I hate Facebook. The amount of vitriol and trolling that goes on there, especially over anything that can considered even mildly political turns people against one another and even against their own family.
I have found over the years that the people who behave like the biggest lions on Facebook are probably the biggest wussies I know face-to-face. Basically they wouldn't say any of what they do on FB to the person's face they are talking to.
I determined months ago that I was no longer going to use Facebook and that I was not going to communicate with anyone on it. I also made my profile private and don't allow anyone to tag me and any time someone sends me a message I encourage them to move over to Signal or Telegram. However, I am finding that there are some aspects of FB that at least for now, cannot be accomplished by any other means.
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So while I had planned to completely ditch my profile and delete it all there are a few things that are getting in the way of me accomplishing this and I will likely not be able to completely get off that toxic platform. Perhaps you have experienced the same things in your own attempts to exit.
Some of my friends are idiots
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Try as I may to get people to switch over to other forms of messenger, some of my friends are incapable of understanding how Telegram or Signal works and really, if anything involves clicking more than one button they don't understand nor will they use it. Despite the fact that adding friends on Signal incorporates essentially exactly the same process as adding people on WhatsApp, some of my mentally challenged friends can't wrap their heads around the process.
I do not want to completely cut these people out of my life, even though they are morons. Some of them are actually a lot of fun to hang out with specifically because they are morons. Therefore, this is reason number one why I cannot fully leave FB.
I live in a foreign country and need information from time to time
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I live in this tiny little country that would fit inside of Texas if you squished it and there are 90 million people here. Very very few of them speak English. I, as of yet, have been extremely lazy as far as attempting to learn Vietnamese is concerned and so far only know how to say "hello, thank you, and one more beer." This doesn't get you very far if you are looking for, say, a new battery for your wrist watch.
Despite the fact that a lot of the people in these "groups" are a-holes, there are also a lot of people in the city expat group that can be very helpful as far as finding something like, i dunno, a new battery for your wristwatch, or basically anything else. As far as I am aware, there is no other forum for this kind of information.
Many businesses are ONLY contactable via FB
I don't require much out of life but on occasion I want to order a pizza, or get an appointment to get a haircut, or get some steaks cut before i turn up at the butcher (and also check to make sure they have them before I go there.) I also may on occasion need something like a new battery for a wristwatch.
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Why TF are these so difficult to find in Vietnam!?
If I find them online, more often than not they do not communicate with the outside world by any other means other than FB. So if I totally delete this from my life, life is going to get significantly more complicated for me.
A lot of the businesses that I find on maps (which unfortunately the only one that really works over here is owned by Google - another company I would prefer to avoid) their phone numbers are wrong and there is no way I can get in touch with these companies other than use F**king FB messenger.
My extended family is not at all concerned about privacy
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I have lived overseas (from USA) for over 15 years. The only way I get to see my cousins and their kids grow up is via their postings on FB. A lot of these people barely even know who I am and that we are related to one another. To them, I am probably that weirdo relative that lives in China - which is exactly where my Grandfather thought I lived until the day he died. He had dementia towards the end, so rather than correct him over and over I just said "oh yeah, China is great Grandpa."
I've tried to get them over to other forms of communication, namely Telegram, but they can't seem to cut the cord and I suspect that a lot of them really relish the attention they get from posting a picture of a pot of stew they made. I'm not gonna judge my own family on this but like they say: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink."
So for the time being I can't fully exit FB. I have put my privacy level up to the maximum level that you possibly can, made my profile private, and no one is allowed to tag me in anything or post to my wall. I removed all of my pictures and am gradually getting through removing all the tags that currently exist of me on other people's pictures (this is going to take a while) I do not participate in any sort of conversation that happens on FB unless I initiate it via a question about something like where to find a battery for a wristwatch.
I would LOVE to completely cut the cord and am happy that there seems to be a big movement to get away from FB, but for the time being all I can do is keep a low profile (pun intended) and not participate in any capacity. I fear that unless people can gravitate to a new system eventually, that I won't ever be able to fully leave.