Mirror cherry bird

Finds a roost, homunculus

Droppings in my silo

Facebook sold your messages to everyone

Just accept that you have no rights to privacy in the US. Facebook sold your private messages to Netflicks, Spotify, Bing, and anyone else. The first thing I noticed about Facebook in 2007 was its intent to push ads in my face based on the content of my status updates. The second thing was that there was a “like” button, but not an “unlike” button. That was weird.

Facebook silos people

I left Facebook in April. Out of curiosity, I went back two weeks ago and, surprise, my account was not deleted as promised. All of my pics, my stupid “personal info”, status updates, “memories” and such, all there. What was missing was a LOT of my friends who work in technical fields. Most of them had split. What was left was pretty sad and lonely. I hung out for a week to post the most inane, ridiculous stuff I could to get laughs. Some people were using the site to raise money for dying kids. That’s because in the US, we don’t provide universal healthcare. I posted foreign Christmas tunes, an old episode of Taxi, and music sure to confuse my old high school friends. The people that were still posting on Facebook are still pandering to the same audiences. I didn’t see anyone on any new paths, which isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just boring. People posting routine online for karma is boring. I had a few acquaintances on there. Here is what happened when I quit Facebook.

I had free time alone.

Facebook is an ego farm

Does Facebook understand what “friend” even means? My experiences on Facebook were shallow and ridiculous. I am a stranger in a small town where my family and myself have lived for years. We are surrounded by people in self-perpetuating reality tunnels. I have taken a look inside other people’s feeds and see an overwhelming amount of gossip, whining and bragging. I see egos, which is what Facebook feeds upon, the carrion of your soul. I think three friends wrote to me while I was away, in eight months.

You can let go of the virtual communities and be yourself

When I quit Facebook, when I lost the reference, and no longer knew how to properly “consider myself as” a type of person or another, then I also lost interest in defining myself. That’s not to say I lost interest in things I enjoy. If anything, my interests grew. I finished my thesis and graduated from school with no clutter from Facebook, no hooks, lures, reminders, promises and curses from myself or other people to hold me. It was liberating. I picked up new skills, traveled, and tried to live outside of my comfort zone. I went back to Facebook after doing a lot of meaningful research and found that the exploitation hadn’t abated at all. In fact, if I am to understand The Privacy Act, then privacy itself is a national security issue. Otherwise, we would have it.

Privacy is an online illusion

We do not have privacy because the commercialization of the internet allowed a corporate feudalism to claim your data as some sort of property. Data theft and fraudulent forms of hegemonic social engineering marketing campaigns are your new keepers. “Privacy” online, to me, is like “diet food”. If people wanted diet food, just eat air. Eat a nothing sandwich. Have a diet drink of thought soda. The internet is a glob of deterministic programming that holds you like variables in a system designed to optimize the concentration of wealth. It isn’t even alive and it’s doing that. It’s a pick-pocketing tool.

Your illusions are commodities

It’s strange to think that people who tried to get me to listen to music and watch movies thought they had the right to look at private messages I shared with people about projects, about friends dying and family dying, to think they could walk in and participate in my grief and pain. For that reason, I will no longer be sharing any content from other websites or services that have a Twitter or a Facebook icon on their website. So, that’s most of them.