Just deleted Facebook

[asids]

The laughable thing is the people that say they're going to delete Facebook because of the Cambridge Analytica thing and the privacy issues related to it, yet don't even use a VPN or other mechanisms to protect their privacy. If you really care about privacy you have to go all in, just deleting your Facebook will do fuck all.

[idunnosomename]

I don't even have a birth certificate

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men

[monkfromhavana]

I don't even have a birth certificate

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men

Breakdance, c'mon y'all

[Jockice]

My next-door neighbour sent me a text message a couple of weeks ago, about a strange smell in her flat. We'd swapped numbers when she moved in but my phone had died a few weeks later and I lost all my numbers and never got round to asking for it again. We rarely meet in real life. In fact the only two times I've seen her in the last six months have been in November when I got home from a concert just before midnight and was dying for a piss, so was doing it in a bottle I keep in the car for weak bladder purposes when she walked past, and just before Christmas when she was standing at her door talking to her dad.  I didn't really think either occasion was a suitable one to ask for her number.

Anyway a few minutes after her text, she came up on 'people you may know' on Facebook. I didn't even know her surname till then, let alone knowing she had a Facebook account. We have no mutual friends.

I suppose this sort of thing should worry me. But strangely it doesn't. If people want to know stuff about me, more fool them. And some people are so pompous about Facebook anyway, telling everyone that they're only friends with those they know in real life and going on about 'purging' those who don't agree with everything they say. Nobody cares, really they don't.

The smell was a blocked drain on the outside of the building incidentally. Nothing to do with me.

[Icehaven]

An ad for some rather lovely kitchen knives with pictures of the Cosmos on popped up on my facebook a few days ago, so I clicked on it out of interest to see how much they cost (too much) and have since received at least one spam email featuring them. I don't really mind although it's giving me a fleeting insight into how parents must feel when their kids employ pester power.

[littlenell]

Everything's negotiable, CaB is my last connection with the outside, I don't come here to argue but to talk and take some ideas away to think about but maybe I should stop that too though my reasons for not being on FB etc are because I value my privacy.

Obviously it is up to you, but I like your posts on here and that photo of the girl on a phone. I'd rather you didn't go, just a thought.

[Genevieve]

That's Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (!)

I remember getting "you may know" for my old singing teacher I hadn't spoken to for 7 years, I think they trawl your email conversations when you join.  I never used a phone to connect as I never had an internet one.

[Head Gardener]

FB disabled my account today for posting this birthday greeting on a friends page, oops!



it does seem a bit strict though, I got told off the other week when I posted a scan of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland (nipples y'see)
is that it then, am I barred from FB for good?

[Dr Syntax Head]

I deactivated mine last week. Now I'm lonely and serve no purpose in society.

[Kane Jones]

I got told off the other week when I posted a scan of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland (nipples y'see)

The same thing happened to me when I posted the cover of Pixies' Surfer Rosa. I had already pre-emptively put circles over the lady's nips, but it wasn't enough. So I had to completely cover the breast area. Fucking ludicrous. I see pictures of abused animals in my news feed all the time, don't you dare show a pair of tits.

[mothman]

Especially when you consider the site started out as a definitely-stalkery, wouldn't-surprise-me-at-all-if-it-was-occasionally-rapey version of Hot Or Not?

[idunnosomename]

The same thing happened to me when I posted the cover of Pixies' Surfer Rosa. I had already pre-emptively put circles over the lady's nips, but it wasn't enough. So I had to completely cover the breast area. Fucking ludicrous. I see pictures of abused animals in my news feed all the time, don't you dare show a pair of tits.

You can't post an event with Michelangelo's Creation of Adam as the image. It's insanely prudish.

[Paul Calf]

FB disabled my account today for posting this birthday greeting on a friends page, oops!

it does seem a bit strict though, I got told off the other week when I posted a scan of Hendrix's Electric Ladyland (nipples y'see)
is that it then, am I barred from FB for good?

And yet they need huge amounts of prodding to close down groups used by people to share their relish at torturing dogs to death. American priorities. If FB was French, it'd be a better place to be.

[yesitsme]

I thought I'd deleted my account ages ago but a few people I know (none of you miserable bastards) wished me happy birthday last week.  When I asked them how they knew they said FB had told them - so I dunno.

I gave up on it because of two people.  My mum, who was shown how to use it by my nieces who were then in their early teens.  As a consequence she thinks you have to end every sentence with LOLXxXXxx.  Even if she's telling you someone has snuffed it. LOLS!

The other person is my sister in law who lives her whole life through the quest for 'likes'.

She puts everything on there in what I can only describe as clues to the world's worst cryptic crossword.  You'd have to be an idiot not tow work out she was talking about you.  I had a go at her once splashing holiday pics all over it saying 'Everyone in the world now knows your house is empty.  Don't complain when you get home to find it ransacked.'

She went mad.  'You're not even my FB friend and you NEVER like my posts.'  I told her it was precisely because I didn't actually like FB that I never clicked any of her cobblers and she went proper mentile.  Like I'd blasphemed against the holiest of all holies.

She ended our conversation with a 'Fuck off!' that I felt came right from the depths of her heart.

Of course FB is going to harvest your data and sell it to advertisers.  Why does it exist?

Don't worry about governments spying on you.  You've given away every bit of info about you, where you are, what you're eating and your mother's maiden name to some faceless tech company in a foreign country but heaven help they keep track of your Farmville score.

I've quat Twitter before but the football season drew me back in.  Hopefully when this season ends I can do the same again - but the World Cup innit?

I've got a pair of Bose headphones.  The other day a pop up came on my phone saying Bose wanted access to my contact list.  Whatever the fuck for?  To tell them I like Backstreet's Back by the Back Street Boys?

[mothman]

YIM's sister-in-law sounds like she needs her own spin-off thread.

[Kishi the Bad Lampshade]

Facebook (not including Messenger) lost 95% of its enjoyability and usefulness for me about 1-2 years ago. At some point the algorithm changed so instead of seeing things my friends are actually posting, I see a lot of friends-of-friends, memes, suggested content and other useless shit that clogs up my feed, just because it has a lot of likes, and in a more-or-less random order as well. It gets particularly annoying in summer, as people post a lot of content that gets large numbers of likes (engagement/wedding, holidays etc.) so you end up seeing loads of friends-of-friends you've never met but instantly hate.

It's not even that useful for keeping up with people anymore - most of my friends post much more infrequently than they did a few years ago, and when they do I might not even see it because of all the other crap. I had a real wake-up call yesterday when one of my best friends from school posted a picture of her with her three-month-old baby - I didn't even know she was pregnant. Another friend of mine moved abroad, and I wouldn't have known about that either had I not recently had a random conversation with her on Messenger. I realised that I couldn't really tell you how any of my friends were doing or what was going on in their lives from Facebook alone - the only ones who I know about are the ones I'm talking to on other platforms. I probably won't delete it, or at least not for a while, but I don't do much on it anymore.

[BlodwynPig]

The same thing happened to me when I posted the cover of Pixies' Surfer Rosa. I had already pre-emptively put circles over the lady's nips, but it wasn't enough. So I had to completely cover the breast area. Fucking ludicrous. I see pictures of abused animals in my news feed all the time, don't you dare show a pair of tits.

Corrupting the minds of the beige youth.

[BlodwynPig]

I thought I'd deleted my account ages ago but a few people I know (none of you miserable bastards) wished me happy birthday last week.  When I asked them how they knew they said FB had told them - so I dunno.

I gave up on it because of two people.  My mum, who was shown how to use it by my nieces who were then in their early teens.  As a consequence she thinks you have to end every sentence with LOLXxXXxx.  Even if she's telling you someone has snuffed it. LOLS!

The other person is my sister in law who lives her whole life through the quest for 'likes'.

She puts everything on there in what I can only describe as clues to the world's worst cryptic crossword.  You'd have to be an idiot not tow work out she was talking about you.  I had a go at her once splashing holiday pics all over it saying 'Everyone in the world now knows your house is empty.  Don't complain when you get home to find it ransacked.'

She went mad.  'You're not even my FB friend and you NEVER like my posts.'  I told her it was precisely because I didn't actually like FB that I never clicked any of her cobblers and she went proper mentile.  Like I'd blasphemed against the holiest of all holies.

She ended our conversation with a 'Fuck off!' that I felt came right from the depths of her heart.

Of course FB is going to harvest your data and sell it to advertisers.  Why does it exist?

Don't worry about governments spying on you.  You've given away every bit of info about you, where you are, what you're eating and your mother's maiden name to some faceless tech company in a foreign country but heaven help they keep track of your Farmville score.

I've quat Twitter before but the football season drew me back in.  Hopefully when this season ends I can do the same again - but the World Cup innit?

I've got a pair of Bose headphones.  The other day a pop up came on my phone saying Bose wanted access to my contact list.  Whatever the fuck for?  To tell them I like Backstreet's Back by the Back Street Boys?

Fuck that shit.

(add me).

[Dr Syntax Head]

I've found that after deactivating FB that nobody really gives a fuck. It's well known that FB 'friends' are not friends but merely contacts and that FB is simply a editable mirror for people to click a little thumb on so that people can feel validated or relevant but really nobody gives a fuck. it's probably just me in that I'm not popular.

I do wonder though whether not having a Facebook can impact your employment prospects. I'm interviewing a lot for jobs at the moment and we all know that prospective employers will have a look at Facebook profiles but do they get a bit wary if you don't have one? Like "what has he got to hide?" type thing.

[BlodwynPig]

Is there an argument that FB etc have diminished the currency of friendship?

[Dr Syntax Head]

Is there an argument that FB etc have diminished the currency of friendship?

This I would very much be interested in reading about if there's any empirical data anywhere.

[Dr Syntax Head]

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hope-relationships/201404/is-facebook-destroying-friendship

Whaddya know

[yesitsme]

I went back on a re-deleted my account.

Are you sure?
Why are you leaving?
I'm don't think you want to do that Tony.
Amanda, Robyn and these other fit birds will miss you.
For a brief second I thought about it.  What if Robyn did miss me?  She never really paid me any attention in school and although I did walk past her in a park many years later I wasn't sure it was her (it was) but even then all she did was smile.  But she might miss me.  Her profile says she's single and she's fit.  Maybe she does miss me?  Perhaps I should stay on FB and give her a poke or a prod, or even call her - no fuck that.  Jump on a train right now and bang on her front door and ask her straight out to marry me before ripping our clothes off and making mad passionate love on the bear skin rug.
That's how they get you.
I deleted it and it made the noise ORAC used to make when he got switched off.

I wonder if Robyn is missing me though?

Yes.  My Sister-in-law could fill a thread with her quest to be called a 'saint' and 'such a good person' - that's why she breathes but I think she'd find out I was bad mouthing her.  She is Facebook.

[Blue Jam]

I just got banned from what I thought was a light-hearted Facebook group about doggos. Someone posted up a baby pic and a few people got annoyed because it was, you know, not a dog. The mods decided to post an announcement telling people to stop being such meanie-heads. Anyone who then tried to explain that the recent increase in off-topic stuff was simply very annoying was pretty much called a heartless baby-killer before being banned. Someone also posted a reply saying it was a bit rich to accuse people of being heartless when they frequently allowed pics of dogs with cropped ears and docked tails and banned any negative comments on this- I think the reason I was banned may have been because I posted a reply agreeing that it was upsetting to see sad-eyed dogs with bandaged ears, etc. Fair enough, that broke the rules, but fuck 'em- I won't miss seeing all those vain owners posing with their needlessly mutilated doggos.

I've had this before with groups- another Doggo page turned out to have been started by a guy who just wanted to build up a big audience before he stopped posting pictures of dogs and started flooding the page with anti-Muslim propaganda. Another one was supposedly a feminism page but the mod had an axe to grind about trans issues and started posting nothing but articles on trans stuff, in between falsely accusing people of being TERFs so they could pick fights- and they banned a friend of mine who is perhaps the most woke, right-on person in the world. Another feminism page ended up being flooded with thinly-veiled adverts for things like expensive "Yoni Yoga" retreats and expensive natural remedies for wimmin's troubles, plus endless posts about fucking Mooncups.

I think there was also a problem with one of the Peep Show groups where two of the mods fell out over the name (or something equally trivial) and one of them then posted a load of abusive messages before closing the group out of spite.

How do these fun, light-hearted things end up turning so nasty? I think I'm going to have a bit of a clear-out. Maybe just stick with Dogspotting out of all the groups- that one does manage to stay fun and relevant...

[idunnosomename]

No I also left because some architecture groups I used to use as serious avenues for discussion and finding new things got bogged down with shit, either crap photos or weird fundamentalist anti-Islam, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, whatever. I used to be surprised how well-mannered Facebook was, but I guess the bots have really helped end the whole thing of using a "real name" breeding civility.

That said, if I join a group for good doggos I do not expect to see a horrible human baby. Puppers only plz.

[Blue Jam]

That said, if I join a group for good doggos I do not expect to see a horrible human baby. Puppers only plz.

The weird thing was that while I was being called mean and heartless I had just given a Like to a pic of a friend's baby and posted a comment about how cute he was (he was smiling and inadvertently doing a little yoga pose- awwwww)...

I thought it was quite well-established that most people only find baby pics of interest if they know the parents, while a lot of people hate seeing photos of babies on Facebook full stop (disclaimer: I am not one of those). I also thought more people were familiar with the annoyance caused by Mommyjacking on Facebook, but it seems plenty of people are still oblivious. It's also funny how these self-proclaimed caring, kind, kid people and animal lovers also seem to love attacking strangers...

I also left because some architecture groups I used to use as serious avenues for discussion and finding new things got bogged down with shit, either crap photos or weird fundamentalist anti-Islam, anti-Christian, anti-Semitic, whatever.

One group I was in shared pics of cute animals, and when someone posted a pic of a beached whale being rescued there was a tediously unoriginal comment along the lines of "Look it's a feminist LOL". When people asked them to lay off with the politics they were met with the usual "YOU'RE JUST A CUCK WHO VOTED FOR CROOKED HILLARY!"-type comments. That sort of thing seems to creep in everywhere, with Alt-Right types and Trump supporters brigading even the most innocuous groups. I think they just look for the groups with the most members regardless of what they're about, and really they're more tedious than offensive.

I find the small, private groups really useful- stuff like study groups and local meetup groups- but perhaps it's inevitable that once a group which admits anyone gets beyond a certain size things will kick off.

[Sin Agog]

Mine's been deactivated for years ever since I had the revelation that I made a little girl in a Viking hat cry by shouting, "By the roots of Yggdrassil, I shall send you back to Valhalla!" mostly so I could get a bunch of likes recounting it back later. 

How do you permanently delete your account?  I thought the only way was going on a racist/homophobic/transphobic spree until they realise you're beyond monetizing.  It always seemed gravely irresponsible not having a permanent delete option on sites like FB and even CAB.  It's clear some people are fucking hooked to that little seratonin fix to the point where it's ruining their lives, and unless they burn every bridge behind them they'll always go back to it.

[Blue Jam]

I forgot: I also got banned from posting to Gustav's Dachshund World And Friends after I posted a link to a cute little sausage dog design on Etsy. I don't know why for sure, but I think it may have been because the owner had their own online shop and objected to anyone linking to a competitor, even if they were just posting a daft picture of a cute dog. Fucking thanks, you cheery fuckers.

[BlodwynPig]

I just got banned from what I thought was a light-hearted Facebook group about doggos. Someone posted up a baby pic and a few people got annoyed because it was, you know, not a dog. The mods decided to post an announcement telling people to stop being such meanie-heads. Anyone who then tried to explain that the recent increase in off-topic stuff was simply very annoying was pretty much called a heartless baby-killer before being banned. Someone also posted a reply saying it was a bit rich to accuse people of being heartless when they frequently allowed pics of dogs with cropped ears and docked tails and banned any negative comments on this- I think the reason I was banned may have been because I posted a reply agreeing that it was upsetting to see sad-eyed dogs with bandaged ears, etc. Fair enough, that broke the rules, but fuck 'em- I won't miss seeing all those vain owners posing with their needlessly mutilated doggos.

I've had this before with groups- another Doggo page turned out to have been started by a guy who just wanted to build up a big audience before he stopped posting pictures of dogs and started flooding the page with anti-Muslim propaganda. Another one was supposedly a feminism page but the mod had an axe to grind about trans issues and started posting nothing but articles on trans stuff, in between falsely accusing people of being TERFs so they could pick fights- and they banned a friend of mine who is perhaps the most woke, right-on person in the world. Another feminism page ended up being flooded with thinly-veiled adverts for things like expensive "Yoni Yoga" retreats and expensive natural remedies for wimmin's troubles, plus endless posts about fucking Mooncups.

I think there was also a problem with one of the Peep Show groups where two of the mods fell out over the name (or something equally trivial) and one of them then posted a load of abusive messages before closing the group out of spite.

How do these fun, light-hearted things end up turning so nasty? I think I'm going to have a bit of a clear-out. Maybe just stick with Dogspotting out of all the groups- that one does manage to stay fun and relevant...

wrong doggo group, I'm a Westie group member (I don't own a westie) and its all cuteness and light.

[Small Man Big Horse]

...How do these fun, light-hearted things end up turning so nasty? I think I'm going to have a bit of a clear-out. Maybe just stick with Dogspotting out of all the groups- that one does manage to stay fun and relevant...

Cool Dog Group is pretty great too - https://www.facebook.com/groups/cooldogpictures/ - they do have rules (and about six months ago when someone posted cat pics it got briefly twatty) but it mostly stays on topic and just includes cute or funny pics. Plus sometimes there's some fun photoshopping going on as well when someone asks the group to modify a pic.