Quitting Facebook

If you've been reading me for long, you know I talk a big game about ideals and activism. I'm all about taking principled stands for what I believe in -- at least in writing. But sometimes, you have to walk the walk, too. That's why I'll be deleting my Facebook account one week from today. 

Facebook has done some tremendous things for me. It's allowed me to connect and reconnect with friends and family I've missed terribly (or never even knew as well as I'd have liked to). And I'm going to regret losing that more than I can say. 

But Facebook has also crossed over so far to the Dark Side that I can no longer defend keeping an account just because it's a convenient method of keeping tabs on my Auntie Jill or my crew from high school. 

Facebook's corporate ethics seem nonexistent. The result is eroding privacy controls, selling out your personal data and habits via your friends, even installing apps to your profile without your knowledge or consent.

I can't condone this. I think Facebook has gone so far that even writing an angry blog post and email campaign just isn't sufficient; why should Facebook care how mad people get, if they still use the service?

So that's it for me. Sayonara, Facebook. I'll miss my friends, but I won't miss you.

Comments

[Joshua Loomis]

Aw. We'll always have Twitter.

[Andrea]

Absolutely. ^_^

[Sheri Rubin]

I'm on that fine line too Andrea. What made you finally go over to leaving and how did your FB friends take it when you told them? (Or did you just leave and not saying anything. :>)

I've been going back and forth on it for awhile. Need to make that decision myself.

[Andrea]

@Sheri: I've been on the line for a while, too. It's their implementation of Instant Personalization that's got me. I opted out, blocked the apps, and then I still found a bunch of secretly-installed apps in my profile not long after. And I'm really uncomfortable with Facebook blabbing about me to external sites without asking me about it first.

A friend also recently encountered a bug where information she had explicitly marked as private was showing up on her public-to-Google profile. Another contributing factor.

Bricks in the wall, but the wall's done been built.

[Ashleysramblings.wordpress.com]

Well another good thing about leaving Facebook is no more app requests( help with my super stove, send me a harness, join my group.)I'm going to stick with Facebook a bit longer( I have someone I have to watch his profile, if you DM me on Twitter, I'll tell you about it.) If they cross too many more lines, I may opt to leave Facebook as well. I've pretty much taken off things I didn't want anyone to know, but the personalization thing is just a pain. I also dislike the changes made to the info page, where everything you have listed under interests became a page or group.

[John Evans]

I wonder how Zynga feels about this?

[Ralph Loizzo]

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9176707/Facebook_calls_all_hands_meeting_on_privacy_for_Thursday

[Andrea]

Yeah, I saw, Ralph. Not impressed. Basically the only thing they could do to win me back is remove the Zuck from the company entirely.

[Sean Vernall]

A year later and this post has once again become relevant as many are now quitting facebook as a consequence of privacy issues.

Did you ever go back to Facebook?

[Andrea Phillips]

I never did in a meaningful sense.

I do have a shell account I use for testing apps I've, uh, designed myself, but it has no friends and I keep it logged out unless I need it. No photos, no status updates, no notes, no contact information.