This Is Why I Don’t Miss Facebook

In early 2012 I quietly shut down my Facebook profile. As much as I enjoyed hearing about the daily lives of family and friends I was disturbed by how often Facebook’s updates made my experience worse and how difficult it was to find, much less adjust, their privacy settings.

Longtime readers know that I tend to be a fairly private person. You’ll never see me walk up to an acquaintance and tell him or her the story of my life. It’s not that I have anything to hide, I simply prefer to get to know people as individuals before sharing every thought that rattles through my mind.

I’ll be honest – there have been times when I’ve really missed Facebook and have almost signed up with them again. It’s so much easier to log into one website and see status updates from almost all of my favourite people in this world than it is to email or call them individually.

A news story that came to my attention earlier today confirmed I made the right decision last winter, though. Apparently Facebook will soon be charging people to promote their posts to friends. Pay the fee and your post will be bumped to the top of everyone’s new feeds.

This is the opposite of what social media is supposed to accomplish. What I love(d) about Facebook and presently love about twitter is the element of surprise. When I log on and read tweets these days I have no idea what everyone will talk about this time: local or national news, cute animal photos, pictures of my friend’s food, rants about the frustrations of daily life from celebrities and average folks alike.

If I wanted to listen to monologues I’d read a newspaper.

99% of the time I don’t so I use Twitter instead.

Why is this so difficult for Facebook to understand?

 

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