Moving away from Facebook services

To start, this isn’t a “we must all move away from Facebook, now!”. This is me feeling like I want to move away from Facebook and their services. Facebook plans to merge all their messaging services to allow all their users to connect through either Messenger, Instagram or WhatApp. Some of my friends think this is good news as you’ll only need one app. However, I’m starting to feel a little uneasy in this situation.

Their real plan is to have better-targeted ads, so they can make even more money and rule even more of the internet. We know of the scandals such as Cambridge Analytica, and today’s scandal “Facebook pays teens to install VPN that spies on them“. It makes me even more worried and makes me wonder how evil can Facebook truly be.

Moving to other platforms

I’ve moved from WhatsApp to Signal. Although I still have the app due to friends not moving away. Once I’ve persuaded them to move, then I’ll uninstall the app. I can easily uninstall Instagram and stick with apps like Twitter and Vero. However, Messenger and Facebook are slightly harder to move away from. This is because I’ve spent a large portion of my life on Facebook and I’ve got many friends and family there. There are also groups I like to interact with and messaging bots which help my finances.

I could start with uninstalling them on my phone and only using the browser version. This is beneficial because I have addons which block ads and tracking. This means it will be harder for Facebook to track my data and I’ll be in more control. I can announce on Facebook that I will hardly be using it in favour of my personal website. Personal websites are a much better place anyway as you have tons more control and people can get a much better insight of you.

What are your thoughts on the situation? Have you moved away already? Are you in the process of moving away, or would you rather stay? Let me know in the comments below.