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Comment by OJFord | Hacker News Reader

> * FB can be a great way of sharing, say, photos of kids or activities or events with people who are... maybe a bit more peripheral than friends I see every day, but who I still find value in keeping in touch with.

What got me off Facebook (>3y ago, not a passing whim) was the realisation that I found no value in keeping in touch with people I was only 'in touch with' via Facebook.

> * YIMBY activism. Facebook especially is a great, low-friction way to get new people involved.

Okay, that probably helped too. ;)

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I think there is a difference between "people I added on a whim and don't actually know" and "my cousin that lives out of state", for example.

I pretty aggressively prune my facebook friend list. I think I'm at something like 68 friends right now. The majority of them are actually older family members who like my random rants about the antics our kids get into.

Basically if I add someone on facebook and they aren't actively part of my life or social / family circle, they get culled.

It seems like a nice compromise.

> I think there is a difference between "people I added on a whim and don't actually know" and "my cousin that lives out of state", for example.

Yeah, an example might be my 4th grade teacher that I liked a lot and added me. She's a sweet lady who's almost 90 at this point. Not sure I would have had any contact with her otherwise, but it makes me happy to see what she's up to.

>What got me off Facebook (>3y ago, not a passing whim) was the realisation that I found no value in keeping in touch with people I was only 'in touch with' via Facebook.

This. If you're only interested in keeping in touch with people as long as it takes zero effort on your part that means that you don't really want to stay in touch with said person. Once I realized that, being done with social media was easy. I run a nextcloud instance that allows me to share photos and large files with family, and anyone for that matter.

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