Facebook is a fantastic tool. But I’m about to be on it a lot less. Here’s why…
1. I’m concerned with the growing business model of Facebook, Google, and lots of other companies whose main goal is to collect information about us and sell/profit by profiling our lives, preferences, communications with our friends and family. You would be shocked at how much information is available about you and your family to people willing to pay for it. You know all those frequent shopper programs at the grocery store and restaurants? Yeah. There’s a reason they’re willing to give you a discount.
And Facebook isn’t just tracking what you do when you’re logged on to their website. It’s easy for them to track a huge number of things you do in any web browser where you leave your account signed in.
2. Facebook’s model of choosing what I see, rather than sorting posts by date/time or other objective means gives them too much control over my social media experience. It means that Facebook can and does bury our posts and comments that they don’t think others should see.
3. The pitiful performance of the iOS Facebook app. Before I deleted the Facebook app from my iPhone, the timeline would jump around while loading, sometimes repeat itself, and just be generally sluggish.
4. Forcing people to install messenger is ridiculous. I used messenger app for a long time before they made it mandatory. I’m not particularly worried about the overblown privacy hoopla around the messenger app awhile back, I just leaves a bad taste to force people to install an app they don’t want. So I join those who refused to install the app by deleting messenger too.
5. It’s so easy to waste time, continually scrolling down and down and down mindlessly.
6. Ads are more and more annoying, and they’re only going to get worse.
Al that said, I love staying in touch, seeing your photos, hearing about what’s going on in your lives, being able to pray for you. So I am going to check in, but not daily. And not from the iPhone app, only from a desktop web browser, and not even my usual web browser. I usually use Safari but to keep Facebook from tracking (spying) my other web usage, I’ll use a second browser just for Facebook.
So if you want to get in touch with me quickly, don’t send me a Facebook message. Email me at brenthobbs@icloud.com or text or call. I love you guys, but Facebook is coming between us. 🙂