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Comment by psbp | Hacker News Reader

Or,you know, just stop using facebook.

The degree to which users are accommodating Facebook's increasingly onerous privacy policies is becoming ridiculous.

If you stop using facebook, then you also lose the benefits of facebook. Some people want to use facebook, but not be searchable by name. It is not difficult to change one's name on facebook, so I hardly think it's a ridiculous response.

So real question: I've changed mine a while back and removed all the vowels - not machine readable but still human recognizable. At one point they did have my actual name and I imagine they still do. What is to say they don't tune their search to include previous names used on a profile?

I also remember last time I changed my name I had a hard time getting around their validation. Any hints on how to defeat that check using an alias?

I just checked and it seems they have also limited the number of times you can change your name. Apparently I only have 4 changes left.

They do keep previous names, so that if you search for someone who was married, you'll still get their result.

The benefits of facebook? What, that they're holding my relationships hostage behind a wall? Again, the lengths that users are going to so that they can use a basic utility without being manipulated and taken advantage of is ridiculous.

Nearly all of my friends use Facebook for scheduling events. If you can tell me how I can convince them all to switch to another service, I'll delete my Facebook account.

Ideally, this plan will also work for when that service becomes a burden, so I can continue asking my friends to switch to new services.

Also, I know I could just talk to my friends more often, and ask them regularly if there are events they've forgotten to invite me to, but that will make me sound needy and pathetic, much like someone refusing to own a telephone, and instead showing up at their friends' houses unannounced, just in case they had something to communicate.

I do it over email. Or even text. Or voice even. It works just fine.

Really, it is entirely possible to schedule events without Facebook. It was possible to do so when FB was not there, and it is possible to do it now :)

You can't control how other people schedule events.

You don't. People change the way they schedule events, or more likely they make an exception for you. A lot more people do that than people who just don't invite me to things.

They want me there, so why shouldn't they make an effort? If they don't want me there at least that badly, why would I want to be there? Luckily, I don't have that problem - people text me, or email me, or try to run into me or something.

Which is fine - people make an exception for you. But the original point was that other people use Facebook to schedule things, and the response was "Well, I schedule things over email and text." Which misses the point, because we're talking about other people's behavior, not your own.

Yeah, but the question is how do you make other people do that.

I don't have a facebook account. My friends that do generally just send me (and a few others without facebook accounts) an email when they are hosting an event. Is it really that much of an effort to remember to invite people who aren't on facebook?

If you refrain from using Facebook for anything but receiving event notifications, you solve that problem while avoiding most of the harm.

Agreed. I find it pathetic and depressing that people are making phony excuses for not deleting themselves from an internet website that continually subverts their privacy and data. This has been Facebook's history since the beginning.

"Won't get invited to events." What?

Pick up the phone, text, email, IM, irc, smoke signals, TALK ffs!

Or instead, be honest and admit you're hooked like any average user.

Wow, what a narrow minded view you have.

>Pick up the phone, text, email, IM, irc, smoke signals, TALK ffs!

Here is a cute notion. Something you apparently are incapable of thinking of. Acquaintances. Friends. Not bffs. Just friends. And people you want to stay in contact with.

How many do you have? By your talk, I am guessing none. And if everyone would be like you then yes, no need for facebook because we all could just "pick up the phone" and talk to the one friend we all have.

It may sound strange to you, but many of us have a lot of friends and acquaintances. People we are still interested in to learn what is going on in their life but at the same time people we don't want to call as if we were bffs.

So, given that situation, what do you propose? Making like it is the 1990s and start mass emailing all these people what you normally just put up on facebook? Everyone in bcc so they don't see each other? Keeping the tone of the post as general as possible cause you can't mention any names? Great stuff. Especially since that is grad a spam as not everyone might want to read your stuff. But they will if you keep stuffing their inbox. When they go on facebook, they want to check up on everyone they added. When I go check my email I want to check my email and not start treating it like my facebook newsfeed!

So why don't all you mindless bashers pack it in, leave the internet altogether and start using your proposed smoke signals and enjoy your hipster elitism and privacy heaven. Just so you know, if I am seeing smoke, I am calling the fire department. So you might want to pick something even more private.

This is literally the worst comment I've read on HN, full of ad hominem and other logical fallacies.

Don't worry, we won't take your facebook away! It's gonna be okay! You sound like a junkie.

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