{"id":2837,"date":"2009-10-14T16:39:47","date_gmt":"2009-10-14T20:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=2837"},"modified":"2012-12-18T10:31:30","modified_gmt":"2012-12-18T15:31:30","slug":"why-i-will-never-use-facebook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2009\/10\/14\/why-i-will-never-use-facebook\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Will Never Use Facebook"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Recently someone asked me why I don\u2019t have a Facebook account.<\/p>\n<p>The simplest answer I could come up with was that <strong>I simply don\u2019t need it<\/strong> \u2013 for me, Facebook is redundant.<\/p>\n<p>The person who asked me tried to tell me how <em>great<\/em> Facebook was, and how you could do <em>so many<\/em> things with it, like connecting with friends, keeping up-to-date on what you&#8217;re doing, and easily share photos (among other things).<\/p>\n<p>But the thing is&#8230; I can <strong>already do all of those things <em>without <\/em>Facebook.<\/strong> So what&#8217;s the point? Where&#8217;s the benefit for me?<\/p>\n<p>I mean, look at it this way:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I <strong>own my own domain <\/strong>and have my own website.<\/li>\n<li>I have and maintain my own blog, which means I have <strong>total control <\/strong>over every aspect of it (appearance, function, etc.) and to which people can &#8220;subscribe&#8221; using the RSS feed (an open standard).<\/li>\n<li>For sharing pictures, I have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/keithius\/\">Flickr Pro account<\/a>. Because Flickr is dedicated to sharing photos, it does a <strong>really good job of it<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<li>For messaging, I have IM and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ksurvell\">Twitter<\/a> and of course email.<\/li>\n<li>For people trying to find me, I have a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/profiles\/keithius\">Google Profile<\/a> (and of course I am not a hard person to find \u2013 one of the advantages of having a very unique name!).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(There&#8217;s also the fact that I consider Facebook &#8211; and all similar sites &#8211; as being the <a title=\"Time flows like a river\u2026 and history repeats\" href=\"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/10\/31\/time-flows-like-a-river-and-history-repeats\/\">modern reincarnations of\u00a0 the crappy websites that populated Geocities<\/a> back in the early days of the web.)<\/p>\n<p>So really, Facebook offers <strong>no compelling advantages for me<\/strong> \u2013 no real reason for me to use it. Everything it can do, I can already do without having to sign up for <em>yet another online account.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why I will never be taken in by the hype, and never join Facebook (or other social networking sites).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[203,199],"tags":[232,35,100,231],"class_list":["post-2837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet-technology","category-my-opinion","tag-facebook","tag-internet","tag-opinion","tag-social-networks","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-JL","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":961,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2007\/10\/31\/time-flows-like-a-river-and-history-repeats\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":0},"title":"Time flows like a river\u2026 and history repeats","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 31, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It occurred to me recently that Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, and all those sorts of sites are just like GeoCities and Tripod were back in the early days of the web - in other words, filled with awful, horrible, ugly web pages that nobody wants to look at.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Rants&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Rants","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/rants\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3090,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2010\/05\/20\/culture-shock-in-the-digital-age\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":1},"title":"Culture Shock in the Digital Age","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"My thoughts on what constitutes \"culture shock\" these days for us always-connected Americans.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"great bay in the daytime","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/farm2.static.flickr.com\/1120\/4607778940_5ffefbf4e5_m.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6207,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/01\/22\/centralized-social-media-is-unsustainable\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":2},"title":"Centralized Social Media is Unsustainable","author":"Keith Survell","date":"January 22, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Wherein I unironically use the phrase \"back in my day\" to talk about social media.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3705,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2011\/12\/18\/why-sopa-must-die\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":3},"title":"Why SOPA Must Die","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act) Must Die - and here's why.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5934,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2022\/11\/24\/mastodon-almost-but-not-quite\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":4},"title":"Mastodon &#8211; Almost, but Not Quite","author":"Keith Survell","date":"November 24, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"I really wanted to like Mastodon - but unfortunately, I don't think I'll be using it, and I'll tell you why. If you're not familiar, here's the quick version of \"what is Mastodon?\" Mastodon is a decentralized social network, built upon the ActivityPub protocol and the idea of a \"Fediverse.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4408,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2013\/06\/20\/a-renewed-case-for-encryption\/","url_meta":{"origin":2837,"position":5},"title":"A (Renewed) Case for Encryption","author":"Keith Survell","date":"June 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"I kind of hoped that this NSA\/PRISM\/wholesale government surveillance business would re-energize people into actually getting back into using encryption - but sadly it doesn't seem that way. Content encryption - as opposed to just endpoint encryption, like SSL - is important, and especially so in light of this kind\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Internet&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Internet","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/technology\/internet-technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"gpg encryption","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2013\/06\/gpg.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2837\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}