All Posts Tagged Tag: ‘privacy’

I’ve decided to migrate away from Facebook for sharing back to the open web (aside from family and a few friends). If you’d like to follow my updates and writing, please follow me on Twitter @reifman or this blog (subscribe to the RSS feed). Over time, I’ve just grown uncomfortable with Facebook’s business model (using our personal data to earn revenue), its privacy policies and its business practices. I’m also pretty sure this model will fail over time. I believe more strongly in the open web and will be writing about Facebook alternatives in the near future.

I know that all free web services harvest data about me for profit. I just prefer not to create such a large footprint for Facebook to commoditize. As my friend Gunner once said, “If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product.” I’ve been particularly disappointed by Facebook’s monetization of the newsfeed for businesses and social friends. Facebook encouraged the development of pages and fan bases and then pulled the rug out from under adopters. Now you have to pay to reach your audience. And, as a user, it’s more difficult to get updates from all the pages that you’ve liked.

I’m also fatigued by the level of interactions I have with people online vs. in the real world. As a non-Facebook user said to me recently (paraphrasing): it’s just not a model of the kind of world I believe in or want to co-create.

Here is a guide to Facebook’s Eroding Privacy Policy: A Timeline and some handy lists of reasons you should leave Facebook:

• Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook (Gizmodo)
• Ten Reasons to Leave Facebook
• Twenty Great Reasons to Leave Facebook

How to delete your Facebook account

• Afterwards, be sure to delete your browser cookies
• Do not log in to your account for 14 days or Facebook will reactivate your account

Before you do, you may want to download a browsable archive of your Facebook activities  (the link is usually at the bottom of the page).