Why I’m Leaving Facebook

I don’t really use it to keep in contact with people. Email is much more personal. If you want to get a hold of me, email me (anthony.hook3@gmail.com) and ask for other ways I can be contacted. (Email, messenger, phone). If I need to get a hold of you, I’ll find a way. Or, heck, drop me your email address if you don’t think I have it.

Short list: I don’t want to be your corporate whore. I’m sick of these tests/quizzes/how-well-do-you-know-me/applications. Facebook is realizing they may have screwed up in adding all of this garbage (lite.facebook.com). They’re late on @replies (Twitter, Identi.ca). I honestly don’t care which celeb you look like or “what your name really means.”

Here’s a longer list of reasons I’m getting rid of Facebook:

Privacy Policy:
When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. In most cases, we retain it so that, for instance, you can return to view prior messages you have sent or easily see your friend list. When you update information, we usually keep a backup copy of the prior version for a reasonable period of time to enable reversion to the prior version of that information.

Who defines ‘reasonable period?’ Thirty seconds? Thirty years?

Also things like Facebook may also collect information about you from other sources, such as newspapers, blogs, instant messaging services, and other users of the Facebook service through the operation of the service (e.g., photo tags) in order to provide you with more useful information and a more personalized experience.

This is your data they collect and sell so that you can get more advertisements suited to you. I understand they’re doing it to make money; it is, in fact, how they make their money. I just don’t like it.

They don’t own your content, but they can do whatever they want with it:

This last sentence means you can delete all of your content, but if you’ve ever shared it, it isn’t “gone” until everyone you shared it with deletes it.

When you delete IP content, it is deleted in a manner similar to emptying the recycle bin on a computer. However, you understand that removed content may persist in backup copies for a reasonable period of time (but will not be available to others).

Again, “reasonable period of time.”

The only half-way plausible argument is that with such enormous masses of users dumping media into facebook, the odds of your data being used in a way that directly hurts you is unlikely. This is masking the symptoms, yeah, and at that point it becomes a crime of society, wherein the people as a whole give up a part of themselves willingly.

There have you.

-Anthony Hook.