Reflecting on my own part in “#DeleteFacebook”

This is too little, and it’s definitely too late.

Last week’s news about Cambridge Analytica and Facebook was my tipping point ^[1]. For years, I’ve read plenty of stories about Facebook that made me pretty uncomfortable ^{[2, 3, 4, 5, 6]}. Usually, I would try to laugh a little and pretend each piece of news wasn’t that big of a deal. I would fallaciously think to myself things like “I don’t have THAT info much up”, “my privacy settings are locked down,” “everyone else is doing it, so it’s okay,” or even “well, there isn’t really another option.” Not this time.

I’ve taken a hard look at what I’ve volunteered to give Facebook. I’ve thumbed through years of mostly unflattering (and mostly self-inflicted) photos. I’ve cringed at the thousands of posts, comments, likes, events, groups, and other interactions the platform had preserved over the last decade my account has been active. I’ve also looked at hundreds of logs showing concrete evidence of how much other data I’ve given away. I’m not happy with what I’ve found.

How’d it end up like this?

Even though content like posts and comments just scratch the surface of what information the company has about me, reviewing them has led to a lot of introspection ^{[7, 8]}. I’ve been asking myself how I let things get to this point, and why I didn’t realize sooner what was happening. At some point in my mid-teens, I made a Faustian bargain, trading privacy for, well, something I can’t exactly put to words. In retrospect, I’ve had ways to communicate and otherwise stay in touch with people. There were other ways to put photos online. And there were definitely better games to play. Aside from the network effect, I can’t say now what specific feature drew me in then or kept me around.

There’s a part of me that wants to place the blame on when I grew up and believe that citing years of peer influence will somehow absolve me from any responsibility. For “digital natives”, socializing online wasn’t only normal, it was expected. Plenty of friendships were made and maintained online; even semi-official groups like student organizations required a Facebook presence to participate. These years of use led to some hard-to-break habits and deeply ingrained (bad) attitudes about privacy.

So, maybe there is some truth to the excuse of not knowing better, at least for years-ago me. But I can’t, in good conscience, let this go unchecked. At best, leaving things as they were could have led to some embarrassment; I’ll leave it up to you to imagine some worst-case scenarios.

What now?

As I continue shaping my personal and professional opinions, I can’t, in good faith, keep ignoring this growing problem.

Even though I know the platform almost certainly keeps everything it can get its hands on, I’ve been methodically deleting as much as I can. Call it an atonement or wishful thinking or whatever you want. As I work towards moving away from Facebook, I’d like to have as little left on the site as possible.

Soon, I’ll be deleting my Facebook account. At the time of writing, Facebook’s help page hints at data associated with my account being deleted, with the exception of shared items like messaging history and some logs (“that will be disassociated from personal identifiers”). I’m still skeptical that all data about me will (or can) be deleted, and that Facebook will stop trying to collect information (e.g. via tracking pixels and data collected through friends’ devices) to tie to me and other deleted profiles. Account deactivation, in comparison, appears to do nothing for data retention or use for advertising purposes.

Deleting my Facebook account won’t undo years’ worth of oversharing and privacy erosion, nor will this single act affect the company. But it will be a step in the right direction for my own privacy. With that said, more action is needed, as eloquently expressed in Siva Vaidhyanathan’s March 24, 2018 opinion piece in The New York Times; the topics raised in that piece are deserving of their own, separate discussion ^[9].

What about other accounts?

Just quitting Facebook isn’t enough, but it’s a start. I know there are plenty of other companies that potentially have similar levels of information, like Google, Amazon, my ISP, and cellphone carrier to name a few. In the coming weeks and months, I plan to take a more critical look at those service providers and explore what (or if) there are any alternatives or mitigating options. There’s always more work to be done.

How can you be contacted?