crossed out facebook logo Sometime ago I deleted my personal Facebook profile and found that I really didn’t miss it – at all. Quite liberating in fact – you should try it. My departure pre-dated the Cambridge Analytica scandal and was more to do with the garbage that ended up in my feed than anything else.

That said, recent reports of plain text passwords and other dubious operating tactics of Facebook would have seen me making the same decision to get off the platform.

But – there was a problem! I had a Facebook business page and it needed an active user account to be associated with. I duly created a new profile and locked down the permissions/privacy settings as hard as I could and then associated the page with that account – leaving me free to delete my personal one.

The business page was little more than a presence and while I posted links to it via Buffer I didn’t really use it to engage with any potential clients. Looking at the engagement of the links I did post they were pretty low (double figures or lower) and it was really an aide-memoir for me if nothing else – a reading list if you like.

Recently the news has been peppered with stories of Facebook and their handling and selling of personal information as well as some shocking security issues including the storage of plain text passwords – as a developer I don’t know why this would ever be seen as a good idea.

So the question I asked myself was;

“Do I want to be associated with a company that operates in this manner?” – Me

It didn’t take long to come to the conclusion that I didn’t.

It’s not that I’m a high flying operation or the next up and coming big deal – I’m absolutely certain that Facebook won’t notice my departure on any level whatsoever.

It’s not that any of my clients (past, existing or future) would make any judgement on me for being on Facebook (it’s not that I’m advocating animal research after all).

It’s just that I don’t want to be reliant on an unreliable platform run by people I frankly don’t trust. Just because I don’t pay for the service doesn’t mean that they can expect to do as they please – not to me anyway.

So that’s that – the social link in the sidebar will link to this post and all my Buffered posts also went to Twitter so I’ve lost nothing at all. I will be looking at creating a ‘Link Directory’ page here but haven’t decided on a plugin yet.