> Deprecate Facebook | Courtney Rosenthal

Deprecate Facebook

Posted: February 23, 2020

I started blogging in 2002. I stopped blogging in 2018.

It’s not like one day I decided, “I’m a blogger,” and 16 years later I decided, “Nope, I’m not.”

What happened is that social networks ate my brain. More of my attention was spent on the social networks and less on my blog.

Initially social networks were very cool. They allowed me to reconnect with people from other times in my life. And most of my blogging friends were moving here too.

At some point, something changed. First, I no longer find social networks to be the uplifting, positive places they once were. In fact, in 2020, they’re pretty distressing places. The bad content, intrusive advertising, and terrible privacy practices are untenable.

Second, it’s getting harder to justify doing this. Due to all the problems cited above, the cost of being on social media has exploded. At the same time, I find the benefit decreasing. I’m no longer making new connections as I once did. When I do the math it’s clear that the price of my social network activity in 2020 is too damn high.

Therefore, it’s time for me to deprecate Facebook.

In software engineering, deprecation has a very specific meaning. It means a feature is not being discontinued, but it is being discouraged. It signals that the feature can be expected to be removed at some future time. Most importantly, it says there probably is a better way to do it.

I’m hoping that better way is blogging. I know, I know, the blogosphere is pretty moribund these days. However, I’ve become very interested in the Indie Web movement. I hope that it becomes a usable way to have conversations on the web outside of the silos of social media networks.

Thanks for checking out my new site. I’m sorry I don’t have commenting (or webmention) impelmented yet. That’s high on my to do list, because it will be hard to have those blog conversations until then. So, I hope you’ll check back as I develop this site.

You can still find me on Facebook, but I’m hoping to move more of my attention over to the Indie Web and this blog.

It's Just This Little Chromium Switch Here

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