The only thing that is currently keeping me from deleting my account is the chat functionality, The author makes a good point when it comes to the amount of "friends" you actually care about. My life would probably be no different if I never heard from 90 % of my Facebook friends ever again. However, it will probably be quite difficult to convince my friends to migrate to a different service. Another problem is the rare occation when I have to contact an acquaintance. Without Facebook this would mean going hunting for their contact info, which might be difficult.
Uninstalled Facebook from my phone after my feed became a mix of polarized political viewpoints and shared clickbait trash content. Don't miss it at all.
I also uninstalled Facebook, and their messenger, and I was extremely surprised how much more responsible by Galaxy S5 became! Those two seem to hog a lot of resources, even if you're not logged in
Not to mention the recent rise of international domain name driven scams. People routinely forward stuff like - Win sneakers from Adidas at adidas.com but with "ạ" instead of "a"
My favorite reason to delete facebook: the massive amount of information on you being bought and sold by facebook and hundreds of other companies is regularly leaked and used for fraudulent activity (gaining access to banks, brokerages, credit lines, cryptocurrency, email accounts, phone port scams, etc.) even if you're totally unaware of it. Identity information yields criminal activity simply by existing in too many places.
It's not about a shitty news feed to me, it's about OpSec.
Facebook has become the place my 60+ year old aunts and uncles share false/exaggerated/fake news. Doesn't matter how many times I point out how easily they can search for the real facts. The sky is falling every day.
There was a very interesting summary of all dirty tricks FB is using to manipulate people in order to hook them, such as birthdays, "last seen" etc.; it was posted on HN a few months ago but I can't find it. Could someone help? I'd like to send it to my friend who would like to delete his account but is unable to.
I have a Facebook account that I barely use. I have a poor UX with it. For me Facebook has become a worse Google Reader. Let's face it, my friends rarely share an insightful article :)
But I think Whatsapp and Instagram are UX masterpieces. My mother joined the bandwagon in no time, after a demo of less than 2 minutes.
Things get scary when you realize that Whatsapp and Instagram are far more personal than Facebook is, now.
So from a time waste perspective, leaving Facebook makes sense. But from a privacy point of view, we are leaving Facebook The App, but we are still stuck in Facebook The Ecosystem.
