Why I Quit Facebook
Conscientious Consumerism
Conscientiousness is defined as, "a desire to do a task well"; consumerism is, "the protection or promotion of the interests of consumers". I guess at this point, you're probably wondering what it means to be a conscientious consumer. Honestly, I am too as I try to figure it out.
It's something I'd like to be better at, to advocate for the change I want to see with the way I spend my currency. Note that I mention currency, not explicitly money, because I think we – as consumers in the information age – spend with more than just money whether we're aware of it or not.
Monetary Consumerism
Being conscientious with spending money can be pretty straightforward. It's mostly along the lines of not handing money to companies or organizations that do things you don't support. These may be companies that use child labor from developing countries (most clothing companies) or contribute to environmental harm (such as oil companies).
It can be hard to know whether a company has questionable labor practices. That's not accidental. Regardless, a good-faith effort doesn't hurt.
The corollary would be giving your money towards those that you do support. TOMS, for example, matches each shoe purchased with a shoe donation to children in developing countries. It's not a perfect example, there are certainly questions about the viability of those efforts, but it's a start.
Monopolizing Attention
Here's a currency we don't often think about, our attention. There is a finite amount of time we're going to live. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's true. There is only so much stuff you can give your attention to in that time. For many millennials, Netflix is our go-to attention ATM; we spend it and get some entertainment in return.
The cost of a Netflix subscription is more than just $X/month, it's also the time it takes to consume that content per month – about two hours per day, 60/month for the average millennial. And that's just for watching on TVs! You remember those, right? The black, void, reflective frames you may still have lying around. It doesn't even account for laptops, tablets, or smartphones. I'm sure no one watches Netflix on those things...
I'm foremost guilty and aware of not valuing my attention enough to guard it from other distractions. That I could be doing more productive or fulfilling things is an idea I'm acutely aware of and would like to improve.
Back in the beginning of 2016 I resolved to limit my mind-numbing endless-scroll social-media-binge by un-following everyone on Facebook. It was also during an election that was very disheartening with some outrageous posts from everyone across the political spectrum, though especially from one band on the spectrum that I still struggle to believe exists. To prevent isolating my exposure to the other end of the spectrum, it seemed the most fair thing would be to un-follow everyone (yes, including my mom) – so un-follow I did. What followed was an enormous boost in my focus on tasks and reliance on that platform. For the first time, my news feed became a stream of news from pages I follow and groups I joined. It was quite refreshing and I never needed to visit for more than a few minutes per day after that to see the latest news.
Data as Currency
Do you know how many companies know where you live? What about how many know how much you make? Think you have a number in your head? I'd multiply that by ten, at least, and that's on the conservative end.
Data is a currency we all pay without knowing it. Comments on a forum, reactions to social media posts, signing up for an account to play a game, or even just linking a benign-seeming personality quiz to your social media profile because you just have to know more about yourself. These are all tolls we pay to participate. It's hard knowing how to navigate this minefield, and I work in the tech realm!
This is primarily why I quit Facebook. I know that my data being shared is an inevitability of living in the digital age, I accept that. I, however, don't accept that data being shared with untrustworthy organizations. Facebook, alone, collects more info on you than you many be aware – all for the purposes of monetizing your data. It reads your chat messages, keeps track of the events you're interested in attending, and knows whose posts you interact with the most. This is information you voluntarily provide by interacting and using the platform. Want to know what it'll be like to be denied health insurance because your recent social media history indicates you may be likely to develop cancer in the near term? Don't worry, we'll all know that feeling soon enough.
The data taken involuntarily is another matter. For every web page out there that has a Facebook "Like" or "Share" button, Facebook tracks you and associates the content on that respective page with your account. It registers your interests by tracking which pages you visit and probably, this part is conjecture, how long you spend on those pages. As a developer, I'd wager they've got an internal formula that determines the relevance of that page to you as someone to be advertised to as a combination of the domain, frequency of keywords on that page and total time spent browsing that page. There are probably other metrics, too.
Deleting my account won't stop this. Facebook will still create a shadow profile to track my habits across the web because I have no doubt they have aspirations to not just power ads on Facebook.com, but also for other sites much like how Google powers ads across the web. Deleting is a start, though. I will no longer volunteer information and will actively block them from accessing my data involuntarily.
An Endless Pursuit
This is a personal journey, one of many I'm sure to be traveling in the near future, and I'm sure I will make mistakes. I welcome you, dear reader, to hold me accountable for them.
At times, I'll also need to make compromises. Some products and services have very few reasonable alternatives. I still welcome others challenging me on those choices because it forces me to re-evaluate that I'm making a fair compromise. On that note, for my travels I will have a temporary Instagram, something I've been asked about multiple times. There are few alternatives for easily sharing a photo with a caption.
It'd be great to have companions through this and I openly welcome any fellow journeyers who are curious about what it means to live as a conscientious consumer today.