edit (February 7): I deleted my WhatsApp already.
edit (February 8): I added links to the newer posts from Kashmir Hill in the text.
edit (February 21): I reactivated my WhatsApp again. Some contacts depend on it, I think that I can delete again but with more preparation to ready others.

See You (probably) in a month

I’ve seen your red [blue] door and I want it painted black
No colours any more, I want them to turn black
I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes
I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.

Paint It, Black. Keith Richards, Mick Jagger. (colour change by myself)

 

Why?

I have been considering this for awhile and when I heard the phrase “Facebook Free Friday” or “Facebook Free February”, I decided on the latter.

I actually cut back my Facebook use heavily in 2018 and went pretty much black there from around March to December. I would research to find the actual date but that would mean spending more time there. My main activity on the platform is my morning login to wish friends “happy birthday” while click through to each of them to force myself to catch up with them (again, the algorithm often does not expose them if I scroll) and perhaps post a recent blog post or other external link that I find interesting. I have resisted the “candy” of  scrolling endlessly through the feed, it just kills too much time.

There are many reasons and much to do about the way Facebook (and other companies) are shaping the thoughts of our society. Sure I enjoy being able to stay in touch with others and for many (family and friends from school) this is the only contact that I really have with them. But we must think how we use these platforms and more importantly how they are using us.

Details

• I won’t be logging into Facebook on a browser and have removed it from my phone. My last post in January 2019 will be this post and I should update my profile to help point people to this post I guess. Oh, I guess I could link to my user on Facebook: kenbauer.
• Facebook Messenger removed from my phone. It appears there is no way to set an auto-reply so people will just need to figure out where I am.
• No Instagram posts nor visits. I rather like Instagram, it is too bad that Facebook purchased that. My account over there is kenwbauer.
• Not using WhatsApp in send mode.
  • Again, too bad they were bought by Facebook. Founders left already.
    • “WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum is leaving Facebook after clashing over data privacy“
    • “WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives The Inside Story On #DeleteFacebook And Why He Left $850 Million Behind“
  • Not posting to it. Unfortunately (and this is part of the problem) many important contact channels use WhatsApp to communicate and that includes channels for my children (school, sports, etc). I will silence all the channels and check the important channels once a day or so.
  • If you read that excellent article in Forbes interviewing Brian Acton, he speaks of what his model was for monetizing WhatsApp and I really wish that had happened. WhatsApp is just a mess now and everyone uses it because everyone is using it.
• Edit: I deleted my WhatsApp account today

I deleted my WhatsApp account this morning. Moving forward with my #FacebookFreeFebruary https://t.co/EE9G2YPQXx

— Ken Bauer Favel (@ken_bauer) February 7, 2019

Inspirations

This has been brewing for a long time, so I will miss some people here. List format below.

• Alan Levine has left Facebook at least twice and written much about the platform. I believe this is his first post back in 2010 of why he was leaving: “Obligatory Why I am ________ing Facebook“.
• Kashmir Hill is publishing a five part series titled “Goodbye Big Five” where she leaves each of the big five for a week: Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple. (I will back-edit, done on Feb 8). The introductory post to the series is here: “Life Without the Tech Giants“.  (added on Feb 8) Concluding post from Kashmir “I Cut the ‘Big Five’ Tech Giants From My Life. It Was Hell“.
• My friend Raj Boora posted an interesting link this week on Twitter to an article titled “How to Balance Your Media Diet“. I had never visited this site before and at first was put off by the image expecting a simple infographic post but it goes much deeper. I recommend the read.

Where and How to Find Me

Honestly, those that need to find me know how to find me. But here are some ideas:

• Well, you can find me here. Perhaps I will be posting more. You can even comment on these posts.
• Good old-fashioned email. You either have mine or you can find it with a little effort.
• Twitter has its own problems, but I am there as @ken_bauer. I have DMs (direct messages) turned on for all so anyone can private message me there. I like that feature since it allows my students to contact me without the need for them to follow me (and vice-versa).
  • Be sure to follow the correct Ken Bauer, not that other Ken Bauer who also is in education, tech and lives in Canada. Often people get caught in our “Ken Bauer trap” and we are able to use this meme that “Ken Bauer” created:

  This happens so often and I love that @KenBauer and I can have fun with it. That name change! Lol. Made my morning Ken and @sensor63 pic.twitter.com/WnW0p6O9Gu

  — Ken Bauer Favel (@ken_bauer) November 8, 2016

• Those that need it have my phone number and I highly recommend others move to Signal for instant messaging.
• A couple years back I created a Mastodon account on the main instance. There are many cool things about Mastodon technically and #IndieWeb speaking but we always run into the problem of a network needing a critical mass. I should be there more often than I am. You can find me there as @kenbauer (I managed to get that before Ken did but then again we can both have that handle on different Mastodon instances.
• You can find me in person, we can meet for coffee. For my students, I choose to setup flexible “office hours” instead of a fixed schedule that often they can never make. I use this for colleagues as well and if you are on campus, you can “book Ken Bauer” with my work YouCanBook.Me page. I still have the personal YCB page but tend to use that for scheduling podcast recordings but feel free to try that.

Title

I chose the title as the song was already in my head from a recent episode of Coverville (a bonus track, I have been a “Coverville Citizen” since 2011). Brian Ibbott is the host of this long running podcast (an award winning podcaster) and points out that the correct title has the comma in it but many covers drop the comma.

Featured Image Credit

I go to Flickr for most of my blog post images,. You can restrict your search to Creative Commons licensed images and the search is very useful. My friend Alan also built a wonderful Chrome plugin (flickr cc attribution helper) to give attribution to the image easily.

I also like that while logged in to Flickr (my account is ken_bauer there, Ken beat me again), your search shows your photos first, then those of the friends you follow and then “the rest”. This allows me to point to the work of many friends. I believe this is the first time that I am using a photo from Tom Woodward. So thanks for your excellent photography Tom! I was looking for a black door (search for door, click the black colour) and had many to choose from but settled on this one.

“IMG_7050” flickr photo by bionicteaching https://flickr.com/photos/bionicteaching/13931415653 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-SA) license