Declaring Independence From Meta

7 years ago, I had had enough. I quit Facebook, fittingly on the Fourth of July.

There were a myriad of reasons, not the least of which were the many issues Facebook has with their users’ privacy. The most glaring example was the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which involved sharing Facebook user data without their consent with political campaigns such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. There was, and still is, issues with Facebook allowing disinformation regarding subjects such as COVID. When July 4, 2018 came around, I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts, thinking I wouldn’t look back.

4 years later, after I participated in the 2022 Bluecoats Alumni Corps, I found that the best way of staying in touch with my newly found drum corps family was, unfortunately, through Facebook. I created a new account and attempted to limit myself to only communicating with Bloo Alumni, but I slowly found myself adding friends, following other groups, and scrolling through my feed. While I was more careful about who and what I followed, Facebook has cluttered our feeds with posts from “suggested” groups and advertisements, to the point that my feed is barely worth looking through. The final straw was Mark Zuckerberg donating to Trump’s inauguration, one of a number of tech billionaires looking to curry favor with fascism.

It’s time to declare independence from all of Meta, including Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. I never used WhatsApp, so that’s one less thing to worry about.

In 30 days, on Independence Day, I will once again delete all my Meta related accounts. My focus will remain on this website, as well as my Fediverse (currently Mastodon and Pixelfed), Bluesky, and Flickr accounts. Please reach out to me if you want to stay in touch so we can trade contact information if we haven’t already.