I am leaving Facebook for good (and everything else Meta related)
I'm doing that somewhat self-indulgent "I'm leaving Facebook" post.
No one really needs to explain why they would want to quit Facebook. There have been entire books written on the wellness benefits of doing so. The section on Wikipedia for Criticisms and controversies is literally 7,000 words long – including, but not limited to, topics such as "ethnic cleansing." As of 2025 the site is nearly unusable: Drowning in AI slop ads and unwanted and misguided recommendations that grossly outnumber actual posts from my friends. You're more likely to get a friend request from a bot trying to steal your account or money than an actual person.
The recent policy changes at Meta, which are intended to cynically appeal to the Trump administration in exchange for more favorable regulation enforcement, are the final nudge I need that it is time to actually get off these platforms, something that I had been ruminating on for a few years but never following through on.
Under Meta's newly relaxed moderation policies, women can be compared to household objects, ethnic groups can be called "filth," users can call for the exclusion of gay people from certain professions and people can refer to a transgender or non-binary person as an "it." - Axios
I don't want to do what I've seen many others do over the years – impulsively delete or deactivate my accounts in response to the latest current events disaster with no plan like a crash diet, then go right back when it becomes untenable. I'd also like to help others do the same if they're interested in leaving Facebook.
I think I am going to split this up into two articles, though the two topics are tightly coupled. In this article I'll discuss at a high level some of my thoughts for how I would replace specific pieces Facebook functionality. The next will be my recommendations for how to wean oneself off Facebook in a sustainable way.
I was frenetically searching for a few evenings for some palatable, low friction replacements for Facebook features such as Groups and Events that friends would tolerate signing up for. While I was reading an old Verge article on the subject of deleting Facebook from 2018 I was reminded of the labor organizing book No Shortcuts by the late great Jane McAlevey:
Facebook had replaced much of the emotional labor of social networking that consumed previous generations. We have forgotten (or perhaps never noticed) how many hours our parents spent keeping their address books up to date, knocking on doors to make sure everyone in the neighborhood was invited to the weekend BBQ, doing the rounds of phone calls with relatives, clipping out interesting newspaper articles and mailing them to a friend, putting together the cards for Valentine’s Day, Easter, Christmas, and more. We don’t think about what it’s like to carefully file business cards alphabetically in a Rolodex. People spent a lot of time on these sorts of things, once, because the less of that work you did, the less of a social network you had.
Facebook lets me be lazy the way a man in a stereotypical 1950s office can be lazy. Facebook is the digital equivalent of my secretary, or perhaps my wife, yelling at me not to forget to wish someone a happy birthday, or to inform me I have a social engagement this evening. If someone is on Facebook, I have a direct line to them right away — as though a switchboard operator has already put them on Line 1 for me. Facebook is one step away from buying my kids their Christmas presents because I’m too busy to choose them. - the Verge
The truth is there isn't an easy drop-in replacement for Facebook, not really. Facebook has held on for nearly 20 years not because it has been an especially good tool for maintaining friendships, it's just the lowest common denominator for many people. The reason there is no real competitor in this space is that for any new service that pops up your friends are likely not on it yet, so it is of little immediate utility. There are no shortcuts; You're going to have to do everything manually now to some extent, and probably collaboratively as well.
I am beginning to think though that this is a good thing – I think it is worthwhile to rediscover these lost skills and actually expend some real effort maintaining social relationships using the most universal tools everyone has besides Facebook: emails, phone numbers, paperwork, and effort.
Posts
Do not post (that was easy)
I've joked for a while I've become a street preacher telling anyone within earshot to just stop posting. My more nuanced take is you can post, but to take the blog in microblogging seriously – share your thoughts and what interests you, but just for yourself, not for a specific audience. Once freed of having to have half your friends follow you to a niche platform first it's a lot easier to embrace something new.
With that philosophy in mind I set up my own Mastodon server for fun a few years ago, though the average person should just sign up for the flagship site.
People can follow me, but no one actually does, and that's OK. I think it takes some of the implicit narcissism out of something like posting on Facebook –Most of the time my friends are not reading what I post because they went looking for it, they're doing it because the algorithm served it to them. Now anyone can visit my profile and see my posts if they really want to.
If having a more traditional audience is important to you Bluesky may work for you, but my limited experience with it is that it is as messy as other social media sites.
Contacts
The original friend request
Our phones are already designed with built-in social media profiles – your address book. Instead of friending people on Facebook I am going to get in the habit of sharing my contact card instead. I've started doing that this week and it's been nice. I've cleaned up my contact entry in my phone so it has the following:
- A recent photo
- My address
- My email
- My website with all my socials (soon to be sans Meta)
- For the parents my daughter's name
Next I'm going to begin organizing contacts update exchanges with my Facebook friends using Google Forms to assist with manually refreshing all of my contacts in my address book so they're up to date. The notes section is a good place to track their preferred chat platform. You can also group your contacts by social circle. Lastly I will export all the new contact cards to a temporary shared folder so people don't have to duplicate my efforts on their end for mutual friends. This is a necessary step for the following section.
Group Chats
For group chats I plan to advocate moving as many group chats as possible off Meta products, which nowadays accounts for 90% of my "social media" usage. As NPR asked in 2023, "Is group chatting becoming the social media medium of choice?" (The answer is yes).
I've self-hosted a niche personal chat server for about six years for some friends, but I recognize this is not going to be a widely tolerated option – they're graciously humoring me. For the general population I think Signal is a fabulous replacement:
- It's an open-source, fully featured, drop-in replacement for texting and WhatsApp (made by some of the same developers)
- There is minimal sign-up needed (just a phone number)
- Your "friend list" is just the other Signal users that are in your phone's address book
- It works equally well on Android and iOS
- It's run by an ethical non-profit
- There are no ads or algorithms
- It's fully private and encrypted, and if you want, ephemeral
I've moved a few chat groups recently to Signal, and I've been very happy with it. They recently added stories as well, which is a cute addition. You can fine tune who they're delivered to and can have multiple different recipient groups. My dream would be to have all my friends on it so I can move all DMs here too (I am getting closer to this goal).
In the end, while I have my own opinions and preferences, moving to anything not dependent on Meta will help make it easier for others who want delete their account to do the same.
Events
Getting trickier.
Here I don't have any easy answers. I think for each individual doesn't matter much what they pick for any given event. There are various sites and apps that manage RSVPs for events; I will probably elect to use Google Forms myself, but I got a Paperless Post birthday invite today and it seems neat.
The hard part will be there is not a single shared spot to keep up with all the events if you're no longer on Facebook. You can continually ping the group chat but that could get noisy or hard to follow. This is likely where a group will have to select a person or several people to be the social coordinators of the group.
An idea I've considered is maintaining an events newsletter so people can keep up with what we're doing. Buttondown is free for the first 100 subscribers, which is more than I'd ever need. That way people can get the occasional email of everything that is going on, and it's straightforward to refer back to.
Ed YongStaff writer, The Atlantic
The downside is that, unlike Facebook, someone has to make it. A shared Google Document would also work well and would take the burden off any one person.
Groups
Where dreams get dashed.
Groups I think are where dreams become dashed. This doesn't really apply to me because I don't really use Facebook groups and never have, but I can see this being the part where people have to resign themselves to keeping their accounts in some form.
There are several big roadblocks:
- It's difficult to organize, coordinate, and convince dozens of strangers to move to a different platform.
- Someone has to setup, host, and volunteer time maintaining and moderating the new forum software or platform.
- You could potentially lose years of content. Exporting Facebook groups has to be done by hand and is likely not feasible in practice.
If you cannot leave your Facebook groups behind I would recommend stripping your Facebook profile down to the minimum, clearing all the content, and just using it for groups. Alternatively, if you can tolerate waiting a month you can hand over moderation powers to another trusted person, delete your old account, wait for it to permanently delete, then open a new one. I don't think you can open a second without the first being fully gone without risking getting auto-banned immediately.
If you DO want to go the route of hosting your own forum, I think Discourse is a great platform, and being the community manager of your own web forum can be a rich and rewarding experience, it's just a lot of work to kickstart and maintain.
If you're curious about Discourse there is an example above and a feature-set below.
My next-door neighbor is in her 90s and is moving out tomorrow. The five years I've known her she's had regular house parties right up to her last day here. She was telling me how the wine we bought her last week was actually from a winery she had visited in France 20 years ago, and her friends who went with her on that trip were having a blast drinking it with her the last night in her old house.
I asked her what's her trick for maintaining active deep friendships for decades – in short, she said that there are no shortcuts, just a keeping an address book, a calendar for reminders, and a little planning.
- WJ
Changelog
- 2025-01-27 – added section about Posts, various minor edits
- 2025-01-28 – minor edits
👨💻 Written by a human, not AI
I'm a software developer based in Raleigh, North Carolina, with a focus on .NET and secure software development. Formerly a Bernie Sanders delegate representing North Carolina at the 2020 DNC. You may find me infrequently on Mastodon.
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