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Comment by wmeredith | Hacker News Reader

>> This has to stop. There has to be a setting to turn this shit off.

You can put a stop to all of this by deleting your Facebook account. It is the nuclear option, but it's one that more and more of my friends (tech geeks - so who cares, right?) are doing.

I think the real problem here is headlines like this. OP's blog post title says "I don't like NEST" this is a problem for their brand and all the other companies that support Facebook's business model. If they start leaving because Facebook's UX opacity hurts their brand more than it helps, then it's lights out.

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tech geeks - so who cares, right?

If I said you could mitigate the issue by selling your computer and getting a feature phone, I would be right. But you would probably protest that there are many useful things you need a computer for -- and some of them might not be strictly necessary to your life, or strictly require a computer to do, but the convenience and satisfaction it would bring make it worth having one.

In other words, don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, right? Same thing applies for most people and their Facebook account. So your only argument here is to convince people that they don't draw as much satisfaction from Facebook as they think they do, or that they don't need an account for the reasons they think they do.

Which might be true, but quite simply, people want not merely to survive but to thrive.

Edit: and also, you are in the unenviable position of arguing with people about what they feel, which means you are wrong.

I'm more than a little concerned that this is not the default answer to this question. While Nest certainly shared blame in choosing FB as their partner in advertising, I think the real problem is the FB only cares about advertising.

I'm amazed at the number of people that I hear complain about this stuff and yet keep using FB as if it is essential. For instance, add your cell # to your account to confirm developer status and then turn off notices. You will still receive texts from FB because they don't give a damn.

For the life of me, why people willingly give so much of their information to a company who clearly does not care about privacy is beyond me.

Why wouldn't Nest advertise to friends of people who like (and possibly own) Nest? If you were installed as their chief marketing officer, where would you advertise the thermostat?

As much as it's good to "fight the good fight" against FaceBook, it's fast becoming an expected means of communicating. Believe me, I deleted mine years ago and finally had to come back because I realized I was actually hindered in real ways by not having an account.

I personally think FaceBook will reach an inflection point where public interest will wane and people will use it less and less... but still have accounts. Then something better will come along and there might be a mass migration. For now though, the reality is it's somewhat essential.

In what way were you hindered? I deleted mine years ago and the only downside is that I occasionally can't see a photo album someone sends me. It's not like photos only exist on Facebook.

I can't speak for other people, but the effort it took to maintain a Facebook presence (deidentify unflattering photos, take a few minutes every day to get caught up on people's minutiae) was far greater than the benefit it brought me.

People who want to talk to me know my email address and phone number.

(edit: clarification, first paragraph)

Well, that's exactly it. Everyone else seemed to "be in the loop" compared to me. People don't always think to mass-email a silly picture of their baby or their latest comment on world news, but those are things I definitely appreciate being able to see. Sure, I might not care what they had for breakfast that day, but it sure is nice to know how my friend's trip to Costa Rica was. Basically FaceBook is its own layer in my social network, and not having an account was ostracizing me.

To me, it's analogous to the argument against text messaging. Yes, people who want to talk to me can simply call, but there's a bottom threshold of importance that must be met to deem a phone call necessary. Meanwhile I can text a one sentence message to a friend I haven't seen in months and not spend half an hour on the phone.

I'm keeping my account because it's the tool 90% of my friends - including my wife - use to plan social activities. I can see which events I'm invited to, and who's coming over to our house next saturday for dinner.

We could use Google calendar for this, or any number of other tools, but that would put a burden on our other friends to learn a new system. The end result would be that some people would flat out not attend the event, and some others would attend but not RSVP, throwing off guest counts, etc.

Does facebook really provide that much value add over a simple email invite? Every response you get can go into a special folder for that party. When the party is over, you delete the folder - or leave it - maybe even put it in an "old parties" folder.

Using facebook for events provides a few benefits over email: 1. You don't need to know your friends' email address 2. You can add pictures/video from the event 3. It automatically generates maps, directions. 4. People not interested in getting emails every time someone responds with "I'll bring the salsa!" can choose not to get notified.

Far too much work. The whole point of a facebook event is to be rid of the organizational administration and to be able to discover events your friends go to / invite you to in a central place.

For some people, Facebook is their primary means of communicating online.

I still have an account but don't login (maybe used it once in the last few months). Before that I only accessed it in an Incognito tab and before that I had the Facebook Disconnect extension running so that I don't see any Like widgets around the web. It's not easy, but it is possible to contain Facebook.

tl;dr I treat Facebook like a virus that is infecting the web.

That's definitely a concern, since I don't like FB much as a company. Thankfully, this hasn't happened in my social circles yet and it doesn't appear that it ever will at this point.

Yeah, I'd like to nuke it, but there's so many things on there that family and friends post that I'd never get anywhere else. The photos of my 2 year old niece. The articles my friends only post there.

Years ago I created http://tgethr.com so I could hopefully get my family just posting/emailing these things around privately. It turned out super useful, but a private network like that just doesn't stick too long. And most of the photos/links/articles just end up on FB.

> You can put a stop to all of this by deleting your Facebook account.

How is this any different than deleting all of your email accounts and acting like that IS the solution to spam?

Facebook is a product. Email is a protocol.

Are you saying that boycotting Facebook is not a solution to Facebook stepping all over privacy? What are we supposed to do? Use harsh language?

Not that it matters what it is, but I said email accounts. I might use multiple protocols to send and receive my email messages, but it doesn't really distinguish it from the stack of protocols that Facebook is based on either.

> Are you saying that boycotting Facebook is not a solution to Facebook stepping all over privacy?

A boycott wasn't actually the suggested course of action by the OP. They made a different point: opt-out of the system to protect your own privacy. You are suggesting collective action to promote change which is quite different. As an individual, quitting facebook isn't really equivalent to a boycott.

"E-mail" doesn't send spam. Individuals or organizations spam you via "e-mail". With Facebook, violating your privacy or shoving ads into your news feed is up to Facebook itself.

Maybe boycott is the wrong term, but it's what I think of when people say "vote with your dollars". Quitting Facebook is essentially denying them an audience and additional personal information. It may not be collective action, but it's still expressing an opinion on Facebook's service and policies.

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