3 reasons you should delete-and-recreate your Facebook account

I will keep it short, I have been using facebook for almost 10 years. I was not addicted but I use to spend almost 15 to 30min on fb everyday.

Reason 1. Facebook has too much wrong data about you.

We all know facebook collects data from many online channels, for example, the apps you install on your phone share data with facebook, websites you visit or buy stuff from, they share cookies with facebook.

for web, you can use number of blocking apps, ad-blocker, ghostery or even block 3rd party cookies. You can not do much about apps sharing your data directly.

Do you know Facebook also collects data from offline channels?

As an example, let’s say you call a Pizza company for delivery, that Pizza company will upload your contact information which fb matches with your profile and maps you for Pizza related re-targeting.

But this data is not accurate, as anyone can buy or get compromised data from so many websites out there, for example, below is my data which I downloaded from facebook, here most of the companies are not even in my countries where I lived!

List of companies which uploaded my detail to fb. Most (80%) of them had no interaction with me of any kind.

Basically, anyone who has your phone-number or email can upload your data to fb, and fb maps you with those interest!

This results in annoying advertisements and recommendations!

Reason 2. Facebook should not be an addiction

Let’s agree facebook is the most engaging software you have come across,

FB mission: Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them.

Their mission is way off from engagement goals they have, they use almost all dark patterns of software design. The top 5 I had say would be:

1. Default setting of everything public, notifications ON.
2. Timeline is the curated to keep you scrolling, infinite scrolling pattern.
3. Notifications won’t tell you what is it about, you have to tap/click them to reveal.
4. Use of social-proof messages like, “Your friend commented…”, “26k people like” etc.
5. Not logging you out, even though you say to logout.

… and many more

All these things are meant to keep you engaged with fb, so you consume more advertisement.

Reason 3: You have changed over time, get a refresh

Facebook learns from your data, your friends,

You created your profile years ago, many things changed:

You really don’t have that many friends, how many do you really interacted in last 1 year?

Scroll your timeline to 5–7 years ago, do you think your post are not relevant? exactly!

Let’s agree, for memories there are better alternatives, like google-photos.

In summary: I deleted my facebook account and re-created a new account, now am adding people whom I really interacted, I use fb few minutes a week and I don’t get distracted with crappy spam post. You should try it as well.