Earlier today I shared this link with some friends on Google Hangouts and no-one was even a little bit surprised. Why should they be? We’ve all assumed that this has been happening for years, it’s been leaked by Snowden and now Facebook is just all out admitting to selling their users. I don’t remember where I heard it, but the saying, “if you can’t see the product then you are the product” rings really true with Facebook as it is now. Gone are the days when I could spend my time on Facebook simply interacting with friends and companies I wanted to, I feel like I barely see any relevant content. Once Facebook changed it’s News Feed sorting system, I felt like I was being bombarded with the same five stories over and over again, never seeing anything new. I found a workaround for a few months, but that doesn’t seem to be working anymore. At first I thought my friends weren’t posting enough, then I realised that wasn’t the case once I went directly to their pages. Where was the content going? This amazing video explains where, it is such an awesome watch. 

I’m exhausted. I want to leave Facebook, I don’t like how it organises my data, I don’t like how it keeps me from the interesting things my friends are posting, I don’t like how it monetises my content and I’m under no illusion that things will change for the better. I see little value in using the service but I know that there is no other single service that has all my contacts in one place. The migration to Google+ is slow, some of my friends prefer LINE, others are on KakaoTalk, others exclusively use Whatsapp, most use Instagram, some have blogs on Tumblr and others on WordPress, but there is no one service that captivates my contact list quite like Facebook. Maybe that’s just how it’ll have to be from now on.  Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing wrong this whole time, holding out for the one site to unite them all, maybe there is no one service. Maybe the days of one site are gone and we just have to be okay with that. 

Even knowing this will I delete my account? Probably not yet. But by the end of this year, I seriously doubt I’ll be with the service anymore. Facebook has screwed up so many times and I think this year, I’m pretty much done with it.