Blocking Socials
Revisiting a post from 2022: adding Twitter to the block for socials that I maintain in my hosts file.
In 2018, after the Cambridge Analytica Scandal came to light, followed soon after with a scandal where Facebook gave handset hardware makers access to user data, I decided to quit Facebook completely. Alas, at the time they made it somewhat difficult to exit completely, but after jumping through a lot of hoops, I was able to completely delete my account (I am not naive enough to believe that they really deleted all my data, pictures and tracking information. They are too fucking evil for that)
But at that time, I also knew that Facebook tracks you everywhere you go, and almost everything you do online, so to really cut them off takes drastic effort.
Today, as I contemplate deleting my last Social Media presence, Twitter, I was writing a post for my professional blog/newsletter, The Product Bistro, I wanted to be sure that I had the correct entries in the host file to prevent me from using muscle memory to go to Twitter.
I discovered that in the past I had taken the extreme effort to block Facebook and this block was already in my hosts file:
############################################
# To Completely Block Facebook
# Add these entries below to your hosts file
#
# Your hosts file Location:
# Linux, Unix and Mac OS X -> /etc/hosts
# Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 -> C:WINDOWSsystem32driversetchosts
# Windows 2000 -> C:WINNTsystem32driversetchosts
# Windows 98/ME -> C:WINDOWShosts
#
# You can edit the hosts file with any text editor
#
# On Windows 7, the default AV security scan will try to remove the
# facebook.com entry; you’ll need to add an exception to tell the OS
# to keep the block listing in the hosts file and not to remove it
#
############################################
0.0.0.0 apps.facebook.com
0.0.0.0 connect.facebook.net
0.0.0.0 facebook.com
(it goes on for about 920 more domains, yes, Facebook is fucking everywhere).
But this prevents them from tracking me when I browse, and that is worth it to me. If you want a copy of this, drop me an email, and I will send it to you!
As far as I can tell, Twitter never had this ecosystem of cyberstalking trained on their users. Perhaps that is why Twitter was never as much of a profit generating Ad Machine.