Just a short note for the record that I’ve now deleted my Facebook account. I’ve not logged in regularly for a couple of years. My blog has been auto-linked to it, and many of the blog posts shared via Facebook when I’ve published them.

Facebook’s Usefulness

I’ve missed some bits of Facebook. It’s a great communications medium with my family, especially as I don’t live near any of them. I’ve also missed some of the social groups, although my wife still uses Facebook, so I get some of the highlights second hand.

Facebook’s Failure

That said the reason I stopped logging in regularly was because there was a lot more noise than signal. It was also clear that I didn’t share values or understanding of the political situation with many of those that appeared on my timeline. Mostly they were friends of friends. It became a chore to wade through the nonsense to find the good stuff. So I just gave up.

Farewell

The trigger for me to log back in and delete my account was a suspect login notification. At first it looked like it might be a phishing attempt. Inspection of the headers made it look genuine. I didn’t click on the link though. Instead I typed in the generic URL and discovered that it was a genuine notification.

So I changed the password, downloaded all my content and marked my account for deletion. That was on 8th August. So now, 30 days later, my Facebook account should be gone.

I’m not logging in to check.