U.S. users are leaving Facebook by the millions, Edison Research says

Whenever the topic of Facebook gets brought up I see a lot of comments on how "the news feed sucks". That it's filled with hateful comments. Leaving facebook is great because it takes toxic people out of your lives! What seems to be missing from the conversation is that Facebook to a large extent is what you make it to be. _You_ decide who to follow, who to keep as your friend, whose post you want to see. There is nothing stopping you from simply removing everyone except your family members and your good friends in which case I'd argue it actually becomes a great tool and a net positive.

If what things end up on the timeline aren’t a simple result of what feeds you select, that makes the feed one sees less under one’s control, doesn’t it?

There's some things you can't influence though.

There's, for example, no way to disable page invite notifications.

I think a lot of that has moved to WhatsApp - at least here in Germany people create and participate in groups for all kinds of social circles and activities:

From never ending, ongoing groups, like family, friends, clubs / sport teams or work to temporary and occasional groups dedicated to events like birthdays, travel with friends, festivals, etc.

The concept of groups is easy to grasp and it's much simpler than organizing Facebook in a similar way. It includes people who don't have a Facebook account (all they need is a phone number and even grandma can join in) and participating feels much less public than posting anything on Facebook.

Of course I imagine Facebook won't mind that transition and development all that much.

This is an oversimification. I have hundreds of friends on Facebook but the algorithm somehow does an amazing job of choosing my top ten most toxic friends and highlighting their most toxic posts. Unfriend all of them and it finds the next top ten most toxic. Saying “Facebook is what you make it to be” ignores the fact that Facebook does a fine job of making itself be pretty terrible.

>What seems to be missing from the conversation is that Facebook to a large extent is what you make it to be.

Regretfully, this was not the case for me. I tried tweaking my news feed to my preferences for multiple years and it still showed me crap that made me sad. More importantly, mindlessly scrolling my news feed was a time sink, and I found it very difficult to stop. I was definitely addicted to it, in the same way that I experienced addiction to chocolate to cope with my PhD.

I broke the addiction for myself by using a news feed blocker recommended by a friend. Recently, I deleted all the content off my facebook in the hope it would discourage other people from interacting with facebook. The addictive properties of facebook are all in instagram, even if it is less toxic, so I hold it in similar disdain.

It's not that simple because imagine that you have a friend that's really cool but you can't talk with him about cars because he has unpopular opinions (or dumb) but really likes to argue for them.

If you have that friend on FB then, because he sometimes posts things about cars and it gets heated, that's what FB like try for you to engage with.

FB seeks and promotes "engagement" over "quality of experience" so it will always try to make you anger (it leads to more engagement) than to have a fulling experience.

If the algorithm can only work with chill people and very alike... it will still try to find what divides and "engages" that group of people.