Social Network Departure

Hi everyone!

Ominous title isn’t it? Also probably not a novel thing either.

I have made the decision that I am getting off of both Facebook and Twitter.  And by getting off I mean delete account, see you later, not getting back on.  There are some reasons for this, that for me are personally good, but maybe not everyone likes them.

I think the biggest annoyance I have with Facebook is how noisy it is.  I think the only thing I found useful with Facebook over the past year has been the Marketplace.  Every time I get on there though it’s meme after video after complaint and it is tiring.  I even tried to drink the Kool-Aid, to adjust my subscriptions to people, to hide pages and accounts  that I didn’t like that had been reshared by my friends.  In the end it was way too much work trying to manage it all.

Facebook also scares me from a privacy perspective. For much longer than a year I have stopped using “Login with Facebook” buttons because I end up getting a lot of my information from Facebook given to other companies who advertise to me in annoying ways later.  There are other privacy concerns I have that I really don’t want to research for a small blog post, but if you really want to know about it, send me a message or comment and I will let you know more.

Finally, Facebook is too much of an assumption for most people I know. I haven’t really gotten on Facebook for the past year for the above mentioned reasons, and friends and family would mention to me things that they shared on Facebook and just assumed I would know about it because I am on there. I want my relationships with people to be more personal. I want people to seek me out because they want to share something with me.

As for Twitter, the only people that I follow that regularly post are either news sites, or people who have opinions I don’t agree with and don’t want to read.  Nothing is wrong with them having an opinion, but nothing is wrong with me having one either. There are very few people that I want to see post that I follow. So again more noise.

Also I want to avoid centralized networks like Facebook and Twitter because I don’t truly control the data I put there.  I could be compromised at anytime just because a different exec got put in charge.  I don’t really like that.  It should be said that anything posted on the internet should never be considered “safe”, however it’s not so black and white.  There are varying levels of what is and what isn’t safe to share online.  Most of the communication I would like to do online I want to be encrypted, with a few exceptions.

So there you have it.  My 6-7 paragraph rant about why I am leaving Facebook for good.  The internet is a wonderful place and there are many different ways to express yourself online.  None of them should come at the expense of your privacy.  I am more concerned about building relationships than making a quick buck on something.  I know many of you are dear friends or family of mine that are reading this (why else would you be here?).  I am sorry to all of you if this inconveniences you in any way, but I want to be happy when using the internet and I feel this is the best way to do it.

If you want to contact me, you can email me or contact me on iMessage at rhettmrogers@icloud.com.  You can also find me on Mastodon at https://lyoko.social/@SerenadeXS or on Keybase at https://keybase.io/serenadex.  You can also hear from me here on my blog as I will keep posting, and you can comment on any of my posts down below.

I will leave my accounts open for the next couple of weeks so people can see this post.  Please don’t hesitate to message me if you want to say hi.  I would love to hear from all of you.  Thanks for being my greatest friends.  You are all amazing.