Bye Bye Facebook
Time to shake off another Big Tech and feel that delightful breath of fresh air, health and freedom.
Pruning the old overgrowth of commercial Big Tech and letting the new shoots of indie tech flourish.
“THE JOY OF NOT BEING SOLD ANYTHING”
Facebook Status:
Deactivating Facebook prior to deleting it from my life. (Not that it was in my life anyway. Hardly touched it in ten years. But because this account existed it looked like I was here. If you thought I was here, I wasn't; Zuck's system wanted you to think that. If you thought I was receiving your kind messages and rudely ignoring you, I wasn't; Zuck's system wanted you to think that.)
I love your stories, your pictures, your news, you as friends and family. I get that Facebook provides a way for you to share these. But I don't like Zuckerberg or any overlord controlling who I'm allowed to connect with and how we are allowed to communicate.
In Facebook I don't feel comfortable. I feel pounced-upon by the Algorithm. I feel the system is dangling your pictures and stories in front of me as a lure, as bait. I feel we are being manipulated, abused for commercial gain.
And so I haven't visited Facebook club. Not for years, aside from a few occasions when I went in briefly to look for something or other. And so I haven't seen your delightful sharing of life events and interesting stories.
Mind you, I'm not the socialable type, so I maybe wouldn't go there nor post anything anyway, even if the place we're talking about was a delightful public park under ownership of the commons.
Why Disconnect?
It's a ghost account. For ten years I haven't even been looking at Facebook, let alone writing back to the friends and family who post there. I already deleted years ago the few posts and pictures that I had initially uploaded there. The only reason I kept the account so long is in case I might one day want to contact an old friend or they might want to contact me and we might not have each other's phone or email... But really, it's ridiculous, just FOMO and inertia.
I detest the feeling of being beholden to Zuck's mega-corp. What do I get from that contract? I get the sense of maintaining what to me is merely a subsidiary way to potentially contact some people. Why should I need to keep subscribing to the Facebook club and playing its game by its rules, just for that?
So it's Bye Bye Facebook.
Shall I silently close my account and slink away? I considered it, and temporarily “deactivated” my account for a few months. But before closing it for good, first I want to tell the friends how I feel, and where to find me.
Where To?
I already feel great with my de-googled phones, email at my own domain, closing my Amazon account, Giving up Github, wearing an open-source smart watch.
More about my de-googling and other freedom from Big Tech's shackles:
If you feel the urge to join the movement, the Opt Out Project has a fantastic set of practical guides for freeing oneself from all kinds of pervasive surveillance tech.
See you in the Free(dom) World
... through regular web sites and blogs like my Wrily;
... through the non-proprietary digital communication tools like email, the telephone system and SMS, Jabber/XMPP, matrix, and the fediverse (the network that unites Mastodon and dozens of other software and services) — we call these protocols — that are standardised, operated by a diversity of providers, and not under a single company's control;
... and perhaps occasionally in Real Life.
p.s. A funny thought occurs to me. I can't help wondering if among my friends there are some who might consider this event “sad” or that I need some kind of “help”. If that's your reaction, I invite you to try on a different perspective.
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