Recently I went to Milan and remembered that I had a good friend there. I tried to reach out to him on Facebook and it turns out that he had deleted his account. I couldn't reach out to him again because I never knew his email, or really had much friends in common. It was pretty sad when I think about it.
I'm happy that with Facebook I can still keep in touch with most of my friends that I made around the world traveling. I end up meeting quite some friends that I haven't seen in decades when I travel.
I understand that some people are unhappy about the downsides of social networks, and Facebook in particular, but I wish more people would realize the upsides as well.
Agreed. Platforms like facebook are very easy to find and contact with old friends, but when people delete the account it becomes 10x tougher to find them again. I wish people improve their self control when it comes to using apps like instagram and facebook.
The same reason no one else on these platforms asks for backup contact details...
These platforms make everything so easy, so additively easy, and it's awkward and difficult to ask for methods of contact outside of the platform or even any other kinds of backups.
Almost as difficult as someone who's never used, and refuses to use these platforms.
Wechat/Line/Kakaotalk handle this without the damages of Facebook and the like. At least for KakaoTalk, it's not a "social network" in the same way your contacts list isn't one, but since everyone [in Korea] is on Kakaotalk it makes adding and maintaining friends easy. You don't have to worry about people deleting their accounts because there's nothing -to- delete an account over; it's just a chat app that everyone uses.
It would be nice if there were a similar app in the US with that kind of market share, instead of everything being scattered among various apps, etc.
The only real issue I felt with deleting my facebook was losing access to facebook groups. I was very close to making a burner account to participate in some groups, but I never ended up wanting it that -that- badly as meetup sufficed.
You seem to have a healthy relationship with FB. Issue is...FB is actively optimizing the experience to achieve an unhealthy relationship that is effectively an addiction. That’s the evil part.
As someone who clearly saw the shortcomings of facebook from the get go and as a consequence never bother to register, I wonder what are the upsides you mention.
Facebook is mostly a birthday reminder feature hidden in a glorified walled garden email, its whole point is vacuuming personal data and find ways to make as much profit as possible with it.
IMHO email is vastly superior to facebook as it is open and offers interoperability.
that's, why I ultimately decided to not delete it (as well as Instagram) - they'll keep their shadow profile anyway. Good idea about unfollowing most people though (some other post herr) - makes visiting it stupid unless to check if someone contacted you/contact someone.
I deleted everything I've posted and stopped logging in and just kept my shell profile as I figured they were keeping a shadow profile on me. I log in an check messages every few months or whenever I randomly remember. I have all notifications turned off because I found they were sending me fake sketchy random notifications to get me to log in more when I stopped logging in, so now I only log in when I choose to.
I'm happy that with Facebook I can still keep in touch with most of my friends that I made around the world traveling. I end up meeting quite some friends that I haven't seen in decades when I travel.
I understand that some people are unhappy about the downsides of social networks, and Facebook in particular, but I wish more people would realize the upsides as well.