Facing Facts about Facebook

I just made the final post I'll ever make on Facebook. I'm ready to close the door on Zuckerberg and his cronies once and for all.

I've also downloaded all of my content from Facebook, everything I've ever put there. The process is easy (although not exact obvious) and you get all your historical content in a self contained html package that can be browsed offline.

I've been reading Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Willams, the book that Meta tried to ban, where she lays out an insider's story of the incredible hypocrisy, lies, immorality, lack of ethics, and general cluelessness that Zuckerberg, Sandberg, Kaplan, et al have influcted on the world. I highly recommend the book. So many examples of unethical, greedy and self-interested behaviour by the billionaire class, people for whom enough is never enough. 

I have never been a big user of Facebook anyway, and I've never really trusted them at all. But Wynn-Willams' revelations about the inner workings of the company have made it abundantly clear to me that I cannot, with any sense of good faith, continue to remain a consumer of products that inflict biased, twisted and reckless algorithms on their users in such a deeply uncaring way. The mis and dis information on the platform is unconscionable and I simply cannot support it or be part of it any longer. 

I know I have many friends still on Facebook and I'm sad that I will lose that, but enough is enough. There has to be a better way. I had so much hope in social media as a force for good and a way to connect and unify people, but it's really obvious that most of the potential for social good has been poisoned by the greed of the people who run these platforms. 

I said goodbye to Twitter/X a few months ago thanks to Elon Musk's greedy power grab and his use of the X platform to misinform and distort the truth, and I replaced it with Bluesky. I thought I would miss X but I don't at all, and I'm enjoying the time I've gotten back from mindless scrolling through endless right wing propaganda.

To those staying on Facebook, good luck. I hope it works for you. But I'm just not prepared to continue giving Facebook the attention and data it wants from me, or to allow Facebook to make one more cent in advertising from having me here. 

These billionaires are completely screwing us. It's time to say enough is enough.