Just over 100 days ago – 101 to be precise – I posted this article.
I’m not a massive Facebook user anymore. It has become something that I look at regularly but quickly leave again because I get frustrated with my feed.
Facebook, over the last few days, have developed their like button into additional emoticons to show love, anger and other things. (If I wasn’t writing this on my phone, I would find an image of them to share…)
However, it strikes me that this is a new way for Facebook to gather information about me.
So I’ve decided to rebel. Wherever I can (as in, whenever I remember) I am going to not like a thing else on Facebook for at least the next month or so and see what happens. Instead, I will use words and comment on the things I like. I have no idea whether this will make a difference or not, but I shall see.
I don’t know if it has made a difference, to be honest. I’ve tried, as far as I can, to not like things. On occasions, due to Facebook being the way it is, I haven’t had a choice. Some of the pages I run have had to like things but my personal account hasn’t liked a single thing since the 25th February.
What I have noticed is that there appears to be more things appearing on my feed from people in my friendship circle, and fewer items from other areas.
Facebook knows what I search for on other sites too – I often get adverts featuring things I’ve hunted for on Amazon, for example. I don’t mind this so much, as I know that I am unlikely to click these. As an Amazon Prime user, I only really buy through their site.
The other thing I’ve noticed is that I am using the site more. It’s annoying me less.
I’ll keep the experiment going, as I do still think it’s worthwhile…