I want to end it with Facebook, but I can’t bring myself to say good-bye.
I have my reasons for wanting to stay, the most obvious being my desire to stay connected to people I wouldn’t otherwise connect with.
Let’s face it, things have changed.
When I first met Facebook, it was a cool place to meet people and talk about all kinds of things. And if I wanted to use the voice of my big, floofy dog to instead of my own, so what?
Before long Facebook became more demanding. It wanted my “real” identity and banished the floofy dog to a corner called a “page.” It wanted my phone number, and the ability to track my location. Then I found it was stalking me as I traveled around the internet, and using my photos to identify me using facial recognition software. It was also stalking my friends.
Eventually this place morphed from a beauty shop to a reality show. People had no qualms posting racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted crap because they had “friends” who would agree with them. People lied about how great their lives were. People lied about how bad their lives were to con others into giving them money.
I’m sick of the bigotry, the narcissism and the never-ending stupid shit. I’m sick of being drawn to the app several times a day like a moth to a flame only to find my blood pressure rising as I wonder why I keep doing this to myself.
If those aren’t enough reasons to end it with Facebook, today I learned that Facebook took all that data it gathered on my via stalking and sold it to a Chinese company that has been identified as a possible security threat to the US. Oh, sure, Mark Zuckerberg SAYS he cares about us and wanted to bring the world closer together, but what he DOES is steal every aspect of our personal lives and sell it to the highest bidder. He is a very dangerous man, and Facebook is a very dangerous company.
So why the hell am I still with Facebook? Why can’t I bring myself to end it once and for all?
Have you found the courage yet to say good-bye? How’d it go?
Dogpaddling Through Life 
I use facebook to network a lot of dog rescue things and along that line it’s been helpful to connect dogs shelters with rescues, adopters, pledges, etc.
I use it to keep up with the gun sense group I belong to. If only I could limit myself to that, but I am addicted. I admit it.
No don’t go yet …
Sent from my iPhone
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But why stay? I can see you here.
I don’t use it much except as PR for my site, but they still got me. I was one of the people he sold the Cambridge Analytica and from there to every hacker on earth. This past month has been hacking hell. I still use it because there really aren’t that many free ways to publicize, but I’m very very careful about what I say. Personally, I think everyone is tracking us. Literally everyone.
I, too, was sold to Cambridge Analytica, and I’m still mad about that.
Dumpy had a FB Page? And I missed it? I so would have been on board that! FB, I rarely share personal ‘ahnything’ So mine is full of Cat Porn! I unfollow people who over-share. Period! Got kids? Blah! Blah! Blah! Can you learn to not get too involved or just break-up? I came late to the FB party and have reasonably tight setting so I am not their target market. Cheers,H
Rumpy had a Facebook profile with thousands of friends, then he got the boot because he was a dog.
I don’t understand that. I follow dog pages to this day. They have not gotten the boot.
Rumpy was a profile account like your personal account, then he got “converted” to a page.
It is a bummer. Great to keep up with friends but if you use it as a marketing tool for your blog, it’s pants. As soon as you start doing well, they ask for money and if you don’t pay, your posts don’t seem to reach so far any more…
I know! And I have no way to reach out to people other than to pay. I cannot initiate conversations.
I’ve never really clicked with facebook. I’ve found the limits to how a page can respond frustrating, along with the constant requests for money so that other people actually get to see your posts. The user interface is rubbish. I hate being told that if I respond to personal messages on my page faster I will get a higher ranking – most of the personal messages are spam!
I don’t check in on Facebook very often, but somehow I can’t quite bring myself to delete tha account…
I see we are in similar circumstances. I keep my page floating just enough but I don’t put a lot of effort into it simply because of the reasons you mention.
I feel your ambivalence. Once thing I’ve especially enjoyed about FB is “meeting” friends of friends who are thoughtful and interesting–people I would not have been able to meet on my own.
I will probably hang onto Facebook for business reasons. But i could see myself cranking down on my personal info. If I could convince enough people I enjoy seeing around FB to move over to one of the de-centralized, owner managed social media sites, I would definitely move.
Diaspora is one I’m looking at now. https://diasporafoundation.org It looks like it has some of the features you miss from the old Facebook.
I used to like Facebook because it was a place that had mostly positive posts, unlike the news. It has changed. More political posts are showing up and more people are sharing disturbing images and stories. It also knows too much about us, just like Google. Despite that, I am now in contact with old friends and relatives that were mostly lost to me before Facebook showed up so I have decided that the tradeoff is acceptable . . . for now.
I still have my personal page, but I’ve deleted a lot off of it. I’ve thought about getting rid of it but there are people I still keep up with on there. I just can’t seem to delete!
I know. It’s hard.
i deactivated my facebook account 2 years ago – and have not been on ever since…”I’m loving it” – McDonald’s commercial….on May 25th – Facebook took 50 million of its users off of servers in Ireland in order to avoid europe’s stricter privacy laws..and today we find out that a “facebook software bug” changed 16 million facebook users account privacy settings i.e. changing their private posts to public posts..Facebook’s only concern is profits and they will break every rule/law in order to sell people’s digital lives to the highest 3rd party bidders..if you are looking for an alternative – it is called mewe.com..they do everything facebook does but it is completely private i.e. they do not sell your digital life to 3rd party corporations..their motto and business model is very simple “Not 4 Sale”…plus, they do not have a news feed with bogus news articles filled with hateful trolls..just google mewe…I have been on mewe since I left facebook – one of the best decision I ever made in my life..best of luck – ciao christian 🙂
Thanks for reminding us there IS life after Facebook!
While I’m still technical on, I rarely go to it. Monitoring use has been surprisingly easy and with each passing week, I feel less troubled by a minor presence. I tend to post on my blog page from external sights thereby avoiding having to get on so that’s helped. But I sure hear you.
I’m still there……but……….sporadically. I was one that barely updated Cody and Dakota’s pages and always felt guilty…now? I laugh and am grateful that I didn’t. All of the hard work others have done with their fan pages is for nothing. I am mostly there to see family photos that I normally wouldn’t see. I know people who seem to live there all day………never could wrap my head around that. I pop in for a few minutes, then I am gone
It’s insidious, isn’t it? Almost as insidious as a giant lobster demon screaming about Darth Vader in the naked winter of our discontent. Or maybe that’s just me. Hard to tell. I guess we’ll never know.
Facebook is quite possibly the dumbest thing on the planet. It only sucks that I need to use it for business. I promise you, you don’t actually have 2,000 friends, nor are you really ‘catching up with friends from high school.’ You talked to them once or twice, then went on with your life. People are so pathetically desperate for conversation they take pictures of their hamburgers at lunch as if none of us have ever eaten, much less seen what one looks like. Yes, I’ve given up on it. I have about 90% of friends blocked and use it strictly to see professional stuff. I like my friends, but I don’t need to know every little detail of their lives every day. Oh, and don’t get me started on people showing photos of their kids! I mean, I get it. We have parents getting in trouble for letting their kids walk to playgrounds alone. but those same parents don’t even consider child predators online! And why the hell does your dog need a FB page anyway?
As I said in the post, the dog’s profile promoted the blog,