Note: I first made the decision to leave Facebook and migrate my content to this site in 2014. It would be seven years after that decision before I actually got the blog set up in September 2021 and started moving content over. I left Facebook permanently in May 2022. Looking back, I still entirely agree with the rationale below (although I came to like the Messenger app as the best part of Facebook and hardest thing to leave in the end). I have not missed Facebook or the interactions I had there. (DL, June 13, 2023).
After many months of consideration, I have decided to begin the process of disengaging from Facebook.
The primary reason is that I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with the way FB manipulates users: curating our news feeds, constantly inserting ads and links to third-party content, giving priority to paid posts, etc. I have ceased to feel like what I see on FB every day is an honest reflection of my friends’ activities and interests; it isn’t. It’s a revenue stream optimized by FB for me to get me clicking on things that aren’t first-and-foremost about my friends, but rather about making FB money.
The real content from my friends is just bait to lure me in. It’s as if to have a conversation with a friend, we both have to go sit at the mall food court and wear clothes with ads on them and pause our conversation every three minutes for a product demo. There’s just so much non-friend CLUTTER! As a result, I spend more time clicking on the latest viral thingamajig or movie trailer or video game ad or piece of political news than I otherwise would, or should, or really want to, and less time having real interactions with friends. I’m quite sure the frenetic jumble of information is bad for my brain, and my attention span in particular.
This whole FB Messenger fracas was the fitting final straw. The fact that FB gimped the functionality of one app which was working well to try and force me to get a second app I didn’t want was just another reminder of how manipulative FB can be. No thank you. I will be opting out. Permanently.
Through these last several months, I’ve come to realize that what I’m missing most is control. I don’t control my own data. An increasingly large portion of my thoughts and records of life events are in a format and on servers that I don’t control. Also, I’m not taking enough control over how I keep up with friends; I’ve become too passive, ceded too much control to FB over who I hear about and who I end up interacting with. Well, no more. I’m taking back control from the corporate manipulator.
When I disengage from FB, I will need to replace two things that FB currently provides:
- A means for hearing about and interacting with my friends
- A means for publishing information to my friends In regards to interacting with friends,
I have already begun to be more proactive about specifically getting in touch with people using conventional means. More phone calls, and in particular more face-to-face meetings. I now have two monthly lunch appointments with friends from college, appointments that I didn’t have six months ago. I have found these lunches a much fuller, more satisfying way to actually experience friendship with my friends. I intend to continue moving in this direction: adding recurring appointments to my schedule and making more phone calls. All of this takes more work than simply clicking into a FB feed, but it leaves me as a less passive person who has deeper relationships.
In regards to publishing to my friends, over the next six months or so, I will be transitioning any of my public FB content worth keeping to a blog at http://david.lohnes.me (which isn’t up yet). I will strip my content from FB and replace it with a public link from my FB wall to the blog so that people who find me through FB can easily find the blog. What with that and Google, anyone who gets a hankering to see what’s up with David Lohnes should be able to without difficulty.
Moving my publishing from FB to a blog will likely mean that fewer people see my content. I’m comfortable with that. My goal is quality relationships, not a high number of “relationships.” And although the content transition will take an enormous amount of work, at the end I’ll have total and independent control over my content, and I’ll be free from my dependence on FB’s manipulative way of doing business.
At this stage I have decided to no longer use the web to publish personal content. Any sense of privacy with the web or e-mail is an illusion anyway, so I’ve decided that the only things I will post online will be things I’m happy with the whole world seeing. I began making a transition to mostly public posts in FB many months ago, so this decision will have limited impact. What is will mostly mean is if you want to see my kids, you’ll have to actually see them. Or I could text you a photo. This transition will take time, and it will be gradual. By the time I’m done, any of my FB friends who want to keep in touch with me will know exactly how to do so. If the avenues I provide are too time-consuming for them to use, well, “quality over quantity,” as they say.
Warm feelings to you all. I will keep you updated on progress.