It’s official, as of yesterday around 11PM, my Facebook account has been deleted. Deleting wasn’t easy from either an emotional or technical perspective.
There is a lot of investment in having a semi-active account. The time one takes to read, post, comment, like–it all adds up and becomes part of a routine.
And what makes the decision to delete even more difficult is the thought of loosing access to some of your contacts forever.
But we have to separate the platform from the purpose. As a contact book it was adequate – but there are certainly better ones available. As a communication platform though it lost its way and its utility has run its course. There are much healthier ways to communicate without getting caught up in the noise.
Ultimately, the time I had invested in Facebook is greater than the return I felt I was receiving–and I don’t see that balance shifting now or in the foreseeable future. I’ve made the decision to move on. My good friends will support me and I’ll support them. I’m OK with cutting the chord with people I barely know. Who knows, maybe we’ll meet again down the line and we and we can start over.
The deletion process:
The thing with Facebook– if you delete and aren’t careful, your footprints will remain. I did my best in covering up those up, but I know that there are a few crumbs for it to feast off of.
Before I hit the delete button, I made sure to unlike everything, delete all of my photos, and remove the tag on every photo I was tagged in. I also ran a script to undo my entire history – this part took a while, and I don’t think I covered it all because I became a bit impatient. After all that, I then visited the delete my account page.
Done.
No longer do I have to worry about algorithm changes or any of the negativity involved just by participating on the platform.
As for the crumbs I left behind last night for the monster to eat, I hope it chokes on them. I would never wish death upon anybody, but a corporation isn’t a person, and with that perspective, saying good-bye is so much easier.
Facebook needs people to survive–people don’t need Facebook.