Why I Deleted My Facebook Account, and Why You Should Delete Yours

About ten years ago I set up a Facebook account purely in order to get back in touch with old friends I’d lost touch with. Mission accomplished.

After that, I left the account to moulder, but for very occasional interactions with those old friends.

Now it’s time to terminate that account. And I’d urge you to do the same.

Why?

• Facebook has poisoned political discourse in the U.S. and much of the rest of the world.

How?

There are three primary ways it’s done this:

• Facebook feeds you “news” you already agree with. This aggravates problems with both under-informed leftist and rightist subscribers in that it reinforces established, irrational views. Facebook for the most part doesn’t expose or challenge already established ignorant viewpoints. It reinforces them.
• Facebook promotes a “let’s you and him fight” attitude by thrusting into your face the most obnoxious opinions opposed to yours. That drives engagement (time spent on Facebook). It’ll raise your blood pressure, leave you depressed, will leave no one convinced of the rightness of your viewpoint — and increase your time spent on Facebook.
• Facebook encourages people to think they’re informed, no matter how crazy the views it pushes at them. To put this another way, other than being spoon fed crazy conspiracy theories, how could the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theorist have gone in guns blazing?

Beyond that:

• Facebook is a “walled garden” controlled by self-interested oligarchs, the exact opposite of the “open Internet” a lot of us were hoping for two decades ago. The Facebook oligarchs harvest and sell your/our data, and their purchasers use that data to sell us things we don’t need and politicians and political movements we really don’t need.

And beyond that:

• Facebook is the ideal means for repressive governments to spy on citizens. This goes beyond direct surveillance — very easy via Facebook — to the set-up of honey traps to ensnare political opponents. “Black Lives Matter”? (They do.) The FBI (in all probability) and Russians (certainly) have set up fake “black lives matter” accounts to lure political dissidents, mislead them, and track them.

Then there’s the obvious:

• Facebook is a huge time suck, and wasting time on it will not only pour your precious time down the drain but will waste the time you could use to do something — anything — more useful.

And after that, for the few who want to use Facebook to good ends:

• Almost any other means of online organizing (see vpn, TOR browser) is safer than Facebook.

Here’s a link to how to deactivate or delete your Facebook account. I hope you’ll do either.

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/how-to-delete-facebook-account-2950145

I’m now free of the near unmitigated evil of Facebook.

Please join me.

Again, your choice: family photos, cat videos, and enabling those who exploit and oppress you, or a temporary minor inconvenience. Your choice.

(There’s a great new book on the topic, Antisocial Media, that I’ll review here shortly. More details when I do so. Please stay tuned.)