It’s been a few years since I quit Facebook. I wasn’t alone. Many people left the site around the same time, and many more have left since. Quitting Facebook is cool now, which is a good thing. While many people have quit or cut back their social media use in order to improve their mental health, privacy was my primary reason. I feel that if the implicit bargain people make when they use Facebook as well as many other “free” services, was made explicit, folks would reject it.

On April 11 I deleted my Facebook account. Well, I asked Facebook to delete my account. I think they have since it’s been 14 days. Of course, if I try to log in to make sure and they haven’t yet, it will reactivate my account. We have to request to have our data deleted. This is where we are. This is the position we have allowed ourselves to be put in.

I saw another article about locking down your privacy settings on Facebook. It was full of ads and written in the form of obnoxious slides, so I made my own version. This is the story that won’t go away, or at least it must feel that way if your name is Zuckerberg or Sandberg. One interesting twist is the “story” that much of the Fox News/Blame Obama wing of the media have jumped on.

So how about that Facebook thing, huh? How can you protect yourself? There are a couple of things you can do to prevent, or at least hamper, the next Cambridge Analytica. (Of course, the next 10 or 13 Cambridge Analyticas have already struck and already have your stuff, but you know what I mean.) Before I give you specific instructions, let’s go over a few points. Stop Calling It a “Breach” When this story broke Sunday (even though it’s really old news, but I digress) new readers repeatedly called it a “data breach,” while techie folks and most of the techie press kept correcting them.

You’re finally making some progress on that thing that you owe that person on that date. Maybe you’ve got headphones on with music that helps you focus, or maybe you prefer to work in total silence. You’ve been putting off this particularly complicated part of the thing, but now you’ve got a handle on it. And then your phone beeps with a text message. Or Facebook message. (Or facebook ‘like’ if you’re masochistic enough to let them notify you of those.

“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.” – Eric Schmidt I finished Deep Work by Cal Newport last week and started The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to our Brains by Nick Carr over the weekend, so I’ve got the hows, whys, and wherefores of Facebook and Twitter on my mind. There’s a good chance I will be inflictingsharing some of these thoughts with you over the next few weeks.

How has Facebook’s “like” button changed the world? Is it responsible for the spread of inaccurate news and that thing that happened in November? Has it become so far detached from the simple concept of “liking” something that it’s become downright counterproductive and maybe even dangerous? Leah Pearlman is one of the people that came up the idea behind the button (which she called the “awesome button” for awhile.) She’s since left the company and makes excellent webcomics.

In the opening of Nineteen Eighty-Four, we experience a “Two Minutes Hate” with Winston Smith. Two Minutes Hate is a daily ritual in Oceania, the fictitious totalitarian state in Orwell’s novel. Citizens assemble in public places, are shown video of Oceania’s enemies, usually Emmanuel Goldstein—the enemy of the state, and must publicly display their hatred for two minutes. Every time I read the book I find it a harrowing scene primarily because of one sentence:

I do this research every day. So I’m guessing you’ve heard about this. tl;dr : Scientists at Facebook manipulated the posts they showed certain users and then evaluated the posts the people being manipulated made. Then they published a study on the results. A lot of people are reacting very strongly to this news. Some people are pissed at the idea of being manipulated. While I empathize and agree, I think a lot of their anger is based on a contract with Facebook that Facebook abandoned a long time ago.