Without a whole lot of forethought or planning, I just straight-up deleted my entire Facebook account last night, after 18 years on the platform. I did it on the spur of the moment, from a gate at O’Hare, between flights.
(FYI: You can request all your stuff. It takes about an hour for the download link to be emailed to you. For me, it was a 1.5GB zip file with literally every single thing I’ve ever done on the system – pictures, posts, all the data they had on me… etc.)
From a personal perspective, I’m just interested in less “broadcast dynamics.” I tended to make a lot of undirected posts, just yelling into the void. Facebook had become this always-on audience for… whatever. That wasn’t healthy for “personal Deane.” I don’t need to “brand myself” or do “thought leadership” in that sphere of my life.
Combine that with the politics, the advertising, the privacy issues, etc., and Facebook had just morphed into a net negative influence on my life (something my wife had been telling me for years).
I’ve been reading a lot of Cal Newport, and he’s always advocated for abstaining from all social media. I’m not sure if I’ll go that far (I’m still on BlueSky and Mastodon… and here, of course…), but it’s strangely peaceful to not have the “Facebook microphone” (microscope?) lurking in the background anymore.
For my personal life, at least, I’m interested in less broadcast, more conversation. Less “town hall,” more one-on-one or small group conversations.
We’ll see how that goes.