12/17/19

Why I'm leaving Facebook


You can certainly find any number of legitimate, scary reasons to dump facebook. Any cursory search on google has tons of interesting articles on why you should dump them.  I invite you to look at several – very eye opening.  As for me personally, I’m listing the main ones for me.

I don’t do this lightly; I think Facebook had  - and still has – some very useful attributes.  But I can’t just keep ignoring their gross bullshit.  I’m tired of feeling powerless in the face of greed, duplicity, and dishonesty, and I certainly don’t think it’s right that such an amoral institution should continue profiting off my images, data, info. etc.  So here’s my personal Top Ten Reasons I Am Leaving Facebook:

1)              They compromise your privacy. I’m not even one of those folks who worries too much about this kind of thing – even after being a victim of identity theft – but the fact that they’ve been so shady on this AND so unapologetic when busted just makes me angry.

2)              They own your data.  I could go on and on AND ON about their disgusting, overly verbose agreements they have you agree to – knowing 99% of people don’t read it all.

3)              Cambridge Analytica

4)              A New York Times investigation has found that Facebook gave Netflix, Spotify and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) the ability to read, write and delete users’ private messages. The Times investigation, based on hundreds of pages of internal Facebook documents, also found that Facebook gave 150 partners more access to user data than previously disclosed. Microsoft, Sony and Amazon, for example, could obtain the contact information of their users’ friends.

5)              Facebook had been keeping records of Android users’ phone calls and texts.

6)              Facebook was in secret talks with hospitals to get them to share patients’ private medical data.

7)              Facebook acknowledges it didn’t do enough to stop its platform being as a tool to incite genocidal violence in Myanmar. A New York Times report reveals the company hired a PR firm to try and discredit critics by claiming they were agents of George Soros.

8)              Facebook admitted it exposed private photos from 68 million users to apps that weren’t authorized to view your photos.

9)              Last July, Facebook was fined $5 billion for just one of their privacy violations.  Five. Billion. Dollars. Now, to me, and probably you, this is a SHIT TON of money, but to Facebook, it’s so meaningless their stock price actually went UP on the news. 

10)          Not to mention the stupid, continual changes in format, sponsored posts, and increased advertisements.

This quote form an article sums it up for me:  If you’re still on Facebook after everything that has happened this year, you need to ask yourself why. Is the value you get from the platform really worth giving up all your data for? More broadly, are you comfortable being part of the reason that Facebook is becoming so dangerously powerful? Are you comfortable being on a platform that has, among other things, helped incite genocide in Myanmar?

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