It took me a while and a measure of forgetfulness, but the deed is done

Since my last post on the subject of Facebook (see Goodbye, Facebook below), I’ve paid next to no attention to it at all, reminded of its existence only by the slow feed of occasional email notifications, an onslaught that slowed to a trickle once I stopped feeding the best. Once in a while I’d click a guilty click to see a picture, perhaps of a friend’s newborn. Other times I was curious to see if the powers that be at Facebook ever bothered to get back to me on my request to cancel my Ars Skeptica page.

A quick bit about that, as an aside:

For whatever reason, of the handful of silly pages I created, Facebook’s magical data gremlins must have realized that Ars Skeptica was different. The others it let me delete without an issue. The Ars Skeptica page deletion provided a prompt that they would get back to me in two weeks time (many weeks ago now) to confirm that I do indeed mean to delete said page. I never heard back from them. As of this moment, the page still exists. What I gather from this: if such process were entirely driven by algorithm, surely a database would have had some fields populated and some actions automatically triggered. Date deletion requested. Add two weeks. Send automated confirmation form. Have done with it. But no. That’s not how it went down. So either they’ve got a faulty automated system, or they have a faulty human intervention system. In either case, those systems cease mattering to me.

I finally remembered to go back and cancel my account. I clicked their very nondescript user menu down arrow. I navigated to Settings. I guessed, after looking at Profile and seeing no option that maybe Security is the way to go. I clicked the link to deactivate my account.

I got a heart string plucking page designed to induce a sad.

Your 112 friends will no longer be able to keep in touch with you.

Almost the straw that broke the camel’s back:
Goodbye, Facebook. Supporting anti-gay marriage, anti-human rights candidate was finally too much

Before that:
Facebook tramples human research ethics and gets published by PNAS for the effort

Before that:
New Facebook app update demands unreasonable privacy access – The Tech Curmudgeon

Before that:
Facebook’s bad year just got worse

Before that:
Facebook: the most congenitally dishonest company in America

Really, quitting Facebook was a long time coming. I’m embarrassed that it took me this long. What was the actual straw that broke the camel’s back? The realization that Facebook is so damned seemingly indispensable that I’d clearly tolerate damned near anything from your company just so I can be part of your product, be disregarded as a user, citizen, and human, and keep in touch with people who mostly won’t bother to keep in touch in any other way because they too find your service so indispensable that they will put up with any damned thing you do for the sake of convenience.

It’s a disgusting realization and one that more people should have, the sooner the better.

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Imaged credit: Sam Azgor @ flickr.com. Licensed under Creative Commons.