Why I Quit Facebook Today

While there are still many reasons to use Facebook, the list shrinks every day. The question is not IF you are going to quit Facebook, but WHEN. So why not today? Here are some practical reasons why I’m quitting.

* It’s not for free. It never was. We used to pay with personal information that they used for “improved” advertising. But now we also need to pay with actual money to reach our contacts. If you don’t pay, you won’t even reach half of your followers. Some people have claimed as few as 15%.

* If someone subscribes to you, there’s a big risk that they won’t see your posts. Either because of some mysterious Facebook selection, or because you don’t pay, or because people can’t bother to sift through the spam, or because people just don’t care anymore.

* You can’t trust the statistics. What does it mean that there are 1 billion accounts on Facebook? Who knows what it means to have “1999 followers” or that “1543 people saw this” or “37 people talk about this”. Or if you are an advertiser – how can you know that actual people (and not bots) have clicked your ad? Well, you can’t. You just have to take Facebook’s word for it. And why would you do a thing like that?

* You can’t rely on Facebook. They introduce features that can have huge consequences to people and organizations – without even a warning. And if there is a reason to shut down your content, because of algorithms or complaints or legal battles – they will do it. And you can’t complain to customer service, because you are probably not a customer.

* Facebook will disappear fast after its peak. Unlike other companies that try to control both platform and distribution (Apple, Google, Amazon, etc), Facebook relies too much on its users. The main reason for people to use it, is “my friends use it”. When they start to leave it, Facebook will disappear as fast as it arrived. Time to prepare!

(Instead of Facebook I will be here. Tonight there will be a live streamed gig to celebrate, starting at 19.00 CET)