Finally I deleted my Facebook Account

19 Dec

I decided to delete my Facebook account. For all of you who ask now: Why did you do so? Here are my main reasons that led to this decision:

Privacy issues

  1. I want to be in control on the data that I share
  2. I am concerned about my privacy and therefore I do want to be in control of my data (or at least in as much control as possible)
  3. I do not want to have anybody else making aggregations and connections concerning my profiles apart the ones that I explicitly create
  4. I do not aggree that Facebook claims that everything I post/like/share on this social media platform has anything to do with my real life. Actually I am aware of my posts and likes and I was always posting keeping in mind that potentially everybody has access to this content. Facebook Timeline does not reflect my life in any sense. In order to prevent others from thinking so I at least have to be controlling all the activity going on on my timeline or delete my entire account. The latter was the better option for me.
  5. Second I am a computer scientist who has some knowledge on machine learning, social media analytics and user profiling techniques and knows how to apply them. So I do know what you can do with data on Facebook and I don’t want to be subject of such action.

Friendship issues

  1. 75% of my Facebook friends are not my “real” friends
  2. With 75% of my Facebook friends I do not have contact
  3. I can also keep in touch with my real friends without using Facebook

Focusing on more important things

  1. I want to spend my time in a more productive manner rather than keeping track and correcting updates on facebook (probably made by others)
  2. I do not want to use Facebook just as a tool of promoting myself (there are other social media platforms which better suite this use case such as linkedin or xing)
  3. I want to spend more time maintaining my blog and less time feeding social networks with the latest gossip news
  4. I am not a Social Media Expert
  5. I do not want to read only filtered information that Facebook thinks is important to me (well I am aware that Google does the same but at least there is some kind of excape to search for information on other sources
  6. …

This are some of my reasons for deleting my Facebook account. What do you think about this?

  • http://blog.flo.cx flowolf

    full ack!
    deleting my facebook account is going to take place the next weeks :)

  • Karl

    This is exactly why I haven’t used Facebook in the first place. There is just a placeholder to remind anybody who is searching for me, that I am *not* using Facebook. 

    I am looking forward to my own diaspora hub or similar. Can’t wait until then :-)

  • http://blog.muehlburger.at Herbert

    In contrast to Facebook I do use Google+ although most of the above issues apply there too. As a matter of fact personally I benefit more from using Google+ than there is penalty. What do you think about that?

  • Karl

    I tried G+ by myself but in the last month I hardly looked at G+. The functionality is OK but as you mentioned: lots of privacy and legal issues there too. Not as bad as with Facebook.

    I am using Twitter and (too sparse) my blog to shout out to the world and Twitter, RSS, Blogcomments and stuff to get something back. So far this is enough to me.Although I’d like to see my own diaspora hub connected to my friends hub in order to have a common and unified communication channel. 

  • the real facebook quitter

    FAKE!
    herb’s facebook account is active again!!!