It’s been no secret that I’m leaving Facebook, I’ve been rather vocal (and annoying) about it. Over the last week or so, I’ve begun to wonder if anyone actually cares. Old family friends and family members who are not web savvy, and use Facebook exclusively, have been telling me not to go.
“We won’t know what’s going on with you if you leave Facebook!”
I explain my position, I talk about Open Web, I tell them how seriously it pisses me off that Facebook has become a web within the web. Over and over again I go looking for things in the web only to find that the person/company/product/band only has a Facebook page. I think about the implications of giving all your data to a single company, one that makes it perfectly clear that they OWN your data and can do with it what they will. I think about giving that company access to your entire web presence, everywhere, all the time through their proprietary identification system.
I think about Mark Zuckerberg, this story about the beginning of Facebook, and I remember all that is wrong with the world. I think about people stepping on each other in an effort to climb perceived ladders, and I feel sick in my stomach.
My tech colleagues have Facebook accounts too, including those championing the fight for the open web, and I don’t damn them for it. I’m punishing myself, cutting my access to the second web, severing my connections with friends and family who only use Facebook, deleting valuable professional connections (albeit with the hope that those people will seek me out elsewhere).
Does anyone even care? Is anyone out there thinking “There’s a girl who stands up for what she believes in!” No, probably not. You have your 200+ friends, you won’t even notice that I’m gone. And it doesn’t really matter. I’m done giving my data to a monolithic corporation that proclaims to own it.
Everyone KNOWS that Facebook is evil, yet everyone keeps using the platform.
“Yeah, but there’s 750 million users on Facebook. Deleting my account won’t make a difference, it’ll just inconvenience me.”
You’re right, your actions don’t matter, but mine do.
Believing that the Open Web is integral to our evolution as a species and not taking actions that demonstrate my seriousness about the advancement of that belief makes me a hypocrite.
“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” ~ Friedrich Engels
32 more days.
Thanks to the Clash for titling my post!
Read these please:
- 10 Reasons to Delete your Facebook Account (Business Insider)
- The World’s Largest Social Network: The Open Web (NY Times)
- How Open is Facebook, Really? (2007 Article from ReadWriteWeb – it hasn’t gotten any better people.)
I admire your ideas and I wish you all the best because I sense your aspirations are unique as well as grand! Keep it up!