I left Facebook — Not Social Media

It’s Not About SM, It’s About Privacy

Jenn Marie
Dear Internet
Published in
4 min readJan 5, 2017

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A few months ago, I left Facebook. Although it occurred around the same time of the US presidential election.. it had nothing to do with that. This was something I had been pondering since I opened my account back in 2009.

Unfortunately, like many Americans, it became difficult to leave the longer I stayed. Plus, when I discussed my intent with friends and family, I was met with irritation, eye rolls, and argument.

Why would you want to leave Facebook???

Shouldn’t you just grow thicker skin??

Here’s the straight-up facts for all the nay-sayers.

All of 2016’s top mobile apps are owned by either Google or Facebook
Today Nielsen released their report about the most widely used mobile apps in 2016. The top 8 apps were all owned by…medium.freecodecamp.com

What does this mean for the everyday person? Well, if you understand online marketing and Big Data, it should give you a chill.

As online monopolies, Google and Facebook have a terrifying amount of control over content. What is content? Content is every single bit of information that you (yes, you) place online. All of it. The emails, the pictures, the videos, the comments, the blog posts, the audio, the description about the products you sell online…

They own all of that.

You gave it to them.

Welcome to the internet universe, where your thoughts are mindlessly handed over to corporations so they can create more robots, build more mansions, and drive more automatic cars. You feed them… and Facebook is a hungry child attached to the tit of humanity.

Excuse me if I am a little tired of it.

A Free Internet Is Slowly Slipping Away from Us

And Facebook is a huge part of the problem.

The reason I was so willing to let it go was because of their blatantly obvious disregard for my social network. Facebook began as an online community — a place for people to share information among each other. That is what I signed up for, and that is why I agreed to knowingly give them my content. My thoughts. My memories.

They then used that information for profit. They placed me under a microscope using…

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Jenn Marie
Dear Internet

Lover of computers, content & culture. Freelance UX writer & grad student. Owner of Jenn Marie Writing & Marketing.