Facebook is a terrible company and I’ve felt much better about myself since deleting their products: notably Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. When ditching use of the apps, there is a withdrawal period of 5-8 days, then after that, it’s fine. Life goes on. Time is returned to your life. You miss nothing of import. I’m still waiting for my “Facebook friends” to check in and see how I’m doing and note they miss my absence…

At what point do we acknowledge that a company is a net negative, and facilitate its end?

Corey Doctorow has written a great article about the latest horrible news arising from Facebook. It’s hard to pull a single quote, but this stood out:

Pluralistic: 22 Sep 2021:

Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.

FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers – their true customers.

Thanks to @fahrni for bringing the Doctorow post to my attention.