Kicking Facebook to the Curb (Sort of)

September 15, 2022

Hey Internet.

It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that I really dislike Facebook. They've demonstrated time and time again that they simply don't care about their users' right to privacy. Despite this, I kept it because it was the only line of communication I have with certain people.

Recently, there was some kind of update to the Facebook app on my phone. It's terrible. I don't just mean that I don't like the UI. It crashes so badly that it locks up my phone. It's literally unusable. Maybe they'll correct this with the next version, but it's really driven home to me how much I really just don't want to have to deal with it any more.

I decided to delete the app from my phone, but the best part is that I actually can't. The OS won't let me do that. I can only "disable" it (whatever that means). Maybe, when my phone stops working—because I refuse to upgrade until that point, but that's a subject for another blog post—I'll consider getting a PinePhone or something like that. Until then, I'll just have to make do with what I've got.

I'm not going to delete my Facebook profile, because that's another thing you can't do. Besides, there's no way to really be sure your data's actually been fully deleted. They only offer the ability to "deactivate" the account, which really doesn't mean much of anything anyways. I'm mostly just going to ignore it, link this post on my profile, and walk away.

If you're one of the people who can only reach me through Facebook, you can always just use e-mail. There are also various other means of contacting me on the home page of my web site. I encourage anyone who's interested to look into those alternatives.

Anyhow, I guess this is a short post, because I really don't want to spend a lot of time beating the dead horse of what a terrible platform Facebook is.

Have a good one.