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Comment by aanet | Hacker News Reader

Controversial opinion:

This entire thread reads like a game of cat-and-mouse. People trying to block intrusive ads, and FB reaching into the depths of code and making it nearly impossible for anyone to do so en masse.

I've been there. Tried to uncheck all the boxes on their ad platform; used all manners of ad blockers, etc; used incognito mode; used Tor; etc. etc. etc.

At some point, you realize that the only way to not get served ads on Facebook -- and thereby not benefit the company itself -- is to get rid of it completely. Delete your account, get off that blasted site, and enjoy some moments of peace IRL.

Having been a very early adopter of FB (since ~2004), I deleted my account and am clean + sober + much happier since 2016.

(Not to say that I'm completely out of the FB ecosystem. Unfortunately, my fam is still on WhatsApp... and I've been trying to convince them to migrate to Signal...)

YMMV

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I keep waiting for people to understand that algorithmic social media communities that serve ads and harvest info are pure poison. The problem is that everyone thinks they've got it under control, for them it isn't a problem or it's a manageable one.

My personal view is that if you take a personal, not a preaching stand early and often people just learn that's who you are. I've never had a Myspace or FB or IG, or any other sort of account like that. To all of the people who say they can only stay in touch that way I just said, "I'm available via text, phone, chat group, Discord, email, Signal, and half a dozen more ways. If that isn't easy enough then maybe we don't need to keep in touch."

The only reason I can imagine seriously engaging with those things is as a business owner who watched FB railroad them into advertising there or being screwed, and happily I've never been in that position.

So yeah... at some point you have to accept that most people will happily dig in, and even most people who have qualms will find ways to justify why it's ok FOR THEM. You just have to make your own choice and stick with it, firmly and politely.

> You just have to make your own choice and stick with it, firmly and politely.

100%

That's the way to go.

And tbh, not being on FB hasn't affected my social life. I'm in touch with people {friends | family | colleagues | etc} the way I want. And if I miss any social events, that's Ok. No FOMO here. Mostly JOMO.

>social media communities that serve ads and harvest info are pure poison.

The biggest problem is that we have virtually zero cases of anyone dying from this poison after 25 years of it.

When people step back and look at the lives of people who never spent the time to block everything, they see what 25 years of ingesting this poison looks like and...there is virtually no difference. If anything it's those types who spend less time online - all the better.

I'm not saying there won't be a reckoning in the future, but for right now, the evidence it's "poison" is pretty thin.

We have plenty of cases of people dying as a result of their social media use or someone else's, both in a somewhat direct sense (sextortion, other crimes that put the victim under immense pressure), or indirect sense (Mobs being whipped up online that riot and kill people, something not at all uncommon in parts of Africa and SEA).

You're also ignoring the enormous role that social media played in the rise of ISIS, and their ongoing recruitment and terror efforts. The "mommy bloggers" who share terrible, unmoderated advice ranging from somewhat harmful to downright lethal.

How many kids killed themselves as a result of bullying that followed them every waking moment through the net, almost always via social media?

You don't need a time machine to see the harm, if what you need to see is actually a body count. For the rest of us the psychological and behavioral impact is negative enough without needing to taking 'pure poison' overly literally.

Unfortunately it’s hard to replace local groups for me. It’s mostly crap but there is very useful updates there as well and I live in a small enough community there’s no alternative. I’ve used them to get rides, forest fire info, community event info etc.

I used to use marketplace as well but they’ve completely ruined it with shipped products and ads and stuff from too far away. They’d rather show me pages upon pages of shit I’ll never buy because it’s shipped or three hours away than show me just the five results for “dresser” within 20 miles of me. So now i only interact with marketplace through buy/sell groups. God I miss Craigslist.

> it’s hard to replace local groups for me.

Once you stop using them for a few months you wont miss them. Its all part of the game to keep you sucked in.

We just had 3 ladders stolen from our house. After a few days of wondering we posted in the local facebook group and got a respons after 5 minutes. Now we have them back.

I do wish there was a valid electronic alternativ. Hosted in our own country. But here we are.

Also nice for events.

I'd rather accept the ladder shrinkage than be subject to Facebook.

I only care or participate insofar as they affect my real offline life.

you realize that the only way to not get served ads on Facebook -- and thereby not benefit the company itself -- is to get rid of it completely

You're probably right when it comes to benefiting the company, but technically - at least for me - using only https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr means no ads/sponsored/whatever. Only the posts I actually want to see, and chronologically so easy to continue where you left off. I don't understand why this isn't more common knowledge but have been using this for years and it makes the whole platform usable exactly for what I want to use it for: tracking things which haven't moved on from it yet without being forced to consume anything else.

Btw there's also https://www.instagram.com/?variant=following which does something similar on Instagram.

Do you have something else going on perhaps? The very top item on that FB link was an ad, followed by 2 posts, then another ad

Not that I know of. It is a bit weird that for me it shows the same posts in my normal container with uBO enabled, and in a new container with uBO disabled: no sponsored ones. But when visiting facebook.com straight away I do get ads/sponsored posts. Probably I did go over all FB settings once to disable everything possible. Perhaps it's that.

What does `?sk=h_chr` in the URL mean?

Apparently it forces your feed to show posts in chronological order, not how algorithm decides

sk possibly means 'sort key' (makes one wonder what other keys there are) and chr = chronological There's also &filter=friends one can add to that.

I dont know what they changed but they kept forcing obvious bot troll political posts on my feed and that’s when I finally deleted my account. They were blatantly trying to enrage me with things I don’t follow. Up to that point I wasn’t bothered and could block whatever and just see friends posts.

> At some point, you realize that the only way to not get served ads on Facebook -- and thereby not benefit the company itself -- is to get rid of it completely. Delete your account, get off that blasted site, and enjoy some moments of peace IRL.

Exactly. Not only do I blocklist every known Meta domain at my DNS (I run the unbound DNS server at home) I also took all the IP blocks from Meta's ASNs and have automatically blocked them at the firewall level.

And I did that before doing so was, like now, just one LLM prompt away.

1 billion people are on Telegram: they may not be much better than WhatsApp but Telegram does not have Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and is not worth 1.5 trillion.

Really: just fuck the Zuck and his PHP/JavaScript ecosystem. Just get off, entirely off, that crappy abusive ad-ridden, surveillance ecosystem.

Delete your accounts today.

Telegram is much worse for privacy than WhatsApp. Signal is better.

I've migrated my fam by just refusing to use it at some point "sorry folks no facebook apps on my phone". It was kinda hard when I needed something from them, but once they needed something from me they had to install my preferred communications channel.

Your family members don't have a phone number you can call?

For a lot of people these days actually calling is for emergencies or other time sensitive comms. Even sending a text is seen that way by some, who have no notifications enabled for other messaging apps & similar but do allow their device to buzz them when an SMS/equivalent arrives.

For socially anxious zoomers sure, but it's not a desirable thing. Call your parents.

Back end of GenX here, I remember our first landline being installed. I hate the phone, always have. Video calls are certainly no better. I'm an "in person or in writing" person, hence I have trouble with the modem remote work environment (to the point where I was considering taking a hefty paycut to leave the dev industry even before AI, which is feeling like the final bail of hay, came along).

But I do make the time and effort to call Dad though.

No point calling Mum, dementia has done away with that being anything but stressful for her.

They couldnt drop you a text or give you a call?

> Delete your account, get off that blasted site,

This doesnt stop it. That what a lot of people dont understand. If you never had a FB, Insta, Whatsapp, etc... account, you STILL have a FB ad profile. It's worse than what people think.

Yes, I am very aware of FB shadow profiles and such. And believe me, it troubles me more than I can say. [This was known in 2015-2017 timeframe, afaik.] That, and the fact that one can't do much about that.

What one can control is not paying attention to the damned site. [Many more added to that list, btw]

It stops their most direct way of influencing you. There are always others (e.g. they can lobby politicians) but that is irrelevant to the question of you should let them into your home voluntarily.

Gold advice. People should get out of there and enjoy more of their free time!

Indeed.

It saved me net an hour or more or mindless scrolling every day. Every single day. Not to mention the benefits of no more FOMO, better mental health, etc. AND left me with more time to actually accomplish things I wanted to do but somehow thought I never had the time.

The thing is: you have to find + allocate time and attention (= your most precious resource) to the things that matter most to you.

Since then I've been working on my online learning (30+ courses done, including several DL/ML certifications), read more books, and most importantly, focused on my health by working out nearly every day.

Small wins individually, but they have compounded greatly over time.

> People should get out of there and enjoy more of their free time!

I think that would be a net negative for me. Instead of posting questions on the local facebook group or selling something on marketplace I would have to print it out and hang it up on the local grocery shop wall. Or go door to door.

Or sit around on the flee market.

Just posting "Selling 4 chairs at Waynstreet 4" in the local group is more time efficient.

I disabled YouTube app on my phone for the same reason. The shorts stole my time too easily.

What fixed YouTube for me by disabling and removing all history. The only thing that works is the subscriptions tab and search. The only shorts I get are from subscriptions, so I'm through them in a few minutes and have to choose a real video.

This is the way! And I wish I could be part of it. Sadly, FB Marketplace is the only platform I that seems to be decent for random sales os stuff I no longer need.

Please, tell me there is this better option called X/Y, and I’ll happily switch. I just haven’t found it.

Such a shame that some afterthought Meta accidentally implemented is better than the rest of their entire platform.

I'm finally reading "Careless People." If I hadn't deleted my FB account back in 2023, I definitely would've done it five chapters into reading this hit piece.

Deleting Facebook, Instagram, X (Formerly Twitter), and TikTok was the best decision I have ever made. I thought that I would really miss them but I just don't.

I like FB Messenger because all the state is stored on there instead of being annoying about E2EE. My group chats aren't important enough to need security, but I still don't want them getting randomly nuked like has happened on Signal and Whatsapp.

I had a period before I dropped Facebook where I actually manually removed every add from the timeline with the added option of "I don't want to see ads from this company ever again", and frankly it worked.

After a period of a doing this I started to get new ads only periodically, and after a couple of sessions of removing every one of them, the rest of the month was quiet.

I fucking beat the Facebook ad department.

In general the internet has become shit so I try to just use it less.

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