If ten years ago, social networks like Facebook could be seen as something marginal, things have changed a lot since then. Indeed, what was then seen as something reserved for teenagers has gained momentum.
So much so that today, everyone has an account on at least one of these social networks. Even people who didn't think of doing it at all 10 years ago are starting to do it more and more.
Moreover, today Facebook is one of the networks favored by a lot of people. However, it is not necessarily the one to which we advise you to go and in this article we tell you why!
1 - Facebook is not really free
Facebook is free and always will be. This is the slogan you are given when you want to create an account. On paper, it's true and if we're not going to have fun talking about the future, for the moment, it's free.
You will be able to use Facebook as you wish. You will then never have a penny to spend to be able to walk around. Either way, on this point, one might be tempted to say that it's true.
But you know the saying that when it's free, you're the customer. As you can imagine, Facebook is not an NGO that lives on love and fresh water. So, you have to make money.
At this time Facebook assures us that they do not sell our personal information. But given the company's declining results, that could become a possibility. Moreover, even without selling you, Facebook uses its users to make money by selling advertising space.
2 - Facebook is spying on you on the web
As we have seen before, Facebook provides its services for free and, in return, we accept that it sends our data to advertising agencies around the world.
However, what is most disturbing is that Facebook also tracks you when you are not using the site. Worse still, you can't avoid sharing this information by logging out of your Facebook account - the company will still follow you.
Information collected outside of Facebook includes:
- the search for an article on a site,
- viewing content,
- the purchase of a particular product,
- donation to any organization,
- downloading a particular file,
- sharing an article,
- etc
Today, you can view this data on Facebook. For this you must go to the Facebook application, open the menu, then the application settings and in the section " Your Facebook information ", open " Activity outside of Facebook ».
3 - There are more and more fake news
A few years ago, Facebook was thought to be a social network where you could communicate and share with friends. But since then, the site has evolved quite a bit and has become more professional.
We thus find the newspapers which have begun to relay information. Except that with social networks everyone starts from the same point, whether you are an approved press organ or even Mr. Everybody.
This has allowed the emergence of new media, which is good, but also a lot of fake news. Today, you can no longer miss it and it is sometimes difficult to sort out the true from the false.
Admittedly, the platform has tried to take the lead by putting warnings under certain content to warn its users. But in practice, a lot of content still goes under the radar. They then have time to spread, much more quickly and effectively than denials.
4 - On Facebook, you are a lab rat
In 2012, Facebook conducted an experiment on the Internet by manipulating the newsfeed of 700.000 unwitting users. There is no need to force participants in the experiment to sign pesky consent forms because they have already agreed to the data usage policy of the site
Half of the users were exposed to predominantly positive messages. The other half has rather negative content. The service then studied the tone of the messages posted by the people observed.
So is it acceptable for Facebook to play with our emotions to improve its services? Besides the ethical issues, one can only speculate what negative effect this experience might have had on users with emotional issues. And that's not the only time Facebook has conducted such studies. There are at least seven other high-profile examples.
Conclusion: Facebook takes us for a lab rat.
5 - You are being harassed by message
Facebook is one of the most well-known social networks in the world and unfortunately, there are bad people who are attracted. Today, it is impossible for you to prevent them from contacting you.
This has been one of the platform's major weaknesses for several years and is one of the reasons why more and more people are leaving it. Indeed, it is impossible to miss these many messages.
Besides the fact that they can trick you, what's annoying is that they tend to harass you. Indeed, these messages are sent to a large list of people, which only takes a short time for the hackers.
On the other hand, it is you who must take the time to manually block contacts by hand every time. This is a procedure that takes longer for you than them to create new accounts.
6 - You no longer have control over your Facebook news feed
In its early days, Facebook was quite simple, on your wall you had your friends and what they posted. You can also like specific pages and when new content was posted, it appeared on your news feed.
But for several years, Facebook's system has changed and many content creators have complained about these changes. Indeed, it is now an algorithm that is responsible for finding what you like or not.
Understand that even if you like a page, there are chances that you will miss some posts. Conversely, there are pages that you didn't like that often appear on your posting feed.
It is certainly possible to configure this a little by asking Facebook to no longer display this content, but it is quite long and repetitive to do so. If we also add the advertisements we were talking about before, we end up with a news feed that seems more and more polluted in recent years.
7 - Facebook is gradually losing interest
We told you, in this article, Facebook has clearly been losing momentum for several months and if we even want to go further for a few years. They who were synonymous with modernity 10 years ago now seem a little behind.
User expectations have evolved and faced with the emergence of a whole host of new social networks, Facebook and more broadly the Meta group is struggling and this has been seen recently.
Around you, you may have noticed that more and more young people end up leaving Facebook. Worse still, they don't even sign up anymore. This led the platform to take drastic decisions and recently, dozens of people lost their jobs!
A situation that still plunges the facebook security in doubt and questioning. Indeed, we have already seen very influential social networks end up forgotten by all. This was the case with Myspace before Facebook.
This uncertain future and all the other reasons you have been given before, might make you think. More and more people are asking questions about whether or not to stay on the platform. Maybe it's time for you to do the same? In any case, if you want to delete your Facebook account, here's how to achieve it.