Discussion: You did it! I've disabled ...

You did it!

I've disabled my account, but haven't quite pulled the plug to delete. I'm impressed.

Out of curiosity, what's the motivation behind this?

A bunch of reasons. Some personal - fed up of scrolling through social media feeds and wasting time but only seeing a tiny fraction of actual important information from people I really care about. Some political - not at all impressed with their response to their roles in any of the disastrous 2016 elections and fed up of seeing complete nonsense from both sides on there. So starting to withdraw my info (I said business initially, but really we're the product and not the customer, right?), but I'm reluctant to get rid of WhatsApp as that's how I text my family. I was likely one of the first UK users of Facebook (I was at Oxford when it was released only to people at Oxbridge) so this has felt like a big deal. I've lost some photos I was tagged in (you can download all yours), but aside from that I don't feel much of a loss.

Also Rob first disabled his by accident instead of deleting - they guilt trip you way more through the disable process than the delete process! Taking advantage of people who are unsure.

Makes sense. The fraction of useful/interesting content seems to be very low these days, though I do find frequent referrals to interesting articles, as well as surprisingly intelligent discussions once in a while.

I do very little on FB. But the son of friends, now living in VT, who we have known for 40 years is a reporter for USA Today based in Denver. His beat seems to be fires - forest fires last year all over the west and now volcano in Hawaii. Also covered Burning Man. So a fascinating portfolio. And maybe the only reason to occasionally check in.

Jonas sometimes wishes that I was still using FB, so that when I have an issue to rant about I could rant there... instead of to him :).