# I Dumped FaceBook today



## wallmaxx (Jun 18, 2007)

CT takes quite a bit of my time...FB was just sucking me in farther. So after reading an article about 10 reasons to drop FB...I took action. It was pretty easy. Go to account - help - type in delete my account. Select permanently delete. Second paragraph has a URL...follow the instructions and YOU R FREE!!!

http://gizmodo.com/5530178/top-ten-reasons-you-should-quit-facebook










*Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook*

Facebook privacy policies keep going down the drain. That's enough reason for many to abandon it. Here you will find nine more:

After some reflection, I've decided to delete my account on Facebook. I'd like to encourage you to do the same. This is part altruism and part selfish. The altruism part is that I think Facebook, as a company, is unethical. The selfish part is that I'd like my own social network to migrate away from Facebook so that I'm not missing anything. In any event, here's my "Top Ten" reasons for why you should join me and many others and delete your account.

*10. Facebook's Terms Of Service are completely one-sided*
Let's start with the basics. Facebook's Terms Of Service state that not only do they own your data (section 2.1), but if you don't keep it up to date and accurate (section 4.6), they can terminate your account (section 14). You could argue that the terms are just protecting Facebook's interests, and are not in practice enforced, but in the context of their other activities, this defense is pretty weak. As you'll see, there's no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. Essentially, they see their customers as unpaid employees for crowd-sourcing ad-targeting data.

*9. Facebook's CEO has a documented history of unethical behavior*
From the very beginning of Facebook's existence, there are questions about Zuckerberg's ethics. According to BusinessInsider.com, he used Facebook user data to guess email passwords and read personal email in order to discredit his rivals. These allegations, albeit unproven and somewhat dated, nonetheless raise troubling questions about the ethics of the CEO of the world's largest social network. They're particularly compelling given that Facebook chose to fork over $65M to settle a related lawsuit alleging that Zuckerberg had actually stolen the idea for Facebook.

*8. Facebook has flat out declared war on privacy*
Founder and CEO of Facebook, in defense of Facebook's privacy changes last January: "People have really gotten comfortable not only sharing more information and different kinds, but more openly and with more people. That social norm is just something that has evolved over time." More recently, in introducing the Open Graph API: "... the default is now social." Essentially, this means Facebook not only wants to know everything about you, and own that data, but to make it available to everybody. Which would not, by itself, necessarily be unethical, except that ...

*7. Facebook is pulling a classic bait-and-switch*
At the same time that they're telling developers how to access your data with new APIs, they are relatively quiet about explaining the implications of that to members. What this amounts to is a bait-and-switch. Facebook gets you to share information that you might not otherwise share, and then they make it publicly available. Since they are in the business of monetizing information about you for advertising purposes, this amounts to tricking their users into giving advertisers information about themselves. This is why Facebook is so much worse than Twitter in this regard: Twitter has made only the simplest (and thus, more credible) privacy claims and their customers know up front that all their tweets are public. It's also why the FTC is getting involved, and people are suing them (and winning).

Check out this excellent timeline from the EFF documenting the changes to Facebook's privacy policy.

*6. Facebook is a bully*
When Pete Warden demonstrated just how this bait-and-switch works (by crawling all the data that Facebook's privacy settings changes had inadvertently made public) they sued him. Keep in mind, this happened just before they announced the Open Graph API and stated that the "default is now social." So why sue an independent software developer and fledgling entrepreneur for making data publicly available when you're actually already planning to do that yourself? Their real agenda is pretty clear: they don't want their membership to know how much data is really available. It's one thing to talk to developers about how great all this sharing is going to be; quite another to actually see what that means in the form of files anyone can download and load into MatLab.

*5. Even your private data is shared with applications*
At this point, all your data is shared with applications that you install. Which means now you're not only trusting Facebook, but the application developers, too, many of whom are too small to worry much about keeping your data secure. And some of whom might be even more ethically challenged than Facebook. In practice, what this means is that all your data - all of it - must be effectively considered public, unless you simply never use any Facebook applications at all. Coupled with the OpenGraph API, you are no longer trusting Facebook, but the Facebook ecosystem.

*4. Facebook is not technically competent enough to be trusted*
Even if we weren't talking about ethical issues here, I can't trust Facebook's technical competence to make sure my data isn't hijacked. For example, their recent introduction of their "Like" button makes it rather easy for spammers to gain access to my feed and spam my social network. Or how about this gem for harvesting profile data? These are just the latest of a series of Keystone Kops mistakes, such as accidentally making users' profiles completely public, or the cross-site scripting hole that took them over two weeks to fix. They either don't care too much about your privacy or don't really have very good engineers, or perhaps both.

*3. Facebook makes it incredibly difficult to truly delete your account*
It's one thing to make data public or even mislead users about doing so; but where I really draw the line is that, once you decide you've had enough, it's pretty tricky to really delete your account. They make no promises about deleting your data and every application you've used may keep it as well. On top of that, account deletion is incredibly (and intentionally) confusing. When you go to your account settings, you're given an option to deactivate your account, which turns out not to be the same thing as deleting it. Deactivating means you can still be tagged in photos and be spammed by Facebook (you actually have to opt out of getting emails as part of the deactivation, an incredibly easy detail to overlook, since you think you're deleting your account). Finally, the moment you log back in, you're back like nothing ever happened! In fact, it's really not much different from not logging in for awhile. To actually delete your account, you have to find a link buried in the on-line help (by "buried" I mean it takes five clicks to get there). Or you can just click here. Basically, Facebook is trying to trick their users into allowing them to keep their data even after they've "deleted" their account.

*2. Facebook doesn't (really) support the Open Web*
The so-called Open Graph API is named so as to disguise its fundamentally closed nature. It's bad enough that the idea here is that we all pitch in and make it easier than ever to help Facebook collect more data about you. It's bad enough that most consumers will have no idea that this data is basically public. It's bad enough that they claim to own this data and are aiming to be the one source for accessing it. But then they are disingenuous enough to call it "open," when, in fact, it is completely proprietary to Facebook. You can't use this feature unless you're on Facebook. A truly open implementation would work with whichever social network we prefer, and it would look something like OpenLike. Similarly, they implement just enough of OpenID to claim they support it, while aggressively promoting a proprietary alternative, Facebook Connect.

*1. The Facebook application itself sucks*
Between the farms and the mafia wars and the "top news" (which always guesses wrong - is that configurable somehow?) and the myriad privacy settings and the annoying ads (with all that data about me, the best they can apparently do is promote dating sites, because, uh, I'm single) and the thousands upon thousands of crappy applications, Facebook is almost completely useless to me at this point. Yes, I could probably customize it better, but the navigation is ridiculous, so I don't bother. (And, yet, somehow, I can't even change colors or apply themes or do anything to make my page look personalized.) Let's not even get into how slowly your feed page loads. Basically, at this point, Facebook is more annoying than anything else.


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## Morning Wood (Jan 12, 2008)

I agree on a lot of those counts too. But, I can't get rid of facebook, I'll lose all my friends.


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## J F (Dec 3, 2005)

What is facebook?


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## pinwheel (Dec 7, 2009)

J F said:


> What is facebook?


Exactly what I was thinkin. Never been there.


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## TimelessQuality (Sep 23, 2007)

J F said:


> What is facebook?


My thoughts exactly:laughing:

J/K...I have a 15 yr old, I know too well what it is.


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## jamesclerie (Mar 6, 2009)

Facebook is just another form of the downfall of society...


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## J F (Dec 3, 2005)

ahhh, it must be some of that new-fangled technology...speaking of which, I just got my first cell phone (great deal on ebay).






































:laughing:


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## ApgarNJ (Apr 16, 2006)

FB is much better than myspace. many more adults are using it than you guys might think. i have contacted a lot of my friends from h.s and college on there. i set my privacy settings the right way and i have nothing to worry about. the internet can only give out what you put into it.
so just don't fill out all the info. there are settings to where only your friends can view any details about you.
i go on there once a day but not for long. i keep the chat thing turned offline for most of the time unless someone wants help.

i dumped myspace a long time ago. that was for young kids and music crap more than anything else. bad layout/format too.


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

Facebook.

Reminds me of the openning to the movie the Hang Over where you are hearing all the guys out going voice mail messages and Phil's is:

_Hey, this is Phil. Leave me a message, or don't, but do me a favor: don't text me, it's gay._


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## 480sparky (Feb 1, 2009)

The only reason I signed up with facebook and twitter and all those other social networking landfills is so my username would already be taken.......... by me.


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## solarguy (Feb 14, 2010)

https://www.linkedin.com/secure/login?session_full_logout=&trk=hb_signout


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## BuiltByMAC (Mar 11, 2006)

You don't join FB if you have concerns about privacy. In fact, if you have concerns about privacy, you don't spend much time at all online (and when you are online, you use shell accounts, anonymous IP servers, etc). 
Almost every site is a vacuum, pulling as much info about you, your spending habits, your passwords, etc, etc, etc, as they possibly can.

I take part in FB 'cause I can stay in touch w/ high school friends who have scattered to the four corners of the earth. FB isn't inherently bad in itself, simply capitalism at it's finest, a free app designed to create a ready audience for targeted advertising.

I'm not worried about exposing my nefarious plans for world domination because I keep that on a separate disk, offline!

Mac

p.s. I text too, but I'll just keep that on the d.l.


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## JT Wood (Dec 17, 2007)

I think I'm out, in 14 days it says


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## JT Wood (Dec 17, 2007)

stupid facebook


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## J F (Dec 3, 2005)

BuiltByMAC said:


> p.s. I text too, but I'll just keep that on the d.l.


:laughing:


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## Joasis (Mar 28, 2006)

I don't keep up with it, and everyone I want to stay in contact with I already have information for, so I am out. Nice link. 14 days away.


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## JumboJack (Aug 14, 2007)

Don't put anything you don't want people to see or know about on FB.Set up an email account just for facebook.
As far as I know they can' read your mind yet.
Some people are paranoid.


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## angus242 (Oct 20, 2007)

Facebook has gone rogue:
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010...op+Stories+2))&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

Long but interesting read. Some people just start seeing $$$ and can't stop apparently. :whistling


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## Static Design (Nov 30, 2008)

Face book was awesome when it was just for us college kids, I remember when I was in school we would link up through class schedules and scope out potential hotties.  I still log on and update my business page, but it's better then myspace or twitter: that stuff is gayer then aids.


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## Mike Finley (Apr 28, 2004)

Static Design said:


> Face book was awesome when it was just for us college kids, I remember when I was in school we would link up through class schedules and scope out potential hotties.



I think that pretty much sums up why I never took it seriously in regard to marketing our business.


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## user38755 (Jan 1, 2009)

I'm on facebook and keep several items open for all to see. I don't use my real name and my friends know who I am so it's all good. BTW, what kind of things do you supose they will be marketing to me as Rev. Jenkum Jones.


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## Jimmy Cabinet (Jan 22, 2010)

J F said:


> What is facebook?


I don't even know what texting is yet. Hell I don't even know what a blackberry or a blueberry is except for on the grocery shelves.


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## Static Design (Nov 30, 2008)

Mike Finley said:


> I think that pretty much sums up why I never took it seriously in regard to marketing our business.



I wouldn't either, but what is nice about it is the ease of uploading pictures, networking between friends and that does end up getting some good leads sometimes. I actually have had more leads that I ended up selling my service through facebook then running 2 years of ads in the local newspaper.


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## wallmaxx (Jun 18, 2007)

http://www.newser.com/story/88166/we-need-an-alternative-to-facebook.html

We Need an Alternative to Facebook
IN THIS ONE, PRIVACY WOULD ACTUALLY MATTER










(NEWSER) – It's time for a revolt against Facebook, writes Ryan Singel. Mark Zuckerberg may think privacy is an outdated concept, but that doesn't mean the rest of us have to play along. As Singel puts it in Wired: "Facebook has gone rogue, drunk on founder Mark Zuckerberg’s dreams of world domination. It’s time the rest of the web ecosystem recognizes this and works to replace it with something open and distributed."

Singel wants the "best of the tech community to find a way to let people control what and how they’d like to share," he says. "Facebook’s basic functions can be turned into protocols, and a whole set of interoperating software and services can flourish." Of course, Facebook could head this off with "respectful" changes of its own. "But Facebook isn’t about respect—it’s about re-configuring the world’s notion of what’s public and private."


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## aggreX (Oct 17, 2008)

Morning Wood said:


> I agree on a lot of those counts too. But, I can't get rid of facebook, I'll lose all my friends.


Nothing worse than losing FACE especially your internet ones:laughing:


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## Greg Di (Mar 12, 2005)

Mike Finley said:


> I think that pretty much sums up why I never took it seriously in regard to marketing our business.


Mike, it is pretty powerful for business marketing. Since starting a fan page for my business this year, I have booked two jobs as a result of long lost friends recommending me to friends of theirs. These are people I might not reach otherwise.

As stupid as FB is, it's worth $42k to me right now. :w00t:

I would actually love to ditch FB because it is dumb, but it's a tool to make money with, so I'm keeping it.


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## ApgarNJ (Apr 16, 2006)

greg, same thing for me. i have started a business page. i have 200 friends on FB and a lot of them still live in NJ. or PA. and when they become my FAN, then all of their friends see that and it spirals. I have a 6 figure addition coming up this summer because of a lead off FB, a friend of a friend and I have a full kitchen gut, renovation, and restructure that is in the design phase with my architect right now and will most likely happen in the fall. Those two jobs alone are well worth it. and i have gotten some smaller jobs too from college friends who have parents still living around here and I do the work for the parents now. 

I keep my info limited on there and I have also educated some fans of mine on the RRP rule that came out. so that even if I don't do their jobs or they live far away, they can make sure their contractor is doing lead safe practices.

i don't stay on FB all day, but I do use it more than linkedin right now, and twitter. I don't see twitter being as good as FB or linkedin as far as marketing and networking. 

greg, i keep forgetting to call you. had a funeral this past week and my son's birthday party this weekend. i'll give you a ring soon.


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## PortlandRemodel (Apr 23, 2010)

*Fb*

The new FB changes give it new wind with business. It's gonna increase. But I'd keep non-business related stuff off anyway.


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## user38755 (Jan 1, 2009)

ApgarNJ said:


> thanks! i appreciate it.
> hahaha


You bet!:thumbsup: But it's not just about YOU! Everybody needs to know about this freak.


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## chris n (Oct 14, 2003)

Jimmy Cabinet said:


> I don't even know what texting is yet. Hell I don't even know what a blackberry or a blueberry is except for on the grocery shelves.


I make pies and jelly from both.:laughing:


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## outlaw (Jan 7, 2009)

JumboJack said:


> Don't put anything you don't want people to see or know about on FB.Set up an email account just for facebook.
> As far as I know they can' read your mind yet.
> Some people are paranoid.


 
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get ya.


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## tedanderson (May 19, 2010)

Maybe I spend too much time thinking that everything is a conspiracy of some sort but I wouldn't be surprised if it was one big social experiment or something more sinister. 

Maybe one day after final exams, a group of college kids were passing joint around considering what would happen if you could get 5 million people to register their demographic data on a website for the purpose of telling all of their personal business and sharing most of the intimate details of their life.

And then when there were enough people who regretted spilling their guts, they could sell privacy subscriptions back to the people who willingly gave up all of this personal information. For $19.95 a month you can ensure that everything you said throughout your high school and college years and all of the crazy pictures that you posted would never see the light of day ever again... or at least until you stopped paying.


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## JT Wood (Dec 17, 2007)

:laughing:wow,


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## ReVisionsWindow (Apr 19, 2011)

While increasingly growing in user population, facebook, operated and maintained correctly, _can_ be a powerful marketing tool. Networking sites like facebook have growing capacity to reach consumers in any particular niche. Social Networking sites are useful in Search Engine Optimization and rankings, too. It's another avenue for exploration and discovery.


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## RenaissanceR (May 16, 2006)

*Been there, left..*

[deleted]


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## kcplumberpro (May 31, 2012)

ReVisionsWindow said:


> While increasingly growing in user population, facebook, operated and maintained correctly, _can_ be a powerful marketing tool. Networking sites like facebook have growing capacity to reach consumers in any particular niche. Social Networking sites are useful in Search Engine Optimization and rankings, too. It's another avenue for exploration and discovery.


This was the case a year ago... but things are changing. Google+ is the future.

They are starting to favor results that have strong google+ presence. Business will put more effort into driving traffic to their google+ profile pages. Which will eventually lead to getting the majority of the public to use google+ instead of facebook.


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## shaedzs (Jan 26, 2012)

kcplumberpro said:


> This was the case a year ago... but things are changing. Google+ is the future.
> 
> They are starting to favor results that have strong google+ presence. Business will put more effort into driving traffic to their google+ profile pages. Which will eventually lead to getting the majority of the public to use google+ instead of facebook.


I'm not so sure about google +...it seems to be flopping big time with more of a cult following amongst tech people. If anything it seems as though google is giving the google+ users preferential treatment as an organic ranking factor versus facebook or twitter....


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## CSB (Nov 17, 2007)

kcplumberpro said:


> This was the case a year ago... but things are changing. Google+ is the future.
> 
> They are starting to favor results that have strong google+ presence. Business will put more effort into driving traffic to their google+ profile pages. Which will eventually lead to getting the majority of the public to use google+ instead of facebook.


I will bet a lot of money and offer great odds on Google+ not being the future of social media.


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## Joasis (Mar 28, 2006)

I dumped facebook back then, but reactivated it, and have had a few calls related to my posts there. Just another tool, either use it or don't. The way to the top are still referrals and reputation, but exposure doesn't hurt.


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