My brother studied computer science and I'll I got was this dumb blog

Devils.

Technology is full of them.

The Tyrell Corporation and Massive Dynamic are currently starring Facebook. Gordon Gecko makes a good Mark Zuckerberg, or vice-versa, or whatever.

The amalgamation of personal data that Facebook was beginning to control and their cavalier attitude toward using and abusing it was mounting daily. It became increasingly frustrating to keep up with the ever-changing privacy features, removing some of their famous granularity, placing it back, making some information public by default or making it impossible to keep private.

They turned my interests into pages, meaning that I had to make them public or delete them altogether. They could never be completely deleted, however. Each time I logged in to FB, I was asked if I wanted to add back these same pages.

With the introduction of Instant Personalization, in which personal data was made available to third party websites and Facebook about my internet usage I finally decided it was time to either reconsider Facebook or quit altogether. The problem was, of course, that there was an entire ecosystem in place which was difficult to leave. There were relationships that were maintained only via Facebook. Though I used other social media tools (Twitter, Blogger, Tumblr, etc.), Facebook is the only site used by most people. It's where everybody is.

No, I didn't make the ultimate leap and delete my account, I merely deactivated it, leaving friends and family behind, only to wonder why I'm no longer on their list of friends. Perhaps they think I've unfriended them.

It's been five weeks. Life is good. Perhaps I'll reactivate soon. I don't know. Meanwhile, I've found other outlets for my social media, especially Google Buzz - even if I have few friends on those. It could be the beginning of something bigger, though.