www.JimStroud.com - Few companies have been under the amount of scrutiny that Facebook has endured. Privacy advocates, free speech supporters and proponents of antitrust legislation can list a myriad of reasons why you should support the hashtag #deletefacebook. Yet despite a growing voice of opposition, the overwhelming supporters of Facebook keep hanging on. Why? In this podcast, I share some of the reasons why people stay on Facebook as well as some reasons why they should leave. 

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EPISODE #37 | Published 07.28.19
HASHTAG DELETE FACEBOOK
(Reasons to Leave and Stay on Facebook)
Hi, I’m Jim Stroud and this is my podcast.
Few companies have been under the amount of scrutiny that Facebook has endured. Privacy advocates,
free speech supporters and proponents of antitrust legislation can list a myriad of reasons why you should
support the hashtag #deletefacebook. Yet despite a growing voice of opposition, the overwhelming
supporters of Facebook keep hanging on. Why? Well, if you stay tuned, I will share some of the reasons
why people stay on Facebook as well as some reasons why they should leave. And I will do it, after this
word from our sponsor.
{ sponsor: Brought to you by Supapass }
The website “Make Use Of” polled their readers on why they continue to use Facebook in the midst of
seemingly never ending Facebook controversies. The poll was done in 2014 but, I think the sentiments
still apply to Facebook users today.

2. People stay on Facebook because…
• Because it’s required to log in to other websites.
• Because you can use it to share photos easily.
• Because Facebook offers free video messaging.
• Because it’s an easy way of organizing events.
• Because Facebook groups are better than bulletin boards.
• Because it’s the easiest method for remembering birthdays.
• Because it offers a simple way of spreading awful opinions.
Some of the comments from that poll were interesting to me too. One person said, “Everyone here should
admit a fact that we don't use facebook because of it's many handy features but we use Facebook only
because "OUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY MEMBERS ARE THERE."
Sigh… So true.
If you are among those who wish to remain active on Facebook no matter what then, this headline from
Forbes magazine may be of interest to you. The headline is this - “Facebook Manipulated 689,003
Users' Emotions For Science.” And the gist of the article is this, on occasion and at the sole discretion of
Facebook, users of Facebook become guinea pigs for experimentation. Here is a quote from that article.
As first noted by The New Scientist and Animal New York, Facebook's data scientists manipulated
the News Feeds of 689,003 users, removing either all of the positive posts or all of the negative
posts to see how it affected their moods. If there was a week in January 2012 where you were only
seeing photos of dead dogs or incredibly cute babies, you may have been part of the study. Now
that the experiment is public, people's mood about the study itself would best be described as
"disturbed."
The researchers, led by data scientist Adam Kramer, found that emotions were contagious.
"When positive expressions were reduced, people produced fewer positive posts and more
negative posts; when negative expressions were reduced, the opposite pattern occurred,"
according to the paper published by the Facebook research team in the PNAS. "These results
indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions,
constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks."
The experiment ran for a week -- January 11–18, 2012 -- during which the hundreds of thousands
of Facebook users unknowingly participating may have felt either happier or more depressed
than usual, as they saw either more of their friends posting '15 Photos That Restore Our Faith In
Humanity' articles or despondent status updates about losing jobs, getting screwed over by X
airline, and already failing to live up to New Year's resolutions. "*Probably* nobody was driven
to suicide," tweeted one professor linking to the study, adding a "#jokingnotjoking" hashtag.
The possibility of Facebook manipulating the emotions of their users was particularly distressing to me
when I learned about Facebook’s efforts to (and I am using air quotes here) secure the 2020 elections.
There has been a lot of discussion about it among political pundits and privacy advocates. Many of the

3. arguments I hear, and can agree with, echo the sentiment on YouTuber – Timcast. This is some of what
he has to say.
If you think the way Facebook manipulates your emotions without your knowledge or consent is
unnerving, wait until you hear this quote from Gizmodo. Its from an article called – “Facebook Is Giving
Advertisers Access to Your Shadow Contact Information”
One of the many ways that ads get in front of your eyeballs on Facebook and Instagram is that
the social networking giant lets an advertiser upload a list of phone numbers or email addresses
it has on file; it will then put an ad in front of accounts associated with that contact information.
A clothing retailer can put an ad for a dress in the Instagram feeds of women who have purchased
from them before, a politician can place Facebook ads in front of anyone on his mailing list, or a
casino can offer deals to the email addresses of people suspected of having a gambling addiction.
Facebook calls this a “custom audience.”
You might assume that you could go to your Facebook profile and look at your “contact and basic
info” page to see what email addresses and phone numbers are associated with your account,
and thus what advertisers can use to target you. But as is so often the case with this highly efficient
data-miner posing as a way to keep in contact with your friends, it’s going about it in a less
transparent and more invasive way.
Facebook is not content to use the contact information you willingly put into your Facebook
profile for advertising. It is also using contact information you handed over for security purposes
and contact information you didn’t hand over at all, but that was collected from other people’s
contact books, a hidden layer of details Facebook has about you that I’ve come to call “shadow
contact information.”
Wow. So, if my Facebook friend has my unlisted number in their phone and their phone has the Facebook
app then, Facebook has my unlisted number eventhough, I did not give it voluntarily to Facebook. Again,
I say wow. Let that sink in for a moment. But, not too long. I have one more story for you.
What if I told you that deleting your Facebook account doesn’t matter? Facebook can and does still track
you, even if you delete your account. Listen to this report from Wochit Tech.
Now in case you are wondering how Facebook can still track you even with your account deleted, the
answer is several ways and I am sure I don’t know them all. One way I know for sure is the Facebook share
button. As of April 2019, the Facebook share button is on 275 million websites and counting. The FB share
button collects data allowing advertisers to see what kind of content you're viewing. That's why you're
likely to see ads for sports in your Facebook feed if you've been visiting a lot of sports websites. Isn’t that
special?
So, to sum things up:
• Facebook can manipulates your emotions, anytime they want, without your knowledge.
• Facebook gathers your contact information, from other people, without your knowledge and
sells it to advertisers.
• Facebook constantly tracks you, even when you delete your account.

4. Tell me. What do you think of Facebook now? Leave a comment. I would love to hear what you have to
say.
RELATED LINKS
• https://deletefacebook.com/
• Why did Facebook lose an estimated 15 million users in the past two years?
http://j.mp/30Y0omD
• Don’t Be an Experiment: How to Control Your Facebook News Feed http://j.mp/30ZEDmm
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