[distances]

It's easy enough to block the feed in your browser. I've done exactly that with Facebook. I haven't deleted my FB account as I still get some random messages from old acquaintances that don't have my phone number, but I removed the feed with uBlock to make sure I'm not exposed to that.

[smt88]

FYI your Facebook profile and Messenger account seem to be decoupled now. I deleted my profile but still have a Messenger identity that people can message.

[reportgunner]

Are you sure you deleted it ?

The behavior you are describing reminds me of the behavior that happens after deactivating your account, not deleting it.

I deleted my facebook last year so maybe things have changed.

[smt88]

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I deleted it. You may be right.

My main goal was to harm Facebook's ad business, so I still accomplished that. As far as privacy, I've mostly given up on escaping from Facebook's databases.

[smhmd]

I did something similar lately. But it's hard to keep up with local news, now. I couldn't find a news aggregator for my country/province. Maybe, I need to build that myself.

[eddieroger]

I recently started reinvesting in RSS via reader that I can sync, and was pleased to remember that my local paper (a Gannett paper, which matters since they use the same engine on all their properties) supports several RSS feeds, from a site-wide news feed to counties or topics. It's been good enough for me to not push further, but I imagine my local TV news sites have similar feeds. This should scale up from county to city and state, I'd think.

[colek42]

I went through an "unfollowed" everyone in my feed except very close family and friends, the local farmers market, and my local newspaper. Facebook is actually useful now.

[bonoboTP]

Some people don't believe it when I say this, but when I unfollowed lots of people, after some time Facebook just automatically re-follows a few.

It has happened multiple times. I explicitly unfollow someone, never interact with them in any way, and then they again pop up in my feed after two weeks. Somehow if you follow too few people, Facebook just picks some more people for you to follow without ever asking you or telling you.

[downvoteme1]

What country would that be?

[cylinder]

I did that manually on Facebook exactly four years ago. Unfollowed everyone one by one so I have no feed. Now I rarely log in to FB at all and have forgotten about so many people I had no business remembering but only did because of the Facebook news feed.

[smt88]

Before I deleted my profile, I fixed my feed by unfollowing all pages and all news. I unfriended people who were not true friends.

My feed went back to being social rather than emotional manipulation or clickbait news. It was amazing.

Eventually the site lost its value for me because 75% of my real friends deleted their profiles, so it was an awkward/depressing ghosttown. I eventually deleted mine because of ethical qualms.

[CrazyStat]

During the 2016 election cycle I started unfollowing everyone who posted political stuff unless it was someone I was actually close with (immediate family and a handful of close friends) or I thought their posts were actually interesting or insightful. My Facebook has been much nicer since. I still have a feed but it's people I care about and people who post actually interesting stuff.