I spent a very frustrating hour or two yesterday trying to get onto my facebook account and confronted with the extra information that Meta wanted from me. I have decided not to use facebook anymore.

This does not affect the Seaside Gazette website at all, but it does mean that I will lose all my contacts, not only on the facebook account, with its 1,225 followers, but also my messenger contacts.

I have taken this decision because trying to recover my account, Meta wanted me to supply either my passport number, my driving licence, my NIE etc, which is just pure data mining and I am not giving all this information to Facebook/Meta.

I have long been unhappy with Facebook’s ‘policing’ of posts, arbitrarily deciding that some links to the site were spam (tricking people into visiting using deceptive wording) and this latest situation is the straw that has broken the camel’s back, so to speak.

To find the Seaside Gazette on a browser is extremely easy as you don’t even have to enter the name of our website because you can simply put “News Almuñécar” and it comes up on the first page of Google at the very top, normally.

Any friends that I have who usually use messenger can simply leave a message for me on this website at the bottom of any post and I will see it and it won’t be seen by the general public.

To use a much used cliche from films, “I’m getting too old for this shit.”

(News/Editorial: Facebook)

Keywords: Facebook, Meta, Information Gathering Abuse

Reader’s comment: “I feel the same way! Last night a ‘Meta’ page popped up inviting me to pay 5.99 a month to use FaceAche without adverts, otherwise to give them access to all my personal data. They also respond to ‘likes’ and ‘clicks’, so if you hold back on liking and clicking and just stroll on, then, in a small way. you’re beating the system.” – Barnacle Bill

Reader’s comment: “I understand you perfectly. I haven’t been asked for personal data yet, but their censoring and AI errors alone, are making me very tired, at times.
Fb was supposed to be based on personal contacts, and they seem to be alienating people instead. Maybe you could make a ‘weekly headlines’ email list instead? Or something similar, that you control?” – Charlotte

Reader’s comment: “FYI, WhatsApp is owned by Meta as well, so it might well be worth backing up your contacts there as well if you’re abandoning ship. Also Instagram and a bunch of other stuff.

There’s a list here:
https://inspirationfeed.com/what-companies-does-facebook-own/

…which is probably going to be deleted but I can’t be bothered to manually copy ‘n’ paste it all.” – Darren

Reader’s comment: “I too have come off faceache. Messenger and all other things attached to the Meta monster. Sadly still use WhatsApp as the few people I have on it. Use it to message me. But it’s part of the meta monster information claiming game.” – Patrick Barry Storey