Last night I quit Facebook. Again. It’s not because they’ve changed their layout. It’s not because they added some new feature. It’s not because I’m afraid Facebook is selling my data to corporations or some other paranoid plot. It’s not even really about privacy. There are privacy controls and I understand them, and I use them.

It’s the implementation, however, that pushed me over the edge. I just got seriously tired of having to flip switches and opt out of everything. When something that’s ostensibly entertainment turns into work it loses any shred of fun it had left. I’ve long tolerated Facebook for the sake of my family connections who use it all the time, but I’ve never warmed up to its near uselessness (for my purposes) since I re-joined a little over a year ago. Now that privacy maintenance has become too onerous I’ve decided to ditch it again. If everything was opt-in instead of opt-out I’d probably linger around a bit longer. But I don’t like the idea that I have to learn about, search for, and maintain every new setting because they’re turned on by default.

Have I left for good this time? I hope so. I didn’t really get anything new out of it when I returned except for additional annoyance, more wasted time, and a feeling that I had to be more careful about what I said because of who was following me. Good riddance.