Around this time last year, the latest Facebook Privacy Policy was published and plenty of influential tech experts weighed in on just how outrageous these policies had become. Hardly viewed as a resolution at the time, I took it upon myself to finally deactivate my Facebook account for the year of 2015. Many times before I had spoke of how I will delete my Facebook or how much I hated Facebook for various reason. I was at a crossroad since I wanted the privacy Facebook clearly did not honor, but did not want to lose touch with friends and family through a powerful social tool. Finally, I pressed the big red button and sure enough, I have yet to feel the urge to go back. I understand some may have a harder time going cold turkey, but let me share why I don't feel the need to go back:
- More time for productive and liberating activities, such as reading, writing, playing music, exercising, subscribing to various enlightening podcasts, and gaming
- Less distractions at work -- I may be just two years removed from college, but I attribute early career progression and learning to many things, and avoiding distractions is one of them
- 'Curiosity Killed The Cat' -- I'm still curious on many matters, but not of the events or updates I was finding on Facebook. I've become accepting of information I get from sources other than Facebook and they tend to lead to something I will actually click on and read (business, sports, music, tech).
- Staying Connected -- The biggest fear many have on doing away with Facebook is fear of missing out. How will I connect with people whose phone number I do not have? How will I be invited to events my friends are attending? This problem solves itself. My close friends have my phone number and I do not miss out on events since these friends invite me. For that batch of close but not close enough friends on Facebook, I've swapped phone numbers with them in person or connected with them on other applications.
- Freedom and Liberation Through Privacy -- This is obviously the big one for me. I wake up every morning knowing Facebook is no longer monitoring my activity or taking personal information without my consent. To give context to this point, when I had Facebook on my phone in 2014 I could blatantly see it was running tasks when not in use (via Android dev tools). Most mobile phones at the time did not have the intense app permissions management features Android M and iOS 9 have today, so using Facebook in any capacity on any device did not sit well. I am no expert on privacy, but the buzz about Facebook pulling my contacts every minute without my consent did not sit well. The company can point to their updated Privacy Policy as consent, but it is truly doing their millions of users a disservice to communicate privacy changes in this way.
Other Observations & Recommendations:
- I've had a few other friends join me in leaving Facebook, and they too have not voiced any urge to return
- I continue to limit my use of applications Facebook owns or pulls information from such as WhatsApp
- Twitter, Reddit, HackerNews, podcasts, and public radio continue to be reliable information services (and weed out the junk)
- Mobile applications such as Signal for messaging and Ghostery for browsing have proven to be great alternatives to Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, and Chrome to encrypt communications and protect privacy.
- 9 times out of 10, DuckDuckGo's top search results lead me to what I was looking for. Through some testing I've noticed Google's search results show many more Facebook links.
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