I’ve been meaning to write about giving up on Twitter since last November. I think I’ll now wait until I’ve been off for 12 months.
I kept threatening to walk on Facebook too. I’d like to thank Facebook for killing the List Feed feature today so they made the decision for me. I’m done.
My first two posts on Facebook were in 2006 and 2007. I was complaining about it even then!
For a short while, I really thought Facebook could be something amazing with all of their developer initiatives. But the relentless direction changes which killed many startups soured me completely. For most of the rest of the time, I’ve only been there for the people who weren’t anywhere else. Old friends and family members. But in the past year I’ve noticed a massive drop off in their presence on Facebook too. So now I’m largely shouting at myself. A bit like this blog :-)
There’s not much more to say. You didn’t need Facebook before. You certainly don’t need it now. Install Signal on your phone, setup some groups and do a lot more interpersonal messaging. Also personal emails never stopped being awesome.
My last post on Facebook this morning is as follows
The only way I’ve been able to stomach Facebook for the past many years is with List Feeds. No algorithmic bullshit, just a chronological list of posts by the people/pages I put in the “Everyone” List. If someone/thing got too gobby, I just removed them from the list. Simple, with me in complete control.
Facebook is removing that feature today. And with it ends my regular use of Facebook.
2,230,000,000 - 1.
It joins Twitter as something I’ll only use when there is no other way of finding out something about an event, or attending it. Or one of you dies. So basically a mix of Eventbrite and rip.ie.
I deleted the apps off my phone many months ago and had only been using the webapps.
I’m still noodling around on Instagram (webapp only too) but I’ll be mostly going retro and re-focusing on my blogs at conoroneill.net and conoroneill.com. I’m just about to go live with my email-to-blog tool for Hugo to make that as easy as possible.
I also tinker a bit with Mastodon (not bad, but full of exactly who you’d expect to be there) and Fritter (an experiment not remotely ready for primetime and needs the Beaker browser).
And of course Strava for the runners/cyclists.
Best way to message me directly is using my mobile number on Signal.
In any case, my small set of followees also anecdotally confirms what FB’s recent stats showed - A lot of you have already left or have stopped posting. I’m sure I’ll pop back in here every once in a while to watch the increasing tumbleweed and listen to the growing crickets. But in the meantime:
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