Comments of the Day: Why I’m Leaving Facebook

I shudder to think of all the time I wasted on Facebook before throwing in the towel and closing my account last November. Endless vitriol, stolen identities, non-stop fake news, scientific disinformation, bigotry, transparently false advertising, and the occasional rational insight. All this so FB could mine my data and preferences, sell my info to advertisers, and leave me open to scams and malware. Such a deal!

I deleted my Facebook account after the election and haven’t missed it. In retrospect, I can’t believe I ever spent so much time on it. Why I voluntarily surrendered my autonomy to such a dark, deceptive and mindless diversion remains unanswered. Real life is infinitely bigger than the virtual dungeon that is Facebook with all of its fake friends, fake lives, fake people, fake entertainment, fake spin. Why allow these minions of deception to feed your head? Facebook is a living testament to how gullible Americans have become.

Power is power. While companies like FB want to think of themselves as egalitarian, enlightened, liberal, there’s one bottom line, and we all know what it is. Facebook makes money playing off of people’s need to connect, creating the illusion that we’re actually connecting with one another through it when we are not. I deactivated my account in 2010 and this morning got an email from Facebook saying I had tried to log in and it hadn’t worked. At first I thought it was spam. Then I clicked the link and it opened my old page with no password, no login information. Creepy, big brother-ish. And we’re all handing ourselves over to it.

I don’t use social media. It’s a vast waste of time, not to mention a vast disappointment for those who look at the site and leave ‘comments’. Most people who participate so heavily are not using Facebook, Twitter, and other such money-makers for the developers to communicate with friends or family. The focus of the users is Me. Me! Look at Me! See how wonderful my life is! There is no trading of information, no return of sympathy or joy, no cohesion of community. Social media is the obverse of friendship and concern, and for the most part, leaves a feeling of ashes in the heart.

The real problem, the one not being addressed, is how much longer are we “The People” (remember us? The ones allegedly in charge!) going to allow these social media and other platforms to keep “profiling” us, all the way down to the way we like to cut our toenails? How long are we going to let these allegedly helpful and can’t live-without platforms to keep creeping (and I mean creep in the physical sense and the icky, yucky sense) around us, spying on us (it is spying when you analyze it) and then using it, and/or selling it (and making millions) so they can narrowly define us, and then narrow down our choices of everything from hair products to, snack foods, to the info in our news feeds.

How long?

Till even non-social media users cant access good content, because the data compiled from all the addicted users, tells their browsers that because Person A might have clicked on Advert 23burblerZ, six months ago, “We” (the almighty Algorithm deity) decree that he/she can only see information from this predetermined, narrowed down (often dumbed down) data packet. “Don’t let them access anything we don’t deem part of that profile.”

How much longer are we going to allow these platforms to denigrate us, define us, sell-off our quirky data, and in the end deny us the very freedoms to choose what we want when we want it that this great nation was founded upon?

Facebook, et al – didnt earn the free-pass they allege they deserve. So why do we give it to them?