---
layout: post
title: Planned Facebook account closure
date: 2017-09-01 18:30:00 +0800
---
Now that my blog is up and running, I do not plan on keeping my Facebook
account forever. As such, over the next two years I will progressively
reduce my usage of Facebook. This can be summarized in two phases:

#### Phase 1
From now until 2018-09-01, I will gradually reduce the time I spend and
the interactions I make on Facebook. I will delete (and in fact have already
been deleting) a number of old posts. Interesting posts may be migrated
to this blog. New posts will be posted here, and a link to the post will
be posted on my Facebook account.

#### Phase 2
On 2018-09-01 I will enable Facebook's email notifications. Afterwards
I will not actively log on to Facebook, except to respond to notifications.
On 2019-09-01 I will delete my Facebook account.

## Reasons
### Reducing third-party service dependence
I would like to reduce my reliance on third-party centralised services.
This is also the reason why I am hosting this blog on my own server
(not on e.g. WordPress), and I am running my own email server and
gradually switching from Gmail.

### Better functionality
I have greater freedom here on how I want my posts to look like. I can
**bold** text, <span style="color: red;">colourize</span> text, insert
inline pictures, and much more. I can also easily find my old posts,
either by time or by keywords.

### Facebook's UX just sucks
I've been using Facebook for 6 years, and have unfriended 100+ people.
A few days ago as part of my plan to reduce my Facebook usage, I unfriended
someone.

Facebook decided to show me this. Six times. *Six*.

![Facebook unfriend notice][fb-unfrd]

This does not end here. Every time someone liked or commented on my public
posts I get a notice to "review my privacy settings". And every time I
choose to read "Most Recent" stories on News Feed, it gets reset to
"Top Stories" on page refresh.

I am also getting tired of seeing all these "Sponsored" posts. I mean,
I get it, you need to make money. But can you not show me the same post
10+ times? Once on my Kindle I've even had a page with more ads than
actual posts.

### Waste of time
I find that I waste too much time reading about things that I don't care.

## Other ways of contact
You may contact me using the following methods, listed in order of
preference.

### Email
My primary (preferred) email address is <me@adrianiainlam.tk>.
This is hosted on my own server, so there may be downtimes.
For *really* important emails you may consider
<del> <ail30@cam.ac.uk> (available for the next two years) or</del>
<adrianiainlam@gmail.com>.

Where possible/reasonable I will sign my emails. You can also encrypt
emails to me. My public key is available [here][pubkey] and also on
[pgp.mit.edu][mit-key].

### RSS
If you want to follow my blog posts, you can do this via [RSS][rss].
You are also more than welcome to send me a link to your own blog if
you have a feed or a mailing list.

### IRC
If you are looking for me to just chat and kill time, I am often online
on [Rizon][rizon], using the nick "ail30".

### Instant messaging / VoIP / Video call
<del>
I have started trying [Ring][ring], using the username "ring:adrianiainlam".
I have no idea how well it would work, and more downtime is expected as I
run this on my notebook, not my server.</del>
<ins> Update 2019: Stopped using Ring, now using Matrix, with
username `@adrianiainlam:matrix.org`.</ins>



[fb-unfrd]: {{ site.baseurl }}/images/2017-09-01-facebook-unfriend.png
[pubkey]: /pubkey.asc
[mit-key]: https://pgp.mit.edu/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x97ED093989537541
[rizon]: irc://irc.rizon.net/ail30,isnick
[ring]: https://ring.cx
[rss]: {{ site.baseurl }}/feed.xml