{"id":12306,"date":"2019-02-27T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T16:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=12306"},"modified":"2019-03-01T13:00:05","modified_gmt":"2019-03-01T20:00:05","slug":"why-i-deleted-my-facebook-account-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/why-i-deleted-my-facebook-account-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I deleted my Facebook account (again)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"750\" height=\"422\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/pYSmFI9GAAs?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Please watch this video in its entirety (before YouTube takes it down). Whatever you think of James O&#8217;Keefe, this is serious stuff that he&#8217;s exposing, and it affects all of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=9458\">The first time<\/a> I deleted my Facebook, it was out of privacy concerns. I came back because there were social groups, such as my local church congregation, that organized all of their activities on Facebook and by being off the platform, I was cutting myself out of the loop. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=11158\">So I got back on,<\/a> rationalizing that I could be careful about what I shared and it wouldn&#8217;t be an issue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The second time I deleted my Facebook, it was because of the negative effect it was having on my life. I was disturbed about the way that social media was programming people, and I could feel it beginning to happen to me. It was around this time that I <a href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=11225\">deleted my Twitter<\/a> as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=11815\">I came back<\/a> because I worried that I was becoming too much of an &#8220;internet hermit.&#8221; There were also some social groups that it was more convenient to interact with over Facebook, but much less so than before. Mainly, I knew that there were people who wanted to reach out to me, and cutting out Facebook entirely seemed a little too extreme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This time, however, it isn&#8217;t just about privacy issues, or even about social programming and the negative effects of social media in our lives. It&#8217;s about power, and conscience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other big tech Silicon Valley companies have a massive political and cultural influence on our lives, and I don&#8217;t like what they&#8217;re doing with it. They&#8217;ve become too powerful, and now they&#8217;re abusing that power to shape our lives and our communities in ways that I don&#8217;t agree with. But the truth is, the only reason they have any power at all is because of us. We give them their power, and we can take it away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m getting off of Facebook permanently this time because I don&#8217;t want to give that company any more power than they already have. I&#8217;m also deleting my Twitter. If I do come back to social media, it&#8217;s going to be through alternative platforms like Minds and Gab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The next big step is to de-Google my life, and I&#8217;m not sure how I&#8217;m going to accomplish that. However, with the direction things are going, I believe it&#8217;s more important now than ever to do so. As for Amazon, it&#8217;s going to be much more difficult since such a large chunk of my income comes from them. What I will probably have to do is limit my dependence on these companies without cutting either of them out of my life completely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Please watch this video in its entirety (before YouTube takes it down). Whatever you think of James O&#8217;Keefe, this is serious stuff that he&#8217;s exposing, and it affects all of us. The first time I deleted my Facebook, it was out of privacy concerns. I came back because there were social groups, such as my&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/why-i-deleted-my-facebook-account-again\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Why I deleted my Facebook account (again)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[457,780,772,1195,414,1040,254,255],"class_list":["post-12306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-current-events","tag-facebook","tag-internet","tag-james-okeefe","tag-politics","tag-social-media","tag-social-networking","tag-twitter","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iXK-3cu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12307,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306\/revisions\/12307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}