Several have tried to convince me to reconsider my departure from Facebook. It’s not an easy decision and I sometimes question myself. Then I am reminded of the corporate hypocrisy and darker side of social media:
We don’t tolerate bullying and harassment
– Facebook
She was called the n-word and given instructions to slit her wrists. What did Facebook do?
So what have I been cleaning and removing from my Facebook account? Currently I am backing up removing pictures and removing all my Facebook Ad “likes.”
Regardless of whether you plan to #DeleteFacebook, backing up pictures, deleting pictures, and deleting Facebook Ads is something you probably should know how to do.
I. Backup and Delete Photo Albums
This is a semi-tedious task. Fortunately, Facebook makes it easy to backup and download each photo album, but I have many albums created over the past 11 years. Here’s how:
II. Removing all Facebook Ad “Likes”
Facebook continually adds advertisement “likes” behind the scenes based on what you post, share, and like. It is a tedious process to go through and delete them. I find it easier/quicker to do on a computer than on a mobile device. Here’s how:
Having deleted all of my ad likes, I’m watching to see if and when Facebook creates new ones for me. Having stopped posting, commenting and liking stuff, nothing has appeared…yet.
Google is the 2,000-pound gorilla among the search engines out there.
It should come as no surprise that Google, Facebook, Amazon, and other big tech companies are amassing a lot of data with each online search and purchase. Ever notice how if you search for some product, it suddenly appears in ads and banners in multiple applications?
DuckDuckGo is a search engine which purports not to collect and store personal information about its users.
Our privacy policy is simple: we don’t collect or share any of your personal information. Ever.
– from DuckDuckGo’s homepage
I’ve been aware of DuckDuckGo for some time, but reading this piece from DuckDuckGo’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg has convinced me to try using the DuckDuckGo search engine instead of my default Google search.
I’ll report back with my results and observations after I’ve given DuckDuckGo a fair trial.
Here are some reviews of DuckDuckGo vs. Google:
DuckDuckGo vs. Google: An In-Depth Search Engine Comparison – SearchEngineJournal, April, 2019
DuckDuckGo Vs. Google: What You Need to Know – Hackernoon, February, 2019
DuckDuckGo vs. Google – Is one really better than the other? – Lifewire, October, 2019
Do you use DuckDuckGo or anything other than Google? Would you consider scrapping Google as your default search engine? Send me your comments!
At the same time Mark Zuckerberg stated in congressional testimony that “freedom of speech” dictates the Facebook not fact-check paid political advertisements (much to many of Facebook’s employee’s chagrin), Facebook is rolling out a new Facebook News feature.
Providing what Facebook describes as a “wide variety of views” and “high quality” information from “trustworthy” sources, Facebook further claims:
Publishers include expected media players like CBS, CNN, WSJ, NYT, etc. One glaring inclusion is Breitbart.
I find it difficult to fathom how Breitbart could come anywhere near meeting the criteria Facebook claims to hold Facebook News publishers to. Even former Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon once called the site a “platform for the alt-right.”
https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/26/media/facebook-news-breitbart/index.html
There are many things that make the departure from Facebook difficult, which explains why many people who quit using Facebook often return. Here are the things that will make it difficult for me:
Okay, if I don’t delete my FB account altogether, what am I actually planning to remove, delete, etc?
I plan to:
I haven’t decided whether to delete my Facebook history. On one hand, that is part of the big data which FB has been profiting off of, despite claims otherwise. On the other hand, it is a history of my life that I’m not quite ready to simply erase.
I have plenty of work to do before I have to make that decision. I invite and appreciate your comments and suggestions. Just click the “reply” link right below the article title.
#DeleteFacebook is not for everyone. Here is a recent story describing various people’s experiences after leaving Facebook.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/want-to-delete-facebook-read-what-happened-to-these-people-first-2018-07-27
To be clear, I do not judge anyone for their choice to stay with or leave Facebook. Indeed, I likely will keep my FB account but remove most of my content, lock it down, and go mostly silent. I have not yet decided whether to keep or delete my Instagram account.
The New York Times published a letter penned by employees of Facebook that reject the “free speech” argument put forward by their CEO used to justify paid political advertisements being published without undergoing any fact-checking.
The letter provides Facebook leadership with six proposals for improvement. Read it here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/28/technology/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-letter.html
Update (March, 2025):
I originally wrote this in October, 2019. I’ve written several blog posts in the following years about Facebook. Here they are:
Breaking up (with Facebook) is hard to do, March, 2025
What Can I Do: Reduce your time on social media, February, 2025
Video Poker and Facebook and Why I Avoid Both, February, 2025
Removing Facebook Advertising “Likes,” January, 2020
Facebook News to include Breitbart, October, 2019
Stories of people who left Facebook, October, 2019
Why am I leaving Facebook? October, 2019
My Facebook Exodus: Removing Pictures and Ads, October, 2019
My First Step in Quitting Facebook, October, 2019
FB Employes object to “paid civic misinformation,” October, 2019
Here are the reasons I am leaving Facebook. I list them here not only in anticipation of the inevitable questions why, but also to remind myself and to help keep me on this track. Three moments pushed me to this point. Here they are:
“They’re [Facebook is] selling off our data to the highest bidder. They’ve got roadmaps now of every single person who’s on there. Like, our personality, what we like, what we hate, what we focus on for longer than 10 seconds with our eyeballs. They are doing face-recognition, which, by the way, is going to be used in all sorts of nefarious ways – and may already be being used in all sorts of nefarious ways…The truth is that Facebook at this moment in time is a propaganda engine that should scare the pants off of everyone.
Mark Zuckerberg sat on the hill Wednesday and described the way in which Facebook is manipulating the 2020 election already by not providing any oversight to the material that is being used in advertising…
He’s [Zuckerberg] has never been a particularly moral or responsible human being. And now he is – bar none – the most powerful person in Silicon Valley, and potentially the most powerful source of information warfare on the planet.”
– Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin, from the Friday, Oct 25, 2019 ResistanceLive podcast
These are the reasons I am leaving Facebook. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.
This is my first step to quitting Facebook. My reasons are many, and they will come as little surprise to those who know me well. I have written the first of what I expect to be several entries why I reached this decision.
It will take me a while to extricate myself from Facebook. I won’t be disappearing suddenly from social media, but this is the first step. I will document the process as I go. Eventually I envision this blog to become the de facto replacement to my Facebook presence.
Blatant Calm 