After some hemming and hawing, the past week’s revelations have been the last straw for me. It seemed a hard decision, but when it came it came swiftly. My wife was shocked, since FB indeed became a main venue for social connections for me. Last winter break we even hosted at our home a family I whom got to know via FB, and it went well.
But enough is enough. FB evidently understands only money, and the company and other perpetrators and would-be perpetrators need to get a signal by losing their reach. So I suspended (“deactivated” in FB jargon) my account, and uninstalled the app from my phone. It seemed too irreversible to delete the account completely at once, but that seems to be the likely next step.
I still use WhatsApp which is owned by FB, but on that network you can only see posts inside groups, and my groups are only family and close friends. No one from the outside can post messages or ads to you.
Saturday morning I made a last FB post, then deactivated the account (which probably means that my post automatically disappeared, heh). I did also email a version of the post to FB’s public relations. My message to them is below the fold.