Dealing with Facebook (Premium)

My approach to Facebook and other social networks is consistent with my general approach to technology: All things in moderation. I wrote about that topic about a month ago, noting that anyone with a brain in their head would ignore social media for news and seek out high-quality news sources instead. More generally, I wrote that limiting your exposure to social media is probably a healthy approach.

But Facebook. Facebook is a problem. Its the largest and most successful social network on earth, and they didn’t get that way by just giving away the service. What they’re really doing, of course, is allowing advertisers to access your personal data. Yes, you must OK each of these incursions, and as Mehedi pointed out, we must take personal responsibility for this behavior.

Whether Facebook needs to be regulated or not is, frankly, uninteresting to me. The problem with Facebook is the same as the problem with smartphones or any other addictive technology: We simply have an immature relationship with this new thing, and we are allowing ourselves to become consumed by the unimportant. Breaking this habit has more to do with psychology than it does with technology. Or regulations, for that matter.

But whatever. In keeping with my philosophy about digital moderation, I long ago tailored my social networking activities to be less time-consuming and obsessing. Specifically, I use the following social networks:

Facebook. This is where my friends and family—people I know in real life—live, and I will not close my account because that would break the one major link I have with most of them. I am, however, dramatically limiting my exposure to this service, and I very rarely post directly to Facebook.

Instagram. Because travel, food, and photography are all passions of mine, Instagram hits at the perfect nexus for each, and this is my primary personal interaction with the world. I only post to Instagram when something actually happens, unlike some, and I will post more when traveling or out in the world, of course. I push much of what I post to Instagram to Facebook as well, which keeps a heartbeat over there. And Instagram is open to the world, so anyone can look.

Twitter. I use Twitter only to discuss work/technology-related topics and to joke with people I mostly don’t know personally. I try to stay off Twitter in the mornings so I can get work done without distractions. And I am almost never on Twitter at night. But it is, of course, open to all.

As for Facebook, I decided to take a look at the data the service has collected about me over the years. You can download this data by opening Facebook in your web browser and navigating to Quick Help > Settings > General Account Settings. You will see a “Download a copy of your Facebook data” link there.

So what did I find?

991 MB.

That’s the size of the ZIP file containing the contents of my life, as understood by Facebook. Unexpanded, it’s almost exactly the same size, because most of it text files and photos that are already compressed to start with.

I have only 20 videos in my history, and though they are all fuzzy with their low-quality, each triggers a memory. An audience doing the wave at Camp Nou stadium in Barcelona. A 180-degree view of the sky during a cross-country drive with my father. My wife, completing a 4K race.

The thousands of photos are … unbelievable. Me, as a small child in Hyde Park, Massachusetts before my family moved to Dedham. My most recent profile photo, taken at CES a year ago on top of the Microsoft logo. Friends. Family. Events. Things .. I don’t actually remember, which is odd. We went on a lot of trips. Ate a lot of food. Celebrated the seasons and the passage of time. Celebrated as our kids grew up, healthy and happy and well-adjusted.

It looks like I joined Facebook in June 2008, and one of the first big things I posted was my lucky attendance with my brother at the NBA Finals game in which the Celtics beat the Lakers for banner #17.

I created a handful of places, mostly for my friends’ homes, and in French because it makes them look classier.

I currently have 287 friends on Facebook. But I have declined friend requests from 765 people, it says, not because I’m unfriendly per se, but because I only friend people I know in real life for the most part. (I came to this decision years into using Facebook, and I had to remove 2482 people from my friends list, mostly through a one-time purge. Yikes.)

And then there’s the ads history.

I think this is what is upsetting people the most. That this free service would show its users ads. And I can see why, to be honest.

Fully 471 companies have “uploaded a contact list with [my] info,” including some big hitters like Amazon, Bed Bath & Beyond, Verizon, and KLM. And some weird ones like BAD DAD, Netflix Is A Joke, Chicago (the city?), and Lynyrd Skynyrd.

I actually clicked on ads for Care for your mouth, eBags Professional Laptop Backpack, 5 Things People With Tidy Homes Don’t Do, The Secret to Learning a New Language…, and a few others. (And I did buy a bag from eBags, too. Interesting.)

My personal ads topics range from the obvious—Photography, Travel, Smartphones, Boston Red Sox—to the slightly off. Singing. Oslo (which I’ve never visited or even attempted to visit). And Musical ensemble.

I guess there weren’t too many surprises, though that information about ads was certainly interesting to see. Nothing crazy-damaging. No fringe/bot political nonsense I could see, which is good.

Certainly, no reason to leave Facebook. Limit my exposure? Sure. But not leave.