Why I Deleted Facebook Off My iPad

Facebook Always Wants Us To Consume

Uhhh, duhhh, thats how they make their money. Its fine that they serve ads and thats how they make money form it. But all Facebook does it push content on you to consume. To me thats annoying because I hate consuming and try to resist it with all my willpower. I read many articles on habits of successful people and one of the first things they say — Stop being a consumer and become a producer — Facebook doesn’t want you to produce!!! As a matter of fact that might actually make you productive and ruin their business plan. If it was up to them, you would be consuming all day long. Its their philosophy and I dont like it. Facebook’s mission statement

To give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected

That maybe what they claim to want but really they want you to comsume content others have paid to share with you. So really their mission statement should be something like this

To give advertisers the power to share PAID content to consumers and make the world more stupid and isolated

News Feed Always Shows The Same Thing

Their news feed algorithm was hyped everywhere as this amazing thing that tailors content to your preference — blah blah blah —But really, its bogus. All it does is show me the same damn things — over and over and over again — The same vines, the same videos from the same people doing the same stupid shit. And boy do they prioritize videos — My whole feed is videos!

Tap-Bait Notifications

I’m noticing this more and more frequently, Facebook is constantly showing me that little red 1 next to its icon. I don’t know about you but I actually can’t resist pressing it. Sometimes its actually stuff I explicitly subscribed to be notified about and want to see. But most of the time, its a sleezy tactic deployed to increase it’s DAUs (Daily-Active-Users). I constantly get notified, some random person posts on a group I like. Just because I liked a group doesn’t mean I need to notified when someone posts to it — Unless I explicitly say so — Facebook says they are highlights from the group. The problem is thats the default behavious and to disable it, I need to go to each group, set in-app notifications AND push notifications to “off”. Facebook brags about how its got over a a billion daily users, thats because of such tactics. I bet their session length is near zero. Because this is what happens all the time —

1. Facebook shows a notification badge
2. User clicks it and realizes its spam
3. User forces closes the app so it doesnt kill battery (which actually does the opposite
4. Facebook counts this into their DAU stats

Facebook Knows Too Much About Us

I always knew Facebook was collecting user data like crazy but now its everywhere and its annoying. I log into facebook this morning on my laptop and of course the same news feed content appears as it did on my iPad. Except because its desktop, we get this extra irritating right column, with nothing but spammy ads and sponsored content. Below that I see its telling me to play Agar.io and Trivia Crack — why? Because I logged into these apps using Facebook. In another tab its showing me “Whats trending” and “top friends”. The problem isn’t even the content I or my “friends” post on Facebook, its the stuff Facebook knows about me that I didn’t know it knew. We all know Facebook uses cookies in your browser to track your browsing activitely. So already through that, it knows almost everything about you — Even your favorite porn sites or whatever weird stuff you are into it. For some reason I believe the Facebook app is circumventing iOS’s strict sandbox/contained app system that is meant mainly for security and privacy. The Facebook app even manages to run in the background even when you force shut it down. Checkout this screenshot below! Thats the Facebook app playing some weird video even when I shut down the app. I have no real evidence to backup my claim nor can I say Apple itself didn’t allow this exception for Facebook. But what I do know is that there is some tricky business going on with Facebook and running in background. And I believe its collecting data from around the OS including from other apps.

Its Not Twitter

See Twitter is struggling with alot of things, but what it gets right and what I love about Twitter is that its designed for sharing meaningful things — real-time without the fake-ness of Facebook. Almost overtime I go onto Twitter, I’m producing even when I’m consuming. I follow news, politics, influencers in the stuff I’m interested it. I get smarter when I go on it. On Facebook, I feel like I get more dumb everytime I go on it. It feels like eating McDonalds, with its almost nutrition free bread, fake patties with added flavour thats addictive yet made of this pink slime — you just feel like shit after eating it and thats how I feel after going on Facebook.

I know many are going to say: Twitter is filled with spam, a ton of fake account and everyone trying to sell you stuff in DMs. Its true, these are some of my biggest complains about Twitter, I wish they could wake up and address them. Twitter is really struggling with this and I’ll write about it in a seperate article. But the point is. Its not Twitters philosophy!! They want to have present you real-time events and not shove it down your throat to consume it. I follow a ton of people and I never get tap-bait notifications UNLESS I explicitly say I want to be notified about something. They let you discover content and follow what you like. They don’t have that annoying right banner with sponsored content and what your friends like and all that. Yes they have sponsored tweets — aka ads — but thats fine, they need a source of income and they try to make it as relevant as possible.

And hey maybe thats why Twitter is struggling, maybe it just needs to emulate Facebook and start shoving content down our throats to consume. And honestly I feel like they are trying to be that with their new algorythm timeline. I also feel its not in their DNA and they are just trying to do stuff because its working for someone else — They just want to fit in.

My iPad Is My Main Device

Not really Facebook’s problem or something to blame on them. But my iPad is my main device. In my case, I’m on it 20 out of the 24 hours we are given in a day. I enjoy technology, working on my apps, reading about business and finance, posting relavant content (Mainly on Twitter) and EVEN writting articles on Medium :P. And ultimately because all the stuff mentioned above, Facebook just doesn’t help me do any of that. Facebook distractions me with annoying notifications and dumb content designed for consumption.

BUT I’m Not Deleting My Facebook Entirely

This was not meant as a completely ANTI-Facebook post. All that set aside, Facebook is still one of the best ways to keep in touch with Family and Friends. I just wanted to point out some of annoyances and why I’m deleting the Facebook app of my iPad. So from now on, I will only be using Facebook on my laptop from now on.