Last January I decided I didn’t want to indirectly support Mark Zuckerberg anymore, so I stopped using his products. I’d been on Facebook since a 2008 baking colleague suggested it as a way for us to keep in contact, and on Instagram since the early days because a friend of a friend worked for them before it became picture Facebook.
With a lot of free time, I downloaded the data from my social media accounts and sent emails asking that my personal data be deleted from servers and not processed or shared with third parties. At this early stage I wasn’t too confident about my rights or ability to get this accomplished, but I came to find that because GDPR had my back, things moved pretty quickly.
Then I deleted all the accounts. Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and Tumblr that I had had since 2006 and then Messenger, WhatsApp, and SnapChat. I’ve kept my professional library Twitter alive along with LinkedIn, and WhatsApp for work. I came into Internet 2.0 when it still felt fun and novel to share, and you could make real new connections via people’s personal blogs, which weren’t yet SEO machines, created solely for ad revenue. We’ve grown far past that now, and it’s all too messy for me to enjoy anymore.
What have been the benefits? Free time. Less stress and frustration that I didn’t need. I’ve started sending emails again.
MmePrice 