Deactivating My Facebook and Instagram Accounts

Audio Transcription

TL;DR

I have left Facebook and Instagram and I am not coming back.

Top 5 reasons:

1. I prefer Twitter. Read more here.

2. The Facebook police are too strict.

3. Too many bugs and glitches.

4. I'm not a fan of Reels.

5. It's a waste of time!

Why have you left?

1. I prefer Twitter. Read more here.

2. The Facebook police are too strict for my liking. They removed one of my posts that contained a link to my website which at the time contained links to my Facebook groups because it apparently went against their Community Standards on "adult sexual solicitation", even though the website contained nothing of the sort. And totally separate from this, they also banned me for no apparent reason. This isn't the only time they've told me off either.

3. Meta, Facebook and Instagram are all very buggy, inconsistent and untrustworthy. To be quite frank, I am fed up with the constant errors, glitching, privacy concerns and things just not working in general.

4. I hate Reels with a passion, and considering they are shoved down your throat constantly, it gets quite frustrating — at least for me. As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I would see a horizontally scrollable section appear containing Reels, so I'd click the three dots and then choose "Hide". But it would continue to appear anyway.

• I enjoy uploading YouTube Shorts (which are similar to Reels) because they tend to end up with a lot of views and they're great for growing your YouTube channel. However, I hate watching Reels and Shorts, and creating Reels does not appeal to me at all. I also hate TikTok if you can't tell already. Yes, I have tried it.

5. It's a waste of time! One minute it's 9am and the next thing you know it's 12pm when you look at the clock!

Why do you prefer Twitter?

1. There is a very large tech community on Twitter which is much more lively than Facebook's tech community from my experience.

2. My Twitter account is growing very fast and getting a large amount of interactions.

3. When something is posted on Facebook, it seems there has to be a substantial reason to as why that post exists, which makes the content less interesting. This isn't the case with Twitter.

4. Facebook doesn't strike conversations, at least for me, like Twitter does. On Twitter, I can casually ask a question/write a statement about anything (not specifically tech), it'll get 10-50 likes and I'll get plenty of answers/responses. I see tech-related Tweets (not specifically asking for help) and a wide variety of other topics I didn't tend to see on Facebook. Facebook has had plenty of time and information to learn what I want to see in my feed.

5. Since Twitter is run by a completely different company, they don't use the same CRAP (Computer Recognised Automatic Procedure) system as Facebook. So they don't take content down for silly reasons as they don't have meaningless, misleading, and nonsensical rules. You can actually have a normal chat with people without being worried about getting told off.

What about your Facebook Groups and Pages?

Well, it's pretty simple — they have been given new owners. I no longer have anything to do with them or the corresponding website and domain.

Will you keep your account deactivated, or will you eventually delete it?

I will keep it deactivated, as opposed to deleting it, in case I need to log back in to retrieve photos, get information from past posts, or review an important post I may have heard about elsewhere.

I also have some other Facebook pages, including Camp Fox and Oak Camp which will need to remain maintained.

2023 Update: These Facebook pages have now been deactivated.

Will you continue to manage your other Instagram accounts?

Yes. I have many other Instagram accounts, including Camp Fox, Bell Tent Camping and Oak Camp which will need to remain maintained. Although I don't use them much, I do like to know I've got access in case I ever need to update something or post an update.

2023 Update: These Instagram accounts have now been deactivated.

Will you continue to use Messenger?

Yes. I use Messenger to communicate with almost everyone, and it is a very good platform in my opinion. While Twitter has direct messaging capabilities, it isn't very good for quite a few reasons (last updated in 2022):

1. It does not have the ability to send multiple photos and videos at once.

2. You cannot unsend messages. 

3. It runs in the same app as Twitter itself, so I could easily miss a message amongst my other Twitter notifications in Notification Centre. It would take me a while to see any messages.

Conclusion

Hopefully this article clarifies the reasoning for why I left the Facebook and Instagram platforms. If you have any further questions, please feel free to email me and I'll get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks for reading!

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