Quitting Facebook feels GREAT

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I didn’t see it here, but actually quitting facebook and not just deactivating your account is a hidden “feature”. Go here to really delete an account- https://www.facebook.com/help/delete_account to do so

Even then if you log in within 2 weeks it stops the deletion.

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I deleted mine a few years ago having aggregated about 300 friends, including some customers I met while consulting.

I kept a close watch on changes in permissions to make sure I could keep from being tagged and having professional contacts see it. Well, they made that hard as hell, but there used to be a way to do it with contact groups (although the permissions were intentionally misleading and would get reset with every “enhancement”). As far as I can tell now, they have completely removed that ability. Anyways. Someone posted a drunken college pic of me in a dress (great party!) that was 10 years old, and I worked out that it may have ended up in someone’s feed that was a customer of my current company. Facebook had to go!

I nuked my account and started over. For a while I would temporarily add friends for the duration of group vacations, and then remove them. Mostly using it to access events and groups. I have some ex-coworkers now and family and friends. Ex coworkers I see now are personal contacts I figure, and generally with a more manageable number of friends I don’t feel like it’s an impending career disaster again.

Yet.

Facebook is out to ruin your lives, guys. I recommend periodically deleting your accounts for your own sake.

Guess what social media site’s permissions never reset themselves and always work as expected? Google plus.

Good thing I am OK with talking to myself in an empty room.

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Alex Lifeson?

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I wish I used Facebook so I could quit using it!

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But seriously, tell Joni I says hi.

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Counterpoint: local cartoonist-about-town Berke Breathed started Bloom County up again exclusively on Facebook (seriously, he just started drawing it one day and posted it like he was just a guy who draws stuff) and that’s been pretty great…

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Tell Alanis that no, it isn’t ironic.

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Here’s the thing, though: if you’re not on Facebook, you won’t know what you’re missing out on. Problem solved! :wink:

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Exactly. There was a reason I left town in the first place.

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Me too. I usually feel like i’m the last holdout on earth. I really hate when people assume every human is on FB, and make resources and communities available only there.

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You are not alone… It was tempting but all the privacy issues/personal info gathering horror stories made me waffle for to long and now the kids aren’t using it anyway. I have the feeling it will eventually die just like friendster, and myspace and orkut and etc.
Honestly if they offered a paid model where here you get your access and no ads, no selling of your info for a reasonable fee I would probably join up as it is the one with the huge userbase.

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I had a FB under a fake name… then the FB name police came for me!
Long story short, don’t get in fights in your neighbourhood FB group if your name is Missy Pants!

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Dunno about that, the kids may feel different when they’ve got more history to want to keep in touch with. FB may just have the kind of critical mass to create it’s own event horizon the way Google has. My kids never forgave me for creating Hotmail accounts for them instead of Gmail. EVERYTHING now in a teens world is revolving around Gmail’s suite of stuff. They can’t comprehend you stick with the 1st non-ISP email you got so you would not have to through changing your primary email EVER again! I hope someday someone give them crap for still having a gmail.

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Even better? Never joining the first place.

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I have so much cruft tied to yahoo mail going back nigh on 20 years now.

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Aldo Nova. It’s Aldo Nova.

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Facebook can be like another tool (just don’t think about the privacy concerns too much) it depends on how you use it. It’s great for me and the Pregnancy and Infant loss group I’m a part of was really helpful while after my miscarriage.

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You can do a fair bit to mitigate the torrent of crap that flows in your direction on Facebook:

  • Immediately download the SocialFixer plugin for your browser and investigate all its settings, particularly the filtering options. Won’t help you on mobile though.
  • Go through your list of friends and decide whether each one is a “Friend” or an “Acquaintance”. Acquaintances get lower priority in your news feed. Once you’ve done that, the option to post things to “Friends except Acquaintances” comes in handy.
  • Scroll through a few days of your newsfeed. See some crappy aggregator post that one of your friends has shared/liked? Hit the little drop-down box next to the post, and select “Hide all from CraptasticViralMemes”, or whatever. Most of your friends regularly share posts from a few major sites. A couple of rounds of this improves the signal-to-noise ratio of your newsfeed considerably.
  • If someone is a major reposter of shite, you can remain friends and just unfollow them.

I’ve found that after doing the above, my facebook experience got a lot better.

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What if I used my ordained name in religion? PraBob!

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I tried to sign up for Facebook several years ago, because I thought it would be useful for work. For some reason, my application never went through and I never felt compelled to try again. Now in retrospect I’m very pleased with having involuntarily protected my privacy.

DH has a Facebook page for the business. I occasionally peer at the endless flow of drivel showing up on the feed. The thing I find most amusing is that FB doesn’t know how to handle my picture when it comes up in an occasional post; I am a cipher to its facial recognition taggers.

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