I have decided to deactivate my facebook account. It isn't done yet, so this message gets through and I am also waiting for the download of my information.
The reason is not a concern about privacy. I am sure that facebook is doing all kind of evil stuff with the information I provide them, but my guess most of this is used to present me with ads to make some money for them.
I think that facebook is probably the site with the best privacy settings out there. Every other site I am using from small forums over job sites to other network sites like xing or linkedin, doesn't provide anywhere near the privacy options that facebook provides. And none of them in under the scrutiny that facebook has to face all the time.
The reason why I would like to stay is that facebook is the best way to keep in touch with people from my previous live in Germany and London, some of who are all over the world now and I will loose any contact to them without facebook.
And facebook is the best casual photo sharing site out there, the people tagging works very well and because a lot of people are on facebook the like/comment bit is brilliant.
No, the reason why I leave facebook is that it is a big time waster. I spend most of the time scrolling to rubbish game notifications, switching the time line back from "magic" to "most-recent". People are starting to send me facebook messages instead of proper emails. And there are no useful RSS feeds for the news feeds, photos or anything else.
For everything else I do on the web I use three applications: gmail, google reader and pidgin. So any information I receive has to be provided as email, RSS feed or jabber. The are additional requirements: the RSS feed has to include all (or most) of the content and there is a limit to the amount of rubbish/spam/4sq I am willing to tolerate. (this disqualifies xing too by the way).
So: good bye
(facebook allows to just deactivate the account, which is also a nice feature if something changes and I decide to come back)
update: in case you want to stay in contact with me find some options here: about me or follow this blog
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