Deleted my Meta account today

[Labster]

Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, decided to go the route of many other disgraced companies and renamed itself.  You know after lying to Congress, hiding how moderation works from its own internal Oversight Board, enabling a genocide, optimizing its products for addiction, and sharing yo momma's extremist views, they decided that what they really needed was a name change.

Honestly, I haven't really used it much since the last name change, back when it was called The Facebook.  It was pretty cool back then -- essentially a rolodex that people kept updated, and it had a messenger product.  Back then, there was no News Feed, and people who went and repeatedly checked pages of people they knew were essentially considered to be cyberstalkers.  You weren't supposed to know every detail of people's lives.  And then the News Feed came and made it expected behavior for people to stalk and to self-promote, all in the name of user engagement (read: addition).  I joined a few anti-News Feed groups, but obviously it was to no avail.

And then all the bad stuff happened, as they made billions and billions of dollars, becoming the world's second largest advertising company.

So as Facebook is embarking on its new quest to forge the metaverse for profit, I'm opting out, and opting for the real world instead.  I logged in, found a couple years-old messages, and decided there was nothing worth saving.  Account deleted.

(Oh, and the Oculus brand is dead now too, since everything is so Meta.)

[robkelk]

I never had a FB account, so I can't delete it...

All I can do here is point folks at this article about how FB deliberately makes it difficult to leave their service.

[Bob Schroeck]

I've long advocated "poisoning the well" when you're done with Facebook, by "updating" your profile with bogus information.

And I'm probably going to do that sometime in the near future. I have a Facebook account, but I haven't actually used it for anything in nearly a decade. This seems like an ideal time to finally shut it down.

[Dartz]

I've two.

One for family, one for fandom.

Facebook doesn't know if I'm a fatguy, or a 33-S?

[Labster]

I didn’t really need to poison the well as I had so little content, most of it decades out of date. I had intended to delete the account while in Europe, because GDPR protections apply to people present in Europe. But pandemic made that trip not happen.

One consequence of the rename is that they tech titans are no longer FAANG companies, but MANGA companies. But I’m not worried. The Metaverse is bullshit. And the NEET shall inherit the Earth.

[robkelk]

Why CBC is keeping Facebook comments closed on news posts

The experiment has been a positive one. We are now posting more diverse stories than ever to Facebook. We are no longer moderating a space with few controls. The impact on our web traffic has been marginal. The well-being of our staff has improved, according to an internal survey we conducted during the experiment.

Fears we were limiting free speech were unfounded. We saw a surge of comments on our website during the federal election, for example, and our viewers, listeners and readers are free to have their say in many other places, including their personal Facebook pages, on Twitter and through our ombudsman process.

So, yeah - why stay in a toxic environment if you don't need to?

[Star Ranger4]

More willing to belive your a 33-S given your writing for Jet, Dartz!

All of this, sadly only confirms why I've always been suspicious of this particular service?

[Labster]

Here's a fun opinion piece on Meta's advert during the Big Game:

Facebook/Meta Asks: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice To Die?”

The writing is pretty good here. It begins: "Given the company’s character and scale and long ethical rap sheet, it is reasonable to construe every message issued by the company formerly known as Facebook as a threat." And do watch the commercial if you haven't seen it. It is very well produced, and ... weird.