This post has been a long time coming.

I’ve had some fun with Facebook over the past week, but some of you may have noticed that I haven’t posted much lately.  There are many reasons for that.  Some of them have to do with privacy (Facebook certainly doesn’t need to know everywhere I go on the web or where I take my phone).  Some have to do with convenience (I used to post directly from my WordPress account, until Facebook decided that it wouldn’t allow me that convenience).  I’ve also have friends that had posts deleted or their account frozen because of conservative ideology.  Most recently it appears that a New York pastor has not been allowed to share a post about his concern with the new abortion law (https://fxn.ws/2G4Kel1).  I guess that this is my proverbial last straw.

In the past I’ve removed the Facebook app from my phone.  I’ve reviewed my browser settings to make it harder for websites to track me.  I’ve disabled location services. Much of this is just good common sense.  Big Data is a real issue.  But I have continued to use Facebook periodically.

Unfortunately, I can’t simply stop using it completely, as much as I’d like to.  I can’t add information to our church page without having a linked personal account.  I’ll have to go back to what I was doing before: logging on whenever I need to post information to the church site, but not using it as a platform for anything else.  I have other options.  I can use my WordPress blog, and our desire is to have the church website updated more frequently so that the information is current.

So, that is where I stand.  My wife has chosen to deactivate her account, at least for the time being.  The nice thing about that is the ability to continue to use messenger, although some have expressed privacy concerns about that app as well! The truth is that even our smart TVs are spying on us.  We should just be aware of the issues that arise as a result, and the Orwellian oversight of our posts.  Each of us will have to make our own decision as to where to draw the line.

Postscript: If you are concerned about your privacy on the net, you may want to check out the Brave web browser.