I don't even know...!

Goodbye Facebook

So I’m getting rid of my Facebook. Here’s just a copy pasta of the note I posted on Facebook. I’ll be leaving it up for about a week or so before I finally go through with it. What started out as a few paragraphs quickly turned into an essay, as you can see, haha.

(Shortened so I don’t spam everyone’s dashboards!)

Dear friends,

While it’s been great being a part of Facebook and reconnecting with old friends, I think it’s time for me to delete my account and move on. I’ll be explaining a few reasons why. I’ll start with the smallest problems and work my way up. Incoming rant:

First off, the layout of Facebook blows. GG guys, you’ve officially made the site the least user-friendly it’s ever been. Seriously, my grandmother could design a better layout for this site. And then all the hoops you have to jump through just to get some things to work, like recording a video directly on the site. I can’t tell you how many failed videos Kyle, Seth and I have tried recording over the last month. It’s ridiculous.

Secondly, I’m tired of having to weed through a bunch of crap while reading my feed. For example, people liking stuff such as “going to Whataburger late at night” or “having fun,” and statuses like “sittin.” Or seemingly random song lyrics, or commenting on how ugly some chick is who just walked past you. If I’m using Facebook, it’s to connect and communicate with friends, not to find out that dumb things you like and how your Farmville animals are doing. It wouldn’t be a problem if I could just block those people, but unfortunately some of them are my best friends.

Thirdly, I’m sick of Facebook (and Twitter if we’re going to go there) being a primary method of communication. It’s almost to the point where if you’re not on Facebook, you don’t exist. Nobody texts me anymore. Nobody calls me anymore. I only IM like 2 people on a daily basis. I used to be the guy people went to when they had problems because I’m a good listener. But what happens now? People channel all of their emotions into cryptic tweets and Facebook statuses, hoping that they’ll get a response from a few of their hundreds of friends. Gone are the days where you got invited to go out to a party; now it’s an open invite to everyone who can see your status.

Last, and probably the most important to me, is something 99% of people using Facebook probably don’t even realize. When Facebook first started, almost everything you put onto your profile was private by default. Only your friends could see that information. However, since about 2007, the default privacy settings have slowly gotten more public, especially this past year. It’s to the point now where if you leave all of your settings as their defaults, anyone who views your profile can see everything about you except for your birthday. “But Chris, that’s not an issue if you change your privacy settings, silly!” Of course it’s not if you’re aware of the changes, but I guarantee you that half of the people I’m friends with have never even touched a privacy setting. The reason this upsets me is because Facebook is taking advantage of these kinds of people and using that information to give to advertisers and such, not to mention how easy it is for stalkers to get a hold of your information. It would be okay for a site that started out public to slowly become more and more private, but for Facebook to open up private information when sensitive data such as addresses and phone numbers are involved…that’s just not cool. If you want any more information, just Google “Facebook privacy” and look at any of the results from the last month and you’ll see what I mean. I’ll include some good links at the bottom to read as well.

Sure, you could tell me I’m overreacting, and maybe I am. But what it all comes down to is that I don’t feel comfortable using Facebook anymore. I feel that by continuing to use Facebook, I’m promoting this kind of behavior, which is something I definitely do not want to do. Maybe I’ll just deactivate my account instead of deleting it entirely; it all boils down to what Facebook decides to do over the next few weeks.

If you want to get in contact with me, you should probably already have my phone number. Other than that, you can always find me here:

Site/Blog: http://chreescawks.com/

AIM: chreescawks
Google Talk: chreescawks@gmail.com
Skype: chreescawks
WLM: chreescawks@live.com
Yahoo!: chreescawks

If you’ve read this far, thank you. It means a lot to me. Granted, that probably also means that you’re one of the people I tagged and we’re already good friends, so this post doesn’t really affect you…but still! Also, if I didn’t tag you, sorry! I tagged as many people as it would let me. Anywho, I’ll have to leave this post up for a few days so that everyone I tagged is able to see it.

With that said, goodbye for now!

-Chris

http://mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
http://gizmodo.com/5530178/top-ten-reasons-you-should-quit-facebook
http://gizmodo.com/5534736/more-reasons-why-you-should-still-quit-facebook
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-rogue/
http://www.allfacebook.com/2010/05/dont-expect-much-from-todays-facebook-privacy-meeting/