Goodbye Facebook & Good Riddance

This past week, I finally pulled the trigger and completely removed Facebook from my life. I deleted my Facebook account in June or July, I forget which month, but I had kept my Instagram account. That ended this week when I downloaded my archive and deleted my Instagram account.

What Finally Pushed Me Over the Edge

This past week, the New York Times reported that Facebook had given Amazon, Spotify, Royal Bank of Canada among others access to your private messages. I wasn’t horribly surprised, but it finally gave me the final kick in the ass I needed to just click ‘delete’.

Now it would not surprise me to know that Facebook would do this, and it was probably buried in the permissions access that users granted to services such as Spotify. I had linked my Facebook account at one point to Spotify and it’s likely that I would have missed it as well. I also wouldn’t expect Spotify to need read access to my private messages, and I’d wager that others would think the same. I understand why it would need write access as I and others have shared tracks through Facebook Messenger, but why would Spotify need to read my messages...I can log into Facebook for that. So with all of that in mind, I decided the supposed benefits just weren’t worth it anymore and got rid of my account...permanently.

What I’ll Miss

I think the two biggest things that I’ll miss from Instagram would be seeing what my friends are up to and what the local craft breweries are releasing. It will kind of suck not having this anymore, but I’m just done with Facebook. I’ve been more aware and active with regards to my privacy and I don’t trust Zuckerberg and company to make any correct decisions when it comes to keeping my data secure.

My Privacy Kick

Over the past year, I’ve been focused more and more on protecting my privacy. I’ve switched to Firefox over Chrome and have been migrating away from Google as well. Facebook was obviously an issue and I can say that it’s been dealt with as best as I can. I’ll write up more on that later down the line, but for now, goodbye Facebook and good riddance!