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Comment by analogpixel | Hacker News Reader

You can block all their content, just delete your account.

I deleted all my meta accounts a couple years ago (Facebook, Instagram). When I did it I was afraid I would miss out.

Nope: 5 years after I feel good about not being a dopamine-addicted sheep (At least to Meta). It makes me sick to my stomach whenever I go to a public place and see so many people mindlessly losing their life watching reels and stories full of ads. I Used to take the Caltrain and I estimate >50% of the people were mindlessly scrolling instagram during the 1 hour train ride.

The best time to delete * Meta was yesterday. The next best time is Today.

(To be honest I recreated a bogus account to sell things on MarketPlace and I cannot believe the amount of crap constantly pushed to me)

What does your social life look like? Because the reality for me is that in any major city, a significant number of places - even if they technically have websites - post all of their events and happenings on Instagram/FB.

Sure, I can talk to my close friends on any number of IM platforms, but if I want to get out and have new experiences, join club meetups, be notified of events at venues I care about, etc. - it's Meta or miss out.

The first thing I did when I quit social media was sign up for the newsletter of every concert venue in town. I never overlooked a show.

I can’t speak to your interests or city, but as a rule, the greatest trick the social apps ever pulled was convincing the world that they are the only way to receive information.

Go to clubs and check the events from ra.co. Go to concerts and art galleries they all have web pages.

Berlin, Germany

Or dice in NYC.

Most venues and places are slowly going away from closed gardens.

> Most venues and places are slowly going away from closed gardens.

They are? Honestly, first time hearing about this. I've noticed only big events get posted outside of the IG/etc. Even in Tokyo, a simple thing like checking if a place is open on a public holiday is to check their Instagram.

It's funny because this should be a non-issue

Consider the grammar

Hey Alice, did you see the event for Chris's band?

It was on Facebook, publically posted (audience set to public)

I'm not on Facebook

Like... you post something public on FB/IG and people STILL CAN'T SEE IT because apparently 'public' means 'must make an account'. It's insanity

Well, the thing is, and people won’t like hearing it… almost everyone has a social media account outside of very small niche groups. Socially speaking, not having an account at all in any SNS (not saying an active poster, by the way!) would be negatively viewed. People don’t care about privacy, data and etc. as much as we would want them to.

Sadly in Tokyo, most businesses post their info to twitter or instagram, but in both cases you're able to read without an account (not well, but it's possible).

Instagram makes it extremely frustrating without an account. Many times I have checked a small business's opening times on Google Maps only to arrive and find them closed... the only place they reliably post their times is on Instagram.

I gave up and got Instagram.

Only way to go is to leave a 1 star review letting them know they need to publish things outside Instagram

That is insanely awful take. Why would anyone review something negatively without actually checking it out?

He did check it out, and it was closed, because they don't post their hours outside of a user-hostile social networking site people shouldn't use and they left their hours misrepresented elsewhere. Poor customer experiences result in poor reviews.

At least he did them the courtesy of telling them exactly what the problem was.

I guess we need a Nitter for Instagram?

I had a similar experience in Osaka. Prettry frustrating. Actually, I didn't know that you can read the posts without an account! That's good to know!

or https://sydneygigguide.net/dl/893a15 in Sydney.

If all you need is to view the restaurant/event, imginn.com or kittygr.am works well enough for me. I also like libredirect because it blocks the network connections and is convenient, shame that it's a browser extension it could really be built into the browser or something.

Maybe I'm just too old for the kinds of activities you're looking to get into, but I haven't had a Facebook since 2014, and had an IG account for just a month or two during the pandemic, and I've had zero qualms finding out information about what I wanted to do or see.

It's definitely not the size of the city that matters, as I was in NYC and only recently relocated to a smaller (but still major) city.

*issues, not qualms. Mea culpa on the wrong word.

Yeah the instagram posting is such a complete BS. I have a bogus instagram account where I don't follow anyone for the couple times a year I need to find set times for an artist or that kind of stuff.

We need to shame artists/events/clubs that only post on Instagram

https://19hz.info/

Sure, for one category of music in some cities there's a resource. There are often community-curated lists that have some things, but if you want specific things or if you want everything/most things, it's the big platforms.

I'm part of some local photography groups. There's a Discord where members plan informal get togethers, but the big events are all posted on Instagram.

I follow a number of local bartenders, and their popup events are all on Instagram. Same for local performing artists.

My bike club coordinates through a Facebook page.

Honestly, none of my non-tech interests are viable (in a group setting) without Meta properties.

Get different interests then?

It’s like saying “none of my group interests are viable unless I smoke”.

I find a life surrounded only by people who already do the things I do unfulfilling. I also find that almost no one who works outside of tech cares enough about privacy or other issues to care to move off the big platforms.

I already spend my entire work day surrounded by tech workers, I'm not going to change my hobbies to spend more time around them.

“Just abandon your hobbies and interests!”

Be fucking serious

I deleted my Facebook account years ago. Recently I tried to make a new one in order to get access to the WhatsApp API to use it for my business, and I just get banned right after the account is created. I'm not sure why, but I guess they don't need my money.

I have been barely using FB, but I deactivate my account early 2025 and I never looked back. I never had Instagram or Twitter.

I thought I would miss out on many events, but then I just signed up to a few more newsletters and that's still more events than I have time to vist.

I still wish we had a proper replacement for FB events. At least we have a nice market place platform that everyone uses (willhaben.at). For a long time I didn't even know that FB MarketPlace exists.

"When I did it I was afraid I would miss out."

All the cool kids left FB a decade ago. You're not missing anything.

well yeah I know that now. But they engineer it so that you feel really bad about trying to leave.

If Zuckerberg is trying to make you feel guilty, take it as supporting evidence that you’re doing the right thing.

I follow traditional media/journalists. Everything important on social media still reaches me- just 24 hours later.

Is there an easy way to delete all of your comments and likes and all of that first? Or at least to randomly alter them into garbage? They make it impossible to do bulk things.

If you really hate a company, you won't delete your account. You'll run spam on that (verified human) account or sell it to some third party who wants an account for spamming.

They make money from your spam too, at least in the short term.

I mean, these companies are themselves providing the tools to mass produce what would be labelled “spam,” the topic of the OP itself.

Deleting your account may not make even a pixel of difference in their KPI graphs, but -in addition to the mental benefits- you get the moral one of not being a participant in this mess…

They only support spam when it aligns with their own incentives. They hate when other people come along and spam the platform for free.

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