Leaving Facebook

It’s time to for me to #DeleteFacebook. I hadn’t been on the platform regularly in years. My main interaction with it was to deny that I was trying to reset my password, and then find out that people had left me Messenger or direct messages 3+ months ago. Now that what we thought was happening–overarching harvesting of data with limited controls on how it gets used–has been revealed in the Cambridge Analytica fiasco, I am simply done.

I stayed on, despite working for a competitor who had shelved several variants, some with their own set of privacy concerns, in deference to a *ahem* less popular social network. Both companies are so heavily entrenched in applying user data toward advertising dollars. It’s easy to point out the spec in their eye, and so I don’t enter into criticism of Facebook glibly, especially where it appears I’ve been drinking Google’s own Kool-aid.

That said, it appears to me that Google and Facebook have different takes on the problem. Google takes privacy criticism and revamps its design and pre-launch evaluations to raise the bar on customers’ ability to understand and manage the data Google has and curates for them, including where it is handed to third parties in the hopes of an improved, customized experience. Meanwhile, Facebook, admittedly entirely from the outside, appears to fix the window dressing, only to have similar privacy concerns re-erupt later, with an ever larger affected populace as Facebook’s userbase increases¹. I see no end to this, and literally cannot, as the history of abrogated promises cannot inform me.

I hope that I am wrong, and I know there must be dedicated individuals inside of Facebook working towards a better future for their customers and their data. I wish them the best, and can empathize with the difficulty of their plight, both technically and business-wise. Until then, I will be sticking to Twitter / Signal / Hangouts / E-mail until I find a better ecosystem.
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¹ Tufekci, Zeynep. "Why Zuckerberg’s 14-Year Apology Tour Hasn’t Fixed Facebook." Wired. April 6, 2018.