I have to admit I just got lazy and lured into the convenience of using Facebook. Facebook is easy and omnipresent. Got it on my mobile and was checking it multiple times a day. So entering content in there was also just easy and convenient.
But, as almost everyone else, I didn’t really feel comfortable in how Facebook decided how can see my content and when. They’ve also not really made any effort to improve all this fake news, security, hate speech etc. stuff. They’re of course just after the money. But I don’t have to play by their rules, right?
I have to give up the convenience and so have you if you want to check in on my updates. I’m sorry for that.
But I’m, really fed up and actually concerned by all this attention driven stuff. I’m concerned that most if not all of the services we’re spending a lot of time with is purely driven by attention. I mean their business model is based on attention – a.k.a. selling Advertising. Means they’d do anything to drive clicks to their stuff. No matter the content.
I’d like to try to not feed into that anymore. I’m not deleting my account and are still using some of their service. But trying to reduce as much as possible and claim ownership of my content by keeping it in my hands.
[Update 2019-01-08]
Thinking about it, I think the burden of using a different tool than Facebook is also on all of my friends and acquaintances. It’s not only a change for me but also a big ask on them to use a different tool to check on my updates.
One option to mitigate the issue would be to automatically post from here to Facebook. Not yet sure I want that. I’m open for suggestions.
I totally agree!
#ilike
I’ve been in this position for the last couple of years, although for me it was more in response to the realisation that nothing on Facebook interested me anymore – all the content is so broken and bloated with ads and uninteresting likes/comments that I just stopped using it. Unfortunately that’s where almost all of my friends are connected.
I barely have anybody’s phone number, but I wouldn’t call anyway. Email seems too formal and somehow I also have very few email addresses of anybody. Twitter has a small subset of people I actually know in person and not a great IM experience.
That basically leaves no mechanism for staying in touch with friends and also some kind of broadcast mechanism. Realistically Mastodon is not an option unless I like talking to myself.
Bit sad that that’s where we are at in 2019 🙁