I deleted my Facebook eleven years ago. I wish I could say it was for some cool reason about privacy concerns and whatnot, but honestly it's because I was spending way too much time arguing with people I barely knew, and I figured that that's not healthy.
I missed Facebook for about a day, and after that I barely even thought about it. In 2021 I bought an Oculus Quest 2, which at the time required a Facebook account so I made a throwaway one, but other than that I haven't been on Facebook (and I haven't even touched my Quest 2 in three years).
Point being, it's really not hard to get off Facebook and to ditch Meta products. More people should delete it.
I don't actively use Facebook and I block most(?) of the tracking, but I do have an account simply because most of the information about my area is on there. This means events, safety updates, second hand shit.
Yeah, that's fair enough. My neighborhood doesn't have that so it's fairly easy to avoid the use of Facebook.
I still spend too much arguing on HN but not as much as I was on Facebook and the audience here is generally more educated and so the arguments aren't as mind-numbing.
My policy for years with facebook has been "post, don't scroll". I also use the brave broswer, ublock origin, and fb-purity extension. It's a tiny thing, and petty but it's better than being facebook's product for their advertising customers.
> Point being, it's really not hard to get off Facebook and to ditch Meta products. More people should delete it.
As another poster mentioned, it can in fact be more difficult. Almost all of my social clubs/groups over the years migrated away from websites/forums to FaceBook. I could give up an account, at the cost of losing effectively my entire social calendar.
I have a generic account with no real user data, but they still get all my content from the social groups so they still win I suppose.
My point ultimately I guess is that I have chosen the ability to continue to have a strong social life over my zuck hating principles.