Life Without Facebook

I’ve decided to take a hiatus from Facebook.

I’m not a heavy Facebook user because I’ve never totally trusted the platform, but my misgivings have never been enough to make me step back from the different special interest groups I’ve joined, or leave the friends I’ve made in some of those groups – or the friends I’ve reacquainted with – behind. But then came the Cambridge Analytica scandal and after reading and thinking about the implications behind that data breach, suddenly nothing about Facebook felt right to me anymore. Even something as simple as looking at a picture or watching a video or clicking a “Like” button felt bad.

I’ll miss friends old and new, and I’ll miss talking about writing and photography and movies and TV shows and baseball, as well as learning about new vegan recipes and discovering new ways of eating. I’ll even miss spending hours looking at memes and videos of animals. But if I’m going to spend hours online interacting with others then I need to do it on a platform(s) where I can feel relatively confident that I’m somewhat secure and where I’m being allowed to think for myself – especially with a very important US election just months away. I need places where I believe the host site takes the responsibility to protect my information, and right now Facebook doesn’t give me that reassurance or sense of security. There aren’t a lot of Facebook alternatives out there that I’m aware of so if you have one you want to share, I’m all ears.

(And that’s one of the biggest reasons I like interacting so much because when you’re all ears it’s very uncomfortable going out in public.)

(Dislike button courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)