Leaving Facebook Part 3 - Dumping Facebook While Keeping Your Friends

in #facebook7 years ago (edited)

In part 1 and part 2 of this series, I've detailed some of the reasons WHY I'm leaving Facebook and why you should consider making that move too.

In this article, i'm going to talk about HOW to go about doing that while keeping your friends.

The hardest part of leaving Facebook is not to delete your account...it's to not come back! Once you’re signed up, it’s hard to break up for good because now you’ve got private messages, event invitations, endless new baby photos, and life-changing announcements from your closest friends.

Truly, Facebook has a way of being sticky and hard to live without. This is why I decided to share with you this step by step guide to leaving Facebook without deleting your online social life.

Your Contact Manager - Who Owns It?

One of the reason why we are dependent on Facebook is that it is our contact manager. All our friends, family and acquaintances are on there and without it, we wouldn't have a way to reach out.

This is why you have to consider building your own contact manager so that no matter what happens, you have a way to reach out to those you need to reach out to. Phone numbers and email are a good start but nothing can stop you from including birthday's and physical addresses.

Too Many People? Maybe not...

The truth is that not everybody on your Facebook is your friend. There is a limit to own many relationships you can maintain...what people call the Dunbar Number


Dunbar's number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. This number was first proposed in the 1990s by British anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who found a correlation between primate brain size and average social group size. By using the average human brain size and extrapolating from the results of primates, he proposed that humans can comfortably maintain only 150 stable relationships. Dunbar explained it informally as "the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a drink if you happened to bump into them in a bar".


As you go through your contact list in your messenger, you'll find this to be true. Most of those people are not even acquaintances...there are people that you have no ties whatsoever with anymore.

Putting Your Real Friends on Notice

Find those people that you want to cultivate a in relationship with, ask them for their phone number and email and compile this into a excel sheet for now. That way, no matter what happens, you have that information at end. You may consider printing it and file it in case something happens.

This process may help you realize how you need to reconnect with some of the people that you haven't connected with in a long time. Why not make the most of it and set up dates to reconnect with them?

Import Your Contacts To Your Phone

The next step is to transfer all that precious data into your phone, you can do this by converting your excel file to vcf format here: https://thewebvendor.com/excel-to-vcf-vcard-online-converter.html

Finally, by setting up whatsapp on your desktop (as see in the video below), you can transfer that file easily from your desktop to your phone in seconds.

Conclusion

I know that this is little tedious. It's way easier to stay on Facebook and bury our head in the sand...but believe me. There is a feeling of empowerment to know that you don't depend on Facebook to reach the people you care about.

By following this process, you end up OWNING all your precious contacts, having better messaging features and have an easier time at getting out of Facebook jail.

We are not done, there are other things we can do to make sure that you can dump Facebook while keeping your friends

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You have been really think this through aren't you @cryptoctopus?

But its difficult to not use anything that is not owned by Zuckerberg, since he also owns Instagram and whatsapp.

And about whatsapp did you knew this?:

However, in the summer of 2016 WhatsApp had begun sharing user information with its parent company, allowing information such as phone numbers to be used for targeted Facebook advertisements. | Source

I’m thinking about dumping instagram. Haven’t really used it much lately anyways.

Still debating about Facebook. Rarely use it but it is useful for some groups I use for things like 3D printing and machine learning that are
much more responsive than other media.

Also works good for keeping family up to date with kid stuff.

Unless you like displaying yourself to the world, I would delete it. I have almost no inclination to take pictures of myself, nevermind sharing them with some randoms haha. I get the foodies and the vloggers, but that's just not me. I guess we gotta find a social media platform that is suited for us.

Yeah I will probably never delete fb because it's like my digital journal. All the back to high school, nearly 10 years ago.

Gosh dang it

It's true. The Facebook and Googles of the world have consolidated virtually all of the social media world under their umbrella. It is simply too lucrative a business model for them to pass up and people are all too willing to give them all of their personal data for free!

Let's hope for blockchain based social medias to take over then.

Steemit is just the first.

well i think it is easy to leave everything related to Mark because we have a better way now. Join FutureNet and leave Facebook today. I'm actually going to delete my Facebook account.

Not so spam you @cryptoctopus but I know you were interested in the Hivemind updates...he is one that just came out from the developer.

https://steemit.com/steem/@steemitblog/update-communities-hivemind

Most people, I know, myself included, keep it for the few people who still use the FB app. I haven't logged in, liked or posted anything in years. It stopped being useful for finding interesting people a long time ago. I give it a year before everyone moves on from it and we start seeing many deletions and dumping.

Lolz...now I love your conclusion because I was just about saying that as well. It is quite tideous and the humans I know would prefer to take the easy way out which is remaining on Facebook since it doesn't bite. But the need to take the steps you just outlined is very important because it will get to save us from the future disaster waiting to occure by using Facebook.

I will take the steps and delet Facebook and also want to seize this opportunity to implore others to do just same.

Talking about the Dunber Number ....150? I can't even keep 3 stable relationships. I can only manage 2 if they are same sex and 1 if it's the opposite sex. I have lots of acquaintances too and I would proudly say I don't have any Close friend.

Big ups to those who can manage up to 150 relationships ..mehn that's much. Lolzz

A wonderful information review, my friend and you hit, just in time for trouble! You are absolutely right and as I already wrote that I also left the Facebook , but the friends who stayed in my account, how to communicate with them, that's the question! Since I did not want to communicate with them through the Facebook, because of the policy of this social network, now you have clearly shown me and all of us how it can be done to stay in touch with them. Thanks for the current message @cryptoctopus

Another way is to get all your friends here on steemit. When all your close friends are on steemit, you will worry less about losing contacts on facebook

Nice way to make fb come out of our brains ,this could help a lot of people from saving alot of time , i guess the best technique to bury the shitty thing & yes thanks for the whats ap video i needed that direct chat thing..thanks Octopus.

Facebook has been fucking us for so long, I guess it's time for us to move on. But as you mentioned we have our friend circle on Facebook and it's hard to let anyone go. You sure suggested to ask each one of them for their contact numbers and other details, but that's really very hectic. No one would want to do that all over again. So I don't see that an option, give me something else.

I invite all my friends to leave Facebook and their awareness that they are exploiting our personal information
Invite everyone to join Steam

@roselover I agree we may invite all our friends to join Steem. 👍