The time is rapidly coming when I’m quitting Facebook for good

By David McElroy · December 23, 2019

I joined Facebook in 2007 only because a girlfriend asked me to. Until early 2009, though, I posted nothing. I didn’t see why I needed this social media platform as part of my life.

After I started using Facebook, though, I became a heavy user as I connected with those who shared my political interests and then as I used it to promote the articles I wrote here. I fairly quickly reached the 5,000 limit on “friends,” but I eventually decided things were out of control with the angry arguments on my page.

Over the last few years, I’ve aggressively cut my number of contacts. (Let’s be honest. Most of them aren’t really friends.) I’ve cut it to just a few more than 500. I thought that might be enough for me to think it was worth sticking around.

I’ve recently realized, though, that I need to leave Facebook completely.

It won’t be today or next week. I doubt it will be next month. But sometime — in six months or a year, maybe — I will delete my Facebook account and move on. I want to explain why.

First, I don’t trust Facebook as a company. If you’re interested in the reasons why, you probably already know the details, so I’m not going to go too deeply into this.

Facebook has shown an incredible lack of interest in privacy or honesty. Company executives have made statements attacking the idea that we need privacy and they have been cavalier in their attitudes about the security of information they have about us.

User information is routinely leaked from Facebook and the company has done nothing to change its bad habits. I have to accept that this isn’t going to change, so I don’t want to stick around and get burned when things get worse.

In addition, the company has ambitions to take even more control over our lives. Not only does the company control multiple platforms (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp), it has just launched a project to design a new mobile operating system which will integrate its platforms and compete with iOS and Android.

Facebook already requires users to use its chosen browser for certain functions — such as going live — and I can see the day when it will make its own phone virtually required for the best experience. I simply don’t want a company which I don’t trust having that much control over my data and my online experience. So I’m going to disentangle myself before things can get worse.

Second, I don’t like what Facebook is doing to my mind and my attention span. This is a broader problem with the web in general and with all social media to some extent, but Facebook has become an incredible “time suck” for me and it has also trained me to spend every bit of downtime scrolling through shallow information which is essentially useless to me.

I might or might not withdraw from Instagram at the same time. I enjoy having a place to share my photos, but I’m not sure Instagram works as it was originally intended. Changes since Facebook bought the company have meant that interaction with other users is rewarded by showing your photos more often.

I don’t really want to make friends on Instagram. I just want to share photos for those who are interested — without having to pretend to be buddies with them. The algorithms on the service currently penalize someone who just wants to display photos for the world to see (without wasting time interacting with people he doesn’t know).

I will continue to speak online, although I can’t pretend to be sure what form that will take. As I’ve told you recently, I’m having a crisis in that regard, because I no longer have anyone to whom I’m speaking — in the broad sense — and I don’t know what I need to say.

I had high hopes for the effect the online world could have on public discourse — back when I participated in online message boards in the early 1990s — but those hopes have all been dashed. These tools don’t do what I had hoped they would. Somehow, I’m going to have to find ways to use different tools to connect more deeply with the people who I need to reach.

I’m not looking for a new social media platform, so please don’t write to me to tell me about whatever upstart Facebook competitor you’ve found. I’m simply not interested. It’s the shallow nature of the social media world which I’m escaping, not just the behemoth that Facebook has become.

There have definitely been positives to Facebook for me. I’ve connected with some people with whom I’ll stay connected and I’ve reconnected with people who I might have lost entirely otherwise. But the downsides have finally overwhelmed the upsides for me.

When the time comes, I will make an orderly exit. I’ll leave contact information posted there for awhile before I actually delete the account. I’ll ask for email addresses for people who would like to stay connected. I’ll give you plenty of warning before this all happens, once I have a plan and timeline in place.

But I’ve made the decision to disconnect completely from the digital clutches of Zuckerberg and Co. I’ll be happier when I quit wasting time in a virtual world and spend it working on things I want in the real world instead.

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The company that owns Facebook and Instagram is heavily promoting its new AI-based software assistant called Muse, but people who are using it as it was designed are incredibly foolish. An early adopter of the software discovered that a few days ago when he advertised an item for sale on Facebook Marketplace — and he inadvertently gave Muse full authority to act on his behalf. The software agreed to a lowball offer made by another Facebook user and then gave that man the home address of the man for whom he was an agent. The software told the buyer that the seller was home and waiting for him. When the buyer showed up and waited angrily, the would-be buyer left an angry review for the man. And this angry man had the seller’s home address. It was only well after that that the software reported what it had done and admitted it had made a mistake. I won’t be putting that much power into the hands of any software. I think anyone who agrees to such terms is a fool. And the software’s user agreement says you’re responsible for purchases the software makes in your name. Nope.

Meet my new girlfriend. Her name is Meg. And she’s my little sweetheart. A couple of months ago, a neighbor across the street told me about a new stray in the neighborhood that she and I were both soon feeding. The cat had been very skittish about contact and she had a lot of scabs and parasites in her fur, but a trip to the vet last week revealed that she was otherwise in good health. The vet estimates her to be 1 to 2 years old. I named her for Meg Murry, the 13-year-old protagonist of Madeleine L’Engle’s wonderful book, “A Wrinkle in Time.” (Please read the book. Don’t watch the horrible movie.) Since we lost Lucy almost a year ago, it seems appropriate that we finally have a new little girl to join the household. She’s already captured my heart, but Alex, Oliver and Sam aren’t there quite yet.

There’s nothing socially acceptable that’s as dangerous as drinking alcohol. Most people grow up being told to “drink responsibly” — and all of us see people abusing this drug in one way or another — but the truth is that drinking alcohol is always a terrible risk. The alcohol in these drinks is toxic and the human liver has to work hard to filter the toxins out. What most people don’t realize is that alcohol is classified as a known carcinogen by the World Health Organization — because of the well-established connection between imbibing and various cancers. Many people have taken refuge behind the idea that light or moderate drinking might be safe, but a new study shows that drinking even one drink a day increases the risks of 10 types of cancer. When I was a teen-ager, I looked around and saw the negative effects that this behavior had on a lot of people and decided not to start drinking, so I’ve never even tried this poison. The evidence keeps piling up that I was lucky to have come to that conclusion early.

It turns out that the radical far left has been training “Antifa cats” to sabotage anything important to Donald Trump. Everything he did was perfect. Honest. It was all the cats’ fault. Arrest all the cats! This is the latest of my ridiculous satirical shorts. Please go watch it. Then “like” it and subscribe. Please. I’m begging you. (Too much?) Although a couple of the previous videos have had views in the hundreds, most have still been seen by fewer than 20 people. So I seem to be having trouble letting people know that page exists.

Here’s the latest of my ridiculous parody shorts. It crossed my mind Tuesday to wonder what a slick and fast-talking car dealer might do right now to try to turn the high price of gasoline to his advantage. So I conceived of a fat and lovable character who tried to sell cars that don’t use any fuel — and then I started wondering if it would be funnier if all the characters were felines. Designing the King Cashpaw character took about four hours, but the rest took only another four hours, so this was a relatively quick piece that virtually wrote itself. I know it’s almost impossible for these parody videos to find a larger audience, but at least they amuse me — and there are 19 of them on my YouTube page now. The first few were very limited, but they’re getting more complex.

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