Are There Viable Alternatives To Facebook? - Comments Page 2

As is so often the case paranoia reigns on this site. I am on Facebook but I don't spend much time there or over share personal information. Remember you are in control of this!

Unfortunately for my circle of family and friends there is no viable alternative to Facebook. If you too hate the way they misuse personal details, you can use false personal details - it won't stop them selling your data, but it sure s
crews the value of what they sell.
Caution! I posted that my employer was the Peking Circus, and I promptly received hundreds of friend requests from nubile young chinese women, with click-bait photos.

Whilst Facebook allows videos of a domestic dog having its left leg chopped off with a machete and a monkey trapped in a woodpile with a dog trying to pull it free with its mouth stretching the animal's arm almost from its socket and, when the dog gives up, the camera owner continues for many minutes filming the poor animal's attemps to free itself without success and the video closing with it still trapped..............

AND FACEBOOK REPLYING TO MY COMPAINTS SAYING THAT THE ARTICLES DID NOT CONTRAVENE ITS POLICIES(or similar) PREVENTING CRUELTY TO ANIMALS.........

Can Facebook ever deserve the respect of right-thinking people?

Darl, I use ad blocker on my desk top computer, and that clears away all those annoying ads. On my iPhone, I recently discovered a feature on Settings > Safari > Reader. If Reader is set on, ads are blocked, and the web page shows the text in an easy to read layout. Maybe one of those options will work for you.
Re main topic of face book, just a few friends are only there. The real importance are some closed groups (meaning a person must apply and be approved to join) that are about topics important to me. I do not know if those groups would move elsewhere. It is generally annoying, face book, cluttered, slow, and only interested in selling ads or selling information about us customers.

Sadly it seems, this article confirm my view that Facebook is the only thing out there that does everything I want. Believe me, I would leave it instantly if I could find something remotely as good (like many others I'm sure). So far, nothing is but we live in hope. I've got into trouble re-posting or sharing stuff that shows the Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians at the moment. Sadly I've realised why (Mark Zuckerberg) so I've had to stop sharing these but I still feel 'big brother' is on my shoulder now

I am going to age myself here, as I was once one of the host on the Chatrooms on the American Online site. That was some 29 years ago and we, as host had a lot of tools to keep folks safe and conversational wise to the rules we created in those group or topic areas.

It is to bad AOL does not reinvent those chat rooms again where discussions where constant like talking via phones but in words and abbreviations of the group. I would sure help out in those veteran issues I get involved with and solve within the VFW and VA networks.

As I've been saying for some time - "Facebook is evil"

In a word: YES, there certainly are viable alternatives to FB.
I see a slow but definitely progressing trend amongst both old and young people to Instagram and Whatsapp instead of FB.
Personally, I have used FB primarily for advertising music events, and for finding long lost friends from the past... Unfortunately, FB keeps changing their look and feel too frequently, making things very hard to follow. The most recent layout change is so awful and disorienting for me, as well as drawing more CPU power and memory than ever before, that I simply can't stand it! I find it impossible to work with FB any more - it often freezes up my browser and my (Linux based) laptop...

Could/should alternatives to Facebook (and Twitter, et al) give at least an honorary mention to being anti-social?
I was not much into the phones (from rotary to smart versions) either... ;)

I like Facebook. It allows me to keep in touch with my family and a group of friends from a defunct support group. However, I limit the number of friends that I accept and I make my posts available only to Friends except for some photographs of non-personal things (my garden!). And I belong to 3 Groups. I'm well aware of FB's failings which I deplore, especially its Community Standards, but they don't seem to affect my small community.

I would be happy to move to another platform if all my friends did but that's not going to happen. I don't use a smartphone so I use Messenger to talk to my daughter, my sister and a Friend from Australia. And I don't have a problem with Notifications, that's how I know something is happening!

I think that people's experiences with FB would improve if they were more discerning in accepting friends.

Also, there is a group called Counter Social which sounds good but which you didn't mention.

I am in need of some assistance, Bob.

It has now been TEN WEEKS since I was suddenly and deliberately banned from my Facebook account, with no reason or message proffered, I have tried every solution imaginable to recover it or simply to contact Zuckerberg's company (writing to @Facebook through Twitter, etc…) and I never get any answers…

At one point, I tried writing to all the Facebook emails I knew of. (The Christmas letter below will explain all the details.)

Do you have any solutions/contacts/suggestions?

Sincerely,

Erik

Dear Mr. Zuckerberg,

It has now been SEVEN weeks (!!!) since I was banned from Facebook, and it is my sincere belief that it would constitute A NICE CHRISTMAS GIFT for you to unblock my page before December 24, 2020.

Indeed, I think that my punishment has gone on long enough and that it is (beyond) time for https://www.facebook.com/eriksvane to be reinstated,

I sent you a copy of my French “carte de séjour” for foreigners in France on the day I was banished. Please find enclosed a copy of my passport.

What's more, I was never told (never given any reason whatsoever about) what led to my banishment.

I was suddenly and deliberately blocked on November 4. At the time, I wasn't posting anything, controversial or otherwise, in public on my wall,

I was only having a PM / DM discussion with one other (single solitary) person, during which time I PM/DM shared a link with a (bona fide) Youtube video and a hyperlink or two from a serious and popular website owned by a professor of law.

Suddenly, in the middle of the Personal Message/Direct Message discussion, Facebook was gone.

Over the weeks, I have been contacted more times than I wish to remember by perplexed friends (FB or other) — sad, irate, and/or uncomprehending — who (reasonably) think that I unfriended them and wonder why on Earth I would do such an uncouth thing.

Now I think that I have been disciplined enough (again, I still do not know why) and I am urging you to bring this punishment to a prompt end.

Two days from now, it is December 24, and I think being returned to Facebook would constitute a nice Christmas present from you, Mr. Zuckerberg, and from your colleagues…

Erik [etc…]