Barry Dahl dot com

In December 2018, I finally left Facebook. There are several reasons why I stayed as long as I did, including:

• A couple of private groups where I found value connecting with either family members or educator friends.
• A few distant friends (who are real friends not just “accept my friend request” friends) who I’ve been able to reconnect with, including a few college buddies.
• And that’s about it.

Those reasons weren’t good enough, as the scales kept tipping further and further against the Bookface.

Facebook, because time isn’t going to kill itself.

The main reasons why I left include:

1. The bastards cannot be trusted.
   • Donald Trump. FB significantly helped bring this plague upon America. See Cambridge Analytica if you don’t believe me; and Russian trolls, and Fake Election News (not of the Trumpian Fake News variety), and more.
   • Most recently, it was disclosed that “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the Times reports. It gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read users’ private messages. It allowed Yahoo to view real-time feeds of friends’ posts, despite the fact it publicly claimed to have ended that kind of snooping years ago…” (lots of good/bad stuff at The Ringer)
   • “Facebook News” isn’t The News, and cannot be trusted.
   • Hacked! Login credentials for 50 million users were stolen in September 2018.
   • If you aren’t familiar with the many other FB scandals, this article gives a great summary of their plethora of distrustful behaviors. My faves are:
     • In May, at a congressional hearing it was noted that Cambridge Analytica, under the direction of Steve Bannon, sought to “exploit certain vulnerabilities in certain segments to send them information that will remove them from the public forum, and feed them conspiracies and they’ll never see mainstream media.”
     • Reports in April indicated that “Facebook granted Zuckerberg and other high ranking executives powers over controlling personal information on a platform that is not available to normal users.”
     • In October 2017, Facebook expanded their engagement with Republican-linked firm Definers Public Affairs to discredit “activist protesters.” This was the whole “let’s imply that Facebook critics are anti-Semitic and somehow link the protesters to George Soros.” Oy.
     • the “view as” feature exploited for 50M users – reported Sept 28, 2018.
     • In July, blocked people became unblocked.
     • As reported by Vice News in October, “Facebook’s political ad tool let us buy ads “paid for” by Mike Pence and ISIS.”
2. Zuck is creepy. His company is creepy. I’m creeped out by them.
3. Time Suck. Not wondering what I’m missing on FB is surprisingly liberating. I still have several other time sucks, but FB is no longer one of them.
   • The signal to noise ratio on FB is low. Really low. The amount of time I spent sifting through the bullshit to find a few nuggets is depressing to think about. Using more trusted sources for reading material is far more productive.
4. I learned to hate the fakeness of it all.
   • Fake birthday wishes from people who wouldn’t otherwise say a word to you if FB didn’t tell them that hey “It’s Barry’s Birthday, help him celebrate!” Gag me. These gestures lost all meaning for me – even to the point of being negative communications rather then positive.
   • Fake outrage over every little stupid thing.
   • Fake enthusiasm about the minutiae of life. Seriously people, 99% of what you post just isn’t that interesting – same goes for 98% of my former posts.
   • Facebook should be renamed Fakebook. So fake. Bigly fake! SAD!!!
     

     Avaaz protest in London ; 04/26/2018 – Flickr – PD photo by Rob Pinney

5. FB definitely caused me more angst than joy. Some examples:
   • A friend of over 40 years who pissed me off nearly every day with his nasty political posts.
   • Relatives that I stopped liking once I got to know them better.
   • All the untruths shared as truths – maybe mix in a fact checker once in a while.
6. This could be a never ending list. But I’d rather end it.

Several months earlier I deleted the FB Messenger app off my Android phone, amid reports of serious violations of personal privacy. If it wasn’t a spy, Messenger would be a reason for me to stay on FB instead of leaving. But alas, it definitely cannot be trusted.

FB has about 2.4 million active users in Q4 of 2018. That’s all fine and good, but I think I’ll align with the 5.2 million humans worldwide who aren’t aren’t in The Book.

I thought I would suffer from F.O.M.O. (the Fear Of Missing Out), but so far I think I’m experiencing J.O.A.F. (the Joy of Avoiding Facebook).

For a while, I too was caught up in all the social sharing, thus limiting my ability to be present and live in the moment. It’s easy to start viewing everything we do with the lens of our phone camera. I’m over the need to constantly report on my life rather than living it. Except maybe here on this blog – like the good ole days.

I still want to be connected with most of the people who were my Facebook friends. It’s a bit sad to think that deleting this one connection might turn out to be the end of any communications with a friend or family member. But it seems that if our relationship is more than Facebook telling us that we’re friends, then our friendship will endure. Almost all of my former FB friends know how to get in touch with me via many different technology options. And I know where they are, too.

Filed under: Personal, Web2.0 |