Here is a biased skimming of this thread only (I did not take any comments from "Facebook Is The Devil"). Now that this journey has concluded for me, I can report: only ONE notification from Facebook, and that is prompted by your request to delete the account. There were no further messages from Facebook.
THANK YOU to all who responded to this topic.
COMMENTS:
The annoying factor is being checked on. For example the advertisements are always more or less related to my interests (aside from fast food ads that i love to report as being "offensive", lol). So obviously some strangers keep putting their noses into your profile, even with strict settings and refusing applications...
So even FRIENDS are not willing to group together for a common cause, which would benefit all.
what's clear to me is that cctv, facebook, increasing loss of freedom and increasing loss of privacy are here to stay. A successful rebellion requires a critical mass, and the chances of that happening are... well, zero from what I've seen!
Can you survive without technolgy, without natural gas, without elctricity? If so, how long could you last? When you start thinking about it and getting anxious about it, do you attempt to drown that anxiety under yet more crap or to shut it out with yet more distractions?
Nobody has to 'like' anything there or interact with any of the gadgetry.
If you really cannot select out the values you want, then I understand why you need to dispense with it.
People who make money through Facebook tend only to care about making money, as opposed to doing good and improving conditions for employees/overseas workers/the environment
A lot of information about a lot of people and their connections, all centralised, as you say it's easy to connect several of these networks
Facebook lax with privacy policies/don't seem to really value this
Distractions and games instead of things that develop and fulfil long-term (contant checking for new messages etc)
Activism has gone from picketing to "Start a Facebook group"
Other users can control a lot of data about you and link it to your account, including photos (and de-tagging yourself will be irrelevant once facial recognition improves)
The harmful aspect of facebook is the addiction. And unfortunately, its quite easy to get addicted to. This addiction leads to wasting time and energy. So..you can deal with that in two ways... 1. Delete your account. 2. Go check into facebook rehab or, you can just overcome the addiction like any other.
You definitely have a good point here. Facebook sucks so much of our time, attention and really, I think, can be harmful to real-life relationships.
No time for your friends? No need to make time - just post on their wall and call it a day!
Long-lost high school "friend" wants to add you even though they barely spoke to you 10 years ago? Cool!
I've thought about leaving FB but I don't know if I really want to right now. Am I addicted? I do think so. Sigh.
There's datamining concerns, but the primary reason I left is because it was a very shallow form of communication on the whole. I'd rather someone e-mail me and meet me on Skype or type out an IM. I use all the major clients so it's not like it's hard. I figure if Facebook is the only way to contact or stay in touch with someone they're not all that valuable to begin with.
__________________
I couldn't agree with you more that showing up in person is more important than typing in words. I'm just not so certain that Facebook is the problem.
I don't think that anything (including Facebook) is inheriently good or bad, it's what people do with it. And even what people do with it isn't inheriently good or bad, that's just our judgements. Everything just... is.
Just to add one more view to the discussion, I also feel that facebook is an incredible time waster... and also that it lowers my attention span and after using it, I feel mindless, zombified, and unmotivated.
I agree that it's all about how you use it. Seems like my autopilot way of using it is not working for me however.
I read a bunch of posts here [at Pavlina Forums], consider whether or not I have anything to contribute, decide no, then leave. I keep coming back because I miss having conversations with people who are interested in topics like yours, royster, but it looks like I'm going to have to find somewhere else to fit in.
|