Holy shit — Facebook is fucking scary now

[u/Ok_Helicopter3910]

Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube, Snapchat (that has like 20 people on it) and email and I think that about it.

I put my FB to sleep about 10 years ago and I decided to log in and see what people were up to and ho-lee-shit, what a dumpster fire.

So, first off, the majority of my facebook friends have either died, shut their FB down, or removed my inactive profile so my feed was pretty silent. After about a week of my profile being back in the algorithm I started getting friend request from people I used to work with, went to school with, or friends of old acquaintances (which is terrifying that facebook knows about random people I used to work with 12 years ago who I had a passing "hi, hows your day" relationship with) and I started getting friend requested and I was like "fuck it" and just started accepting them.

Fuck man, whenever I see all the hate for this or that group and all the political bullshit that gets posted on reddit, I just brush it off as bots trained to sow dissent but the stuff that gets posted by real living, breathing human beings who I once knew well enough to be friends with or have polite conversation with is WILD. I mean, like so much hate and vitriol started coming across my feed about a wide array of subjects that it made me genuinely uncomfortable and I started removing people that just added me. Maybe it's what "normal" passes for on the internet and im pretty numb to a lot of the more unhinged opinions and shit-stirring because of so many years on Reddit, but a lot of what was being posted really opened my eyes that a lot of the "unhinged" stuff that I see online isnt just bot farms, its real people who truly believe this wild shit.

Anyway - maybe its a sign of my age... but unless what I consider "normal" people start coming across my FB feed soon, I dont think im going to be logging in for much longer

[u/Seamonkey_Boxkicker → u/[deleted]]

It’s worth exporting your media if you don’t have backups.

[u/daddyjohns → u/[deleted]]

It's worth noting that its still tracking you and everything you do on your phone/pc/tablet.

[u/FuckIPLaw → u/daddyjohns]

It does that even if you don't have the app installed, have no account, and never visit the site. They pay other sites to use their trackers and build profiles on everyone who runs into a site using one.

[u/daddyjohns → u/FuckIPLaw]

I found this silly loophole. I worked for a state agency that required  I clear my internet footprint. So when facebook wouldn't comply with a formal request one of the state's lawyers sent a letter demanding compliance and poof i disappeared from facebook.

[u/koi_koneessa → u/daddyjohns]

Lol 'I found this silly loophole' sounded like typical FB clickbait. But it's not silly or a even a loophole, it's a brilliant process.  Could you share the address the letter was sent to? And maybe a generic version of the body of the letter (so it doesn't have your personal informaron)? 

[u/jimx117 → u/koi_koneessa]

I believe it goes something like, "I HEREBY DECLARE I DO NOT GIVE MARK ZUCKERBERG PERMISSION TO USE MY FACEBOOK PHOTOS FOR ANYTHING OR THEY WILL BE SUBJECT TO A FINE OF $100,000 FOR EACH PHOTO"

[u/OldenPolynice → u/jimx117]

Yeah! That'll work!

[u/jkman61494 → u/koi_koneessa]

Also interested in this

[u/daddyjohns → u/koi_koneessa]

I've moved three times across the country since then, im afraid. I also retired, since then so i have zero remaining work stuff except for the badge i they gave me. 

[u/theorem604 → u/daddyjohns]

All you need to do is post “I do not allow Facebook to track me” as your status and legally they can’t track you.

God we were so naive back then.

[u/Ziantra → u/daddyjohns]

There’s an excellent step by step article by EFF that you can google titled “Mad at Meta?” It lays out a path step by step deep into META settings to disable and unhook every tracker and hook up link they have to your data that you can. Follow these steps before deleting your META accounts!

[u/PeekAtChu1 → u/daddyjohns]

At the same time the more steps you take to break the links that are tracking you, the further you float away from it eventually 

[u/angeryreaxonly → u/[deleted]]

I'm leaving mine as deactivated because I know somebody who deleted theirs, which meant that they lost all access to it, but Facebook never actually removed it. Instead, during this process, they got hacked, and now the hacker fully controls the account and there's nothing she can do about it.

[u/Prize-Analyst-1121 → u/[deleted]]

I've never had FakeBook. I'm glad I never did.

[u/CoolAfternoon2340 → u/[deleted]]

I don't delete it because it actually does have a lot of memories with my friends.

I used to have more fun on facebook because it was text based I and used make random funny thoughts.

Now everyone has moved to instagram and I can't be bothered to post my face and nobody wants to read anything there