Why I left Facebook
Dec. 27th, 2018 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
markschuldenfreiAs 2018 starts to draw to a close, I started to take stock of my personal life and year. It was not the worst year of my life, but it was also far from the best.
As I navel-gazed, I realized that I had spent an awful lot of time on Facebook (or so it seemed). And I asked myself "was what I got out of it worth the time I put in?"
Overall, the answer was "no". Because Facebook promises one thing, and delivers another entirely different experience.
I went on Facebook to keep in touch with friends - to share, as Facebook calls it. Those were the good parts of what I did and saw.
But Facebook "curates" too much, and advertises too much. It's goal is engagement, and not pleasure. It creates and encourages conflict and outrage, not information and community.
It was Dickensian - the best of times and the worst of times.
I'm familiar with the psychological concept of "intermittent reinforcement", which is a type of behavior reinforcement which is most successful at encouraging certain behaviors. Once I realized that the "good parts" were being made deliberately rare and that doing so served Facebook's needs more than mine, I made a decision.
So - while this is not the first time I've "quit" Facebook, I hope it is the last. Facebook just doesn't make me happy.
Time to try other things.
(FYI, I'll be posting the same content here and on MeWe- let's see if a community forms in either place.)
As I navel-gazed, I realized that I had spent an awful lot of time on Facebook (or so it seemed). And I asked myself "was what I got out of it worth the time I put in?"
Overall, the answer was "no". Because Facebook promises one thing, and delivers another entirely different experience.
I went on Facebook to keep in touch with friends - to share, as Facebook calls it. Those were the good parts of what I did and saw.
But Facebook "curates" too much, and advertises too much. It's goal is engagement, and not pleasure. It creates and encourages conflict and outrage, not information and community.
It was Dickensian - the best of times and the worst of times.
I'm familiar with the psychological concept of "intermittent reinforcement", which is a type of behavior reinforcement which is most successful at encouraging certain behaviors. Once I realized that the "good parts" were being made deliberately rare and that doing so served Facebook's needs more than mine, I made a decision.
So - while this is not the first time I've "quit" Facebook, I hope it is the last. Facebook just doesn't make me happy.
Time to try other things.
(FYI, I'll be posting the same content here and on MeWe- let's see if a community forms in either place.)
no subject
Date: 2018-12-28 05:55 pm (UTC)(I do use FB heavily for *groups* still. But that's solely because it's almost the only game in town. Any groups that move to better systems I would more than happily follow there.)
I currently use Medium for my professional blog, DW for anything else *significant*, and FB for random links. That seems like a decent balance, so far.
I joined MeWe a while back (under my usual handle), when the G+ exodus brought it to my attention; so far I haven't done much there, but I'd be entirely happy for it to take over FB's niche in my life. (I'm trying to remember to cross-post the link stuff there as well as FB.)