I have seriously been thinking of deleting my Facebook account recently. I don’t have any serious problems with what I post and who can see it, but I am starting to get concerned about the moving target privacy policies and the lack of customer service by Facebook. It is easy to deactivate your account but that doesn’t really delete it. There is a link to actually delete the account and Facebook doesn’t make it very easy to do but the account can be deleted. As far as your data well it will probably be sitting on a Facebook server but not accessible to friends or the public. I figure Facebook will wind up with so much crap data out there that eventually they may need to get rid of some of it.
More than the privacy issue is just the issue of why am I wasting my time posting picayune facts about my life and posting cartoons that I think are funny or carrying on conversations through a comment thread or messaging. I don’t even care for regular phone texting except for small messages such as “made it home safely” or something of that nature. If I want to express myself I would much rather write a blog post to let people know what I am up to or how I feel about certain issues. If my Facebook friends really want to communicate with me lets meet face to face, have dinner, have a drink, have a real conversation. My perception of social media is that it is one of the most unsocial way to interact with others. Can’t say I will turn off FB today. If I make the decision, most of my friends should be able to figure it out. My first step will be to not post or logon to Facebook for a month. At that time I will logon and post a message letting people know that I am giving up Facebook, after a couple of days I will logon and
de-friend everyone and manually delete all photos and posts. then I will go to the Delete Facebook account link and start the convoluted process of deleting a Facebook account. Then if people want to know what is up with me they will have to visit this blog or give me a call and meet me for Happy Hour. It will be a great test to find out who really wants to stay in touch and who are the people living on the fringe of friendship.
