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Stop Using Facebook

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103 pointsmengledowl31 comments

> Because Facebook hired climate change deniers as fact-checkers.

Source:

> Facebook has announced that it was teaming up with CheckYourFact.com, which is an offshoot of the anti-science media site, The Daily Caller

> The CheckYourFact website brags that: "Our mission is a non-partisan one. We're loyal to neither people nor parties — only the truth. And while the fact-checking industry continues to grow, there are still countless assertions that go unchecked. We exist to fill in the gaps."

Source's source:

> The Daily Caller, which has published misinformation about climate science for years, was co-founded by the science-denying Fox News host Tucker Carlson and is backed by major conservative donors, including Charles and David Koch, the billionaire fossil fuel barons who are the single biggest funders of climate science misinformation.

They use a source, which uses a source, which argues that CheckYourFact employees are climate change deniers because it's a spin-off of a site that was donated to by climate change deniers.

Looking at the evidence, one of the first links I saw on CheckYourFact's site was debunking a bad thing that Hillary supposedly said [1], which suggests it is not the same in agenda as The Daily Caller.

To the creator of this site: If you want this to have an impact, present the facts as-is, with no sensationalism or dramatization. Most of what you're writing very well may be true, and this seems like a noble cause, but if a reader can pick apart one questionable if not false statement, its legitimacy will be destroyed.

(If you're interested in a great piece on the importance of making claims conservatively and retaining legitimacy in reporting/writing, highly recommend checking out Spotlight, which chronicles the Boston Globe's exposure of the Catholic Church protecting pedophile priests).

[1] https://checkyourfact.com/2019/11/20/fact-check-hillary-clin...

I only use Facebook for events, yet there seems to be no alternative, partly because of the network effect where small and large organizations keep posting their events only to Facebook.

If there was some kind of bot that would automatically crosspost events from Facebook to other social media platforms, then perhaps there would be a chance of winning me over.

On top of that, you have certain niche online communities that seem to only be on FB those days (the days of websites with discussion forums are long gone, sadly).

Also, some of my (smart) friends insist on using FB/Messenger for group messaging. I tried to convert them to Whatsapp a few years ago which IMO is way superior, but they still prefer Messenger (which I won't ever install, so I have to use FB web to keep in touch with them).

Whatsapp is now FB-owned, so lately we wanted to move our workgroup chat to Telegram, but one of coworkers boycotted the idea, because she has already a dozen different apps to keep in touch with her friends all over the world and she refuses to install yet another app.

The network effects and inertia are really hard to overcome.

FYI Telegram uses dubious encryption and lies about their business (for ex calling themselves a nonprofit when they aren't) and is run by a Russian oligarch who started spending on democracy-related causes after a falling out with Putin. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15281788 for example.

WhatsApp's encryption protocol (Axolotl) comes from the open source secure messaging app Signal. If you can't get people to use Signal, WhatsApp is at least much better than Telegram or Facebook messenger.

I used to only use Facebook for events, then they dropped support for iCal. I used to use Facebook for birthdays. See also the iCal droppage.

Facebook is useless to me now, this story gave me the final kick to add Facebook to my pi-hole to begin the rehab process.

Rip the bandaid off, let the healing begin. I’ll find some other way for sorting out events.

Also you can’t do that with a bot. At least not legit via API. They blocked access to events after the Cambridge thing

I know it's almost become a trope here already, but I'm really becoming increasingly worried about the cultural impact of the kind of entertainment that optimizes for rapid action / reward cycles. Facebook is definitely in that class, even if to me personally it's never been that attractive.

I used to say that it was impossible for me to understand how people could become hooked on activities as ridiculous as gambling on slot machines, and yet I have to shamefully admit that I've probably now spent one or two full years of my life just cycling through different news sites, even when I knew I had probably read almost all of the interesting articles already.

The insidious thing about these things is that you do get something out of it, too. I've come to realize that it's not worth it ultimately. For me, the point where I started to understand that this really wasn't healthy was when I realized that the hours I spent on rapid-reward websites per day was pretty well (negatively) correlated with my mood. It can become an escapist activity, the go-to thing to do to avoid facing actual real-world issues.

I think rapid-reward websites are particularly dangerous to people who are intrinsically very curious and thus drawn to novel information. It's sad to think how much genuinely interesting thoughts of genuinely worthwhile thinkers you could absorb instead, if these sites didn't exhert such a pull. The pessimist in me is really worried about all the 12-year-old John von Neumann's right now being intellectually poisoned by ubiquitous, rapid-reward entertainment.

Anyway, I finally made the decision to change something and blocked almost all of the rapid-reward sites in my hosts file, via browser extension and Android apps... Defense in depth. ;) [1] Now, when I feel really compelled to check some news site, I go for a run. I can honestly say that this is one of the things that I have done in my life that has had the biggest positive impact on my well-being, relative to the effort needed.

[1] Yes, I've made an exception for HN and for one super boring newspaper website. I feel those are actually worth it.

I think these calls to action are preaching to the choir. I don't even use Facebook and my eyes glazed over when seeing this.

Why are “these calls to action” just preaching to the choir? Over the last year a bunch of people I know have stopped using google search, Facebook, and the epic games launcher. It’s working slowly

Actual Google and Facebook usage data strongly suggests otherwise. In cases where one could argue that people are leaving Facebook for a competitor, it has nothing to do with privacy concerns (it would certainly be laughable if anyone thought TikTok would be better in terms of privacy).

I've left mostly because of numbness FB leaves me w/ -- my mind is literally numb from all the hate articles/etc propagated and I see the same crap over and over.

I still have an account, and use messenger w/ wife when she's out and about... but for a social/news 'feed', I've moved over to reddit... the conversations/discussions are a LOT deeper and less assinine (and that's saying something considering some of the culture at reddit can be toxic itself). Plus I can drill down on topics via multi-reddits and such...depending on my mood.

There's also a bit more candor and shock factor on reddit cause of the supposed anonymity people tend to say what they really think even when it's appalling to most other people, so you definitely get a full-spectrum of discussion. It just feels more 'cerebral'.

The big difference between reddit and facebook discussion (at least outside of facebook groups) is that people group by interest rather than social graph. Most of my family and friends are not interested in stuff I am.

I have a feeling that people who leave would have left anyway. Out of curiosity, why Epic games launcher? Because of the exclusives?

Start regulating Facebook.

There, I fixed it to make it more realistic, otherwise it’s about as useful as saying “Stop Using Oil”.

Don't we kind of need to stop using oil though?

The point is that a) it’s unfair to expect individual consumers to make a difference and b) it’s not realistic to expect individual consumers to make a difference because network effects are so powerful. The modern world exists in part because of cheap, plentiful oil. If you live most places in the US, you need a car, and probably a gas-powered one at that. Similarly, Facebook gobbles up information about you even if you decide not to use it. You can’t stop using Facebook even if you aren’t using Facebook, because Facebook is actually using you and the billions of other people it siphons data from. This libertarian wet dream of “just don’t use it” doesn’t work on a large scale.

Sorry for being toxic but would that mean saying we shouldn't tell people to stop using Facebook will fall on deaf ears as well?

Ideally they would stop using Facebook but if people can just be aware of the horrors involved they can stop using it in full ignorance.

The comparison to oil isn't apt at all. Stopping oil use is next to impossible because it's a part of almost every mode of transportation and everything that's made out of plastic. And even if you decide to abandon your life and live naked in the woods, your individual contribution will be minimal. On the other hand, you can delete your Facebook right now with minimal consequences to your quality of life and some very likely upsides. And the network effects work in the other direction too - you disappear from the list of friends of everyone you're connected to.

I guess my overall point is that when it comes to Facebook, people have a lot more choice than you seem to be suggesting.

The analogy is not about the difficulty of quitting, but about externalized costs. Quitting oil won't improve your life in any way, and if you look at the lists of reasons to quit fb, most of them are not of individual concern. Just like climate change, they are collective problems. Asking people to change their habits to improve society almost never works. Taxes and regulation work.

> if you look at the lists of reasons to quit fb, most of them are not of individual concern.

Some of the main reasons like privacy and mental health are of individual concern. I'm not arguing against regulation for oil or Facebook, just pointing out that the incentives are very different on an individual level.

This is a tactic that I've noticed right wingers using increasingly: to frame societal/collective problems as individual responsibilities. We shouldn't tax billionaires because some are philantrophists. We don't need social security because you can help your neighbors through gofundme. If you worry about climate change, lower your emissions. Back in reality, only taxes, laws and regulation actually works (which they know) but it's a pretty clever rhetoric.

The site would make a stronger case if it just kept its stronger points and dropped the ones that are weak. Some weak ones:

This would make a better case if it dropped the ones that are kind of weak.

> Because Facebook was covertly paying teens 13 years old and older to spy on them.

Didn't this involve people who explicitly download and app that told you it was going to gather this data for research in exchange for payment? I'm having a bit of a problem seeing what was covert about it.

> Because Facebook gave exclusive access to your private messages and friends to large tech companies, device vendors, retailers, entertainment sites, automakers and media organizations.

And with this one I'm having a bit of trouble understanding what "exclusive access" means here. It sounds like it was pretty much the opposite of exclusive. I'm not saying giving you data out non-exclusively is better than giving it out exclusively--just that this "exclusive access" claim makes little sense.

> Because Facebook facilitated Brexit by spreading misinformation, made a fortune and tried to sue to prevent people from finding out.

The essences of this seems to be that people pushing "leave" bought ads on Facebook, and that some of the people who bought the ads may have been shady.

> Because Facebook employees say “F*ck ethics, money is everything”.

One engineer said that on Blind. I'm pretty sure you can find one employee with that attitude at pretty much any employer that pays well and has over 100 employees.

As I and many privacy advocates would love people to immediately stop using Facebook for privacy-respecting alternatives, I'm afraid that the users won't leave FB, IG or WhatsApp unless the so-called 'Influencers' and their friends leave for other alternatives as they can 'influence' the 'millions' of followers to another platform.

On top of that it's difficult to convince these 'influencers' to move due to the reasons outlined on this web-page if they start to lose their followers, popularity and their money. They will crawl back to FB/IG again if this happens. Rather than target general users, they must target the influencers with millions of users.

Every major social network always had these 'influencers' using it first and their followers always jumping on it afterwards. If a privacy-respecting alternative can somehow help grow an 'influencers' reach or even make them more money without violating their privacy, they will stay and their millions of users will follow them.

I like the idea of offering alternatives, but have you considered crowdsourcing those apps? Could add an extra level of transparency if people could select/vote on which alternatives really are better (because that can be awfully subjective).

It would be interesting to link to privacy policies and other relevant information as well!

You mean like AlternativeTo does?

https://alternativeto.net/software/facebook/

Good point, though I tend to get too distracted on AlternativeTo. Not sure if it's the design or just too many options and not enough votes. Measuring alternatives on specific dimensions related to the problems with Facebook could be interesting!

Oh boy this again.

Everybody has heard about all these things on the telly, on online newspapers, etc. The media launched a massive campaign against Facebook. It didn't work. People find value in Facebook and they don't care about your predicament. Let people enjoy things!

The list of reasons is good but the proposed alternatives in terms of social media (as opposed to messaging - which are pretty good) is laughable. Mastodon and all these federated services IMO fail to address the main problem while bringing several other problems to the table; I've explained this in a previous post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20317513) which I'll quote here:

> One big issue is that there’s nothing decentralised that currently exists that can rival the quality & user experience of mainstream social networks, and decentralisation comes with its own problems (I personally think the problem with mainstream social media is its ad-based business model and not centralisation). Mastodon (which seems to be the biggest alternative being proposed) is still a joke, even the name and branding sounds awful IMO. And who in their right mind thought calling a post a “toot” (https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/toot) was a good idea. Besides the branding, decentralisation comes with its own issues like the lack of network-wide content moderation and agreement on what content is acceptable. There are solutions (more like hacks) around this where instance admins can choose not to federate with instances they don’t like the policies of, but it then causes problems for end-users where they can’t communicate with their peers on those banned instances despite all of them being on Mastodon. Good luck explaining to a non-technical person why they can’t talk to/see the posts of certain people despite them all being on Mastodon, and the solution is to spend time choosing an instance with policies you agree with and making sure your friends are on it or on a similar instance that’s not banned by yours, and then hoping the instances stay online without any kind of funding (there’s also no knowledge of whether they would scale to the size of mainstream social networks). The solution IMO is not Mastodon or any of these fringe social networks. The main problem is the lack of an ethical business model in mainstream social media. The solution would be to vote with your wallets and fund a better Facebook alternative - it could even show the current social networks that there’s profit to be made treating their users with respect and make the situation better for everyone else too.

The lack of censorship that you don't like is the main value proposition and what I like. Run your own server to match your own values, but don't impose them on others.

I think that app does not make it successfull. App can be awful, because friends that use it with us are the real value of social media. So if you’ll convince most of your friends to use Mastodon, it may be pretty good social media app. You are right that non-technical people may find hard to use these ‘super secure alternatives’, but apparently media buzz about evil Facebook did the job and nowadays it’s not always obvious that someone is on Facebook. I have some friends that decided to use apps that are not really social media apps as substitute to Facebook - and it turns out that reddit or signal may be a great social media place even though it’s not really designed to be one. :-)

A site that renders with JS disabled would be a very good idea here.

Something's also broken the Internet Archive's ability to save the site right now, see:

https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.stopusingfacebook.c...

If your going to suggest alternatives, don't suggest telegram with all of it's own privacy issues.

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