Why I Quit Facebook

[avaistheone1]

I just de-friended Facebook.

I have no interest in tweaking 50 Facebook privacy settings every few months as the company changes its policies in a never-ending quest to wring profit out of my identity. Facebook's striking tone-deafness when it comes to privacy has simply caused me to lose confidence that the company will protect my personal information. In short, Facebook has lost my trust.

So instead of dealing with 50 different privacy settings, I'm simply going to deal with one: Deactivate.

I'm hardly the first person to reach this conclusion. Stories of people deactivating their Facebook accounts are all over the place. And, truth be told, I wasn't using the service much anyway. (My dog actually uses it more than I do.) I originally joined Facebook because, as a tech reporter, I figured I couldn't reasonably cover the company without using its service. But I quickly discovered that I just don't use it that much, and when I do, I'm inundated with boring content from those few "friends" who post frequently. It isn't that I'm not curious about what my real friends are up to, I guess I just prefer interacting with them in old-fashioned ways.

Facebook's privacy policies are alarming, to be sure. But the truth is I'm not really getting any value out of Facebook, anyway, and I don't think I will really miss it. My friends, (and many others), seem to find a way to get in touch with me through other channels, like phone, email, Twitter and mountaintop fire signals. Sometimes, I actually speak to my friends on the phone, or -- and this is crazy -- get together for drinks with them or even visit them in their homes. We go shopping and cook food and make dinners. Radical stuff…

http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/company-news/why-i-quit-facebook/19473822/