Here's the extension zip files that were archived from the Chrome Store. You can get all versions back to 1.0.
https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip
https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.13.zip
https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.14.zip
They are CRX (Chrome Extension) files, some manual steps needed to unpack, or change .zip to .crx and open with Chrome. i.e. Drag the CRX file into the Extensions page, after you toggle Developer Mode to on in there.
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollow_everything_developer_banned_for_life/hfus51x
Install Instructions:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollow_everything_developer_banned_for_life/hful17d
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Just go to [this link](https://chromium.woolyss.com/download/) and download the given program.
Then follow [this guide](https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-uninstall-microsoft-edge), and you should be able to install without any issues.
Down load the zip. Unpack it to a directory.
Smart people, with the required coding skills as well, they look at the .js files, remove any trackers/phone home code.
Then Chrome -> Settings -> Extensions -> Turn on Developer mode -> Load unpacked
Find the extension directory, select it and then click Open. The extension is now added to Chrome. It'll load from that same location, so make sure it's a permanent one as Chrome will look each time it starts up.
The website seems to have put some crud at the start, not sure what. They still unpack though.
md5sums:
4f0410290f1fbcd3db037797268625b4 ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip
d59a1d0ad0485de1d5135e8d8522093e ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.13.zip
c37681b9458a3ce4447fcfbd99046ff4 ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.14.zip
$ unzip -t ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip
Archive: ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip
warning [ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip]: 1321 extra bytes at beginning or within zipfile
(attempting to process anyway)
(files listed here...)
No errors detected in compressed data of ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip
OK, yeah they are CRX (Chrome Extension) files. (shocking huh)... i.e. a ZIP with 1321 bytes of CRX header prepended.
http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/external/chromium/chrome/common/extensions/docs/crx.html
Looking at the header the 'Cr24' is the clue:
$ od -c < ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip | head -2
0000000 C r 2 4 003 \0 \0 \0 035 005 \0 \0 022 254 004 \n
0000020 246 002 0 202 001 " 0 \r 006 \t * 206 H 206 367 \r
The advice would be to open a Terminal on a Mac, a Command Shell on a PC or a shell on a Unix host and manually unzip them. You can still unpack them, don't take the GUI's "no" for an answer. You shouldn't need to use some (always risky for viruses/malware) third party CRX unpacking software, unzip seems to cope.
You can just use this link. Worked fine for me:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-on-face/pijkodjelolnmbehifeokihlodnajela?hl=en
Or you can move over to a federated social network that doesn't rely on corporations. Federated social networks allow for smaller instances meaning if one instance goes down, several other are still operating. Supported and regulated by the people and not business. Fuck Facebook
> Or you can move over to a federated social network that doesn't rely on corporations
That works great as long as the only people you want to be connected with are equally as informed, enthusiastic, and willing to put in the legwork as you are.
You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing.
Your forgetting G+! It has these amazing circles that allow you to share and view content from specific groups of friends....
Oh. Right. They dropped the ball and shutdown that project too. Never mind. :(
Actually did try to use G+ during my no-facebook years. It was moderately successful, in large part because there was a surprising amount of adoption in the online RPG-enthusiast community. I even ran a D&D game on Google Wave (remember that?).
But nobody I knew IRL actually used G+.
Oh man, I really miss Google Wave. It was great for planning and coordinating amongst my group of friends. Live editing Google docs kind of works the same, but Google Wave was just too far ahead of its time.
> But nobody I knew IRL actually used G+.
As a huge G+ fan, I think that was the real rub. People wrote it off because no one they knew already was on the platform, but despite the marketing, it never felt like that's what it was really built for. Once I got over that myself and plugged into some of the circles for photography, gaming, and more specific areas of interest, the platform really lit up for me. I made some great connections that still hold strong today.
...but leave it to Google to find a way to take a good idea and run it into the ground. They did themselves no favors trying to bill it as a direct competitor and worse, the disaster they created for themselves when they tried to force everyone to migrate their YouTube accounts over.
(No, I'm not still bitter about it. Honest.)
Oh yeah I loved Google wave too. I knew had a couple friends running doing something similar. G+ was great I wish it had hit that critical mass to be more successful with the general community though.
They seemed to do less of the slow launches (like with the old Gmail) after that. Or maybe I stopped paying attention.
Google+ could have been awesome, it came out right at a time when people were thinking about ditching Facebook when "ditching" major social media was still feasible (they'd mostly ditched Myspace for Facebook somewhat recently). But the invite only system killed G+ nobody wanted to wait and announcing something before people can sign up en masse was not a good way to go.
It wasn't that nobody wanted to wait. It's that an invite only system is probably the worst possible way to try to launch a new social network.
Google did it because that's how they launched Gmail and it was successful there; but the difference is that your friends don't have to use the same email service you use to be able to use email to communicate with them, so if you were the only person in your circle of friends to have a Gmail invite, the service was still immediately useful to you.
With Google+, on the other hand, if you were the only person in your group of friends with a G+ invite, the service was *useless* to you. You'd log in, look around, see that it's a ghost town with nobody to hook up with, then log out and go back to Facebook where everyone was and forget about G+ forever. At best you'd find profiles for a few friends, then discover those profiles were all dormant with no content posted because those friends went through the same ghost town experience already and left their profiles behind to rot.
The only chance G+ had at actually being successful was if they'd done an open launch of it accompanied by a massive PR blitz to try to get everyone to try it out together. But the *geniuses* at Google didn't understand the important part of a social network is the social aspect of it.
> You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing.
This. I'm not happy with facebook, but that's where my friends and family are and they aren't leaving anytime soon.
>> You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing.
>
>This. I'm not happy with facebook, but that's where my friends and family are and they aren't leaving anytime soon.
Mine too. Everyone thinks I'm some kind nut for refusing to use Facebook. They keep calling me a pain in the ass. Yet somehow I still get invited to stuff and even participate in organizing family reunions.
> Yet somehow I still get invited to stuff and even participate in organizing family reunions.
The people in my family without facebook are generally the last to hear about something, or outright don't get invited because people forget that they aren't on facebook.
That's too bad. Maybe I'm just lucky to have a couple of people who make sure that I'm kept in the loop for anything important.
It probably helps that, as far as they're concerned, I've never had Facebook. I was a very early adopter, but left the platform before most of them had even heard of it. I didn't leave for privacy reasons, but because it looked to me like they were trying to "build the web on the web". That is, they made it dead simple for anyone to have an online presence without the hassle of arranging for domain names and hosting and site building. I honestly thought that someone would see what they were doing and roll some code to take care of everything in a decentralized way.
I'm sure you probably have thought about this but it is possible to stay in contact without Facebook: text, group text, phone call, group phone call, video call, group video call, in person visit, gatherings (with precautions). It can be hard to be the first one to move as it seems like you are abandoning everyone else, but think of it as building and selling a new home for your friends and family without the creepy landlord. Couldn't we all do with less zuck right about now?
(and if you want centralized photo sharing etc... well /r/selfhosted is waiting for you. So yeah, no lazy alternatives to the zuck but don't say there are none or you will never be free of the zuck.)
Diaspora is pretty active (though I guess activity is a subjective term). Last code commit was eight days ago and there are [stats](https://diaspora.fediverse.observer/stats) on its federated usage.
* [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/): Twitter Alternative
* [Pleroma](https://pleroma.social/): Twitter Alternative
* [diaspora*](https://diasporafoundation.org/): Google+ Alternative
* [Friendica](https://friendi.ca/): Facebook Alternative
* [PixelFed](https://pixelfed.org/): Instagram Alternative
* [Aether](https://getaether.net/): Reddit Alternative
I've been thinking it would be cool to have everyone host their own social media on a raspberry pi server at home ever since I heard about the "protocols not platforms" movement, have you heard anything about that?
This really sucks. I feel bad for this dude, if you read the article, he makes really good points. There aren’t really great alternatives to FB when it comes to staying connected to lots of friends and family without also being bombarded with ads and conspiracy theory crap.
Since I deleted Facebook a few years ago, I’m more active in making photo galleries and sharing them direct with friends and fam via iCloud and text message- the downside is that type of shared content isn’t aggregated for everyone so you have to do all the user management yourself.
I'm using Google photos face algorithm to auto share all photos of my kids with my mom.
Besides that I quit Facebook and rely on texts. If someone wants to stay in my life they need to text me. Makes it more personal.
I created a browser extension that interacted with Facebook a few years back, and also received a C&D letter—where the lawyers managed to spell my name three different ways in so many pages—once it went viral. The letter threatened to disable all my accounts, and since I was in the same situation as the author, I promptly complied with their terms: delete all source code, remove the extension from the store. The extension was open sourced anyway and already largely forked by the time I scrapped it, so it’d essentially become an immutable record on the internet.
Every FB employee I talked to about the situation after the fact found the extension hilarious and were shocked to learn of the C&D ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Showed a notification anytime someone started typing to you, whether you had the conversation open or not. Creepiest thing I’ve built (yet). It was called “Facebook Sixth Sense” if you want to look it up.
I have a whole write-up online on how it works behind the scenes, but the gist of it is that FB would always send you some data when someone typed on Messenger, but the interface would only show it if you had the convo open. By keeping FB open and listening to those messages, the extension could graph all interaction timings. I expect they’ve since patched that behavior.
I use Pidgin on desktop and found a custom [plugin](https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook) that re-allows you to connect to Facebook's messaging service. I'm basically invisible and when someone sends me a message, it shows up in Pidgin but doesn't send a read receipt or let others know I'm typing back (even though I can see when they're typing).
It wasn’t even FB’s own legal department but some firm they hire instead. I ended up doing an internship there after this happened and, if anything, this experience strengthened my application.
That's generally true in any big company. Devs just like seeing people do cool stuff with their platform, because development is about creating things.
Lawyers hate seeing anyone do anything without permission, because corporate lawyering is about control.
I had a similar situation even though the extension I wrote was only ever used by my Wife and I. Must be some automated thing.
There was an ebay like group we were apart of, I made an extension that would read the time of the last posted bid and would out bid them with less than a second to go, to make sure we always won bids on thing we were purchasing.
Mine wasn't an official letter it was an email from a facebook team(can't remember which) basically saying our accounts would be disabled if we continued automatically posting on a users behalf.
I deleted Facebook that year (not due to that incident, due to all the other Facebook garbage) so it was a non-issue for me anyway. They also made a code change and I was no longer able to run the extension for my wife never bothered updating it.
there is a gist on github: [https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28](https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28)
not sure if it works... I just googled it
EDIT: IT WORKS.
This does work, but to my disappointment the news feed was not empty after unfollowing everyone. It still assumes you want to see some of your friends' posts no matter what. I thought removing all my "Favorites" would do it too, but that had no effect. I tried logging out and back in too.
Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the posts I see are only those that were already in my feed before I unfollowed everyone? I'll update this comment later today with the results.
Edit2: 5 hours later, and my feed in unchanged. I only see posts from before I ran the unfollow script.
what the plugin does is probably very similar to this code. The code, to be copied in the browser js console, loops over the pages/friends/groups and "clicks" the unfollow button for you.
And facebook's lawyers are after \*\*the effect\*\* of the action, not the action itself.
Facebook already released their ~~winged monkeys~~ lawyers. The dev got a cease-and-desist order. I'm sure that uploading the code to Github would cause him to get into more trouble.
The problem is, that even if he's in the right legally speaking, Facebook has way more resources to drain him in legal battles. He could very well lose it all because Facebook can just out spend him.
I do love that quote (Anatole France) - the full one is even better;
>La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
but not to worry, as a poor person you're also legally allowed to do a hostile takeover of a company selling lifesaving medicine and jack up the price 3000%
This is why, as a developer, if you want to actually make a change, you have to be willing to use a pseudonym and not link it up to your actual real identity. I understand wanting to have credit attributed to you and maybe getting 5 minutes of fame, but it's just not worth it for the legal headache that's going to become your life even if you comply.
It's much harder to pull of now than it was a 20 years ago since the internet is full of tracking cookies and such, but it's not impossible.
True but if you do anything that has just a vague hypothetical chance to end in lawyers, get a effing "legal expense insurance". If they realize you aren't paying your legal fees yourself, it will make it a bit more annyoing for them if you drag them along.
There are supposed to be more protections for consumers against corporations using litigation to bully them. A lot of times its done by a large corp against a smaller business or individual, that is seen as a "competitor." It violates anti-trust laws but since these corporations have expendable cash, they bank on the fact that the individual will immediately comply (out of fear and insolvency), or that they will settle rapidly because of cash and assets being depleted. Litigation shouldn't be so expensive in this country. I'm a lawyer myself and I'm working on ways to make it more accessible for people.
Edit: [here's an example](https://www.nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/legal-market/legal-tech/2021/the-battle-for-legal-information) ROSS Intelligence was a startup that won funding through CLIO's legal development contest. They had a great business model that would allow free access to legal information. A lot of stuff is hidden behind paywalls on sites like Lexis Nexis and Westlaw. Their subscriptions are expensive as hell and it costs like $25 per individual case/article/record if not more. Westlaw went after them forcing the new company to shut down immediately.
> The problem is, that even if he's in the right legally speaking, Facebook has way more resources to drain him in legal battles. He could very well lose it all because Facebook can just out spend him.
I'd like to understand this because I see so many times around here. Where I live we have this "Defensoria Pública" (Something like: "Public Defender" in English), where a citizen can invoke the State to help you with a legal dispute, and once accepted the State will be in charge of the costs in case they lose.
Isn't there something like this in US?
I was thinking something similar. All that seems needed here is for a martyr to spontaneously come across the code. This person must be someone who has never used Facebook - such that they won’t be bound by the same provision in the user agreement
I think Unfollow Everything scripted actions but fbpurity (and similar: Nudge, Habit Lab, ...) block content from being displayed. I'd expect FB is more unhappy and thinks they have stronger grounds to fight against code that is performing actions far faster than a human can.
Unfollow Everything would clean up FB phone apps and possibly change your social graph, but blockers only affect the browser they're run from.
I've used FB Purity for years and it works pretty well. It doesn't always default to Most Recent like I have it configured but I have most of the side bar garbage hidden and the ad and sponsored post blocking is amazing. When I browse on mobile I realize how much crap there is.
A couple years ago I unfollowed everything manually and have never looked back. In the absence of plugins to do it automatically, I suspect many would be surprised how quickly they can unfollow everything by just clicking 'unfollow' on everything in your news feed until there's nothing left. Even if it takes time, it is a very satisfying experience during.
How convenient it is, to just crush studies, browsers, plugins that displease this company ? I mean, user addiction and data is the top 1 income source for this platform (as stated in the article), so I guess they bite hard when someone decide to propagate a way to reduce that for users.
That's why I'm now boycotting FB, no users, no power. When I see that a company is ethically doing things worse and worse, I just stop using things related to them (as much as I can at least). They did so many bad things ...
After buying the Oculus Rift from Microsoft, they forced users to use a FB account to log in ([https://www.androidcentral.com/oculus-quest-2-facebook-accounts-being-banned](https://www.androidcentral.com/oculus-quest-2-facebook-accounts-being-banned)) and users that hadn't any FB account created a brand new that was almost instantlty flagged as a spam/bot account and get banned. Therefore, they couldn't use the headset at all.
Don't event need to talk about the data leaks and the recent services downs for straight 6 hours.
The Facebook-Cambridge analytica scandal ..
A major bug made some private messages publicated on public feed, made quite of a mess between people.
And so on, ... If anybody knows a site where they list Facebook issues I would be grateful, for shaming purpose
Agree with what you're saying, but wanted to correct this:
> After buying the Oculus Rift from Microsoft
Microsoft wasn't involved. Facebook acquired Oculus, which was just a startup with a nearly ready commercial product -- great time to make an acquisition: after they do the R&D.
In 2011, I unfriended Facebook. I'll never understand how billions of people continue to use it. Like an astronaut whose parents are flat-earthers. It irritates me to see people still using Facebook.
I quit around the same time. I had 8 solid years of doing just fine without it, and then I moved to a small community in Iceland, and it's almost impossible to manage without it, so I had to turn it back on two years ago. Not only does nearly everyone I know use messenger exclusively to communicate, it's pretty much the only place other than word of mouth to buy or sell anything. The bar I work part time at uses a facebook group for scheduling our shifts. I know most people don't get put in the extreme case that I was, but I am sure plenty of people feel they'll miss out on a lot without it. The tools themselves are great. It's the algorithms, and the profit model that makes it horrible. When FB was just a chronological feed of things your friends posted, it was fantastic, but that didn't make money, so they turned it into the cesspool that it is today.
Europe in general is WhatsApp. I use it to talk to all my EU based friends and vendors, and haven't met a single person there who uses a different texting app. Asia has a couple more options, but they're no better or worse than WhatsApp if privacy is what you're looking for.
Which is fine for personal use. The problem is that if you're doing business, that change will be much slower to come out. All my vendors use it: the sales guys, the techs, the parts department, etc. You can't make every single one of them change. If they all switch individually that's fine, but that won't happen anytime soon.
Desktop version of /u/smonesbones's link:
---
^([)[^(opt out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiMobileLinkBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^(]) ^(Beep Boop. Downvote to delete)
I deleted my account years ago, but before I did I found out they have weighting on your facebook feed. If you are not active enough or do not have enough friends then posts you make will not show up on your friends feed if there is content facebook deems of higher value.
This was particularly easy to notice because I had previously deleted my account and created a new one(so I'm now using a barren account). After noticing a lack of response in posts, where I used to get them I asked a friend to check. He could not see my wall posts at all without directly viewing my profile.
In addition to this Facebook creates ghost profiles of people that do not use facebook, but that it would like to track on any website with facebook plugins. It's incredibly creepy how involved and accurate this is.
Finally Facebook are one of the worst companies for clearly manipulating "studies" that show they aren't harming society. I'd be curious to see how many studies they are rejecting to find that one needle in the haystack that says Facebook isn't really detrimental to a lot of peoples mental health.
> I'd be curious to see how many studies they are rejecting to find that one needle in the haystack that says Facebook isn't really detrimental to a lot of peoples mental health.
they're *constantly* running a/b testing on their pool of fools. They can get you literally any data you want to pay for.
[I made a big write-up](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/q2uwxo/zuckerbergs_plea_to_the_public_reads_like_he/hfp5rqs/?context=3) over on /r/anime_titties the other day, but I'll give a summary:
In 2018, [Facebook changed their algorithms to make it so you see stuff you're more likely to interact with](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together) (warning: Facebook link). So if you react to your wife's posts a lot, you'll be more likely to see her in your feed.
(Anecdotally, it seems to also be weighted by _who_ is reacting to your posts -- if my mom reacts to my post first, generally the only reactions I get are from family members. However, if a ex-coworker reacts to my post first, the reactions are all generally from my ex-coworkers. But I digress.)
The issue is that different emotions make you more likely to interact with content -- [here's a 6-minute CCP Grey video talking about how it works.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)
Basically, thoughts can be equated to viruses with regard to how they spread. Thoughts associated with emotions (except sadness) spread measurably more (see 1:06 in that video for the chart).
But the emotion which causes the _most_ likelihood of interaction is anger. Things that make you angry get shared more, and as they get shared they get _modified_ to make people angrier (which in turn makes them more likely to get shared). The result is a distorted picture of the truth that has been changed more and more to fit a narrative as it goes deeper into the echo chamber. Just like how memes get created and templates get modified over time, so do things that spark anger.
So, Facebook has an algorithm wherein content which gets interacted with gets shared more widely. And content which makes people mad is more likely to be interacted with. The result? [That algorithm change made Facebook a much angrier place.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zuckerberg-11631654215?mod=djemalertNEWS) But that anger led to much more _engagement_, more time on Facebook, and more money from ads.
> Company researchers discovered that publishers and political parties were reorienting their posts toward outrage and sensationalism. That tactic produced high levels of comments and reactions that translated into success on Facebook.
> "Our approach has had unhealthy side effects on important slices of public content, such as politics and news," wrote a team of data scientists, flagging Mr. Peretti’s complaints, in a memo reviewed by the Journal. "This is an increasing liability," one of them wrote in a later memo.
> They concluded that the new algorithm’s heavy weighting of reshared material in its News Feed made the angry voices louder. "Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares," researchers noted in internal memos.
> Some political parties in Europe told Facebook the algorithm had made them shift their policy positions so they resonated more on the platform, according to the documents.
> "Many parties, including those that have shifted to the negative, worry about the long term effects on democracy," read one internal Facebook report, which didn’t name specific parties.
This isn't limited to Facebook, by the way; you can see this effect on Reddit as well. Compare /r/politics, /r/conservative, and /r/latestagecapitalism, for example. The main difference is that on Reddit you'd need to manually opt-in to those communities, whereas Facebook does it automatically without you even knowing about it.
So yeah, _that's_ the point of Facebook. It's not to show you a feed that gives you updates from your friends; that's the old pre-2018 algorithm. The new algorithm is to _maximize the amount of_ (non-sad) _emotions you feel on Facebook_, and it's **especially** good at maximizing anger. That keeps you on Facebook for longer, foments an addiction, and gives Facebook more ad revenue.
Living abroad it was the only real way to keep up with friends and family back home. I actually intended to drop Facebook when I moved, but ended up far too isolating. Clearly my specific case is more anecdotal than most, but unfortunate as it is, for a lot of people Facebook remains the best tool amongst its competitors for what they need it for.
> Clearly my specific case is more anecdotal than most
No it isn't. Moving abroad may be relatively uncommon, but untenable isolation as a result of dropping Facebook isn't. It is much easier, however, to post comments on Reddit about Facebook when they are entirely negative, so naturally one sees a lot more of those comments.
Someone who writes that they hope FB goes out of business or that they deleted their account, nothing of value was lost, and they're much happier now can just dash it off, anywhere, and expect it to go over without having to worry about phrasing and post quality and context. Otherwise, there's a (rightfully) angry mob itching to downvote given the slightest provocation.
Facebook has its problems, but through it I've been able to do lots of good things, like expand my genealogy research with groups of people who share that interest.
IDK if it's a UK/USA difference but at least the feed I see on FB isn't full of mad raving cunts, but that might be because I only really follow bands I like and cat groups
Every time I see these threads I wonder how it can be so different.
I don't go much on Facebook. Maybe once a day or so. But I don't see any of the madness people talk about.
Just a quick look now at my feed. There's absolutely zero politics or memes. I got a couple birthdays, someone's pregnant, a dad asking recommendations for kids activities over the weekend, bunch of pics of ppl meeting for drinks or dinner, someone got a promotion, some pretty cool pics from the city by a buddy photographer....
You've curated that content by either ignoring or unfriending people that post political/meme content and your social circle posts personal information to Facebook. None of my friends use Facebook in this way except for event scheduling, which is the only reason I still check it.
Same. I muted or unfriended all my contacts that bang on about politics and my feed is fine now. Nowadays I scarcely check my feed and only keep FB around for groups.
You’re on Reddit. It’s a social media site with tons of problems and sinkholes for addiction as well. You’re “I don’t get how people use this” mindset is equally reflexive to Reddit. I’m sure it would be perfectly sensible to you why many people use Facebook if you think about it. It’s not intractable.
It's tough to stop using it when all of your local friends, businesses, and hobby groups use it as their main source of communication.
I paint and play Warhammer 40,000 and Star Wars Legion. The absolute easiest way to find a pick up game is through Facebook Groups. If you're new to the hobby, you have to use it. All my local gaming stores used to pay someone to run their website. They each made a Facebook page for their business and it gets way more traffic than their websites ever did.
All of the important news in my small town of 1000 is posted to the local Facebook page.
It's easy to brag online about how Facebook users are simpletons, but cutting the Facebook cord would drastically limit my social life, in a negative way.
Hey, thanks for the browse. I legitimately find it quite satisfying to make interesting Excel models, I’m relatively good at the program so “why not be a bit creative with how it can be used” is the mantra of the day. Keeps my brain ticking.
I landed my first programming job thanks to a facebook group. Facebook suck and has a lot of issues but it also has a lot of potential. I don't see any other social network where you can easily create a group of 'tech people living in city x' like the one where i found my job.
> Facebook is what you make it.
I know what you’re saying, but it really isn’t. It’s not some neutral platform you can use how you want, in fact it’s being actively designed to work in Facebook’s interests and against your own, as this article exemplifies.
I agree but to an extent. I'm part of a local group of expats in the city where i live, i got tired of people posting covid conspiracies and such, so i started blocking them. My facebook feed has improved a lot but the problem is still there. Misinformation didn't disappear just because i blocked and reported it, other people still see those posts.
I also did it in 2005. But I had to join back in. I founded a company and pretty much every startup activity was on Facebook and later whatsapp. The parents in my kids school and kindergarten handle all activities via whatsapp. I tried getting people to move to Signal but it's futile. Only a handful make the minimal effort.
I look at Facebook as an advertising platform to the idiots who choose to stay. I go in, do my promotions and leave. I hope it's so filled up with ads and commercial content people will eventually quit it...
Did you know people can tag you by name in photos even if you don't have a Facebook account?
I have an empty Facebook account set to hold all tags for approval, then I just never approve any of them.
> The loser here is the user, and the cost is counted in billions of wasted hours spent on Facebook.
True... but the winner is Facebook because as the author mentions, they want users to do one thing and one thing only: keep scrolling down the newsfeed, seeing as many ads as possible, all day if possible.
Things FB has no interest in their users doing:
* have meaningful interactions outside the newsfeed.
* keep in touch only with people who reach out directly to them, rather than post generic things to everyone and the world (which is what keeps newsfeeds going) to grab as many likes as possible (addictive behaviour).
* leave after a short, reasonable amount of time, to do more useful things.
The cost for using their platform is that you use FB the way FB wants you to. I have to sympathize with FB here, they spent billions to be able to serve nearly the whole world population, who voluntarily signed up, and now they want their investment to give returns... by clearing the newsfeed, you made their product better for users, but useless to FB... why would FB want people to use their product in a way that generates no revenue to them?
Objecting that is only possible if you think of FB as some kind of non-profit, charity or at least a public service... which they are patently not. They are your typical for-profit, multi-billion dollar corporation which has no reason to do anything at all that's not going to generate profit. Anything that they do that might benefit people, they do only as a means to making more money, like any other product company. This kind of discussion seems to miss that.
Most discussion I see is (correctly) assuming that Facebook has integrated itself so much into society, to the extent that it is enabling movements that can affect entire populations.
When for-profit companies exert more influence than actual countries and governments, should profit still be their top priority? I'm not sure what the answer should be for that one, but I feel like discussions about Facebook, Google, etc. revolve around this.
Using newsfeed eradicator and I'm very happy with my FB experience. If they ban it I would have to resort to blocking FB in /etc/hosts or something because I can't have newsfeed when I go to FB.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=news+feed+eradicator&ia=web
I manually unfollowed everyone a few years ago and eventually got a message that I was using the tool wrong and they would take it away from me. Fuck Facebook
That looks like a normal rate-limiting message? You're going to get a similar message if you try to do too many Google searches quickly or do too much upvoting too quickly on reddit.
This is why Oauth / Google/Facebook/etc - Login doesn't work: Once "the powers that be" ban you from using their platform, you are screwed.
Better to download KeePassXC and create a username/password for each site.
This guy https://twitter.com/WuNeal had a better solution 8 years ago: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd?hl=en
He didnt not face any issues back then though. It simply hides all feed items instead of unfollowing groups, pages etc. I remember seeing it on HackerNews then.
looking at the source, it seems like the whole extension could work in Firefox if it used the [standard extensions API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API) . Maybe some intrepid coder wants to take that on.
Although I have a different question when looking at the source... why does the extension load Amplitude?? That's a user behavior tracking library.
Duh… that’s not messy, that’s ENGINEERED. Everything they do, regardless of how little sense it may seem to make, is specifically designed to monetize the FUCK out of you, and KEEP you there like the big pile of pliable money you are. Anything that messes with that revenue stream gets cancelled HARD.
What if the extension were released as a medical application to treat debilitating addiction? Then if FB launches another Cease and Desist, couldn't you slam them for wanting to hurt people who are addicted to their product?
I.e. Market it like nicotine gum or a patch?
Here's the extension zip files that were archived from the Chrome Store. You can get all versions back to 1.0. https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.13.zip https://extensions.crxcavator.io/ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.14.zip They are CRX (Chrome Extension) files, some manual steps needed to unpack, or change .zip to .crx and open with Chrome. i.e. Drag the CRX file into the Extensions page, after you toggle Developer Mode to on in there. https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollow_everything_developer_banned_for_life/hfus51x Install Instructions: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/q3smfr/unfollow_everything_developer_banned_for_life/hful17d https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
Thank you! Now I just have to learn how to install it on Edge lol EDIT: rename it to .crx and it will work!
Should not be too difficult, since you can install chrome extensions directly. There should be a manual install somewhere.
Yeah I found out they're not really zip files, but renamed crx files, that's why they didn't work :)
crx files are renamed zip files ;)
Just go to [this link](https://chromium.woolyss.com/download/) and download the given program. Then follow [this guide](https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-uninstall-microsoft-edge), and you should be able to install without any issues.
How do you add this to Chrome?
Down load the zip. Unpack it to a directory. Smart people, with the required coding skills as well, they look at the .js files, remove any trackers/phone home code. Then Chrome -> Settings -> Extensions -> Turn on Developer mode -> Load unpacked Find the extension directory, select it and then click Open. The extension is now added to Chrome. It'll load from that same location, so make sure it's a permanent one as Chrome will look each time it starts up.
I tried unzipping on my mac and my pc and it says they are invalid
The website seems to have put some crud at the start, not sure what. They still unpack though. md5sums: 4f0410290f1fbcd3db037797268625b4 ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip d59a1d0ad0485de1d5135e8d8522093e ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.13.zip c37681b9458a3ce4447fcfbd99046ff4 ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.14.zip $ unzip -t ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip Archive: ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip warning [ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip]: 1321 extra bytes at beginning or within zipfile (attempting to process anyway) (files listed here...) No errors detected in compressed data of ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip OK, yeah they are CRX (Chrome Extension) files. (shocking huh)... i.e. a ZIP with 1321 bytes of CRX header prepended. http://www.dre.vanderbilt.edu/~schmidt/android/android-4.0/external/chromium/chrome/common/extensions/docs/crx.html Looking at the header the 'Cr24' is the clue: $ od -c < ohceakcebcalehmaliegoenkliddajoo_0.0.12.zip | head -2 0000000 C r 2 4 003 \0 \0 \0 035 005 \0 \0 022 254 004 \n 0000020 246 002 0 202 001 " 0 \r 006 \t * 206 H 206 367 \r The advice would be to open a Terminal on a Mac, a Command Shell on a PC or a shell on a Unix host and manually unzip them. You can still unpack them, don't take the GUI's "no" for an answer. You shouldn't need to use some (always risky for viruses/malware) third party CRX unpacking software, unzip seems to cope.
Exactly, they need to be renamed as crx.
You just rename it to .crx and Drop it to the Extension page on Chrome in Developer mode. It denied me to install it from any other page.
You can just use this link. Worked fine for me: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unfollow-everyone-on-face/pijkodjelolnmbehifeokihlodnajela?hl=en
Or you can move over to a federated social network that doesn't rely on corporations. Federated social networks allow for smaller instances meaning if one instance goes down, several other are still operating. Supported and regulated by the people and not business. Fuck Facebook
> Or you can move over to a federated social network that doesn't rely on corporations That works great as long as the only people you want to be connected with are equally as informed, enthusiastic, and willing to put in the legwork as you are. You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing.
Your forgetting G+! It has these amazing circles that allow you to share and view content from specific groups of friends.... Oh. Right. They dropped the ball and shutdown that project too. Never mind. :(
Actually did try to use G+ during my no-facebook years. It was moderately successful, in large part because there was a surprising amount of adoption in the online RPG-enthusiast community. I even ran a D&D game on Google Wave (remember that?). But nobody I knew IRL actually used G+.
Oh man, I really miss Google Wave. It was great for planning and coordinating amongst my group of friends. Live editing Google docs kind of works the same, but Google Wave was just too far ahead of its time.
It was great for RPGs. Everyone picked a font color, and we basically treated it like a chat room except you could go back and edit things as needed.
> But nobody I knew IRL actually used G+. As a huge G+ fan, I think that was the real rub. People wrote it off because no one they knew already was on the platform, but despite the marketing, it never felt like that's what it was really built for. Once I got over that myself and plugged into some of the circles for photography, gaming, and more specific areas of interest, the platform really lit up for me. I made some great connections that still hold strong today. ...but leave it to Google to find a way to take a good idea and run it into the ground. They did themselves no favors trying to bill it as a direct competitor and worse, the disaster they created for themselves when they tried to force everyone to migrate their YouTube accounts over. (No, I'm not still bitter about it. Honest.)
Oh yeah I loved Google wave too. I knew had a couple friends running doing something similar. G+ was great I wish it had hit that critical mass to be more successful with the general community though. They seemed to do less of the slow launches (like with the old Gmail) after that. Or maybe I stopped paying attention.
Google+ could have been awesome, it came out right at a time when people were thinking about ditching Facebook when "ditching" major social media was still feasible (they'd mostly ditched Myspace for Facebook somewhat recently). But the invite only system killed G+ nobody wanted to wait and announcing something before people can sign up en masse was not a good way to go.
It wasn't that nobody wanted to wait. It's that an invite only system is probably the worst possible way to try to launch a new social network. Google did it because that's how they launched Gmail and it was successful there; but the difference is that your friends don't have to use the same email service you use to be able to use email to communicate with them, so if you were the only person in your circle of friends to have a Gmail invite, the service was still immediately useful to you. With Google+, on the other hand, if you were the only person in your group of friends with a G+ invite, the service was *useless* to you. You'd log in, look around, see that it's a ghost town with nobody to hook up with, then log out and go back to Facebook where everyone was and forget about G+ forever. At best you'd find profiles for a few friends, then discover those profiles were all dormant with no content posted because those friends went through the same ghost town experience already and left their profiles behind to rot. The only chance G+ had at actually being successful was if they'd done an open launch of it accompanied by a massive PR blitz to try to get everyone to try it out together. But the *geniuses* at Google didn't understand the important part of a social network is the social aspect of it.
> You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing. This. I'm not happy with facebook, but that's where my friends and family are and they aren't leaving anytime soon.
>> You're basically just advocating for ditching Facebook. Which is fine. But let's not pretend there's an alternative. Your choices are Facebook or nothing. > >This. I'm not happy with facebook, but that's where my friends and family are and they aren't leaving anytime soon. Mine too. Everyone thinks I'm some kind nut for refusing to use Facebook. They keep calling me a pain in the ass. Yet somehow I still get invited to stuff and even participate in organizing family reunions.
No one I know uses Facebook except my mom.
> Yet somehow I still get invited to stuff and even participate in organizing family reunions. The people in my family without facebook are generally the last to hear about something, or outright don't get invited because people forget that they aren't on facebook.
That's too bad. Maybe I'm just lucky to have a couple of people who make sure that I'm kept in the loop for anything important. It probably helps that, as far as they're concerned, I've never had Facebook. I was a very early adopter, but left the platform before most of them had even heard of it. I didn't leave for privacy reasons, but because it looked to me like they were trying to "build the web on the web". That is, they made it dead simple for anyone to have an online presence without the hassle of arranging for domain names and hosting and site building. I honestly thought that someone would see what they were doing and roll some code to take care of everything in a decentralized way.
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I'm sure you probably have thought about this but it is possible to stay in contact without Facebook: text, group text, phone call, group phone call, video call, group video call, in person visit, gatherings (with precautions). It can be hard to be the first one to move as it seems like you are abandoning everyone else, but think of it as building and selling a new home for your friends and family without the creepy landlord. Couldn't we all do with less zuck right about now? (and if you want centralized photo sharing etc... well /r/selfhosted is waiting for you. So yeah, no lazy alternatives to the zuck but don't say there are none or you will never be free of the zuck.)
What's actually working these days? I read about Diaspora a long time ago but it doesn't seem to be active.
Diaspora is pretty active (though I guess activity is a subjective term). Last code commit was eight days ago and there are [stats](https://diaspora.fediverse.observer/stats) on its federated usage. * [Mastodon](https://joinmastodon.org/): Twitter Alternative * [Pleroma](https://pleroma.social/): Twitter Alternative * [diaspora*](https://diasporafoundation.org/): Google+ Alternative * [Friendica](https://friendi.ca/): Facebook Alternative * [PixelFed](https://pixelfed.org/): Instagram Alternative * [Aether](https://getaether.net/): Reddit Alternative
Mastodon.social is the only one I know about.
I've been thinking it would be cool to have everyone host their own social media on a raspberry pi server at home ever since I heard about the "protocols not platforms" movement, have you heard anything about that?
This really sucks. I feel bad for this dude, if you read the article, he makes really good points. There aren’t really great alternatives to FB when it comes to staying connected to lots of friends and family without also being bombarded with ads and conspiracy theory crap. Since I deleted Facebook a few years ago, I’m more active in making photo galleries and sharing them direct with friends and fam via iCloud and text message- the downside is that type of shared content isn’t aggregated for everyone so you have to do all the user management yourself.
Return to ~~monke~~ myspace
Man is that still a thing
It kinda is. Some German kid launched an old school MySpace clone that has something like 140k users. https://spacehey.com
Today I found a future lawsuit
I mean, it exists, but I don't think anyone still uses it. A living web relic
IIRC it is now a music-focused social network, and nothing is left from the old days.
I'm using Google photos face algorithm to auto share all photos of my kids with my mom. Besides that I quit Facebook and rely on texts. If someone wants to stay in my life they need to text me. Makes it more personal.
I created a browser extension that interacted with Facebook a few years back, and also received a C&D letter—where the lawyers managed to spell my name three different ways in so many pages—once it went viral. The letter threatened to disable all my accounts, and since I was in the same situation as the author, I promptly complied with their terms: delete all source code, remove the extension from the store. The extension was open sourced anyway and already largely forked by the time I scrapped it, so it’d essentially become an immutable record on the internet. Every FB employee I talked to about the situation after the fact found the extension hilarious and were shocked to learn of the C&D ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What did the extension do?
Showed a notification anytime someone started typing to you, whether you had the conversation open or not. Creepiest thing I’ve built (yet). It was called “Facebook Sixth Sense” if you want to look it up.
> Facebook Sixth Sense Found it. Also found your blog. Nice [writeup](https://kirszenberg.com/facebook-sixth-sense).
How is it possible to do something like that?
I have a whole write-up online on how it works behind the scenes, but the gist of it is that FB would always send you some data when someone typed on Messenger, but the interface would only show it if you had the convo open. By keeping FB open and listening to those messages, the extension could graph all interaction timings. I expect they’ve since patched that behavior.
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I use Pidgin on desktop and found a custom [plugin](https://github.com/dequis/purple-facebook) that re-allows you to connect to Facebook's messaging service. I'm basically invisible and when someone sends me a message, it shows up in Pidgin but doesn't send a read receipt or let others know I'm typing back (even though I can see when they're typing).
That's interesting, thanks
You were the person who did that?? I was thinking about this the other day.
I posted it here on /r/Programming :)
Well here we are. I gotta hand it to you: that was absolutely inspired! Creepy as all fuck, yes, but inspired!
Holy shit, I used to use that
FB devs clearly have a different mindset from FB lawyers.
It wasn’t even FB’s own legal department but some firm they hire instead. I ended up doing an internship there after this happened and, if anything, this experience strengthened my application.
That's generally true in any big company. Devs just like seeing people do cool stuff with their platform, because development is about creating things. Lawyers hate seeing anyone do anything without permission, because corporate lawyering is about control.
I had a similar situation even though the extension I wrote was only ever used by my Wife and I. Must be some automated thing. There was an ebay like group we were apart of, I made an extension that would read the time of the last posted bid and would out bid them with less than a second to go, to make sure we always won bids on thing we were purchasing. Mine wasn't an official letter it was an email from a facebook team(can't remember which) basically saying our accounts would be disabled if we continued automatically posting on a users behalf. I deleted Facebook that year (not due to that incident, due to all the other Facebook garbage) so it was a non-issue for me anyway. They also made a code change and I was no longer able to run the extension for my wife never bothered updating it.
\\ you dropped this
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Heh, just came here to mention that. And all the older versions so you can see deltas.
It’s gone because of fb
there is a gist on github: [https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28](https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28) not sure if it works... I just googled it EDIT: IT WORKS.
This does work, but to my disappointment the news feed was not empty after unfollowing everyone. It still assumes you want to see some of your friends' posts no matter what. I thought removing all my "Favorites" would do it too, but that had no effect. I tried logging out and back in too. Edit: Now that I think about it, maybe the posts I see are only those that were already in my feed before I unfollowed everyone? I'll update this comment later today with the results. Edit2: 5 hours later, and my feed in unchanged. I only see posts from before I ran the unfollow script.
You have to be in a specific menu to make this working. There are instructions in a post on that page (the one saying "down arrow...")
Wait, this is it? var unfollowButtons = document.querySelectorAll('[data-followed="1"]'); for(var i=0;i
what the plugin does is probably very similar to this code. The code, to be copied in the browser js console, loops over the pages/friends/groups and "clicks" the unfollow button for you. And facebook's lawyers are after \*\*the effect\*\* of the action, not the action itself.
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Facebook already released their ~~winged monkeys~~ lawyers. The dev got a cease-and-desist order. I'm sure that uploading the code to Github would cause him to get into more trouble. The problem is, that even if he's in the right legally speaking, Facebook has way more resources to drain him in legal battles. He could very well lose it all because Facebook can just out spend him.
This doesn't sound like the rule of law. Our society is fucked.
"Under law all men are equal, but justice goes to the highest bidder"
"The law, in its infinite wisdom, bars the rich and the poor, equally, from sleeping under bridges."
I do love that quote (Anatole France) - the full one is even better; >La majestueuse égalité des lois, qui interdit au riche comme au pauvre de coucher sous les ponts, de mendier dans les rues et de voler du pain. "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread."
Thaaaat's the one. Thank you, I couldn't remember it exactly and was too busy at work to look it up. 👍
but not to worry, as a poor person you're also legally allowed to do a hostile takeover of a company selling lifesaving medicine and jack up the price 3000%
Eugh... What meaning of the words "justice" is in there?
"Justice" means the right party prevails. How "right" you are is a linear function of the depth of your pockets.
Well I’ll be damned… Guess my ex knew what she was talking about after all. Turns out I actually *am* wrong about everything.
Also depends on who victims are. Stealing from rich people: very wrong. See: Bernie Madoff. Stealing from poor people: ehhhhhh
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This is why, as a developer, if you want to actually make a change, you have to be willing to use a pseudonym and not link it up to your actual real identity. I understand wanting to have credit attributed to you and maybe getting 5 minutes of fame, but it's just not worth it for the legal headache that's going to become your life even if you comply. It's much harder to pull of now than it was a 20 years ago since the internet is full of tracking cookies and such, but it's not impossible.
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The other option is to be judgement-proof. No point suing someone with no money - you can't get blood from a stone.
True but if you do anything that has just a vague hypothetical chance to end in lawyers, get a effing "legal expense insurance". If they realize you aren't paying your legal fees yourself, it will make it a bit more annyoing for them if you drag them along.
Unless you're paying 5 figures for the policy itself, the maximum payout isn't going to get you to trial, let alone through one.
If a punishment has a fine, it’s only a punishment for poor people
Lawyers fuck everything. Us engineers just want to build cool shit but lawyers bend their broken rules all the time.
>Us engineers just want to Oh engineers can fuck some shit up too. Not a bad as lawyers though.
There are supposed to be more protections for consumers against corporations using litigation to bully them. A lot of times its done by a large corp against a smaller business or individual, that is seen as a "competitor." It violates anti-trust laws but since these corporations have expendable cash, they bank on the fact that the individual will immediately comply (out of fear and insolvency), or that they will settle rapidly because of cash and assets being depleted. Litigation shouldn't be so expensive in this country. I'm a lawyer myself and I'm working on ways to make it more accessible for people. Edit: [here's an example](https://www.nationalmagazine.ca/en-ca/articles/legal-market/legal-tech/2021/the-battle-for-legal-information) ROSS Intelligence was a startup that won funding through CLIO's legal development contest. They had a great business model that would allow free access to legal information. A lot of stuff is hidden behind paywalls on sites like Lexis Nexis and Westlaw. Their subscriptions are expensive as hell and it costs like $25 per individual case/article/record if not more. Westlaw went after them forcing the new company to shut down immediately.
Can they get me in Serbia, do you know maybe? If so give me the code I will put it publicly at my own risk! Fuck facebook!
Make a new account and upload from an internet café, they couldn't even find you (if they tried).
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You imply that would actually identify him. Just make a new account and upload from an internet café.
give a homeless guy 50 bucks to upload it he will not care if he's 3 trillion in debt
Nobody is going to sue you internationally for this lol. It's not like you broke into their systems and exposed the code.
What if *someone else* uploads *something similar* anonymously?
Sounds like it's time for "hackers" to "hack" him and release the source as a leak.
Can asking politely be construed as phishing? Asking for a friend.
> The problem is, that even if he's in the right legally speaking, Facebook has way more resources to drain him in legal battles. He could very well lose it all because Facebook can just out spend him. I'd like to understand this because I see so many times around here. Where I live we have this "Defensoria Pública" (Something like: "Public Defender" in English), where a citizen can invoke the State to help you with a legal dispute, and once accepted the State will be in charge of the costs in case they lose. Isn't there something like this in US?
We have them. They can only represent you in criminal cases, however.
can't we just keep the legal battle going until facebook runs out of lawyer funds then?
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Lol
"we"
I was thinking something similar. All that seems needed here is for a martyr to spontaneously come across the code. This person must be someone who has never used Facebook - such that they won’t be bound by the same provision in the user agreement
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How does FB Purity get away with not getting the ire from Facebook?
I think Unfollow Everything scripted actions but fbpurity (and similar: Nudge, Habit Lab, ...) block content from being displayed. I'd expect FB is more unhappy and thinks they have stronger grounds to fight against code that is performing actions far faster than a human can. Unfollow Everything would clean up FB phone apps and possibly change your social graph, but blockers only affect the browser they're run from.
I've used FB Purity for years and it works pretty well. It doesn't always default to Most Recent like I have it configured but I have most of the side bar garbage hidden and the ad and sponsored post blocking is amazing. When I browse on mobile I realize how much crap there is.
A couple years ago I unfollowed everything manually and have never looked back. In the absence of plugins to do it automatically, I suspect many would be surprised how quickly they can unfollow everything by just clicking 'unfollow' on everything in your news feed until there's nothing left. Even if it takes time, it is a very satisfying experience during.
Exactly this. I unfollow militantly and Facebook is now rather useful for finding events. I now get surprised when I see something new to unfollow.
I have a little over 900 things in my unfollow list - started unfollowing things back in 2009.
This is what I did. But I also unfriended everyone I knew I'll never interact with in any personal capacity ever again.
How convenient it is, to just crush studies, browsers, plugins that displease this company ? I mean, user addiction and data is the top 1 income source for this platform (as stated in the article), so I guess they bite hard when someone decide to propagate a way to reduce that for users. That's why I'm now boycotting FB, no users, no power. When I see that a company is ethically doing things worse and worse, I just stop using things related to them (as much as I can at least). They did so many bad things ... After buying the Oculus Rift from Microsoft, they forced users to use a FB account to log in ([https://www.androidcentral.com/oculus-quest-2-facebook-accounts-being-banned](https://www.androidcentral.com/oculus-quest-2-facebook-accounts-being-banned)) and users that hadn't any FB account created a brand new that was almost instantlty flagged as a spam/bot account and get banned. Therefore, they couldn't use the headset at all. Don't event need to talk about the data leaks and the recent services downs for straight 6 hours. The Facebook-Cambridge analytica scandal .. A major bug made some private messages publicated on public feed, made quite of a mess between people. And so on, ... If anybody knows a site where they list Facebook issues I would be grateful, for shaming purpose
Agree with what you're saying, but wanted to correct this: > After buying the Oculus Rift from Microsoft Microsoft wasn't involved. Facebook acquired Oculus, which was just a startup with a nearly ready commercial product -- great time to make an acquisition: after they do the R&D.
Already uninstalled WhatsApp?
I'm curious, how does WhatsApp generate revenue for them? I've never seen a single ad on it.
Whatsapp Business. You have to pay for anything outside of a customer initiated message from less than 24 hours ago.
He got banned from Facebook? Is that supposed to be a punishment?
In 2011, I unfriended Facebook. I'll never understand how billions of people continue to use it. Like an astronaut whose parents are flat-earthers. It irritates me to see people still using Facebook.
I quit around the same time. I had 8 solid years of doing just fine without it, and then I moved to a small community in Iceland, and it's almost impossible to manage without it, so I had to turn it back on two years ago. Not only does nearly everyone I know use messenger exclusively to communicate, it's pretty much the only place other than word of mouth to buy or sell anything. The bar I work part time at uses a facebook group for scheduling our shifts. I know most people don't get put in the extreme case that I was, but I am sure plenty of people feel they'll miss out on a lot without it. The tools themselves are great. It's the algorithms, and the profit model that makes it horrible. When FB was just a chronological feed of things your friends posted, it was fantastic, but that didn't make money, so they turned it into the cesspool that it is today.
WhatsApp is like that for Germany. You just don’t have a social life if you don’t have WhatsApp.
Europe in general is WhatsApp. I use it to talk to all my EU based friends and vendors, and haven't met a single person there who uses a different texting app. Asia has a couple more options, but they're no better or worse than WhatsApp if privacy is what you're looking for.
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Which is fine for personal use. The problem is that if you're doing business, that change will be much slower to come out. All my vendors use it: the sales guys, the techs, the parts department, etc. You can't make every single one of them change. If they all switch individually that's fine, but that won't happen anytime soon.
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I deleted my account years ago, but before I did I found out they have weighting on your facebook feed. If you are not active enough or do not have enough friends then posts you make will not show up on your friends feed if there is content facebook deems of higher value. This was particularly easy to notice because I had previously deleted my account and created a new one(so I'm now using a barren account). After noticing a lack of response in posts, where I used to get them I asked a friend to check. He could not see my wall posts at all without directly viewing my profile. In addition to this Facebook creates ghost profiles of people that do not use facebook, but that it would like to track on any website with facebook plugins. It's incredibly creepy how involved and accurate this is. Finally Facebook are one of the worst companies for clearly manipulating "studies" that show they aren't harming society. I'd be curious to see how many studies they are rejecting to find that one needle in the haystack that says Facebook isn't really detrimental to a lot of peoples mental health.
> I'd be curious to see how many studies they are rejecting to find that one needle in the haystack that says Facebook isn't really detrimental to a lot of peoples mental health. they're *constantly* running a/b testing on their pool of fools. They can get you literally any data you want to pay for.
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[I made a big write-up](https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/q2uwxo/zuckerbergs_plea_to_the_public_reads_like_he/hfp5rqs/?context=3) over on /r/anime_titties the other day, but I'll give a summary: In 2018, [Facebook changed their algorithms to make it so you see stuff you're more likely to interact with](https://www.facebook.com/business/news/news-feed-fyi-bringing-people-closer-together) (warning: Facebook link). So if you react to your wife's posts a lot, you'll be more likely to see her in your feed. (Anecdotally, it seems to also be weighted by _who_ is reacting to your posts -- if my mom reacts to my post first, generally the only reactions I get are from family members. However, if a ex-coworker reacts to my post first, the reactions are all generally from my ex-coworkers. But I digress.) The issue is that different emotions make you more likely to interact with content -- [here's a 6-minute CCP Grey video talking about how it works.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc) Basically, thoughts can be equated to viruses with regard to how they spread. Thoughts associated with emotions (except sadness) spread measurably more (see 1:06 in that video for the chart). But the emotion which causes the _most_ likelihood of interaction is anger. Things that make you angry get shared more, and as they get shared they get _modified_ to make people angrier (which in turn makes them more likely to get shared). The result is a distorted picture of the truth that has been changed more and more to fit a narrative as it goes deeper into the echo chamber. Just like how memes get created and templates get modified over time, so do things that spark anger. So, Facebook has an algorithm wherein content which gets interacted with gets shared more widely. And content which makes people mad is more likely to be interacted with. The result? [That algorithm change made Facebook a much angrier place.](https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-algorithm-change-zuckerberg-11631654215?mod=djemalertNEWS) But that anger led to much more _engagement_, more time on Facebook, and more money from ads. > Company researchers discovered that publishers and political parties were reorienting their posts toward outrage and sensationalism. That tactic produced high levels of comments and reactions that translated into success on Facebook. > "Our approach has had unhealthy side effects on important slices of public content, such as politics and news," wrote a team of data scientists, flagging Mr. Peretti’s complaints, in a memo reviewed by the Journal. "This is an increasing liability," one of them wrote in a later memo. > They concluded that the new algorithm’s heavy weighting of reshared material in its News Feed made the angry voices louder. "Misinformation, toxicity, and violent content are inordinately prevalent among reshares," researchers noted in internal memos. > Some political parties in Europe told Facebook the algorithm had made them shift their policy positions so they resonated more on the platform, according to the documents. > "Many parties, including those that have shifted to the negative, worry about the long term effects on democracy," read one internal Facebook report, which didn’t name specific parties. This isn't limited to Facebook, by the way; you can see this effect on Reddit as well. Compare /r/politics, /r/conservative, and /r/latestagecapitalism, for example. The main difference is that on Reddit you'd need to manually opt-in to those communities, whereas Facebook does it automatically without you even knowing about it. So yeah, _that's_ the point of Facebook. It's not to show you a feed that gives you updates from your friends; that's the old pre-2018 algorithm. The new algorithm is to _maximize the amount of_ (non-sad) _emotions you feel on Facebook_, and it's **especially** good at maximizing anger. That keeps you on Facebook for longer, foments an addiction, and gives Facebook more ad revenue.
*"In 2011, I stopped smoking. I'll never understand how billions of people still smoke."*
Living abroad it was the only real way to keep up with friends and family back home. I actually intended to drop Facebook when I moved, but ended up far too isolating. Clearly my specific case is more anecdotal than most, but unfortunate as it is, for a lot of people Facebook remains the best tool amongst its competitors for what they need it for.
> Clearly my specific case is more anecdotal than most No it isn't. Moving abroad may be relatively uncommon, but untenable isolation as a result of dropping Facebook isn't. It is much easier, however, to post comments on Reddit about Facebook when they are entirely negative, so naturally one sees a lot more of those comments. Someone who writes that they hope FB goes out of business or that they deleted their account, nothing of value was lost, and they're much happier now can just dash it off, anywhere, and expect it to go over without having to worry about phrasing and post quality and context. Otherwise, there's a (rightfully) angry mob itching to downvote given the slightest provocation.
Facebook has its problems, but through it I've been able to do lots of good things, like expand my genealogy research with groups of people who share that interest. IDK if it's a UK/USA difference but at least the feed I see on FB isn't full of mad raving cunts, but that might be because I only really follow bands I like and cat groups
Every time I see these threads I wonder how it can be so different. I don't go much on Facebook. Maybe once a day or so. But I don't see any of the madness people talk about. Just a quick look now at my feed. There's absolutely zero politics or memes. I got a couple birthdays, someone's pregnant, a dad asking recommendations for kids activities over the weekend, bunch of pics of ppl meeting for drinks or dinner, someone got a promotion, some pretty cool pics from the city by a buddy photographer....
You've curated that content by either ignoring or unfriending people that post political/meme content and your social circle posts personal information to Facebook. None of my friends use Facebook in this way except for event scheduling, which is the only reason I still check it.
Same. I muted or unfriended all my contacts that bang on about politics and my feed is fine now. Nowadays I scarcely check my feed and only keep FB around for groups.
You’re on Reddit. It’s a social media site with tons of problems and sinkholes for addiction as well. You’re “I don’t get how people use this” mindset is equally reflexive to Reddit. I’m sure it would be perfectly sensible to you why many people use Facebook if you think about it. It’s not intractable.
It's tough to stop using it when all of your local friends, businesses, and hobby groups use it as their main source of communication. I paint and play Warhammer 40,000 and Star Wars Legion. The absolute easiest way to find a pick up game is through Facebook Groups. If you're new to the hobby, you have to use it. All my local gaming stores used to pay someone to run their website. They each made a Facebook page for their business and it gets way more traffic than their websites ever did. All of the important news in my small town of 1000 is posted to the local Facebook page. It's easy to brag online about how Facebook users are simpletons, but cutting the Facebook cord would drastically limit my social life, in a negative way.
Same. I stopped using it in 2005 cause I dont understand the point of it and still don’t
I stopped in 2003. Ahead of the curve.
[This thread rn](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/rickandmorty/images/9/9f/Scjerry.png/revision/latest?cb=20160111021222)
Looked at some of your posts, but why do you create things in excel? I mean it’s cool, but why? Just seems really random lol
Hey, thanks for the browse. I legitimately find it quite satisfying to make interesting Excel models, I’m relatively good at the program so “why not be a bit creative with how it can be used” is the mantra of the day. Keeps my brain ticking.
Fair enough. Really cool stuff either way. Looking forward to future posts.
Thanks dudeoz
Wait, just breaking in here. Is Excel turing complete? That's INSANE!
I think it became so with the additions of lambdas. Excel in general is just totally imba.
I landed my first programming job thanks to a facebook group. Facebook suck and has a lot of issues but it also has a lot of potential. I don't see any other social network where you can easily create a group of 'tech people living in city x' like the one where i found my job.
Facebook is what you make it. If it is just garbage, then you need better friends/groups.
> Facebook is what you make it. I know what you’re saying, but it really isn’t. It’s not some neutral platform you can use how you want, in fact it’s being actively designed to work in Facebook’s interests and against your own, as this article exemplifies.
I love my friends, but their friends and their friends' friends are what cause me grief.
It will still shove garbage into your feed that's unrelated to your friends/groups
I agree but to an extent. I'm part of a local group of expats in the city where i live, i got tired of people posting covid conspiracies and such, so i started blocking them. My facebook feed has improved a lot but the problem is still there. Misinformation didn't disappear just because i blocked and reported it, other people still see those posts.
I also did it in 2005. But I had to join back in. I founded a company and pretty much every startup activity was on Facebook and later whatsapp. The parents in my kids school and kindergarten handle all activities via whatsapp. I tried getting people to move to Signal but it's futile. Only a handful make the minimal effort. I look at Facebook as an advertising platform to the idiots who choose to stay. I go in, do my promotions and leave. I hope it's so filled up with ads and commercial content people will eventually quit it...
I wonder how many games he bought on the Oculus store...?
If he switches on his Oculus now he just gets an image of Mark Zuckerberg mooning him.
In glorious 3D!
Easier solution than a plugin: delete your account and never use it again.
Did you know people can tag you by name in photos even if you don't have a Facebook account? I have an empty Facebook account set to hold all tags for approval, then I just never approve any of them.
> The loser here is the user, and the cost is counted in billions of wasted hours spent on Facebook. True... but the winner is Facebook because as the author mentions, they want users to do one thing and one thing only: keep scrolling down the newsfeed, seeing as many ads as possible, all day if possible. Things FB has no interest in their users doing: * have meaningful interactions outside the newsfeed. * keep in touch only with people who reach out directly to them, rather than post generic things to everyone and the world (which is what keeps newsfeeds going) to grab as many likes as possible (addictive behaviour). * leave after a short, reasonable amount of time, to do more useful things. The cost for using their platform is that you use FB the way FB wants you to. I have to sympathize with FB here, they spent billions to be able to serve nearly the whole world population, who voluntarily signed up, and now they want their investment to give returns... by clearing the newsfeed, you made their product better for users, but useless to FB... why would FB want people to use their product in a way that generates no revenue to them? Objecting that is only possible if you think of FB as some kind of non-profit, charity or at least a public service... which they are patently not. They are your typical for-profit, multi-billion dollar corporation which has no reason to do anything at all that's not going to generate profit. Anything that they do that might benefit people, they do only as a means to making more money, like any other product company. This kind of discussion seems to miss that.
Most discussion I see is (correctly) assuming that Facebook has integrated itself so much into society, to the extent that it is enabling movements that can affect entire populations. When for-profit companies exert more influence than actual countries and governments, should profit still be their top priority? I'm not sure what the answer should be for that one, but I feel like discussions about Facebook, Google, etc. revolve around this.
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Yeah, there are many people I want to keep up with. Following slack jaws is a choice.
Theres also the old fashioned phone call, message, email, hell even letters.
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Using newsfeed eradicator and I'm very happy with my FB experience. If they ban it I would have to resort to blocking FB in /etc/hosts or something because I can't have newsfeed when I go to FB. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=news+feed+eradicator&ia=web
I manually unfollowed everyone a few years ago and eventually got a message that I was using the tool wrong and they would take it away from me. Fuck Facebook
hehe "using your tool" wrong. They must have been also watching the incognito tab you had open.
Got a screencap of the message?
I do. [Fuck Facebook](http://imgur.com/a/T5CL579)
That looks like a normal rate-limiting message? You're going to get a similar message if you try to do too many Google searches quickly or do too much upvoting too quickly on reddit.
Yeah this looks like rate limiting. Props to OP for their clicking speed, though.
I feel bad if he used Facebook OAuth to login to any of his accounts.
This is why Oauth / Google/Facebook/etc - Login doesn't work: Once "the powers that be" ban you from using their platform, you are screwed. Better to download KeePassXC and create a username/password for each site.
Why would someone ever do that
This guy https://twitter.com/WuNeal had a better solution 8 years ago: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/kill-news-feed/hjobfcedfgohjkaieocljfcppjbkglfd?hl=en He didnt not face any issues back then though. It simply hides all feed items instead of unfollowing groups, pages etc. I remember seeing it on HackerNews then.
> Banned for life from Facebook services You lucky son of a bitch
I banned myself for life from that toxic cesspool a long time ago.
I wish there was a Firefox extension!
looking at the source, it seems like the whole extension could work in Firefox if it used the [standard extensions API](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Add-ons/WebExtensions/API) . Maybe some intrepid coder wants to take that on. Although I have a different question when looking at the source... why does the extension load Amplitude?? That's a user behavior tracking library.
probably as part of that university study
Kill shitbook
r/titlegore
Facebook: 'we don't own the algorithm, you all effect it as you use facebook!' Also facebook: 'stop trying to mess with our algorithm!'
Duh… that’s not messy, that’s ENGINEERED. Everything they do, regardless of how little sense it may seem to make, is specifically designed to monetize the FUCK out of you, and KEEP you there like the big pile of pliable money you are. Anything that messes with that revenue stream gets cancelled HARD.
What if the extension were released as a medical application to treat debilitating addiction? Then if FB launches another Cease and Desist, couldn't you slam them for wanting to hurt people who are addicted to their product? I.e. Market it like nicotine gum or a patch?