Taking a Long-Term Break from Facebook

Update: I started to do this five months ago, and got sidetracked. But the incentives and reasoning haven’t really changed.

Getting away from Facebook for breaks has been a good move for me in the past. With one exception. I always end up coming back. When you take a vacation from work, you sort of by definition are required to go back someday. Well, only if you still want the associated fame, glory and huge paycheck.

With Facebook, I actually don’t have to come back. It is not that I don’t enjoy keeping up with friends or trading information and seeing 267 lost pet posts a week. It’s just that I know from reading how manipulative Facebook is as a defining characteristic (including trying to affect the moods of 689,003 users - well, because they could) and knowing from not infrequent leaks from Meta employees, including testimony to Congress, that their users seem to end up on the short end of their frequent modifications. Last year, it was inadvertently revealed by Facebook that they are now keeping dossiers on users, even some who don’t have an account. Regarding their unruly artificial world, the Brennan Center says their moderation is a mess. Moderation is being carried out by AI and a sea of people who do not necessarily have the skills in most cases for that job and are following rules that are reversed five out of six times by their external appeals board.

So as a guinea pig for well over a decade, I have decided the free food pellets do not outweigh being kept in the guinea pig cage for display.

However, I am not “here” to convince anyone else to do what I am doing. Just here in case you want to check up once in a while on Link goings on, or just a good place to make a sarcastic comment. (I may retain Messenger, but have not made a final decision on that.)

I added a comment section for this blog. Let us know that you dropped by once in awhile. If you make a Freudian slip, there is a delete button which appears in the upper right corner of any comment. There are no grammar, punctuation or spelling police - unless it is irresistible due to the “pending pun” clause in the contract.