I am deleting my Facebook account one week from today. The week’s delay is to give my real friends on Facebook, many of whom hail from other parts of the world, a chance to connect with me IRL or via other social media (my preference among photo-sharing and social media sites remains Flickr, call me an old stodgy).
Here’s what I wrote on Facebook:
I am deleting my Facebook account one week from today. #deletefacebook I no longer want to be complicit with the egregious misuse of personal information at the behest of commercial profit.
I will miss many of my Facebook friends’ updates, and hope that you decide to keep in touch with me off Facebook. My website is https://www.digitalfieldguide.com – My contact info is publicly available on my website at https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/about/contact-harold-davis(including snail mail, phone, and email). I work hard to respond in reasonable real-time to personal emails at harold [at] digitalfieldguide [dot] com. You can subscribe to one of my email lists at https://www.digitalfieldguide.com/about/subscribe.
Finally, if you want to laugh (or cry) about all this, check out Alexandra Petri’s Deleting Facebook? Don’t Worry I’ll Replace It for You from the WaPo.
Ina
23 Mar 2018Sorry – and I really do not understand it.
Data is being collected, sold, misused everywhere these days, that’s nothing new and it’s not Facebook alone. Did you know that Flickr has been sold? 😉
There is no adequate replacement for Facebook, especially for entrepreneurs and professional artists, to promote our art. Nowhere comes more traffic from.
Ultimately, the data misuse of Facebook is actually about the immaturity of the users: to control exactly what I reveal on Facebook, to install in the browser the addon “Ghostery”, so nobody can track me everywhere.
Everyone is responsible for their own data – and you can not blame Facebook or anyone else for abusing your own data (!).
I post on Facebook only about my photography, no private details, no private pictures, no selfies. I have not even left my phone number on Facebook. Everyone is responsible for designing how their data is used or abused.
I stay on Facebook – nowhere is networking among artists and photographers so good, so far-reaching, so international; I would never have found you without Facebook.
But I’m thinking very well, WHAT I post – nothing private, nothing that I would not also hang on my garden fence at home 😉
And in times when everyone owns X cards from various shops, something like Payback etc, I find it a double standard to complain about Facebook.
No harm meant ♥
Harold Davis
23 Mar 2018@Ina, I appreciate your thoughtful comment, and have indeed had some second thoughts about the business aspects of my withdrawal from Facebook as an artist and photographer. But to help you understand why I consider Facebook more offensive and dangerous than other online media, let me explain my reasons for deleting Facebook and not the other applications from my life:
(1) It’s not just the sale of personal data, it is the heinous political use of that data in the last election, and the callous disregard of Facebook as those political uses became apparent.
(2) From a professional viewpoint, I am least able to control my platform on Facebook. I don’t when it will serve what, or what it is surrounded by, or what the design around my imagery looks like. Some of my images will get censored as well. In comparison, on my blog my control is 100%. On Flickr and IG (yes, I know IG is owned by Facebook!) my control is pretty good, and my images looks mostly the way they should, often not the case on FB.
(3) As a personal matter, I find I do waste a great deal of time on my Facebook stream, it is “designed to be addictive,” and yes it works pretty well—but let’s face it, a great deal of the stuff served up is pretty repetitive and stupid.
Thank you for “listening” to me.
Khürt Williams
24 Mar 2018I just used your blog post and Facebook post as a template for my own exit. Thank you.