[stevetursi]

Hello, my name is Steve and I'm addicted to Facebook.

It has been 3 months since I deactivated my account.

Kidding aside (I'm not really kidding) In my last year using facebook, I was aware of all the privacy shenanigans, and I saw news articles every day about things like cambridge analytica. None of that mattered. But the thing that actually got me to deactivate my account was realizing that it was all performant. I couldn't keep myself from signaling in every post and comment I made - and I would recognize my own signaling and it drove me crazy. Conveniently, I started a new job in February and couldn't bear being distracted all the time by whatever nonsense was happening there.

Do I miss it? I miss seeing the posts by about 1% (literally) of my facebook friends. Every time something neat or interesting happens I think about posting it on facebook, but I don't. And I do think it has made a big difference at work.

[patrick5415]

I deleted my Facebook about 5 years ago but hung on to my Instagram. I was never very active, but about a year ago I noticed a similar trend to the behavior you describe: I’d post something and wait with bated breath to see how many likes it got. Didn’t like how that made me feel, so IG got deleted too.

[frosted-flakes]

I find that this behaviour happens to me everywhere, even on HN. Often, I'll spend ten minutes writing a comment, only to realise that I'm only replying because I want the attention, and that what I have to say really doesn't add anything to what's already there. That's when I end up backing out and erasing away what I wrote. (I almost did that now, but I decided to post anyway.)

And when I do end up posting, it's impossible for me to not check for replies or upvotes. I wish HN had a way to hide my karma score from the header.

[ma2rten]

I don't really have anything to add, but if you could give me an upvote that would be great.

[lowdose]

Welcome to HN!