I just rejoined Facebook.  Not because the reasons I had for leaving have changed, because they haven’t.  But without Facebook I’ve had virtually no contact with my friends.  So I decided to create a new account and Facebook as little information as possible.  This blog will still be my primary place for posting things, but I’ll post links on Facebook to my blog posts.

This morning I deleted my Facebook account.  I made sure to give my Facebook friends a few weeks notice so that I could get their contact info.  I’d been thinking about deleting my account for a while. What made me decide to do it now is that in the last few weeks I noticed several changes for the worse.  These changes made me think Facebook no longer places a high priority on the needs of their users, so I decided the time was right for me to leave.

I’ve always been a very private person.  I don’t share a lot of information with people, and the information I do share I share very selectively.  So the idea of any company selling my information to the highest bidder, or giving it freely to some third party is absolutely appalling to me.  For a long time I wasn’t sure what to do about it.  However, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to give my business to any company who I know is giving my personal information to other entities, especially when they can’t even be bothered to tell me who those entities are.  Facebook is going to be the hardest to leave because of the number of friends I have there.  I hope that I don’t lose touch with any of my Facebook friends, but it’s a risk I believe I have to take.