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Authors: Ben K. <benk@tilde.team>
Date: 2020-12-28
After spending the better part of yesterday trying to figure out how to get rid of Facebook and/or other social media, I began making preparations to do something drastic like deactivate my account or even delete. Of course, I couldn't do it.
The idea was that I could simply delete it, and before doing that I would download my photos just in case there are any on there that I don't otherwise have a copy of. (Unlikely.) The good news about that was that all that data only amounted to a bit over three hundred megabytes, meaning my Facebook account, although it's got to be about fifteen years old, is not really full of much other than my written posts.
Before deleting Facebook altogether, I wanted to give people a chance to add me elsewhere, so I did go ahead and commit to MeWe. I mean, yes there are some things wrong with it like how it flirts with being a right-wing haven, but I have to admit it is the best alternative to Facebook I have seen so far. Also, it's easy enough for normal people to use, who appear frightened of things like Mastodon. (Why, I have no idea.)
Before announcing my migration, I wanted to make sure my contacts list was clean of anyone that I might not have wanted to know about the move. That wasn't so hard because I actually cleaned the hell out of it this past year, so after ensuring everyone is my real friend I also took the opportunity to harden the account a bit. That is, making all previous posts private (friends only) and disallowing everyone from viewing most of my profile information.
So why aren't I deleting it? That's a good question. I figured I'd download the photos, make the announcement, and then destroy the account on December 31st, but when I was looking at my friends list, I noticed some connections that I feel need to stay in place. For example, my uncle who passed away this year whose last interaction I had on Facebook, or my college buddy who died tragically more than a decade ago. There were a few contacts that without Facebook I'd probably have no other way to contact them ever, like the owner of the bed and breakfast we stayed at in Bukhara five years ago.
I guess I could take screenshots or save copies or whatever of just those few things that I want to keep forever, and try to get an e-mail from those contacts that I'll have trouble keeping in touch with. In Central Asian countries e-mail doesn't work most of the time because most people seemingly never learned how to use it or use providers that actually aren't reliable.
In fact, I wanted to delete a bunch of stuff like my Instagram and Twitter, but then it turned into a bunch of "what if" and "just in case" scenarios. One of my professors does webcasts through Instagram, and I need to have access to that for educational reasons.
The important thing, I figured, is for now to commit to *not adding content* to these services anymore. Not that I have a particular thing against Twitter, but I just want to promote Pleroma and Mastodon as much as I can. Therefore, the new year's resolution is that I forbid myself from posting to Facebook anymore. Instagram is getting uninstalled. (I'll use the website if and when I truly need it.) Same goes for Reddit, et al.
All in all, it's a good plan of action that's ready to take effect immediately. In time, I can return to these accounts and wrap things up, for example quietly putting Facebook out of its misery sometime during the coming year. There's no rush to do that, and anyone who bothers to check my page who hasn't already will see that I announced my move off the network at least.
In other news, I modified my generic Benlog to include my e-mail in the posts like I have with Logarion. People need to be able to reply to these somehow, and I haven't otherwise figured out where to stick contact information. Maybe I'll link to my contact page from the index?