I just deleted my Facebook account
Jul. 9th, 2021 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kestrellI just deleted my Facebook account. Facebook has never been as accessible as I thought it should be, and it's always been a pain in the ass to use. In addition, this recent deal to sell advertising to Oculis so it appears on people XR headsets is really creepy: seriously, sighted people, advertisers are not going to be happy until they can feed advertising to you in your sleep.
I signed up for many of these social media accounts when I was in the media studies program at MIT, when social media seemed all shiny and new and full of promise, but the accessibility hasn't improved all that much since then, while the privacy and security risks have increased exponentially, especially over the past year. It's past time to sign off.
My next step is to delete my Twitter account.
So don't panic: I'm not dead, I'm just not on Facebook or Twitter anymore.
I signed up for many of these social media accounts when I was in the media studies program at MIT, when social media seemed all shiny and new and full of promise, but the accessibility hasn't improved all that much since then, while the privacy and security risks have increased exponentially, especially over the past year. It's past time to sign off.
My next step is to delete my Twitter account.
So don't panic: I'm not dead, I'm just not on Facebook or Twitter anymore.
Re: As you know, Bob, I totally approve of this!
Date: 2021-07-12 08:36 pm (UTC)I'm afraid to find out re: "cohorts" but will track it down.
I had two gmail accounts for a decade -- and I gave myself an entire year to wean away from them. They're still alive as "Inactive Accounts," as explained fourteen levels deep in support.
https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3036546
This was facilitated by having a password manager -- I searched for gmail and recreated 5 new accounts every week.
I've set my gmail to auto reply: Subj: Account closed; body: This account no longer connects with a human.
Keeping them inactive means I can glance at them every three months to notice anyone who I want to communicate with.
YES IT TOOK A YEAR to back away from the Google octopus. And I still have one tentacle in: I'm signed in on YouTube (on my Roku TV streamer and in one browser) so I can have subscriptions and a history.
Re: As you know, Bob, I totally approve of this!
Date: 2021-07-12 09:36 pm (UTC)Re: Google levels of policy and documentation: yes, I went down about five or six levels just to try to delete my personal info that was associated with their own "Privacy Check," which is supposed to make deleting one's personal info *easier*. Good luck with that if you don't have a college degree. And it goes on for so many pages, because they divide every little section up on a separate page, so I'm pretty certain the idea is that you will get tired of fiddling with combo boxes and check boxes, and give up after an hour or two, which is what I spent on it, and only got about halfway through the exercise, and I didn't even get on to some of the other sections.