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why should you delete facebook from your life

kicking zuck to the curb

2020-10-18

Many people don't think about this as they scroll through their social media feeds when they are bored and have some spare time to mess around on their phones, but Facebook is an evil company looking to erode our privacy and control us.

"But wait" - you're saying "It should be my decision whether or not to use Facebook!"

It is your decision. But do you know how Facebook destroys your privacy behind the scenes, while you keep pressing Like and Share? Take a quick look and you can get a little well informed on it if you weren't caught up to date on some of Facebook's privacy shenanigans before:

the dangers of facebook and other large social media platforms

Before we get into the privacy nightmares surrounding Facebook and other social platforms, but Facebook especially, you should know how Facebook is generally dangerous. These days, it is rare for someone not to be on Facebook. In fact, you may even be seen as strange for not being on Facebook, but don't let that deter you from taking control of your life back from Zuckerberg and his evil cronies.

the known evils of facebook

Here are some of the worst ways that Facebook shows us just how evil they are, and how they don't truly care about their users.

facebook's love of censorship - Facebook is well known for shutting down opinions they don't like. Whether it is political, religious, or something else, if it is a post that goes aganist the Facebook agenda, it can be deleted without explanation, and your account can be suspended or even banned because of it. If you care about freedom of speech, Facebook (and most other social platforms) are your enemies by default.
facebook thinks it knows what you want more than you do - Facebook loves to think it knows its users better than the users themselves, and has made it very hard for a normal user to find their account controls and access to deleting their account easily if they want to. If you choose to delete your account, Facebook will "make sure you really want to" by merely deactivating your account for two weeks, and if you don't sign in for those two weeks, your account is (supposedly) deleted. It should be much easier to delete your account, and it should be deleted instantaneously, not several weeks later.
facebook forces users to use their real names - Facebook doesn't allow users to practice pseudo-anonymity online, instead forcing them to use their real names as they show on their government issued ID card. If your real name changes, you will have to send Facebook your legal documentation proving the legal name change before you can be allowed to change it on Facebook. This is a gross overreach of power, and makes using Facebook dangerous for people who don't want to use their real name for their own reasons, whether they simply like to stay private online, or perhaps even trying to escape from an abusive stalker. Facebook doesn't care. In fact, Facebook has tried to encourage users to rat out their friends who aren't using their real names on the platform.
facebook has shown they can't be trusted with your information - Facebook has failed on multiple occasions over the years to protect the private and intimate details of their users. We all know one of the biggest offenses here, the infamous Cambridge Analytica scandal, as well as Facebook being caught storing user passwords in plaintext format. These are terrible breaches of personal data and Facebook should be held liable for their failures.
the facebook mobile app is a privacy nightmare - If you use an Android or iPhone device with the Facebook app installed, you have welcomed privacy invasions on your phone. The Facebook applications (the Facebook app itself, WhatsApp, Instagram, as well as Messenger) are well known for tracking people across the internet, stealing contact data stored on the device, and even stealing SMS history and call logs.

These aren't even some of the worst offenders. For a more thorough list about how Facebook is "Zucking" you, check out this list of evil things Facebook does from Richard Stallman.

are there any alternatives to facebook?

As it turns out, you don't have to depend on Zuckbook or the other big name social platforms if you want to express yourself online. There are other, more privacy-respecting and censorship-free platforms that you can turn to when you get sick of Facebook invading your privacy and telling you what you can and cannot post.

\ \ \ This post has been edited on 2024-08-13 with more up-to-date information.

Fediverse: The Fediverse is a decentralized social network built on top of ActivityPub and accessible through many different kinds of clients, such as Mastodon, Pleroma, Misskey, and more. People run their own servers, and these servers "federate" together, so that you can join any server (otherwise known as "instance" in Fediverse-talk) and still be able to communicate with other servers.
Nostr: Nostr (short for notes and other stuff transmitted by relays) is a growing ecosystems of apps and platforms around the nostr protocol. Using only a private and public keypair, you can sign into any number of nostr clients and communicate with others, share images and updates, watch videos, host video chats, and more. The nostr ecosystem is growing all the time, and new developments are always being made.
Bluesky: Bluesky is built on top of the AT Protocol, another federated social networking protocol. Spun off from a former team from Twitter/X, the Bluesky development team has been building the protocol in the open with the main Bluesky site acting as a way to see what all is being built. There are also some third-party clients available for Bluesky as well, on iOS and android.

Check out some of these options if you're ready to kick Facebook out of your life. Personally, I am on Mastodon and Gab, and have been Facebook-free for quite awhile now. It is a freeing feeling when you rid yourself of the shackles imposed on you by Big Tech, and when folks decide to get off of Facebook and move onto one of these alternative platforms, or better yet, start their own website where they are in complete control, they take a tiny bit of control back from Zuck and into their own hands.

This stuff is a small sample of why I encourage everyone to #DeleteFacebook as soon as they can.