Facebook Banned Me for Life Because I Help People Use It Less (2021)

https://slate.com/technology/2021/10/facebook-unfollow-everything-cease-desist.html

by dotcoma • 2 years ago

227 162 2 years ago

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

I have this thing: https://www.fbpurity.com/

which I use to get rid of those "suggested posts" from groups I never joined. You could also customize it to do what this guy's tool does, I suppose.

mrinfinitiesx4• 2 years ago

Nice. I installed one of those addons to hide that crap. I only use my fb for my local pet shelter that I volunteer at and other things I volunteer with since tech is well, in transition to say the least.

https://micg.net/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/output.gif

I have to scroll for like 2 minutes just to find a local group post (small town that gives out local town news), It's all suggested/sponsored/ads.

I have facebook blocked in my /etc/hosts file so I can only view it at the shelter etc. But yeah, that's the crap its feeding in our faces. When you visualize it, it's like and see what it's really doing to your brain/eyes, you need to reclaim that time and attention sink.

croisillon• 2 years ago

i love that tool:

- i only see posts from people/organisations i friended/followed

- those posts are in chronological order

- and i don't see what people liked/commented somewhere else

- on top of that, i don't see "reels" or whatever this feature is called

- and when a contact change their name/deactivate/unfriend i receive a notification

kirenida• 2 years ago

This is another similar tool:

https://socialfixer.com/

It loads 10 posts at a time and filters out all of the junk. Then you have to manually load more posts.

It's really eye-opening when you load 10 posts and it filters out 9 of them.

But besides that, the thing that's really pushing me away from FB is the pure hate, agression and stupidity on display in the comments section of local groups. It hurts to see the levels people descend to when they can comment without any repercussions.

rolph• 2 years ago

how someone with a banhammer hanging overhead behaves is nowhere near as valuable an indicator, compared to behaviour when there are no perceived consequences.

[the thing that's really pushing me away from FB is the pure hate, agression and stupidity on display in the comments section of local groups] -- you are seeing what lurks inside, and what degree of personal refraint exists.

AlbertCory2• 2 years ago

actually, on NextDoor, the population is so limited that it's fairly productive to Mute/Block the hateful or dumb people ("excuse me, but please pick up after your dog.")

FB, of course, has billions of users so that doesn't work.

genewitch8• 2 years ago

omfg thank you so much. truly. it works with facebook container tabs too!

tim333• 2 years ago

I was going to recommend that. I'm amazed when I try using fb without it at the amount of junk it throws up.

sasaf5• 2 years ago

It also told me that it had permanently disabled my Facebook account—an account that I’d had for more than 15 years, and that was my primary way of staying in touch with family and friends around the world.

You don't need Facebook for that. Write down a list of the people you care about and contact them with some frequency, at least on their birthday.

em-bee13• 2 years ago

contact them how? they don't read email (if they even have an address), they are not using any other messenger. and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable. at best i could send SMS, but that is not suitable (and across continents expensive) for real conversations. also none of the alternatives allow me to keep up with what's happening with them because they only post it on facebook. and there is at least one project that is important to me that i can't participate in without a facebook account because it is coordinated only there.

in general, reaching someone through other ways than their preferred channel only works if both sides are willing to do so. very often, especially with non-technical people that is simply not the case.

you can replace facebook with any other tool that is used for messaging, and you will find cases where not being able to access that tool would be a problem.

most of my contacts are only reachable through one specific messaging tool.

the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it. or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.

squigz3• 2 years ago

the reality is that we can no longer allow any of these companies to control who does and who doesn't get access. getting access must be a right that mustn't be denied to you if you choose to use it.

A right to an account on web platforms? Okay... does that apply to every single platform, or only those of a certain size? What size? What about people using the platform to spam, harass, or threaten other users?

or, better, all major messaging systems should be made interoperable so that you can stay in touch without needing an account there.

This is a far more reasonable take, though still not probably viable.

MisterBastahrd• 2 years ago

The actual reality is that you worked yourself into the untenable position of being so hands-off with people that you need a social network to do what a phone can do just as well, and that's because most of the people in everyone's social network are not actually people that we care to stay in touch with on a daily or even monthly basis. You don't need a social network. You choose to use one.

There are people in my facebook feed who I haven't seen in person in over 20 years. It's nice to keep up with them and their lives and families, but if I lost access to facebook tomorrow, it wouldn't change a thing for me. I am friendly with these people but I don't actually know them anymore and am not all that invested in their lives.

jpc0• 2 years ago

and my introvert nature makes phonecalls very uncomfortable

It's got nothing to do with introversion, you aren't comfortable makeing phonecalls. Start making phonecalls and it will get better.

If you truly struggle, stop lying to yourself that it's just your introversion and seek help. Mental health issues aren't something to be ashamed of, it is affecting your quality of life and should be diagnosed and treated by a professional.

I'm not saying you have a mental health issue. I'm just saying if you do, you don't need to let it effect your life.

monkeywork2• 2 years ago

So if I build a tool that lets me and 3 of my friends chat privately, I need to give you access because you somehow think you have a right to access?

cratermoon• 2 years ago

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that if this person's efforts at helping people use Facebook less is materially affected by loss of access to Facebook, they weren't really helping people use it less.

im3w1l2• 2 years ago

He is clearly saying that the goal was to help people reap the benefits of facebook usage while limiting the drawbacks. The goal was never to get people to quit altogether.

garciasn• 2 years ago

I highly suggest you unfollow everyone on LinkedIn as well; the result is the same: nothing in your feed and no ads, but everything is still available to you—like searching for jobs and looking at profiles/messaging folks.

I don’t have a tool that does this for you, but it’s definitely the way to go. Literally when I go into LinkedIn it’s just a completely blank page; it’s fucking glorious.

—-

I deleted Twitter during the 2008 election cycle and I “disabled” my FB acct (allowing me access to Messenger and Marketplace; the former only used for the latter) and it’s been amazing.

This is how you deal with these companies: by using their services without the noise and advertising that keeps them afloat.

NayamAmarshe• 2 years ago

you unfollow everyone on LinkedIn as well

No need, You can use the SocialFocus extension to hide the feed :)

victor90002• 2 years ago

Yeah, you can also do this with a custom filter if you already have an ad blocker like UBlock Origin

wkat4242• 2 years ago

Unfollowing doesn't work for me. It will just suggest random people and spew their nonsense in your feed and still show ads too.

Strange that it does work for you, but not for me! I'll try that extension though mentioned in the other reply, thanks for the tip?

walthamstow• 2 years ago

I can confirm this LinkedIn trick works and is great

yeahsure• 2 years ago

I did that for Facebook (unfollowed everyone but my direct family). It worked great for a time. Now my feed is filled to the brim with suggested posts from pages and groups that have nothing to do with me and low-quality fake AI images to push controversial fake news. It's become unusable unfortunately, so I don't use it anymore.

genewitch8• 2 years ago

upthread is linked socialfixer plugin, it seemed exactly what i wanted so i installed it and ... it's exactly what i wanted. Just my friends and a couple groups i actively joined, on purpose. I don't know how facebook differentiates "joined by commenting" vs "joined by request", but it seems to do it. You can also tell it to stop scrolling, defaults to 10 posts. you can tell it to order chronologically, instead of "the algo".

I read this post whenever it was made (the OP) and i'm glad i read downpage a bit, because i remembered 3 plugins mentioned, and the other one is fbpurity, and the third is i forget, but the Vet mentioned it i think (ctrl-f vet)

archerx8• 2 years ago

Facebook has been making itself unusable, I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up too but I just get a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see. Facebooks algorithm for their wall is one of the worst. Even if I X the spam posts it find other crap to spam with so I just gave up and visit FB every other week instead of daily for a quick update.

Instagram is suffering the same fate, it doesn’t show my posts to my followers, really wants to show me post that have nothing to do with my interest and I’m getting a lot of likes from bots. I noticed my friends don’t post to it as much anymore so it’s feeling like a ghost town.

I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.

mrinfinitiesx4• 2 years ago

Made a post down below. I scroll for like two minutes before seeing anything local in my town. I only use it to volunteer at places in my town, and it literally showed over 100+ suggested/Follow/sponsored things, the addon I used collapses it all.

Dead internet theory. AI generated stuff. Busted algorithms, and attention-soul sucking 'pull me in' psychological warfare ad induced stuff. We need to reclaim our sanity from doom scroll/infinite scrolling.

I have it in my /etc/hosts file to be blocked unless I'm at a computer that requires me to log in.

archerx8• 2 years ago

I don’t know what is going on at Meta but they are killing their cash cow.

I don’t mind the Youtube algorithm, it used to be better but it’s still good enough. I don’t use Youtube with an account so I have gotten good at “training” it and getting it to show stuff I’m actually interested in. The X algorithm is not bad either, if I post art related stuff it will only show me art related stuff.

parpfish2• 2 years ago

I have a FB account with no friends and a pseudonym that I just use for being able to check the pages of local businesses (it’s usually the only way to see hours because nobody has normal websites anymore)

The garbage that they serve up on my feed is astounding. When they don’t have any info from “friends” to populate it, it looks exactly like a collection of chumbox ads

archerx8• 2 years ago

At this point I think it’s less of an algorithm and more of a random number generator that picks out spam to show to people.

jddj• 2 years ago

Same here for X. Extreme left/right propaganda and rage bait only interrupted by porn and crypto scams

sroussey• 2 years ago

Do you advertise the Twitter account? That is, do you pay for the blue checkmark? Just curious

archerx8• 2 years ago

No blue check mark and I don’t pay for twitter and I don’t advertise it, not even my friends and family know about it.

RajT882• 2 years ago

Same - the friends it churns up posts from tend to be the ones posting inflammatory political garbage. Unfollowing them doesn't always stick, I've observed. I call this the "facebook oopsie" - "oops we reset your privacy settings - again".

Facebook ads are egregiously bad. Overwhelmingly scammy: Drop-shippers pretending they are having a going-out-of-business sale, products priced double or triple where they are priced elsewhere. And of course, I've started seeing straight up malvertising campaigns which somehow made it through review. ("somehow" being - paid ads get little scrutiny)

If Facebook groups hadn't totally taken over a few communities I want to be a part of (car enthusiast groups, local fishing groups), I would probably never check it. Actually, less and less my friends and family post there, preferring other social networks, if any.

#DeleteFacebook

grogenaut• 2 years ago

Tangential question what's a good group site these days?

ben_w2• 2 years ago

I don't know about scam ads, but I've been seeing badly targeted ones, for example a bunch for a lawyer who specialises in helping Americans who live in the UK to renounce their US citizenships.

I'm not an American, I don't live in the UK, and I'm working towards gaining a second citizenship rather than removing one.

Also for example, an ad from a government of a country I don't live in about them banning a breed of dog I've never heard of. I don't own any breed of dog, definitely now whatever that was.

uslic001• 2 years ago

Every time I report scam advertisements Facebook responds that they do not violate their TOS. I rarely spend any time on Facebook as a result. Big waste of time. I have moved all my friends and family interactions to text messages and WhatsApp.

yardstick• 2 years ago

Try find the Feeds section, from there you can select Friends.

On iPhone it’s in More -> Feeds. They really work to hide it.

The main caveat is it only shows a few days worth of activity. But it’s still better than the main feed.

archerx8• 2 years ago

I used to do this but it would keep reverting me back to the spam feed so I just gave up on FB.

jakub_g• 2 years ago

Whoa, I never noticed that, thanks! Given how bad yet time sucking the default wall became, I hope this will make me reduce my time in there.

Zambyte• 2 years ago

I just want to check up on what my friends and family are up to

Literally just call them. You don't even have to ask for permission. Cold call them. If they don't want to talk now, they won't answer. That's fine. Call again another time.

In the last year I have just started cold calling my friends and family. It's been great.

amelius• 2 years ago

For a long time my main use of Facebook was to check what events my friends were attending, and to check which events had which people going.

At some point Facebook crippled those features. Maybe for good reasons (I guess the possibility of stalking might be one). But in any case, I use Facebook much less now.

wk_end• 2 years ago

The success of this seems highly dependent on the nature of your social circle. I would probably be less inclined to be friends with someone who was randomly calling me for awkward chats about what I'm up to.

manuelmoreale8• 2 years ago

I love that we’re going full circle. Social media is so terrible we’re getting back to just call people on the phone. I hope the next thing to come back are pen pals. Proper old school with envelopes and paper pen pals. It’s gonna be great!

ljm• 2 years ago

Isn't this a variation on a theme? A lot of current unrest revolves around people feeling ignored and unrepresented because of the global aspirations of tech and government.

pndy• 2 years ago

a flood on unsolicited spam from pages I’m not interested in or want to see

Dunno what kind of weird experiment they were conducting last December but once I start scrolling, I was getting AI generated images of really poor quality accompanied by comments from bot profiles among normal stuff, obviously out of chronological order from my friend's list.

Not that I'm visiting that page that often - on contrary; every few months to see if those who don't have anything beside messenger want something.

paul7986• 2 years ago

Indeed and WTH is Zuckerberg thinking as I saw him say stuffing our feeds with posts from not our friends & family is the way forward.

It's annoying as I'm constantly clicking the X. I'm on Facebook to follow family & friends and groups I joined not other groups I didn't!

archerx8• 2 years ago

Clicking the X is useless. I just stopped going on Facebook.

verisimi• 2 years ago

I have an experiment going on, I have an art account on insta and X, every night I post the same image to both and X gives a lot more views and engagement than Instagram for the same content. Also it seems like the X algorithm is smarter than FB/instagram because it shows me similar art to what I post and keeps the correct vibe. Insta/FB show me random crap I couldn’t care less about.

You post the same image? And then you're happy you get more engagement from x?

I don't get your experiment... You want lots of engagement when you post boring content repeatedly?

Dylan16807• 2 years ago

Same image on both sites, not same image over and over.

j45• 2 years ago

Individually visiting profiles seems to change the feed a little.

One guess is if social media engagement isn't as high as desired, users are increasingly presented with alternatives to take them in different directions until they're more engaged, or at such a deficit of dopamine they will be ready to jump to the next thing, maybe like a tik tok?

Today, if a social media network made and kept it about people and not algorithms calculating the topically desired outcome of one company, maybe there would be a different usage.

People have historically learned how to tune out certain forms of media when or if they became too focused on topics not aligned to them, including advertising. Newspapers, Radio, TV..

Hyper personalization may be an option, but if the result of it is distance and not supporting authentications in real life and not digitally, the brain is wired for one for the former a lot longer than the latter. An example of this is how much more.. vivid spending time in person with someone was after not being around people as much during the pandemic.

qingcharles• 2 years ago

Apparently Facebook just added an "Unseen Friends Updates" feature to try to combat this:

https://www.threads.net/@theahmedghanem/post/C_A6XLJNOaJ

EasyMark• 2 years ago

When I go there it just seems like a ghost town. I actually undid all my “likes” of various groups and companies etc and it quietened down dramatically. Not that many people are posting there and mostly I just have a few relative/friends groups going and that’s about it, and what it’s good for. I wish I could get them to move to signal or even WhatsApp and nothing but crickets.

slowmovintarget• 2 years ago

If content is driven at you by algorithm it's not your feed, it's their feed.

seoulmetro• 2 years ago

Your mistake is assuming Facebook's algorithm isn't written to be exactly like you explained.

"The algorithm is poor" is not a thing anymore, algorithms are easy to get right and even easier to break on purpose for their own benefit.

No large corporation actually serves their algorithm for you any more. That's why TikTok got so popular, their algorithm actually worked for you for a long time.

xyst• 2 years ago

I would perceive a life ban from Zuckerberg a badge of honor. Congrats to this person!

Personally, would have just open sourced the project. Then Zuck would have to spend engineering time (and employ more people) to “combat” these types of usability hacks which reduce their bottom line.

Similar to how YouTube is in a perpetual battle with the entire world over ad blocking on the platform.

Personally, I just stopped using FB/IG all together. Much happier. And relationships are much more meaningful. No more filters/ai/thinly veiled bullshit/“curated ads”.

im3w1l2• 2 years ago

I'm sure University of Neuchâtel would be appreciative if you actually did.

underseacables2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, it's not from Zuckerberg, it's from some underpaid, Third World content moderator churning through posts and accounts with only the most minimal of thought.

gitaarik• 2 years ago

Indeed, why doesn't this guy just open source it. The community will take care of it staying available.

firesteelrain2• 2 years ago

I have noticed a phenomenon where people I am connected to on FB rarely post anymore. I have a ton of history on there but I mostly use it for the groups which is a very useful feature since I am in a few ham radio groups, my local HOA and community groups. I can’t stand Nextdoor so I don’t use it for similar purposes.

Anyways, it appears FB is on a slow decline.

more_corn• 2 years ago

Aren’t they helping you in your goal?

urbandw311er• 2 years ago

I’d chip in towards defending the lawsuit if they wanted to crowdfund.

zahlman• 2 years ago

These demands seemed outrageous to me. They also seemed outrageous to lawyers I consulted from the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and in the U.K. But my options were limited. I’m a U.K. resident, so a lawsuit against Facebook would probably have played out in a U.K. court, where I would have been personally on the hook for Facebook’s litigation costs if I lost. Facebook is a trillion-dollar company.

Seems like this could have been answered by releasing the source code? Someone else could remake and distribute the app; and if Facebook didn't like that, they'd have to be the ones to file a lawsuit.

MichaelZuo• 2 years ago

The author is exaggerating the risk, even if Facebook goes all the way, via hiring the most expensive gold plated Magic circle teams, and wins, the judge wouldn’t assign 100% of the inflated costs to the author.

Of course they could still be on the hook for normal costs relative to the actual workload imposed (i.e. what the median law firm would charge), but that’s a potential consequence for any lawsuit whatsoever in the UK. Or any other ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction.

mynameisvlad• 2 years ago

Of course they could still be on the hook for normal costs relative to the actual workload imposed (i.e. what the median law firm would charge), but that’s a potential consequence for any lawsuit whatsoever in the UK. Or any other ‘loser pays’ jurisdiction.

That still seems like too much for a free tool that they are getting no revenue or monetization from, and the author seems to agree.

zeroonetwothree• 2 years ago

I’m not sure what you expect when you violate the terms of service.

splawn2• 2 years ago

I was banned for life for pointing out how the Tuttle Twins choice of pricing $14.88 and $88.88 for their children's book bundle sale could be perceived as hate speech.

genewitch8• 2 years ago

I would have said "don't google those price numbers"

splawn2• 2 years ago

That would have been a MUCH better thing to do.

0xTJ• 2 years ago

I'd enjoy watching Facebook make a miserable decline into obscurity. In the last couple years I've moved away from using Facebook Messenger to keep in touch with people, and I don't remember the last time I've opened Facebook "proper". The only reason I'd even consider opening it is for Marketplace.

timbit42• 2 years ago

Do you use something else that isn't owned by Meta?

FpUser• 2 years ago

I do have FB account to communicate with couple of people which happens like once a year. Other than that, the further I stay from Zuck concoctions the better I feel.

jgalt212• 2 years ago

Everyone says FB is sh*t and unusable, but every quarter their ad revenues go up. So are we wrong, or are the ad buyers wrong? Or is Instagram 80% of their revenues?

latexr• 2 years ago

The alternative option is that you’re wrong and not everyone says or thinks that about Facebook. In tech circles, sure. Outside of them, not so much.

tedunangst• 2 years ago

Any update three years later? Are you using it less?

fitsumbelay• 2 years ago

After being a fairly heavy FB user since 2005, in 2012 I decided to remove all of the 400+ Facebook pages I followed after it dawned on me that it was the source of a lot of my news feed garbage.

After deleting about 100 pages from my list of followed pages, I notice the last 10 would re-appear. Every 50 or so pages I'd delete from my list -- which to begin with is a purposefully slow and painful UX whether done manually or javascriptically -- 5 or more pages would reappear. It took a while to realize what was happening because it wasn't always 5 or 10, sometimes it was 2 or 4 and the time between occurrences was sometimes so long that I originally assumed I just missed some. Then I noticed some pages got re-listed after a day or so. This got me pretty upset but it was only the beginning.

I began making it a daily mission to delete at least 50 pages a day and keep deleting them as often as they came back. It was at this point when pages stopped reappearing and I'd get an alert from the app that went something like "Hey (stop sign emoji) stop! You shouldn't be doing that!" and a bunch of lines about how I'm using the app in a way that's not meant to be, and some vague noise about continuing in such a way may lead to repercussions to functionality and/or my account. What? I'm not supposed to use the delete button on the Pages Followed (or whatever) pop out list?

After ignoring these warnings and deleting as much as I could, one day I found the delete functionality would just stop working after deleting 20 or so pages, if at all. My frustration led to me pausing my account for a month or so, then reactivating when I felt motivated to delete more pages until again the functionality would either be limited or completely impossible. Finally I paused my account for 4 years until 2016 when I found I got delete all followed Pages. I was so happy about this I started using FB daily again but not nearly as much as I used to.

Funnily enough the same thing happened to me in 2021 on Instagram when I tried to unfollow accounts.

That said I've always thought FB had/has the potential to be a public utility as a local-first product. Like, families should have an FB. Your street or the floor of your building should have a FB. Neighborhoods should have a FB.It doesn't even necessarily need to be ad-free, just community oriented. I suppose that's Mastadon's intention but FB does it best IMHO

throwaway738384• 2 years ago

I find it so interesting that you say that, because I, for a long time, have been trying to manually erase/obfuscate details in my Instagram account—when I go to unlike posts in bulk, after about 40 or 50 of them Instagram gives me an incredibly vague "Something went wrong" error while spouting something about "protecting our community".

Even funnier, I did this with my story archive, and it actually hid my entire archive from me after I deleted about 10 of them. Now, I can't access my story archive except through Instagram's "Download Your Information" downloader. It now won't let me delete or even view my past stories.

Food for thought.

genewitch8• 2 years ago

i wonder if this is because they don't know how to secretly store (say, in an LLM) what your "reactions" were or whatever, so when you wholesale start wiping out your interactions on the site they have two conclusions - you're a bad actor who stole your account; or, you're stealing from them, stealing the only thing they care about, your personal info and preferences.

Parent's issues predate GDPR (i think?) - but i do know i tried one of those reddit "wholesale delete all content and interaction" apps/scripts/plugins whatever, and i got the same thing.

actually ignore my first, i just realized it's to stop people from either stealing and selling, or just the owner selling their account - imagine a 16 year old FB account, it'd be pretty hard to ban that account (you'd think).

either way, it's my data, and i want it NOW

benatkin2• 2 years ago

The person in the best position to fight the nightmare company that is Facebook is the next Instagram, Oculus, or WhatsApp founder. Please don't sell to Facebook. kthxbai

bloodyplonker22• 2 years ago

So TikTok? And it's arguably even more of a "nightmare".

btmiller• 2 years ago

I currently have 388 videos bookmarked on TikTok all about home design that I used to help guide decision making on my home remodel. I have 389 videos bookmarked about cooking. I’ve never amassed a collection of resources this size on any other platform, both text and video. It’s a really good system for disseminating knowledge that I care about.

benatkin2• 2 years ago

One word for you: Myanmar

nickphx2• 2 years ago

I've seen nothing but ads directly promoting malware as "AI" image and video creation tools.. The malware steals credentials and uses the credentials to post similar ads from the compromised accounts. Facebook seems to be doing nothing as all methods of reporting are ineffective.

nickphx2• 2 years ago

Here's a live one now.. https://www.facebook.com/ads/library/?active_status=active&a...

virustotal scan of the "installer" -- https://www.virustotal.com/gui/file/ba3cdc5190b44da96e5ecb5f...

If only facebook were held liable for what they allowed to be advertised.

alex1138• 2 years ago

It would be so much easier to believe this was a question of incentives ("it's not just/never just One Person At The Company") if Mark Zuckerberg didn't have a history of knowingly stealing from other people and generally being a backstabber

People who claim they would say the same thing about "...dumb fucks" because it's dumb to give away information (already pretty spurious, but whatever) seem to miss the other part where he says "If you need any info on people, just ask"

Because it sure seems like the pattern of behavior keeps continuing, rather than stopping, as a once young immature person who then learns

codersfocus• 2 years ago

U.S. law specifically allows programs like OPs to exist. Summary from gypty:

The statute you are referring to is likely the *Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996*, specifically *Section 230(c)(2)*.

Section 230(c)(2) provides immunity to providers and users of an "interactive computer service" for actions taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected. This includes the development and deployment of programs intended to block or filter malicious software.

This section has been crucial in allowing companies to create and distribute tools designed to protect users from harmful or unwanted content, including spam filters, antivirus programs, and parental control software, without the risk of being held liable for the consequences of their actions.

k__• 2 years ago

Meta should ban itself from Facebook.

10 years ago, I'd post multiple times a day.

Now, I only go there a few times a month to check for events.

fraboniface3• 2 years ago

I created Weavus [1] as a way to take my events away from facebook. It's a social app (mobile only for now) where events are the main element and the home screen shows your upcoming events.

The philosophy is no feed, no ads, no addiction, just your real social life. It would have been easier to have users sign up with facebook, but I decided the best thing to do was to be entirely Meta-independent. They will undermine anything that threatens The Feed.

The idea is also to merge in a single app many needs of events, like group chats, photo albums, expenses splitting, and I'm planning to add more. I realized groups have similar needs to events, so I added them as well. They're not designed for massive communities though, more like small groups of friends.

All of this is stil very early in development and it definitely needs some more work before a Show HN, but we've found it very useful for weekends and holidays already.

Consider it an open beta, so feel free to give it a try and give me your honest feedback :)

[1] https://weavus.app

cowboylowrez2• 2 years ago

didn't look too exciting with firefox

fraboniface3• 2 years ago

Could you elaborate? I'm not a web dev and it's just a landing page in raw HTML/CSS (developed mostly on firefox btw). I intend to improve it but some pointers would be great.

firesteelrain2• 2 years ago

The reason he was banned and given a C&D is because it ruins their business model. You are the product.

underseacables2• 2 years ago

If it weren't for Fluff Busting Purity Facebook would be completely unusable. What I hate most is that it fills my news feed with crap from other people and groups that I have no interest in, and no desire to see.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluff_Busting_Purity

LadyCailin• 2 years ago

I like the rule about loser paying attorney fees and such, but it should be capped at whatever the loser paid for their fees. That way, if you hire a local lawyer to sue a trillion dollar international corporation, sure, you might lose, but they will have to eat the cost for whatever legal fees they spend above “local lawyer rates” are. If they hire a local lawyer too, then by all means, loser has to pay for that attorney.

Facebook Banned Me for Life Because I Help People Use It Less (2021)

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