Ditto. I got rid of my Facebook account for that reason, primarily -- I don't believe monopoly is ever a good thing and Facebook is headed that way fast (simply because of the network effect, not because they're gurus at building monopolies).
There's another reason I ditched Facebook, though. I found that my life was getting too entangled with other people. I had a lot of friends in the past who worked or still work for the US govt. and my current views on that government (that it is corrupt to the core and needs to be rebooted) were making them afraid for their jobs. Simply unfriending me is not enough, because Facebook has a memory...so I sent everyone my email and Twitter ID and went through the 2-week-long process of deleting my Facebook account.
What scares the hell out of me is that Facebook is concentrating so much personal knowledge in one place -- one-stop shopping for corrupt governments!
The proper approach is to federate the social networks together, so people can move from Facebook to Twitter to G+ to LinkedIn effortlessly but retain control of their data and hence put up a sizable barrier to corruption.
I see your point about making a statement by not being present on the social net.
But I'm not about to alienate myself from the people I love in order to do so. So I stay in FB and only put stuff on there that can be put in the front page of the newspaper. I do not mind not having privacy because I go in with no expectation of privacy at all.
There's another reason I ditched Facebook, though. I found that my life was getting too entangled with other people. I had a lot of friends in the past who worked or still work for the US govt. and my current views on that government (that it is corrupt to the core and needs to be rebooted) were making them afraid for their jobs. Simply unfriending me is not enough, because Facebook has a memory...so I sent everyone my email and Twitter ID and went through the 2-week-long process of deleting my Facebook account.
What scares the hell out of me is that Facebook is concentrating so much personal knowledge in one place -- one-stop shopping for corrupt governments!
The proper approach is to federate the social networks together, so people can move from Facebook to Twitter to G+ to LinkedIn effortlessly but retain control of their data and hence put up a sizable barrier to corruption.