I prefer not to be sold.

27 Aug 2012

Part of my series of posts explaining to my Facebook community why I am leaving. 

I think most people do not understand their relationship to Facebook.  You are not a Facebook customer, you are a Facebook product - Facebook wraps you (and all your data) up in nice little boxes and then sells you to advertisers.  As time goes on I'm increasingly uncomfortable with this type of relationship. I am not a product and prefer not to be sold.

(original image from ethannonsequitur.com)

I want to pay for products and services I use.  When I'm the customer the relationship is much more direct.  If I have a problem I know exactly who to contact, and they have a very real obligation to assist.  I'm the one paying their bills and keeping the lights on.  I've also recently switched from Gmail and now happily pay a company to host my email. Once your email account gets locked out for a few hours for no reason at all you quickly learn that free isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Unfortunately, being a customer is no guarantee a company will always behave well.  Companies still occasionally behave poorly and sell limited data about you to 3rd parties.  That's bad enough, yet imagine if a company had literally unlimited data about you... your age, gender, religion, address, job history, sexual orientation, friends, etc... and if that company's primary income stream is generated by finding creative ways to sell both you and your information to others.

I for one can't think of a single thing that could go wrong.

Goodbye Facebook.