Facebook - Why I left and won't be going back!

I had an account on facebook for a long, long time; but no longer. At the end of last year (2009) I’d had enough and deleted my account, which is a challenge in itself. Since then, I’ve not missed it one bit.

Notifications – aka Spam Galore

Every time any of my friends or groups did anything you can bet your life I’d get a notification about it. I don’t care if you’ve just bought 5 more sheep or got a full house, I’m not interested!!

You can turn most of the email about these off, but every time you log back in you’ll get dozens of them in your face with each application wanting you to join up.

This is only a minor annoyance when you log in regularly, but when you only use the site once a week you can imagine the amount of spam have to wade though before can find anything useful.

Eventually facebook introduced a blocking ability, so you can stop those annoying apps slightly, but some still make it though :|

Applications and the Zynga Saga

This was probably the final nail in the coffin for my account. The amazingly bad practices that one of the largest facebook app providers admit to is shocking. Everything from selling on user data to trying to push scam offers!

When you add an application to your account, you gave them permission to do what the hell they liked with your personal data. Combining that with Zyngas ploy to make money by scamming users enough was enough.

Techcrunch covered this far better than I ever could, so have a read of what Zynga thinks about you really:

Sadly, these practices were known about by facebook, and they didn’t (and still don’t) care. Why? Because the make a small fortune from advertising on those games.

The Almighty Dollar

This is what facebook guys really want, above all else. They don’t care about you, or how they make their money as long as they are rolling in it they are happy.

The most recent and worrying one would have to be Harman Bajwa and his vanity url that was nicely sold to a corporation…

Delete and be Happy!

Stop spending hours on end on that nightmare of a website and get out more! Follow the instructions on this facebook group (as they like to make it hard for you to leave) or use the amusing web suicide machine for a laugh.