How to change your settings to make yourself less valuable to Meta

You shouldn’t. Meta will always find a way to count users like you in the MAU. If they didn’t, they would destroy their statistics.

There are just too many accounts like yours on FB now.

Also, in my area, Facebook Marketplace has totally displaced Craigslist for used goods.

These are the only things I use Facebook for, but they're hard to get away from.

I think we really miss some sort of "community" software (discussion boards won't make it these days), where people can gather around and talk and share stuff. I think Meetup was nice, but the fact that it's way too centered around actual meet-ups, plays against it.

I've thought many times about starting to build something, but the thought of having to market it and make it grow to have an impact demotivates me instantly.

Yes yes, I understand marginalized people need to find each other. Alternative options like Mastodon already solve that problem better than Facebook because they aren’t owned by Big Tech/the US government.

Then normies should not actively be trying to make the service that is indispensable to them non-viable.

Either you need to use it, in which case you should not try to sabotage it, or you don't, in which case you should not need to sabotage it. So what is the point of attempting to sabotage it?

Back in the friendster days I distinctly remember being able to import my friends over to myspace and then later from myspace to facebook years later. We used to have a mass exodus every few years and then we we’re locked into facebook. Facebook should have died many times over. That no competing service has been built that has made migration easy is in my opinion the reason facebook has been allowed to fester for so long.

That such a tactic may be a violation of tos or questionable legally never stopped anyone before… and on the legal front I would argue it’s the users who own their social graph. Before facebook your address book was a thing of immense value. I have multiple friends irl that would sell their contacts for $10k+. That everyone just decided to give that info to facebook still boggles my mind and especially after all the bs they pulled over the years, yet here we are.

Facebook still provides an API. Wouldn't it be possible to leverage that API to build a proxy service, and then at least mitigate one side of their monopoly?

I've very rarely encountered that, though. Most businesses at least have a phone number I can use to talk to them.

Yes. Just stop using facebook. Call your kids' teammates' parents on the phone if you're unsure when the next game is. Call your local businesses on the phone to get info. Join an in person sewing group. Start an in person sewing group if one doesn't exist. These are things "normies" have always done and still do.

For that to be true, it isn't necesssary that there is nothing of any use or value on Facebook. It simply has be true that those benefits are outweighed by the costs. For most people, there is a very real danger that if they use Facebook, they will end up wasting lots of time scrolling through their feed. Given how precious time is, this is an extremely a high cost.

I didn't find your examples super compelling.

I have kids and they're in groups with shared calendars, and so far no of these have used facebook. If everyone seemed super attached to it, I would go along, but I can't see other parents digging their heels in against "why don't we write it in this shared google doc, which anyone can view or even edit without an account"

I have hobbies and interests. There might be some good content or communities on Facebook. There's lots of good content and communities outside of Facebook. It's not a limiting constraint.

I also didn't get your techie vs normie distinction. Maybe I am not a techie but I don't use email mailing lists, RSS readers, Mastodon, vBulletin, or phpBB boards.

At work I use slack and email. In my personal life, I use email, iMessage, SMS, and Signal.

FWIW, whatsapp provides excellent capabilities (well, for 2025 where only old timers remember phpBB and can compare to it) for local community discussions and meetups, interest groups, parent groups, whatever group discussions and coordination.

Same for meta and ebay, plus all my financials, I don't want them knowing what I visit.

Some months ago (years?) I was shown a popup asking me to either agree to be tracked or to pay a monthly fee [1]. I chose neither and haven't logged in since.

I logged in just now and everything seems to be working fine. But then I went to the "Ad preferences" and I'm shown a message saying I have to choose between using Facebook for free with ads or subscribe, and that my information won't be used for ads until I make a choice.

Looks like my account is stuck in some weird middle ground where my data can't used for ads but I also don't have to pay. Did I get away with neither? Or will they ask me to pay next time I log in, two years from now?

[1] https://www.voanews.com/a/meta-risks-fines-over-pay-for-priv...

What i do is completely ignore facebook, and the rest of their properties (including whatsapp now).

ublock origin to block out the social media links/badges, and make sure to never visit facebook site directly.

Hopefully, what this means is that my "account" and whatever they identify as me, looks like an inactive user with zero potential to be advertised to.

On top of that, a lot of advertisers have tighter budgets and therefore want the ad on a specific segment to max out ROÍ. So the pool of ads that get shown to you go down. Which means you’ll be shown the same ad repeatedly. And FB does not make as much money off repeat impressions.

And on top of that engagement brings more revenue to the company as compared to just impressions. The whole reason meta exists as a much more profitable business over something like TV or radio for ads is that targeting brings better engagement metrics. And the difference is huge.

Now I am not sure how meta’s ad internals work, but the only way I see them recouping some value out of your selection is by showing you more ads. Maybe you go from seeing ads after every 3 user generated content items to every other item being an ad.

TLDR; turning off preferences doesn’t make you more valuable, but the company could squeeze out as much value from you as other users.

Eat healthy and exercise? No, most people in the world don't, and it doesn't guarantee you'll never fall ill

It's extremely difficult to use Facebook in any form on mobile in a way that lets you block ads.

Why just Meta is a false dichotomy. Privacy-aware users tend to adjust the settings and use privacy-enhancing extensions for all companies.

Yes, I think this should be regulated and companies within the EU need to be forced to respect privacy and other EU laws. The current penalties are too low. Data theft is a serious crime.

Whenever I go into Facebook itself, I see how poorly they target me.

Boob surgery and dick pills.

Lawyer specialising in giving up a citizenship I never had for those living in a country I left in 2018. Announcements from that country's government that a breed of dog I've never heard of is now banned.

Recommendations to join groups about teams I've never heard of in sports I don't follow in states I've never even visited in a country I've never lived in.

1) I don't particularly care beyond possibly being less targeted for manipulation

5) I wouldn't have thought it was a campaign or effort by Warner Bros, likely just the show itself which seems to have pretty wide editorial freedom (and obviously EFF does have a known position on these matters)

6) Good luck getting timely and well thought-through regulations through the EU / any regulation through the US

tl;dw he found a 1992 recording of an art auction involving a series of paintings of humanoid rats being intimate, and he really wanted the person who bought one of the paintings to sell it to him.