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Comment by rinchik | Hacker News Reader

it takes guts! Not that easy. You are greatly overestimating an average user. Dopamine generated by the daily drama FB provides is hard (again, for an average person) to quit.

Facebook is the circus (as in panem et curcenses) that masses learned to crave

EDIT: same goes for twitter.

CONTEXTUAL EDIT: I understand that emotional weakness, unawareness, and gullibility of the general population is a controversial topic, it is still very useful to be aware of and hence put reminders in place.

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nuked fb+twitter years ago; wasn't hard

Same.

But I 100% acknowledge there's social gatherings and events I miss out on now because they're exclusively organised/promoted on FB. And mostly I'm OK with that.

same, though if my participation is desired/required i’ve found people tend to reach me anyhow

Nice. Now tell an average J[oe|ane] to delete FB, [s]he won't be able to.

I personally don’t understand the draw of Facebook. Prior to deleting my account, I just seemed to be constantly unfollowing people because of their over sharing, excessive baby pictures or reposting dumb political stuff or starting massive arguments over literally anything.

If this is the new public square then lordy, I want no part of it. And it’s funny and really scary that people are so into Facebook that’ll come for the photos of a grandkid and stay for the misinformation and repeated privacy invasions.

Facebook's surviving active users are self-selecting very effectively. Anyone not into photos of friends' relatives' offspring and misinformation tailored for maximum emotional impact are at the highest risk of leaving, if they haven't already.

All three of your complaints are about one feature of Facebook, the feed. Facebook also has a wildly used messenger, marketplace, and events for pretty much any activity announced.

They may not want to when all one’s family and friends use it. Personally I couldn’t stand the business and deleted it years ago, but for some people it’s not a option. They need it to communicate, plus there is no clear alternative in 2019.

Alternative for communication? Or something else?

I'd say email + SMS solves 99.9% of problems and also limits the garbage received because people can't be bothered to start/write an email and don't want to spend money on images in MMS/SMS.

My life is blissfully quiet because of this, or I have to physically see people which is much better than all the noise.

Perhaps most people would do alright with WhatsApp or Apple Messages for IM?

Seeing how much my wife's phone bings and beeps with her apps is enough to put me off it.

Friend tax is a real thing. Its when a friend doesn't have access to something that the rest of the friend group has. For example, if your friend group uses Facebook messenger and Facebook events to plan stuff but you don't have that then they will try to include you through second-hand reach out such as texts or emails, in-person, etc. However, since you are not involved in the primary mode of communication you will miss important details and may even show up to incorrect locations as it is not clear who in the group is responsible for informing you of the change.

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