At some point, something changed. First, I no longer find social networks to be the uplifting, positive places they once were. In fact, in 2020, they’re pretty distressing places. The bad content, intrusive advertising, and terrible privacy practices are untenable.

That means the numerator of the cost/benefit ratio has been increasing. At the same time, the denominator has started decreasing. I’m not creating new connections on my social networks as I once was. When I do the math it’s clear that the price of my social network activity in 2020 is too damn high.

Therefore, it’s time for me to deprecate Facebook.

In software engineering, deprecation has a very specific meaning. It means a feature is not being discontinued, but it is being discouraged. It signals that the feature can be expected to be removed at some future time. Most importantly, it says there probably is a better way to do it.

I’m hoping that better way is blogging. I know, I know, the blogosphere is pretty moribund these days. However, I’ve become very interested in the Indie Web movement. I hope that it becomes a usable way to have conversations on the web outside of the silos of social media networks.