I was amazed how well it worked to get off Facebook by removing the button from the phone's home screen. First few days it was weird - when between things I grabbed my phone, unlocked, moved my finger to the palace where I expected Facebook and then was confused "what was it I wanted to do? - oh nothing, damn" and after a week or two I got used to it being away and was mostly off Facebook. Now I use it only when specifically searching for information which (unfortunately) is exclusive there (for some businesses it's simpler to do a FB post than their own thing ...) and when I scroll over my feed quickly think "oh what a waste of time" and am happy for getting past my "addiction".

Won't say it works for everybody, but certainly worth to try. My life got better.

That's a good approach. On top of being easier than going cold turkey, it also lets you slowly migrate all your social needs elsewhere. For instance, having done step 2, you can start telling your friends that you barely ever check Messenger these days - they're more likely to accommodate that than you going all "Facebook is evil and I cleansed myself of it".

When I deleted my account, I went through one additional step:

6. Delete your account. Create a new account under a pseudonym. Add a single friend, who can add you to group chats.

At this point, you should have a near-empty news feed; Facebook is only for staying in touch with the group (eg, not missing out on social events) until people have gotten used to texting you to invite you to things.

You won't be able to comment on anything public because if your account gets reported as a fake, you'll be locked out of the account unless you provide ID (which of course you can't do, since it's not your real name).

>Create a new account under a pseudonym.

I've not been on Facebook for years, and I tried doing this recently. It was relentless in pestering me for a phone number for "security reasons". It would not accept any of the online SMS services I found. I ended up abandoning it.

Sounds like a job for a burner phone.

Why would someone buy a whole new phone just to use a shitty advertising network they explicitly did not want to use?

Who said anything about a phone? Prepaid SIM cards are free, top one up with £5 and you're good to go.

> Sounds like a job for a burner phone.

I mean it's right there...

Right, but the "phone" part of a burner phone is essentially superfluous, it's the sim card that serves the purpose here. Of course you need to put it into something but it doesn't matter what. You can swap your main sim card with a "burner" sim, get the code to authenticate, then swap back. It takes 2 minutes.

You can get a free SIM, but even if you have to pay 5$ or whatever... many people still need to use facebook messenger to get in touch with some people, for instance.

and then what, run the spyware on my main phone, so it can have all of my data and my friends data?

m.facebook.com for the social network

mbasic.facebook.com for chat

No apps needed

Even if you take it literally as a physical phone instead of SIM, the SMS verification works equally well with 20 EUR Nokia dumbphone as with the latest iPhone.

Because due to network effects they effectively have to use it.

Yes, but there's no way I'm investing neither money nor time in jumping through silly Facebook hoops. What's to stop them from suddenly requiring dental x-rays, or some other nonsense, for "security reasons"?

Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none.

You can get a "burner" phone number and even a physical phone (that's what I do for whatsapp), but you can't have a burner face to make selfies.

...so now I don't have a FB account at all, and it is very inconvenient.

You can try using a picture from https://www.thispersondoesnotexist.com/.

If a lot of people do that, then maybe Facebook moves to requiring pictures with a code written on them, like Reddit does.

>Nope, that won't work. Facebook will ask you for a phone number and for a selfie. It will then match both against their databases, and ask you for an ID if there is none.

Damn, I never would have made a Facebook account if that was what the sign up process was when I signed up. That's just fucking insane. How the hell did it get to that point?

Since when? I've never been asked for a selfie.

If you must, it doesn't seem like a big problem still. Go to thispersondoesnotexist.com, hit F5 a few times to find a nice portrait, then Google "driver license template" and apply basic Photoshop skills.

It probably means you're using your real name and/or your real phone number. Or have an established account with photos of you.

I did not check if images from thispersondoesnotexist.com would work to pass the selfie check, but my guess is that they wouldn't. A professional portrait of someone from a Western country who has never been seen on any photos Facebook owns, not even in the background? That's a red flag. Also, my guess is that Facebook knows about that page and takes precautions.

Anyway, if Facebook tries that hard to make sure I'm not there, why should I join?

I'm using a psuedonym but my real phone number. I don't see what they would compare it to though. It might as well just be a burner phone.

I do not believe they check it; if you provide an ID scan, it's good enough.

Because you have no choice but to join.

Bookmark the groups you want to periodically check.

Stay away from the newsfeed on the home page, no distraction and no mindless scrolling.

I'd do something else before #3:

3. Unfollow everyone in order to disable the news feed.

I did this to reduce usage and force me to actually visit friends' profiles, but it did its job too well. In the end I noticed that I wasn't really interested in anything I couldn't know by chatting in some other app or in person. The only thing hooking me up was the news feed itself.

If unfollowing everyone is too much effort (or too much potential drama from people assuming unfollow = no longer friends), then there is another way. Someone mentioned the Newsfeed Eradicator plugin the other day -- it replaces the FB News Feed with a thought-provoking quote...!

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/news-feed-era...

I've found that to be a really useful extension as well, stops you getting distracted by all the news feed posts when you just logged in to check an event or something.

I would also add that, on the rare occasion when you do need/want to log in, use https://mbasic.facebook.com/

I know very well why I am still using FB: there is a single group that I am working with that uses it as its main channel of communication. And I don't want to invest the effort to make them switch right now.

What I did was an alternate plan that can work for many:

- Don't install the Facebook app, but the FB Messenger lite app. No access to the walls.

- Mute channels you don't want to be pinged about (most of them except two in my case)

- Logging out of FB on the desktop is a good idea but I really type faster on a keyboard so often when pinged I'll just open up FF (with all the fencing in place) for a quick answer.

Out of curiosity, have you tried messenger.com to answer the pings?

>Going cold turkey is never easy. If you're having trouble withdrawing, consider what I did over the past few years

The main issue, at least for me, is that everything social that is happening is arranged through Facebook. My kids school events, social events in the town i live in, hell even the good old paper adds from our local grocery store has been replaced with posts on Facebook. Everything is announced and coordinated through Facebook.

So going "cold turkey" is not really an option unless i want to be left out of everything that is going on. That doesn't mean i don't care. I don't have the app installed, and usually don't browse it on my phone. Instead i limit it to "checking todays news" on Firefox (with facebook container) on my PC at home.

It is always an option.

It starts with replying "I don't have Facebook and won't sign up to this thing" to everyone that explain that they are only on Facebook; even before you close your account. Just signalling that Facebook-only is not ok.

You're not so much being left out of everything as much as they are leaving people (you're far from alone) out of their events.

And that's part of the clever thing Facebook does to make you believe you have no option but theirs.

It took me 3 years from starting to reduce to finally deleting my account. I only wish I did it way sooner.

Being left out of social events is a significant reduction in my quality of life. I've got enough reasons to stay home all day without deliberately excluding myself from social events.

Organizers of these events have enough to manage without going to the effort of finding everyone who is not on facebook and contacting them. And let's stay away from "if they are real friends they will make the extra effort", as it is usually a good way to find out how few 'real friends' you have.

So, in some way, they let Facebook win by bullying people into their closed garden.

Edit: and I mean _they_, not you.

I haven't used my facebook account in over a year. Even if I logged in to follow something like this I'd never see it because I'd never remember to log in and look.

> So going "cold turkey" is not really an option

Ending an abusive relationship is always an option.

I'm not really worried about being on Facebook but only about wasting too much time checking the stream (or worse: integrating with it in even more stupid ways which could result from excessive browsing). I good surprisingly good results from adding the tiny bit of friction of removing the app from the Android launcher screens, relegating it to App drawer. (and careful push configuration of course)

I still have a facebook account for the sole purpose of messaging those people I only contact once a year. Honestly never really used facebook for anything more than a IM platform. I never felt comfortable posting anything since all family members would be seeing it. And I never liked consuming content on it because I found it all to be low quality shitposts and blog spam.

Before I deleted Facebook (and severely cut down on my Google usage) I imported the birthday list to my own calendars (on Nextcloud). I added all the contacts in my calendar as well (on Nextcloud). This gets synced with DAVx5 when I'm home on WLAN.

Now I keep contact with these people via WhatsApp (due to network effect it has in The Netherlands) and plain old telephone/e-mail as these are included in their contact info.

Don't quit Facebook right away. First, request your data and import this. Manually backup the data I mentioned above (and consider to remove people). Gradually delete all your posts (there's an addon for it, not sure which one I used). Then make a post you're going to leave Facebook. No drama, no reason required. You're just informing people about it. And then you do it: you go through the process of removing your account, and you never log in again. Ie. remove the password from your password manager.

I've also installed containers for GAFAM, and use a myriad of browser addons to protect my privacy.

I had a similar bad habit of mindlessly visiting sites I consider time sinks from the browser. I learned I could edit my hosts file to override the DNS lookup from a comment on HN. Just be sure to cover variants of the url you wish to block, otherwise if you're anything like me you'll start prepending 'www.' to bypass the block.

Why not delete? This way they legally keep your data and it would be naive to assume they don't find a way to keep following you...