I quit Facebook months ago, and guess what, no one cared. I keep contact with REAL friends far away via email or Whatsapp. For local friends I use Whatsapp and meet in person. There is no NEED for a true Facebook replacement.
But to be honest, I created a new account, with a fake name and won't add anyone to it. The goal is to track some events and key communities I like to interact with. But I've added no personal data to this account and only log on to it on a less used web browser and don't use it in my mobile. I also use the following add-ons to prevent any Facebook tracking: uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger and uMatrix. Probably overkilling it.
If the target is to have a contact, an email or a phone number are sufficient.
Also, it's fallacious to think that emails/phones are subject to change, while a Facebook account isn't - some people close it. Especially emails nowadays are used for a lot of services, so people stick with them for a long time, more than the past.
WhatsApp
But yeah, the networking effect is real. Whatsapp is what everyone uses, so far it seems like a decent compromise based on end-to-end encryption.
I'm not understanding something here. Is that an empty address book, or does FB allow you to still access the information of people you're no longer connected to? I was under the impression that the default information visible to folks not on your "Friends" list was pretty limited, which is why [Cambridge Analytica/Kogan] needed to use an app to scrape data from users' friends.
Unfollowing removes someone's posts from your wall but they remain connected as friends. (You can also like a page and unfollow it)
I've used the script provided by the top answer here before and it worked! No need for an extension (I don't know if it still works however).
Its like downloading your email and organizing it into sub folders instead of using gmail.
I'm part of the team, we are running a token sale somewhere around the next couple of months (https://ico.kuende.com <- easier to understand the vision from here) and planning a "paradigm shift" of social media, so to speak.
I guess, given the current drivers within traditional social media and all the associated bull*t, we might have a shot at fulfilling our vision.
So, yes, using Ethereum blockchain, not fully decentralzied, and we might switch to a dPOS blockchain in the near future (if EOS, SMT succeed).
Users can create, curate and participate in challenges. And they are incentivized to do so through gamification. For all that, they can earn tokens and keep the fun running.
European GDPR is making this data export a consumer right (it comes applicable in may). Though I haven't heard about any service enabling data loading from a Facebook export (nor a Facebook export tool).
Just send them all an email or a last FB message with your contact information. Seriously... you are not that important for 90% of the people in your FB contacts to care about. Go outside and get some fresh air and enjoy life. the people who you really matter to will either email or call you.
This kind of advice came up repeatedly but it doesn't answer the initial question at all.
I'm fairly new to active HN but I followed passively and had the impression, that we are supposed to interact with reason and logic. These were emotional responses which triggers an emotional answer because it implies OP would be anti-social and the question would be unnecessary at best.
I am not a FB addict. I don't use the apps I hardly use the timeline, I scroll around when I'm really really bored (and that didn't help, ever), but my hoarder soul feels relieved to know that my past encounters with people from all over the world are listed somewhere and even when phone numbers changed due to country hopping or emails changed due to finishing university I'm still able to say hello when I feel like it or need a place to crash.
Maybe this context helps to stop the lecturing bullshit.
Outlook.com used to have a feature that would import your Facebook contacts directly. I can't find that feature in the current version of the site though. Yahoo.com still does have one. So you could make an account there, import your FB contacts, then export them as a CSV file.
Since it is a protocol, there are several clients that behave differently and you can create your own. ( https://ssbc.github.io/scuttlebutt-protocol-guide/ )
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
You can then use a container system. I've got one for all the google stuff (might be worse than FB on the privacy concern in my opinion), one for Facebook, one for some online site I don't want to cross data with anything else.
That plus uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc...
This is what I do, except I also use Facebook as an information source, since people post their "fun" contact photos through there.
https://hackernoon.com/so-you-want-to-build-a-p2p-twitter-wi...
YOU are the next Zuck.
I want an encrypted chat service thats convenient as slack and discord.