I used to have a Facebook account. I deleted it. Not just suspended, actually deleted. The whole system over there gave me the creeps, between the ads that oscillated wildly between knowing too much and too little about me, to the way it would send me email notifications that someone had left me a message without actually telling me what was in the message. And then there’s the fact that Facebook’s friending system is reciprocal, which means I can’t let someone follow me without following them in return and taking the risk that they’re the sort of person who spends their day throwing sheep at me.
I gather that things have got better in the last year or two, and I keep seeing reasons why I should use it for work, so the time has come to try it again. Warily, and with much trepidation.
In addition to the obvious AdBlock I’ll be making use of articles like these:
It’s not that I particularly desire privacy — hell, I spew all the minutiae of my life across Twitter without caring who reads it — but that those same settings might just help keep me sane and sheep-free. The problem is, I know a lot of people — more than most of the people I know1 — which leads to a serious imbalance of traffic. So I’m much more concerned about filtering inbound information than I am about filtering outbound information. I’m not sure that Facebook’s really set up for that.
Tips, as usual, are appreciated.
1. Somewhat-related article of interest: Why your friends have more friends than you do, via Radar.