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network effect

Yup. I quit everything but Reddit several years back without a second thought in all that time because I lived in a big metropolitan city.

Now I live in a small suburb where all the towns and businesses post to FB, neighbors have tradeposts and active interest groups on there, the schools and Police post info there too. My wife has connected to “friends” we otherwise wouldn’t exchange info with.

All that has had me wanting to create a new account - just to connect. I was completely ignorant to the role it plays outside of big cities beforehand. Nextdoor is a really crappy alternative.

I tried nextdoor but nobody was on it compared to the thousands in the local facebook group.

Nextdoor is the Boomer HOA of social media

The few people on ours are local real estate agents and severe weather alerts lol

Not missing much. It’s full of WASP-y pearl-clutchers.

Lucky that I’m a misanthrope so I don’t care about leaving communities and acquaintances behind.

That’s how I’m connecting with friends and family for the most part.

We are your friends now and we are your new family

That's unsettling

It is at first but you will soon get used to it

True, brother

Rockandstone.mkv

Cool can i borrow a few thousand dollars? Thanks

Sure! You first have to send me a comparatively small sum of 500$ so that I have your address and than I will send you 7000$ at a not specified moment in the relatively near future.

If that sounds shady, it's not, I'm a Persian prince and therefore not allowed to do scams. It's forbidden by law here in Persia.

<3 ily xxxooo

Everyone seems to make this excuse for using Meta like it's no possible without meta. They're a piece of shit company, we shouldn't be making excuses to stick around.

Come up with a reasonable replacement product, and do it through an ethical company, and people might switch. But you're not gonna convince people to give up the convenience they've relied on for a decade without a really good reason, and "this company is evil" is way too esoteric for most people.

Companies have forced everyone else out of what was previously a functioning non-commercial space. We have more choices than "evil company" vs "nothing"

Oh come on, that's like "all politicians lie". There is "I record every millisecond of your private life to sell to anybody with a fat enough wallet" evil and there is "I am raising prices this year because I can" evil. The two are not the same.

Facebook is the absolute worst of the worst though. They have proven time and time again that they will always be as anti-consumer as the law allows - and then some. It only takes a peek at their wikipedia page to see how true this is.

I can’t convince all my acquaintances in my group chats to switch platform.

They don’t got a goddamn phone to SMS with??????

Let me guess, you still use Twitter too

They don't have email?

It’s 2024. People don’t socialize over email anymore.

Social media has barely been around for 20 years, we kept in contact with those we wanted to just fine before it. But now with social media you're in contact with all of them all the time, even the ones you aren't particularly excited to see once a year on the holidays.

But... But... Marketplace something something

I actually tried to use marketplace a few weeks ago. It was an unmitigated disaster. People either didn't respond, had stale posts for items, or couldn't get their act together to have a conversation (even with 12 hours between messages) about how to get shit out of their house. I have never yearned for old-fashioned yard sales so much.

I've used Marketplace many times without issue.

Yes because none of them have a goddamn phone number, can’t talk to em unless you have a facebook account!!!

Jesus fucking Christ what a bunch of bullshit

Half of that is why I ditched it in the first place

There are dozens of us that don't have a FB account!

I created a new one just to use the marketplace. I don't post or read anything else.

Mine dates to '09. It's been dead since '14. I only keep it around to use Marketplace since Craigslist is basically dead.

The only reason I keep my fb is so my mum can send me things she finds funny online.

Also reddit - why still keep using reddit

Niche interests and/or local stuff. My city has basically no activity over here, so I still browse the local subreddit regularly.

Way, way more content. Lemmy isn't even close.

Must. Consume. Content. 🤖

I mean that's why you're here too. Lemmy would be all I needed if all I cared about was Linux and Star Trek memes. But lets say I want a live thread with hundreds of people all watching the same sporting event I am and chatting about it, I'm going to need to go somewhere else.

Besides from the Turkish shooter meme, there was barely any engagement in the Olympics here. Our interests here are so niche not even the largest sporting event in the world can get our attention.

But at what price!

Soon this will be a literal question with the paid subs and all coming

Reddit has communities without active alternatives here 🤷

I have switched to using a WPA version with Adblock

Yeah, it's always surprised me a little bit just how strong they still are. While the often-online do tend to shy away from it, it's actually still a preferred platform for the less-online, due to how easy it makes coordinating real life events. Also not the sort of segment that usually cares much about data privacy.

I have up FaceFuck after Brexit and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

They brainwashed people into voting against their own interests by "Targeted Advertising" which is basically brain washing.

Of course nothing came of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and I can't do anything about that as a Plebian, so I just left.

I left Reddit when they took my favourite app. I used it to Doomscroll and that wasn't great for my mental health, so it was a no-brainer

So Lemmy and only Lemmy for me. I got over my addiction to social media by taking up the Rubik's Cube.

I'm currently working on getting an average solve under 30 seconds...

So if you use your social media time to do something productive instead, you can do some crazy shit

The only reason I go to Reddit anymore are the credible defense megathreads. It is the last subreddit that has not been taken over by partisan botfarms pushing an agenda.

I'm into home automation and self hosting services and the only time I go to Reddit is when a Google search of something I'm researching takes me there.

I don't log in (which sometimes fucks me, weed subreddits for example need a sign in for ages verification) so if I have to log in I just nope out, and I will actively try to not use Reddit if I can help it.

Been using f2l and can't even get under 1 min. How do you do it?

Honestly the short answer is practice.

Long answer is also practice, but with information lol.

I spent a long time moving from 2 look to 1 look (oll and pll) using this website https://jperm.net/algs/pllI've linked the PLL but there's OLL there too.

On this page I learned as many of these as I could. You can click on the picture and change the status from unlearned to learning to learned, then go to the trainer and you can select those 3 statuses and it will show only things you've selected. You can also click on the alg to get alternatives or even put your own alg in.

So I've gone to that page and set an alg as training, then just practiced that one alg until I have it in muscle memory. I aimed at trying to get each type of alg learned, so corners are there, or middles need moving, or headlights are there, or even that there is no pattern.

I was advised to learn PLL first then OLL algorithms, but I kinda picked out the patterns I see most in both, or algs that seemed the simplest first. So I have been learning both together and working from easiest to remember to hardest, and also making my own up for the ones that are most complicated.

This meant that I could practice a few, then go and do solves and when the patterns I knew came up I'd get faster solves for those patterns.

Ok so that's the big time saving out of the way, takes a lot to learn all the algorithms so it'll take time. But there's also taking time to plan your cross. That can save you a good chunk because there's less head scratching when you start.

Then there's the look ahead, which I'm only just getting. I did a lot of slow solves to get this in my brain and it's quite big. This is what I'm practicing to get from my 40second average down to 25

So as you're solving a corner and edge into the corner, once you have it set up into a 3 move insert, you don't need to look at it anymore. It's 3 loves to insert, so instead of looking at it as you put it in, you have to train yourself to look for the next 2 pieces you're putting together.

While your learning the OLL and PLL and just doing solves (not training algs), when you get one you don't know, try and alg you do know on it. Sometimes this changes your top pattern to an easier pattern that you can solve. It's like a stopgap 2 look (pll or oll). Eventually as you learn all the algs you'll find that you can "wing it" with some of the harder algorithms by just doing a couple of easier ones, which is all the harder ones are anyway, a couple of easier algs with a connecting move in the middle.

Hope all that helps. I'd also advise you have a "travel cube."

I have an extra cube that lives in the pocket of my leather jacket (yes I'm a metal-head Dad, doesn't quite fit the stereotype does it?) and it comes in useful when I'm stuck in a queue, or at the Dr waiting room or A and E (or emergency care as it's called in the US). This allows me to cube instead of whipping my phone out when I have time to kill out of the house.

Yeah my travel cube is a really cheap one as I don't want to get it dirty.

I got 2 expensive (over £30) ones and the worst one became my travel cube. My cheap but decent cube is my work cube. Work in a factory so I have to not give a single fuck about it.

Thing is, now it's just sat in my pocket at work for 6 months it's actually pretty decent. When I bought it and tried to make it decent I couldn't. It's like the grease and silicone has made it a half decent cube

I can’t use meta out of self respect

I don't integrate it with anything else, but facebook remains my best option for getting current contact info for anybody from my past. Even after the enshittification, it remains an effective Rolodex. Rolodex...I am old.

You'd be surprised how much you're integrating it with everything else. Facebook has installed trackers on most major websites, and without the right tools blocking it, they are essentially following you everywhere.

that happens regardless of whether you have an account.

Fair point, but I still need a quick way to tell people about upcoming funerals. On the plus side, I'm between the wave of friends' baby photos and the wave of grandbaby photos. Which is nice.

And yet your life would be almost literally no different if you didn't speak to a single one of them again after dropping the charade of cordiality and reminiscing.

You clearly haven't met all of my friends.

Sure I haven't, Bob.

Hahaha! It was a good bet on my part.

Never used any bar Reddit, then binned that for Lemmy.

Same. Lemmy is the only social media I use as well after I dumped reddit.

Obligatory: fuck Spez.

Last I checked Facebook had the most active users it ever had. I don't like Facebook either, but it's also sad so many people here live in such a bubble that they think they're part of some big movement of people ditching Facebook.

I don't think anything of the sort. I found that I didn't enjoy my time on the platform so I don't use it anymore. That simple evaluation had more to do with my decision to stop using it than any moral issues I could cite, of which there are many.

I don't think anyone here uses Facebook for fun.

For staying up to date on my local shops and events, Facebook is just the easiest and more reliable option.

Not sure we should be shaming people about what social media they use lol

We should and I will.

we absolutely should. facebook is fucking evil, and getting everything to move off it, damaging the network effect, is important for creating a more free and open information ecosystem.

You realize you’re shaming people on Lemmy, the people who clearly already support a more privacy centric and less profit-driven approach to social media.

We don’t live in a Utopia where all 7 billion people have already followed suit, and shaming won’t help. Providing a welcoming community will.

in general. plenty of reasons you might be here, could just be reddit got unusable.

Reddit

Bingo

yep. I know if it wasn't unusable trash I might not have come over to lemmy.

Name social media platform that isn't "evil"

lemmy isn't too evil. on purpose. mostly.

certainly less vile than facebook. "no political system is perfect so im'a just exterminate the jews and revere the fuhrer" is not a good look

and if that sounds like hyperbole, remember how many of your young-male and elderly relatives were radicalized by that social media platform, which has been critical or complicit in multiple genocides, finished and ongoing.

You like getting personality-tracked and getting psychological experimentation done on you without your consent?

lol what a silly statement.

I like being up to date on what my city councillors are doing, events my local cafes host, local art exhibits, etc. Things that have tangible benefits to my community.

If you can convince them all to share that content on Mastodon be my guest :)

Right. You have all the content there but fitted with more horrible tracking mechanism. Choose between it.

As a more practical answer, use your facebook as a webpage(Don't use app on phone) on some pretty privacy friendly web browser. Or maybe there are bots which scrapes the content and gives it to you

I'd rather be a loner than go back to that shitbook.

At least it's not X/Twitter

Yea, nah. Say what you want about X, but Meta is in a whole other league than X. In my communities it's monopolising to a large degree:

  • finding housemates/sharehouses,
  • buying/selling second-hand goods online,
  • info on events,
  • news-updates for community groups, and even
  • shift swaps at work

amongs others. All essential services that Meta took over one by one.

X on the other hand is just a micro-blogging platform.

That thread is hardly accurate. Lemmy acts holier-than-thou about social media, so most people that do use Twitter or Facebook didn't post because they'd be shit on or have memes created about how they use social media owned by evil robots.

Well craigslist in my area is kinda dead so Facebook market place is the only place to do local buying and selling. It also acts as a lowest common denominator, I find someone on facebook send a few messages until we agree on some other social media to continue communicating on. Then My family uses What's app and has done since before they were acquired by meta. Getting them to switch is something I push for, but I'm not holding my breath.

There’s also Nextdoor, but fuck that noise with all the nimby and boomers on that platform “omg I saw a weird guy that was…. walking! Should I call the police?”

Edit: I typed “doomers” and it autocorrected to “boomers”, I’m leaving it

Still waiting for good alternatives.

No you aren’t. There are so many networks and apps far better than fb, you just would rather not switch. Quit the excuses

The main problem is always "nobody else that I care about uses/will use the alternative", so it's a dead end

Uh, yes i am?

Please show me the app that local drift events get posted to.
...that local cycling events get posted to.
...that the local buy/sell market gets posted to.

That's what i use fb for.

Also, go fuck yourself. Don't be an ass with me just because you're butthurt people use a social media you don't like.

Cancer? Eating feces? Stabbing forks in your own eyes?

There's loads of alternatives!

No? Quit being an ass.

… I'm just joking, I didn't attack anyone, only a multi-billion tech conglomerate. I don't understand howi can possibly be an ass here.

"ItS juSt A JOkE"

If you're ever a parent, and you have one or more kids in school, and they engage in extracurricular activities - you'll be surprised how many amateur sports clubs and similar places communicate predominantly or even exclusively through Facebook.

#childfree

I don't actively use it, but I don't see the point in deleting my account? My HOA is only on a Facebook group, so it's the only place I can go to check for updates on some stuff (typically trash day getting moved, neighborhood pool stuff, etc). That's the only use. My understanding is that Facebook tracks me even without an account so doesn't really seem like I'm gaining anything other than good feelings by deleting my account.

It's not like I've gone out of my way to delete my old Myspace or xanga accounts either, I just stop using them.

Yeah, there's more than a handful of things that are only on Facebook that I'm not going to give the effort of trying to get people to move to something else. Even the kids school pages.

Facebook has a monopoly in many areas and they know it.

I use it for marketplace that's all. Fake name, no friends.

The largesr draw about a social media is who's on it. I can't tell you how many invites to things I miss for not being on social media. Anyone outside of my immediate friend group simply makes plans on Facebook and goes through their friends list to invite people and wont remember some one they maybe see every other month especially among the dozens of names they already looked through to invite. Some peopel are fine sacrificing social life for some small protest that has no effect on Facebook's MAUs and profit, and other's would rather not isolate for a fight they can't win.

Might be depending where you live. I never had issues finding all the parties and having a large network of friends without Meta apps.

I was born before computers were really a thing though, so maybe that has an effect on this. Now I don't even realize without reading these threads that I miss something. Life is just fine without…

Haven’t had Facebook in at least 5 years, probably more. I had a Reddit account for 13 years, but got banned for saying I wished MTG would trip and swallow her own head. They said I was inciting violence. Fuck Reddit. I had an Instagram account for a while and I posted joke pictures of random everyday objects with lots of filters. After insta became a super battery drain spy box app, I deleted app and account and never looked back. Never got into twitter, certainly wont now. Lenny seems to be one of the few platforms that isn’t totally ruined by shitty people and companies.

Haha, I got banned from leddit for talking shit about spez during the api outrage days. Not even anything violent, but got the perma for harassment.

Good riddance, enjoy the paid subs morons

Lost an 11 year account on the other site for reporting a thread where some 'frienworld' style fashi bois were planning a hit and run at a protest the next week.

20 mins later my account was permabanned for 'ban evasion' despite that being my only reddit account ever.

Tbh Lenmy has a lot of old users. Not a horrible thing but there are parts of Reddit I miss within my age group.

yeah but those are mostly gone or otherwise unusable now, one way or the other. that's kind of the problem.

edit: I wish I could help. there are reddit communities I miss too, but reddit killed them, and they haven't popped back up anywhere.

I'm a hobbyist photographer. Facebook and Instagram are my main outlets to show off my work right now. While (fortunately) my livelihood doesn't depend on that hobby, I'd still rather have the online presence.

in my defense, there's like 3 businesses and a few charities that I can only reach through facebook

I've spent nearly 2 decades connecting with friends, family, coworkers, and associates through Facebook. I hate Facebook, and actually use F.B. Purity to remove 90% of the content, ads, promotional junk, games, marketplace, etc. from it. But as the main way I've stayed in touch with people I've known over the course of my life, I just can't dump it.

Besides that, I have Lemmy (of course); LinkedIn, which I'm not really using anymore since I retired young; Imgur, which I mostly just use for browsing memes; and Discord, which I only use to communicate with a few close friends whom I game with weekly.

I created accounts for Instagram and Whatsapp, but I've never used them. They were too self-promoting for my taste. When they first became a thing, they were all about taking selfies and sharing your face with your friends. I wanted discussion and interesting content, not to see selfies. They created the generation of "social media influencers" who think they're entitled to things in life because X number of people follow them on social media.

I also avoid TikTok like the plague. I was in the US military (working as an IT guy) when TikTok became popular, and we discovered it embedded itself in your phone so deeply, you couldn't fully remove it even when uninstalling. Plus, it gave itself full admin rights to your phone, then started trickling your data to Chinese servers. Which is why the president made such a big deal about TikTok being a national security threat. It's not because we didn't get along with a Chinese company; it's because a foreign government was collecting personal data and building profiles on American citizens. I will never touch that program as long as I live.

I'm 40 years old, by the way. A lot of people say Facebook is only used by old people, and yes, I just turned 40 and am finally becoming an "old person." But I'm still relatively young compared to people's expectations of Facebook users. And I have a lot of Facebook friends who are much younger than I am.

Samesies. Geocities and MySpace were a good time. I now only keep the FartBook because of business not pleasure

I hate the fact that I use meta but I hate musky boi more so that’s how I justify it

Holy false equivalence batman.

I still use Fb because of the groups/pages there.

There are mentorship and professional groups there that aren’t available elsewhere.

Plus, the local groups for my town/state provide crucial information about weather, taxes, traffic, river safety, etc. In general, it’s a good source of knowledge.

I hate that I’m giving up privacy, but there are also no other social media networks that can compete. I can’t message/Signal my closest 5,000 neighbors to find out which local/free berry patch is ready for picking. But, there’s a fb group for that.

There meme pages can be really good if you find the ones that don't have a racist fuckwaffle in charge

This is the exact same bs people spew to defend staying on Twitter.

Anyone else only use Facebook for FB dating and FB marketplace?

The only thing keeping me on Facebook these days is marketplace. If that wasn’t the main thing people in my city use to post used items I would have deleted it ages ago.

Yeah kinda hard to get around that

It’s actually EXTREMELY easy to get around that, so many fucking apps and communities for selling things locally.

If you’re still using fb software stop lying to the rest of us, you simply don’t care about how evil the company is.

Absolutely bs to continue giving meta interactions (and thus money) just because a perceived majority use it in your area.

It’s the same goddamn bullshit as “all the people I like post on Twitter so I couldn’t possibly stop using it!!!”. Get a fucking grip on your morales.

You're not wrong. The inertia people have towards this stuff is unbelievable sometimes. You will be fine without marketplace. You'll survive if you don't see fresh content on Reddit every second of your life. People act like FAANG is fucking Kuato growing out of their abdomen, inseparable but through pain of death.

Life existed long before this exploitative shit.

I mean, yes. But fbk marketplace is the quickest and safest way for me to get some local random to come pick up a bird bath I don't want.

I get your point but you have to convince ALL the people selling stuff in marketplace to post it anywhere else that isn't meta. There is literally no other app or community online in my local area. It is not a "perceived majority" it IS the majority.

Well, I tried.

I refused to use messenger for about 6years and I tried to bring people to signal (at least ~most of my family still uses it), but after changing environment and essentially doing a semi-fresh start, I realized I had to give up some (much) privacy to have any social life.

I'd really like not to have such a dilemma, but I dont think I would go very far with ~zero social life (would probably have strong depression, no friends and possibly many other issues).🥲 Fb is ~forcing it to us.

At least while I might have lost some privacy, I help others gain privacy (I help them use/find open source, privacy respecting alternatives to various programs).

Also, Signal really didnt help me convince people use it by requesting a phone number... Its hard to convince people that dont care much about privacy and want ease of access to give their phone number to an unknown app (I know it's not that big of a deal, but they dont know what I know and dont care much even if I explain it to them).

PS. I'm still not making an insta account tho😅

I use beeper to connect to messenger, it works well. At least I don't have to use their app

Hm, that might be a good alternative, but I dont think I'll trust any non-opensource front end and end up sharing my date with more people (though I see it has fewer trackers than messenger and they appear to care about privacy, so hmm).

(Also, I have long and of sentimental value chats there and I wouldnt want to get banned for using any 3rd party client. I know they probably dont care and apps usually hide it, but ugh.. (this is a bit conflicting to the fact that I have an exposed module that turns off ads in messenger and I use an open source front end app for fb, lol.))

Can't be worse than meta. You can host your own beeper relays.

I keep Facebook around specifically because that’s how I know what is going on in my area, both with news, and events

Bands I play in, venues I go to and shows they announce are widely published on Facebook. I tried to stay off but it persists.

Haven’t used Facebook in probably a decade, but as a photographer Instagram is still the most active platform I’ve tried. Vero is weird. PixelFed is pretty empty, mostly people’s snapshots. Others either cost money or aren’t really good on mobile.

How about cara.app or is this more like art and not photos?

That is what I’ve heard. Like digital painting and stuff.

Normal people have friends and family and would like to use social media to stay in touch with them. There are network effects that make it practically impossible to switch. This is not something that can be done with the power of love and well informed agent in the marketplace.

One solution would be to nationalize facebook and other social media and turn them into public utility coops that are run democratically by giving the workers that work there a vote for who and how they should be managed. And give the users a vote.

Everything else is just fantasy. Facebook is forever. You'd need many billions in marketing and advertising to get enough people to switch. And then it will be the same shit.

Unless of course Elon Musk buys facebook, then it will be trash in less than a year.

Those same people have phones which have phone numbers and unlimited amount of apps that provide the exact same ability.

There are network effects that make it practically impossible to switch.

Stop making excuses for your lack of morals. If they truly cared about you they wouldn’t mind texting your phone number or using another app.

Let me guess, you continue to use Twitter too

No I don't use facebook or twitter. But it's more for personal disgust than for morals. Nothing you or I or ten thousand lemmings do or not do will change the rising domination of social media on our civilization. Same as our individual choices won't impact climate change. It's the same illusion that only serves to prevent actual action against a serious threat. Not even thinking or talking about possible solutions. Corporate control of the means of communication is amoral, and accepting it is problematic.

Maybe I'm wrong and network effects can be overcome through a well crafted alternative like mastadon. But capital translates into power for marketing, development, articles and regulation or even legislation.

Normal people have friends and family and would like to use social media to stay in touch with them.

Normal people stay in touch with their loved ones even if they are not on the same platform. You do not need everyday group chat noise for that.

Ah normal people. My apologies

It has all the local groups and my friends and family. I like to see what's happening locally and with my friends and family.

Don't people use it mainly as a calendar? You can see events near you and get alerts to those you've signed up for. There are alternatives of course but I feel a lot firms and people publicize their event through Facebook.

Well most of the people I know are on there as well as on Whatsapp so there isn't really a choice unfortunately.

Only for marketplace. Haven't posted anything in years, and before that never anything meaningful.

Sadly Facebook groups superseded many hobby forums.

Some have moved to discord which is only marginally better.

If someone would make a platform that made it easy to move FB groups to a more open platform they’d be a billionaire

The iisue is having people use the platform. On Lemmy we are getting there :). Also I've seen some niche communities using forums still.

Facebook marketplace is the only reason I still have a Facebook account.

Facebook in my country is where you go to find the best deals on secondhand shit. i got a backpackers tent worth ove £100 from someone on FB marketplace for £15

No excuses, I use FB. I’ve turned my feed into mostly hobby and other interest groups so that it’s more like reddit or the Fediverse. I viciously “x” any ads I see as soon as they show up. Seems it takes a bit for FB to look at my account and try to tailor me some ads so I get a week give or take of ad-free fb. It’s actually a useful social media if you force it to conform to what you want and make it hard for FB to abuse you.

Tried Threads, don’t like the format, and the comments and questions are every bit as stupid as FB reels or YT shorts. Insta sucks.

i just use irc lol

Bring back NNTP dammit

I have a bare bones FB profile for neighborhood info (were those gunshots?), school stuff, local businesses, etc.

Dang. Friend, I think you need a new neighborhood.

Spoiler alert: it's never gunshots

In comparison to things like Twitter and Reddit, Facebook has actually been the most difficult to completely abandon because of Messenger. All my friends use it, and an attempt at switching everyone to Signal didn't manage to stick. I would delete my Facebook account right now if it were possible to separate the two services.

Facebook is for boomers resistant to change. Or the tech-illiterate.

The two reasons I'm still on Facebook are 1 my parents are on their, 2 to keep and eye on what bands are on locally at the pub

It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I do use it because that's where people are. You can't really not do Facebook at all. You can't talk to people on Messenger, you can't sell stuff on Marketplace, you can't get invited to events...

You can't really not do Facebook at all.

I haven't even had a Facebook account in like a decade...

About 12 years for me without any Meta accounts. I talk with my mom using Signal, and have a very active group chat with friends on Signal too. A dozen of Matrix channels for nerd stuff, Akkoma and Lemmy for social feeds, the orange site and Lobsters for work, LWN and Phoronix for hobbies.

Enough for one day with these...

Yup. Between Lemmy, Mastodon, and good ol' RSS I have more than enough sources of mindless scrolling that don't slurp up all my personal info.

In many places WhatsApp is the defacto standard unfortunately.....

If its not that its something like Viber, or badoo or telegram or some other nightmare service...

If you have kids there is also not really getting away from it. Friends of mine have never had Facebook accounts until they had kids because the local football team or boyscout or whatever only uses Facebook to communicate...

I agree you can live your life comfortably without meta services, but sometimes, like in the example above, you dont have any alternatives....

You can't keep harassing other parents to forward you messages or ask the team to print any messages specifically for you. Not having a Facebook account just gets "its easy to create" responses rather than "completely understandable, here's our private matrix server to stay in the loop".

I still have mine (need it occasionally for work, I’m tied to the work account) but I deleted the app from my phone several years ago and not having it there has really helped me not check it. I never check it. Every once in a while I’ll log in to do something for work, see that three parents from my kids’ school sent me a friend request, accept those, and then split. I’m not sure why I bother; guess I don’t want them to feel shunned but it’s not like they’ll reach me there.

That's why I just deleted it. I wasn't checking it ever, and people would be like "Hey, are you coming to the thing tonight?"

Now they just reach out to invite me instead.

yah, same. ignorance is bliss; I do not care what is going on at faceplace.

What a bizarre thing to say, nobody has heard of Facebook in the last nine years until this very comment.

I use kijiji, even with the dwindled userbase compared to marketplace, signal instead of messenger, and I wasn't going to events anyway, so I'm set without facebook

I think that depends a lot on country or region. Brazil pretty much abandoned FB, but went all in on Instagram instead. For used stuff, people are likely to post on Olx and maybe send a message on whatever whatsapp groups they're in. I haven't seen a single person around here suggesting "post it on FB marketplace" for selling used stuff

“everyone uses it”

can you actually prove that (doubt it) or is this just a perceived thing?

Messenger and marketplace? Seriously?? You can’t manage to find a single alternative? Come on now. There are so many good alternatives for local, you just don’t care to look and try.

you can't get invited to events...

Are you fucking kidding me?? Oh no I can’t get invited to an event unless someone invites me specifically on Facebook and I click the button saying I’m going!!!!

Give me a goddamn break.

You know what happens when I stop visiting Facebook? I don't learn anything about extended family because they don't give a shit about me.

You know what happens when you sell not on Marketplace here? You get like 10 clicks a month and you don't sell.

You know what happens when you message people not on Messenger? You're the annoying person on the hipster app/sending text messages to a phone number and people don't talk to you unless talked to first.

Also, good for you if you're a significant enough friend to be invited personally, but no one invites me anywhere unless I show up in a list of people to invite.

I realize my comment was a bit too generalizing but holy shit dude calm down

There are a ton of people who got on reddit and never got on anything else. I like to stay in contact with some of them.

I think it's a good sign - people are on here because they like it, not just because they are free software fanatics.

If nobody here had any Meta accounts I would be more worried, as it would mean we're completely detached from whatever normal people are up to.

I have old friends from Livejournal and that's how we stay in touch. I use a lot of the fediverse platforms, Lemmy, Catodon, Pixelfed, and I also use Bluesky and Maven.

I just got on Lemm and my reason fro staying on FB is for family friends, and advertising.

I mean, I mentioned that my experience with Pixelfed has not been the best, since it lacks content and discoverability. I wouldn't sign up again to Instagram (I deleted my accounts years ago), but it's obvious that it has orders of magnitude more content, and maybe the recommendation algorithm can be useful sometimes.

Personally, even if I don't want to, I have to use WhatsApp since everyone in my country uses it, even government offices.

I don't use Facebook or Instagram or Reddit or twitter/X if

If you want to connect come find me where I am, if I want to connect with you it'll be over WhatsApp or signal.

Remind me, who owns WhatsApp?

I know, I don't have much option in that

I only still have fb for 2 reasons.

Work contacts.

And FB Marketplace.

I never use it. Never browse it. Never post.or comment. Don't even scroll it.

I keep FB as a cloud contact list, nothing more

Facebook is for my family. LinkedIn is for work. Lemmy is for me. That's all my social media.

Well, using FB since something like 2008, but for years now it's only for groups, like retro toys group, spotted group, neighbour group, camping group, moped group, etc.

I don't have friends anymore who post stuff like their dishes or things like this, nor do I post. The feed is basically ads and far-right conspiracy nowadays,

I'm using Marketplace a lot too, this is the shit here, everyone is using it.

I don't know anyone under 65 that uses FB unless it's their only contact method for a friend / family member.

I use insta a little bit, but I vanced it and that makes it a whole lot better ngl.

Facebook Purity plugin for firefox is a must.

I haven't had a Facebook since like 2017. The only thing from Meta I use is an anonymous Instagram page I use to follow a few different famous people/bands, but I never post anything there. It keeps trying to get me join Threads lol

I have an account on facebook, the last time i tried to use facebook to reply to all my friends that sent me a happy birthday, and was warned by my wife of the messeges on the platform, i was bombarded if i wanted to use it, i had to agree to see publicity and data collection, or pay subscription to use it, so i backtraced the login and never went back. From Meta i only use Whatsapp, work mandated related stuff.

For me, all the federated alternatives, serve me well.

I mean, whatsapp is a meta platform so really no surprise at all.

I'm not saying there could be a grey market on Meta, but I'm also not not dismissing it's existence.

Lemmy mostly.
Mastodon, but it's pretty barren there so I've mostly given up on microblogging
Pixelfed, but rarely use it for the same reason.

I'll use Facebook marketplace to sell shit. I have an account on pretty much everything but I don't use it anymore unless someone sends me a link to something.

I mostly just use IM chat apps with my friends

People use Facebook for Messenger. Others got used to group chat via this app.

I had to create a random account after years to be be updated with uni group chat news. Otherwise I would feel like an outcast.

Who gives a shit what other people use?

I mean, I do. That's why I asked. Curiosity.

Respect

Indeed

I don't use any other social media sites. I don't even have accounts to them.

Being edgy just isn't a concern for most people

Is not wanting to have a Facebook account considered edgy now? Jesus how far we've fallen.

Cue Sarah Maclachlan 🤣