Privacy baby steps. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter DELETED!

This is an exercise. I’m not a social media expert, but I was here before social media. I view everything as experiment… from tech to life to establishing my place in the universe. What I do shouldn’t be considered, nor am I suggesting it is, “right.” That’s up to you, and your beliefs specifically with regard to your personal data and its value.

Choosing to remove the Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn apps is going to be somewhat controversial. I say that with one caveat: I’ll still be on those platforms and engaged, but only through the web browser, and only with certain controls.

One control is the use of the DuckDuckGo browser for iOS/Android. If you don’t know what that is, you do now. Explore it, see if it feels right for you. Read about the ratings feature for each site as it relates to tracking, privacy, and permission.

Another control is the use of the DuckDuckGo plugin/extension for all major browsers. It provides the same features, but for your browser of choice. Mine is now Firefox.

Another goal here to to regain control of my content. Posting on owned media first feels better today than ever before. Long forms, short, photos, all of it will be rooted here – on a site I own and control, where I get to choose privacy and permissions settings.

If this sounds overly complex or “too hard,” here’s something to consider: these changes are all one-time. It’s a matter of changing habits, and that’s a matter of turning priorities into action. To me, especially these days, the reality is that my data is valuable, and I’m nothing more than data points to sell ads against for the platforms I mentioned. Yuck.

If you have thoughts and feedback, let me know. This is going to be a fun experiment. I hope we all learn something from it!

As always, thank you for being here!