Why I quit facebook

In August 2019 I deleted my Facebook account.

At the time, the process took 30 days. When you decide to delete your account, you have 30 days to undo the deletion. If you login again within the 30 days, you will undo the deletion. Maybe their process has changed since then.

Why I left facebook

  • Facebook was becoming a time thief.
  • When I got bored I had the habit of hitting CTRL+t, f, ENTER and within 1 second I was on Facebook.
  • I started logging out which helped a bit, but I still had the craving to check my ‘likes’ and notifications.
  • I was scrolling random stuff, watching other people live their (fake) lives, instead of focusing on my own life.
  • Facebook was involved in numerous data scandals
  • Do I really want a private company being able to read and store all my conversations?

Would you allow a person from a private company to listen and record all your conversations with your friends and family? Probably not, but that is what we are doing.

Facebook monitors everything.

Imagine someone knowing all of this:

  • How often and how long do you looked at that picture of your ex lover
  • When is your next period, when are you tired, hungry, horny etc.
  • How long you stayed at that location

Alternatives

For communications I switched to Signal messenger.

I am still on Twitter and reddit, but I don’t use their apps, only their mobile websites.

I am still using some Google services, but I have started to switch to other services such as:

  • ProtonMail for mail
  • https://duckduckgo.com/ as a default search engine
  • Firefox browser
  • Brave browser

These sites have a good list of reasons not to be used by Facebook

Obstacles

It was surprisingly easy to get my family and friends on Signal.

Signal has groups, video calls and is simple to use.

Some people already use WhatsApp - but that is also owned by Facebook! So that was not an option for me.

Telegram might be an option for some, but it is also owned by a German company, started by two Russian brothers.

Signal is owned by a non profit foundation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)

https://www.wikihow.com/Quit-Facebook

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