

> When I last posted in 2007, the internet seemed to be a much different, friendlier place.

But then something happened...

I'd love to know what happened, because I'm honestly not sure what it was. I just remember posting fearlessly about all sorts of random stuff I'd ashamed to think I put on the internet nowadays.

I used to use it daily, but now basically do not interact with it at all. I left because a year ago I spent a week away from it, and when I logged back in it was insanely spammy and clingy with irrelevant "your friend liked this post" notifications that I literally couldn't turn off.

The unmutable spam in my inbox forced me to turn off all Facebook mail notifications, and the user-hostile behavior made me hate the platform and not want to come back to it, almost out of spite.

I'll bet these underhanded tactics performed great in A/B testing. But big picture, they should not be surprised that people are leaving in droves after deliberately degrading user experience.

Perhaps you are not the product that they prefer to cultivate. You are not useful to them, so driving you off is actually a benefit to them. Win-win!

That pretty much exactly describes me - I never did delete the app on my phone but I can't remember when I last opened it. I just have no interest in checking it anymore.

you should probably delete it. in case it's sending your juicy phone data back to the mother ship in the background. (it probably is).

Or even just for the battery savings

Does it matter if FB (super)cookie and http beacons are still reporting back what they're browsing?

FB can always promote Instagram or Whatsapp into their main money cow.

Yes, that's how I see and use Facebook as well. It's there if someone not close enough to have my phone number wants to reach me, but other than that I simply don't open and use the app, let alone post content. It's just not worthwhile to me.

So like Yahoo email then.

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