So long Facebook and thanks for all the posts!

....

Yeah, so I deleted my Facebook account. I haven't activated any bots to go through and remove me from any posts historically cause I think that's kinda rude towards my friends and family who are still there. But I'm gone and I won't be leaving any more info with that company for future use or whatever.

I'm not so naive that I think that this will 'erase' me from that part of the internet. Far from it. Information I left inside Facebook is only private for now and I know it's never really deleted just stored for later on. In the meantime they're already employing new algorithms to figure out which of your posts are worth reading or not.

I'm not bitter, and it was a free service and I definitely got some fun time out of it. I'm under no illusions about the nature of the arrangement, but I think the scales are finally tipping too far in their favour.

So [aside from this stupendous list of criticisms!] these are my reasons for departing [in no particular order]:

• 1. Ever increasing monetization. [Wasn't it more fun when there were less ads?]. Edit: Now they want your credit card too!
• 2. Pretensions to politics. [fwd.us Really? Something about this just ain't right].
• 3. Privacy policy changes and fluctuations in the use of your material. What, don't you want to be famous? Your face could be used to sell vacuum cleaners!
• 4. Facebook's crappy treatment of 3rd party devs. I believe Social Fixer likely made Facebook a better place to be, although I never used it. What's wrong with people making client-side tools to make Facebook's site more enjoyable?
• The bloated arching rise of the Junk Web. I love me some cat macros but some of my 'friends' are completely out of control on Facebook. And it's ugly.
• The inane posts, VagueBooking, and general time wastage. I'd rather get excited and make things than sit and read about someone else eating their dinner.
• Cross-site tracking and monitoring what I'm into, yo.

All this being said, I love you people and think the internet is a great place. Too bad it's being compartmentalised and monetized so aggressively. I'll be in touch, and you know, when we chat next I'll have more new stuff to tell you cause you didn't hear it all over Facebook!

I may return to Facebook at some point in the future but likely only as a photography or app business entity as I fully recognise the power [hand raised to eye in salute] of 'the social' in this regard.

-julian

P.S. if you have interesting reasons why are or are not on Facebook I'd love to hear from you in the comments! What did I miss? Why should I still be there? What did you have for breakfast? Don't hold back.