[harimau777]

I'm not sure its necessarily that simple. For example, because of the job market for software engineers I have moved to new cities multiple times during my adult life. As a result, my social network is highly fragmented and without Facebook it would be incredibly difficult for me to manage.

So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

I don't say this to necessarily mean that you are completely wrong, just to point out that opting out of these companies can be more complicated than it may initially appear.

[drnick1]

> So for me "stop using Facebook" sound similar to saying "burn all of your family photos and throw away your ability to talk to many of the people who are important to you."

You just aren't looking for obvious alternatives that would still allow you to do all that privately. Keep your family photos offline on your own hardware. Create a contacts list on your phone (ideally de-Appled and de-Googled) and text people on Signal and/or create group chats. Tell people you are leaving Facebook because it is an evil surveillance machine, and that you can be reached on Signal, email (self-hosted) or phone.

[torben-friis]

Where are you that Facebook (the network, not meta as a company) is still minimally relevant ? I haven’t logged in in about a decade.

[BoneShard]

Facebook (if you don't use newsfeed) is a very useful product.

Local events - check

Local groups - check

Small time music bands/artist/performances/etc - check

Buy nothing groups where I can get rid of something I don't use - check

Groups for mom with kids to get organized for some kids event - check

A library having a read together event for a kids book author - check

I'm happy I don't have to use FB, but my wife uses it all the time, she just avoids newsfeeds and all the click/rage bait parts.

[torben-friis]

Is that in the US?

I’m genuinely asking, it wasn’t rethorical - none of that exists in my corner of Europe anymore. Businesses, indie stuff and local stores use instagram, groups are WhatsApp, second hand stuff has its own app.. facebook seems to be just the >60 year old crowd.

[drnick1]

Guess what, Instagram and Whatsapp belong to Facebook (Meta).

[torben-friis]

No shit. That’s why I literally made the distinction in the first post.

Meta as a company is obviously currently relevant, it’s Facebook as a social network still being used what’s surprising to me.

Here they’re almost in the same category as MySpace, something you mention in passing talking about the past.

[epolanski]

I'm polish/Italian and Facebook is the major source of local events information in both countries.

[gtowey]

People before Facebook found themselves in exactly the same situation as you and managed to survive.

People have become dependant on the convenience of these tools and become, for lack of a gentler word, lazy. Moreover we have this current sense of entitlement -- that all of these details of modern living should be done for us. Having our social circles organized and maintained for us, having infinite entertainment a button press away, food delivered to our door on a whim, cars to take us anywhere always minutes away.

People survived just fine before these conveniences, it just too a bit more effort. You could collect your friends contact information, keep an address book, call them up from time to time. It's not perfect, but it works and starts to break the silicon valley tech giant dependence.

Personally I find adding friction to these processes has actual value. When you slow down and have to put a bit more effort in, it helps you to evaluate what is important, and what truly matters. You prioritize, you make tradoffs. The process IS the richness in life. We all don't need to be jet setting globetrotters to whom paris might as well be New York or london or munich, while robots manage our social lives. There is no substitute for actively working to build a community where you are. You have to put the effort in, and in a single generation we have lost so much of it. But we can get back there again if we try.

[epolanski]

Nonsense, those aren't real relationships if you don't have numbers to each other and the relationships die with you deleting an account.

I've deleted all of my socials but LinkedIn in 2019 and I haven't missed anything at all.