Dear Facebook,
We’ve been together for several years now. We’ve had some fabulous times, we’ve connected with new and old friends, seen the world and posted pics of weddings, honeymoons, holidays and new houses. You’ve been the conduit between my old life in London and my new life in Canada. You’ve helped me reach out and keep in touch and for that I am forever grateful. But lately I’ve been feeling like the magic’s gone.
I’ve found myself logging on less and less. Not caring so much about photos of last Saturday night or random people who I knew in high schools status updates. I wasn’t feeling too sure about us and then. and then you went and changed your Terms of Service. I felt betrayed and sold out. You tried to sneak the changes by me which felt seedy and when I started looking at every thing more deeply I was shocked by your arrogance. First I scoured the web trying to make sense of it all. I read the Mashable article, aptly entitled Facebook: All Your Stuff is Ours, Even If You Quit AND all its comments as people weighed in and tried to figure it out. Then Amanda French compared you to other on-line services and I was just plain damn embarrassed to be your friend. I did try to listen to all sides of the argument – I know that most people thought that you would never sell my photos to advertisers, that you didn’t really want my words, ideas and photos to pass on as you please. While others commented vainly that if I was stupid enough to post photos of myself, regardless of how harmless, and even if I set all privacy settings to private I should have expected that the whole world would have access to them. But my concern was, is, that you could under the new TOS and there would be nothing I could do about it – even if I decided to leave you.
Ever since the debacle, and even despite you returning your TOS to its previous incarnation, I’ve been thinking about you and I and how we work together. I’ve come to the realization that I’ve been not emailing some of the people on my facebook list because I’ve been making do with 1 line status updates rather than real, thought out connections. I’ve been selling my friends short just like you tried to do with teh TOS. I do like how easily you let me see what people are up to but really, I want more. I miss really hearing how people are rather than just their ’status’.
I think the truth is that we’ve just grown apart. That I want digital experiences to enhance my real life ones – not replace them. The thing I love most about my blog is not the SEO but the people who I can connect with and be honest with and how that enhances me, Emily, as a real person in my real life. Blogging has, in a lot of ways, made me a better person – the same can definitely not be said for you.
So while I figure out the next steps in our relationship you’ll notice that I’ve moved all my photos and most of my info out of the house of facebook. I’ve cut away the friends for whom I was only a notch on the facebook friend count bedpost and scaled back to the bare bones. I’m not sure I see your purpose anymore.
Until the day I’m ready to walk away completely we can be friends. At least on Facebook.
Emily
