Facebook is toxic. It farms people for data and feeds off reactionary content igniting polarised discussions. It delivers very little value for the time spent.

The background

Fast everything

H&M does fast fashion, McDonald’s does fast food and IKEA does fast furniture. Facebook is about fast friendships. Unfriending works the same way as does throwing away a tee shirt that only cost 5€ to buy. Quantity over quality.

One of Hollywood’s greatest, Denzel Washington, put it nicely:

We all want to be liked, but now we all want to be liked by 16 million

Privacy

Facebook’s success builds on privacy violations. You’re in a private chat telling your friend about a football team you’ve never mentioned before and 2 minutes later you have a fan gear ad of the team in your Newsfeed. All your data, however private, is digested for advertising purposes.

In 2014 I joined @maxschrems’ class action against Facebook1 exactly because of it. The lawsuit has gone all the way up to Court of Justice of the European Union, awaiting verdict.

Negativity

Facebook provides an excellent platform for flat earthers, anti-vaxxers, trumpists. Hate speech and alternative facts distribute with little control. The more people like this type of content, the more likely it is to appear on their Newsfeeds. Facebook’s algorithm takes care of that for obvious reasons: getting people hooked for higher advertising conversions.

Fast friends are the usual suspects of corrupt Newsfeed and whilst confronting them is not mandatory, it’s sad to witness. Not merely a presumption, Facebook use has been directly linked to depression2.

The experiment

Since I removed Facebook from all my mobile devices a year ago already, next steps should go further:

  1. Deactivate Facebook for a quarter as of Jan 15th
  2. Monitor
    • overall productivity
    • spare time for activities like sports, hobbies, contributions to Open Source Software
    • communication with friends
    • mood

Addressing all friends until further notice: text or call. Our keystrokes are limited.

1: Facebook Class Action
2: Study Links Heavy Facebook And Social Media Usage To Depression