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Comment by K0nserv | Hacker News Reader

I used to have a rule in my ad blocker that blocked the typing notification and read notification from being sent. Both of which are features that I despise

When typing a `POST https://www.facebook.com/ajax/messaging/typ.php?dpr=1` is sent for example.

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Used to? Did you stop or does it no longer work? Was it as easy as adding that URL to your ad blocker blacklist?

I've started using a bundled app for messenger.com so haven't looked into blocking them for that. Also use the mobile Messenger app a fair bit.

I'd like to switch away from the Facebook platform, but it's seriously difficult to convert people away from it.

I know of various third-party IM clients which allow you to do this. Been a long-time user of Trillian myself, for which this was one of the cooler features back in the day. Allowed you to be notified of people typing, regardless of having an open conversation, and set up whether you wanted to send typing notifications always, only after having sent a initial message, or never. Was pretty cool to be able to say "Hi!" to someone just when they were about to message you. Most of my friends never figured how I did that, since their official clients never supported it so they didn't even know it could be a thing.

Haven't got Facebook myself, but I know Trillian fully supports Facebook chat and I suppose many other (free/open source) IM clients do as well. Such multi-network clients are in my experience great for slowly moving people away from pretty much any network, since they pretty much remove the distinction between them. I just add my friends and let the software figure out how exactly it gets the message to them. :)

Just do it. Seriously, moving away from fb is important, but it won't be seen as such as long as people like you don't flat out refuse to use the crap. It's worked out extremely well personally, drastically cutting down on social noise, thus getting distracted less. Somehow, people who actually wanted to stay in touch, managed to over different channels (of which there's a fuckton; signal being my goto solution).

Why signal? What alternatives do you use / have you considered?

I'm still on facebook messenger but I mostly off facebook otherwise (and have settings to make it difficult to track pictures of me), and I'm curious to hear a good comparison of messaging software.

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