Welcome! This is a community for all those who are interested in protecting their privacy.
PS: Don't be a smartass and try to game the system, we'll know if you're breaking the rules when we see it!
Back in 2021, major advertisers pulled their money off the platform, and even that barely stopped the money machine from printing infinite cash. User boycotts come and go and in most cases have very little lasting impact, largely due to the sheer size and monopolistic grasp on its audience that Meta has
Maybe everyone should just delete their accounts and move on?
Seems pretty simple to me. I did it all the way back in 2015 and I'm just fine.
I deleted my Facebook account once, then went back. All my stuff was still there. You can try all you want, they have it, and your data is more valuable to them than regulatory compliance can ever touch. Your data is out there, and it will never be deleted.
The only way damage you could possibly do would be to download your own copy of your profile data. Then (and this would only work en masse), place it under something like a creative commons license. This might seem counterintuitive, but facebook is selling your data. This way, they lose the profit of selling it in addition to any advantage they would have from hosting it.
I very much doubt that makes literally even the smallest difference. The problem is that Facebook isn't selling your data--as in, not specifically yours. They sell everyone's data. And the companies which buy that data aren't going out and looking for anyone who's licenced their data under whatever license, either. They buy a gigantic pile of data from Facebook and whatever parts of it are yours are gonna be in there either way.
Obviously they're not really going to delete it
The point being they won't get any more data to make money off of
That's not going to stop them. Facebook builds profiles on people regardless of if they signed up or not. Just like any other online ad company, collecting 'analytics' about users even anonymous ones
Even if you're not blocking all the external trackers, not giving the engagement and data on Facebook's sites themselves still matters.
I did for good after the tiktok ban. It's difficult as someone who moved to a different state than most of my friends and family but they have my phone number if they really want to talk.
That was my favorite part about quitting Facebook
Removing the people who aren't actually in my life
If they're actually in my life, we can call or text
One of the best things I have done. I don’t even miss it and the thought of going back is sickening in a way.
I often forget it even exists until it's in the news or a family member texts me a link to something on Facebook
I have had to tell people in my life multiple times that send me reels through text that I can't watch them.
I don't really know how to talk about this, but when I broke up with my partner, it was very painful. I didn't want to block her on Facebook, so I stopped using Facebook gradually, and haven't now for years.
And I think I really did lose a lot of friends and social connection. I'm basically a loner now, years later, but I didn't used to be.
I'm not very good at staying in touch with friends; remembering birthdays, reaching out, organizing hangouts, and stuff like that. Facebook helped me with all of that. And when I took it out of my life, something is missing now.
Step 1: Stop using facebook?
Step 2: block all Meta sites (Facebook Container for Firefox works well if you occasionally want to see Meta content)
I really fucking don't.
Last time I was on Facebook I had added a relative of my dead best friend/roommate because she'd been over a lot working with his dog (which was a purebred that she had given him and was going to take back cause I couldn't keep him) and we got along pretty well. After a few months of just the worst kind of low-effort, disinformation-laden culture-war conspiracy-theory meme bullshit ('zomg liberals literally eat babies!' and shit like using literal Nazi propaganda posters to refer to liberals) and me getting ever more frustrated trying to put good information alongside bad, I finally gave up. I was barely holding on to Facebook to talk to a couple people, but then I realized I had fb messenger and didn't need facebook for that shit anymore.
My SO sends me funny clips from Instagram periodically, so blocking it entirely just means killing that part of our relationship. I don't have an Instagram account, but I do watch those clips in a container where Meta can't connect that to other websites w/ their tracking pixel (which are blocked outside the Facebook container).
I've never had an instagram account, and I can still watch videos and such that others post.
Same. But if I blocked all meta sites, I wouldn't. That's why I stick it in a Firefox multi-account container, so meta can't associate that with anything else I do online (i.e. tracking pixels on other sites). Still don't have an account, I just use it to isolate their cookies and whatnot.
If only it was that simple
"Everyone" wants to quit Facebook, but refuse to because that's where they find "everyone". But honestly, everyone has email and SMS as well. I have even seen a huge spike in signal users in my address list in the last weeks. I can now reach most of my friends and family on signal, where I only had ~3 friends on signal a few years ago. I might have contributed to that in my circles.
Be the change! Tell people that you're not on facebook anymore, and that they can reach you on signal. They don't want to use signal? Okay, use texts or call then.
Edit: Oh and yes, I also have kids with activities, a job, board positions etc. This complicated thingsa little bit, but not that big of a deal.
The problem with facebook is also that it tracks you around the web even when you don't have an account or even access its web page. Other users mentioned Facebook container as a good plugin but even installing an add-on is sometimes too"complicated" or simply too much effort for the average user.
Oh absolutely. We need stricter regulations and probably break some monopolies, but I suppose we're stuck for a few years as Zuckerberg is zucking up to Trump.
"They would probably not want me to tell you that you can change your settings so that Facebook and Instagram cannot profit as much from your data anymore,” Oliver said, before directing viewers to a guide set up in collaboration with the Electronic Frontier Foundation on how to prevent Meta from tracking you. “If you’d be interested in a step-by-step guide on how to do that, simply visit johnoliverwantsyourraterotica.com.”
Noticed the other day that Zuckerberg was in my Mastodon feed. First I thought it was a parody account, but after staring at the profile for a while, it started to look like @zuck@threads.net might actually be the bastard himself.
So any Mastodon users might want to consider blocking the threads.net domain.
A move that all mastodon instances should have taken proactively. Federation with Meta only benefits meta
get facebook container from firefox add-ons and isolate your facebook and instagram traffic.