>Not tweeting (much), not instagramming (much), not posting on Facebook (much)

It's not a spectrum. You are a user and you are rationalizing your cognitive dissonance. Just delete it, those things are completely useless/pointless and you're being tracked regardless of whatever precautions you take. You are on it, or you are not.

This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms. We don't always get to choose our battles, and this is one I won't win. And trying, in earnest, to avoid putting yourself on a stage is a far cry from publishing posts incessantly, looking to be a social media celebrity of some kind.

>This is naive, at best. I have a network of people in my life that I must maintain contact with, and their platforms of choice are these platforms.

Must maintain? With who? Do you use FB to exclusively chat to your wife and boss or something? Will the stasi knock at your door for not checking in with Lord Zuckerberg every 5 minutes?

I find it incredibly difficult to believe that there are people who's ONLY platform of communication in a digital age is Facebook. I don't mean 'primary', I mean 'only'.

If your 'friends' much less family won't keep in contact with you because of choice of platform, can you really say they are your friends/family? If we didn't live in an age of cellphones, if calling is too much effort, would they have ever come to visit me in person?

I deleted all that crap way back and only a few people came out of the wood work, the rest I forgot about and couldn't remember if I tried.

In reality the only effect social media has is lowering barriers to communication, letting in all the shit connections. Much like a dam. Lower it, and the crap water comes in. Same with this, just makes it easier to be connected, which is built on the illusion that these connections are now somehow important.

I have yet to encounter a plausible real life scenario that requires facebook. At best, it might add a tiny bit of convenience to your life wrt events/comm. But it's nothing that can't be easily replaced.

Not op but there are people who I like to communicate with on Facebook and Snapchat and the like who if I got off that platform I would never see again because that is their primary platform for communication.

I have tried to lose these applications for a week or month at a time and I do miss out on the latest happenings with them. I have tried to switch them to different services but for one reason or another they don't like it and want to go back.

Commonly this is the switching cost of learning how a new app works but to lose those friendships are not worth the anonymity that I gain from not using the services.

I just drop those people. Why should my mental health suffer just to leech off someone? They should be willing to reciprocate.

I don't see it as a switching cost. Well I do, but only in the beginning. You switch the thing on and you are exposed to X more people. Then it seems like switching it off you're losing those people, but you're probably just going back to your original state.

>Commonly this is the switching cost of learning how a new app works but to lose those friendships are not worth the anonymity that I gain from not using the services.

It is to me. I would definitely make a switch for a friend if all it was was changing an app. If they can't do the same, like they literally couldn't download or use a different fucking app then they can fuck off. Like our friendship is worth so little they can't EVEN be bothered to download an app. Fuck those people.

You realise that it is symmetric? That it can be said that YOU value the friendship so little that YOU can't be bothered to use an app (facebook)?

> Commonly this is the switching cost of learning how a new app works but to lose those friendships are not worth the anonymity that I gain from not using the services.

Do you seriously call such people "friends"?

> I find it incredibly difficult to believe that there are people who's ONLY platform of communication in a digital age is Facebook. I don't mean 'primary', I mean 'only'.

When I told my family I was getting off of those types of platforms and only using email/phone/text, there was absolutely no issues on their end keeping up with communication. If anything, I was able to cut down on the chatter and only keep up comms with two really close friends, the rest were just acquaintances that I don't mind not getting updates on.

I suppose I can get real with you to make my point. My daughter lives in another state, and her mother's platform of choice is Facebook. I don't get to see her but once every couple weeks, so, if I want to regularly see what my daughter is up to (in a day-to-day sense vs. in a formal sense, like when I Facetime her daily), I _have_ to be on Facebook.

I realize such a situation is an outlier, but you must realize that if you could not conceive of this, there's probably many more situations you could not conceive of. For better or worse, things like Facebook are now a staple in our lives. If it means being able to follow along with my daughter's growing up, I'll subscribe to whatever the hell social network she's on.

I tend to think that it is not as much about how much you use it. You either do use it or don't. If you do, you are already being tracked.

Right, but do you hang out with people around you that tweet, Instagram, and post on Facebook? Have you ever had dinner with friends and they have an Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV? They can infer where you are based on being around others that use these services.

I understand about being tagged in a photo and a social media site inferring where I am but can you explain how this happens with a friend's "Echo/Dot/Home/"Smart" TV"?

Ultrasonic? GPS? geolocation using WAN IP of those devices and your device's GPS coordinates. You are in the same vicinity.