| I dropped all my social networks in the beginning of the year. I did for two main reasons. First, for privacy concerns. FB, specially was getting to creepy for me. I felt, every action I did was being analyzed and filtered, I felt like I was a lab rat. The fact that these companies know so much about us is pretty scary, I felt like I needed to regain my privacy, fight the system somehow. Second reason was because, I wasn't getting anything substantial that could improve my life overall. All I saw was dumb-ass posts, ignorant comments, the passive aggressiveness, the "look at me doing this really mundane thing, but please like my picture so I can feel validated", etc... feels like a mouse-cat race to see which of us has a better life or something. I honestly feel bad for how much time I spent there when I could apply that time to learn new things. After more than 6 months without FB, here's what I've learned: - I still keep in touch with my closest friends, we chat on slack/iMessage every day. It's actually a good way to know who really misses you, during this time, only about 5% of my FB friends reached out to me through message or phone to ask how were things in life. The other 95%, I really don't even remember most of their names anymore. Just ask yourselves, why do we have to share so much of our lives with so many "friends"? I know we can filter, and create groups, etc.. but damn...do you really want to spend your life "managing" relationships, to see who sees what? I find that tiresome. - I don't feel left out of anything, because I keep track of local events using other sources, I read news from faithful websites, and if I need to share anything I just use the old email or show face-to-face any pictures I need of my latest vacation from my phone without having to share anything with anyone. - I gain more time, less stress, I don't feel overwhelmed to keep track of every social media update. I just don't care. If something important happens I will know it sooner or later. - I no longer have this need to constantly keep posting photos of what I'm doing outdoors or whatever. I don't have the need to feel validated by anyone but myself. - But most importantly, I regained my privacy, or at least my social footprint is bare none at this point. I'm using uBlock, Firefox, DuckDuckGo and other tools to keep trackers at bay. I may never completely win this war, but at least my habits aren't being recorded and feed to any ML algorithm. |