I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t) | Hacker News Reader

I Deleted Facebook Last Year. Here’s What Changed (and What Didn’t)

nytimes.com

11 pointsingve7 comments

I've been off facebook and twitter for a year. I stopped watching and reading news sites for the past two weeks. It has been absolute bliss. You can bemoan that I'm not "woke" but I can be active in my community and contribute to causes I support without hearing a certain someone's name every damn day.

Hacker News might be next. :-)

I hear ya! At first after getting off of Facebook, I substituted Reddit, which was WAY worse. Hacker News is the closest I get to a Social Network, now.

The problem I have is that there is some news that I really do want. Especially local news and some international news, but I feel like I have no way to get it without the constant drone of soul crushingness

Does your city have a local newspaper? Until it was shut down in 2017, I loved reading my small city newspaper over breakfast. Mostly everything was relevant, and there was a lot more focus on positive things.

Physical newspapers seem old fashioned, but it was a much better experience than online, and it was easier to say, "I'm done reading the news" and put it down. I didn't really read online news, because if there was anything really important, it would be in the National News page of the local paper.

We paid a couple hundred dollars a year for 5 days a week delivery, which was totally worth it in my opinion.

Yeah reddit was my substitute for awhile and as you said it was way worse. Glad to be rid of it

I got back on Facebook this year after taking a break for a while. Here's whats changed and what hasn't:

- My attitude towards it changed. I no longer compare myself to how my friends are doing. This makes it a lot more fun to post things and to see what people are up to. I don't have this internal pressure to keep up / go do things because... I'm for the most part doing the things that I want to do.

- It is still fun / addictive to log in regularly to see how many likes / comments I've received. I guess I like the attention. I don't mind negative comments anymore - I guess I'm finally comfortable with disagreeing with those closest to me about my choices.

- Unlike before, I don't think about when it is appropriate to post. I post when I can.

- Sometimes I feel really proud of something and I share it to show off a little. But mostly, I try to post things that I think my friends would like to see.

- Unlike before, I don't get caught up in most things my friends post / talk about. Just as not everyone has to agree with everything I do, I don't need to agree with everything my friends do. I don't usually comment and I don't always like. And that's okay. Politically, career-wise, lifestyle, travel, relationships - I just don't get angry about how they feel about these things. I sometimes have a counterpoint / question about some things, but I try to remind myself that I'm only good at a few things.

- For a long time I thought about the privacy implications and "if you're not the customer, then you are the product". And to some degree this is still true.

Facebook is a fantastic tool to keep in touch with friends and to see what they've been up to, especially when you wonder what they've been up to. It is also a great way to get in touch with them directly. For me it is better than Instagram or any other social networking tool. The only thing that came close was ICQ.

The author mentions how after he's deleted his facebook account he started seeing weird instagram ads and I can very much relate to that.

After I deleted my facebook a bit over a year ago, instagram suddenly switched to showing me Mexican targeted ads despite the fact that I've never been to Mexico and don't even speak Spanish. There's pretty much nothing you can do about it as far as I can understand, so I've been diligently marking all Spanish ads as "non-relevant", which I suspect accounts to nothing.

I have had facebook for about 1 month 10yrs ago. I dont think I missed anything and catchup on family gossip during family functions.

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