Facebook: Why I’m Staying … For Now
January 23, 2025 – David R. Weiss

I’ve seen friends—many whose values and choices I deeply respect—announce their intentions to leave Facebook (and Instagram). Some are departing to preserve their own mental health; others are signing off as a way to break ties with Meta and its insidious influence in our lives.

I can respect both reasons. Indeed, both resonate with me personally. There is no question that Facebook posts or comments can play havoc with my mental wellbeing—and do, fairly often. And I’m well aware that despite Facebook regularly offering me up memories with the (let’s be honest, grooming) phrase, “David, we care about you and the memories you share here,” all Facebook really cares about is monetizing my clicks in every way possible.

To use most any social media these days is to crawl willingly into the belly of the beast.

Disconnecting from Twitter/X, Instagram, Threads, Facebook, etc. is a legitimate decision. But that doesn’t automatically make it the best decision. For me, for the values I hold and the relationships I want to tend, it’s more complicated.

As I’ve wrestled with this, these are the insights that have most informed my choice to stay. (For now.)

Facebook is a place where I can be in relationship with (and, at times) in active community and solidarity not only with friends, but also with marginalized persons, voices, and communities. It’s hardly the only space where I can do that, but I have BIPOC and LGBTQ friends on Facebook that stretch across the country and around the globe. My capacity to stay connected to them off Facebook would be next to nil.

It’s equally true—maybe more importantly so—that Facebook has served (despite all its morally-compromised capitalistic impulses!) as a “belly of the beast” where marginalized persons and communities have fashioned deep and life-giving connections. Let’s be real: for those persons most at risk in our society, there really is no option to connect that is not in some corner of the beast’s belly. For those most targeted by bias, prejudice, and exploitation, there is no choice to leave Facebook for a safer space. Safer space is not anywhere for them.

As one of my gay friends commented on another friend’s page, “I especially think it’s cowardly for people who identify as allies to leave because of the way Meta is making it easier to abuse queer and trans people. Why trust a person who will leave at the time when they’re needed somewhere the most?” I wouldn’t paint every decision to leave as “cowardly,” but his lament that Facebook will become an even more unsafe place if those who can, leave, hits home for me. I’m certain that among my approximately 1000 Facebook friends, a couple hundred are LGBTQ of BIPOC.

Another friend, commenting to a leading queer faith leader on her decision to stay, wrote, “Leaving Meta now would indeed undermine the connections and solidarity that are crucial for our movements. By staying and leaning into this community, you’re helping to preserve a vital space for marginalized voices.” Both of her comments speak to my decision to stay.

For more than thirty years now I have been publicly committed to being an ally, actively working to expand the sphere of safety for LGBTQ and BIPOC persons in faith communities and in civic spaces. (And offering my heart and home as sanctuary when other spaces are not yet safe.) My decision to stay on Facebook is part of this commitment. My Facebook wall will continue to be a place where my Allyship is on public display, and my comments will continue to promote safety and flourishing for all—and to disrupt the threats to that safety and flourishing.

But perhaps the comment that moved me most was in a meme by Feminista Jones, (b. Michelle Taylor), activist and author of Reclaiming Our Space: How Black Feminists Are Changing the World From the Tweets to the Streets. She suggests that the decisions by Meta and others to create less friendly conditions for social media are precisely intended to get us to “abandon the communities we have cultivated”—precisely because these communities have proven to be powerful loci of resistance. In line with my comment about “the belly of the beast,” she says, “NONE of these spaces are actually ‘good.’ But WE need them to stay connected. We been doing the best we can. Block. Mute. Go.”

Her insight was echoed by a lesbian friend who wrote, “If we fracture our social structures they win. If we scatter to the wind to avoid what we perceive to be unsafe, they win. Move forward with caution. Stick together. Don’t run.” Finally, another faith leader I respect shared, “I was in a meeting of ecumenical faith leaders today where we debated this very question, recognizing Facebook is still a space where many of our members are. My fear is that if those of us with a commitment to justice and peace all leave this platform, we will have effectively ceded this space to other voices.” And one of the lesbian pastors and authors whose work was formative in my own understanding thirty years ago, stated simply, “I’m staying. They are not going to steal my joy and the connection I have with so many of you through this medium.”

So, I will continue to be here. Very intentionally. Maintaining connections that matter to me. Building community with others. Expanding safety. Disrupting harm. Hell, fomenting solidarity and resistance.

I have no illusions this is a “pure” choice. As Audre Lorde wrote, “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

Hence, I am making several decisions (perhaps more will come) to counter Meta’s game.

(1) Per Feminista Jones’ counsel, I will be generous in blocking and muting voices that bring a harmful presence onto my page. And I will do the same for persons and pages that I have no need of in my life. At present, I’ve left my profile set to “public,” but, if need be, either to protect others or myself, I’ll move to “Friends Only.”

(2) I’ve turned off Meta’s ability to track my “off-Meta” activity. When on (which is Facebook’s default setting), this allows all Meta technologies to receive information about websites you visit and use that information to present ads based on your activity off social media. This is central to Meta’s relationship to businesses; it is one of the key ways they monetize you. By turning it off, I’m going to see more random ads in my newsfeed, but I’m withdrawing my consent for my interests to be sold to other companies. I’ll show you how to do that below.

(3) I’m going to train myself to never buy anything through a Facebook link. This is another way Meta has chosen to make Facebook less a “social media” site for building friendships and shared communities and more a “money-making-media” site for their own profit. Every click to from a Facebook ad to a product website rewards them for monetizing you. I say “train myself” because this won’t be easy; Facebook counts on human impulsiveness. But I’m going to press myself: if I see something that really interests me, I’ll leave Facebook and go independently to the product’s website directly. With my off-Meta activity disabled, Facebook will be none the wiser, and my interests will belong to me.

(4) I’m going to ignore all the click-bait stories presented for my reading pleasure. Yes, somedays I’m prone to click through to a lurid-fascinating-or-just-plain-unbelievable story I was never looking for, but came my way thanks to Facebook. I don’t need that. And Facebook knows that, which is why they take money from someone else to thrust clickbait in front of my fingertips. My interests are no longer for sale to Meta. And I’m going to resist clickbait.

(5) I’m going to be very selective about what other Facebook pages I visit. Even within Facebook, there’s a plethora of vapid pages masquerading as essential-to-me and begging for my attention. I joined Facebook to connect with friends and communities of interest. Every time I (or you!) go down a rabbit-hole after some tasty tidbit we weren’t hungry for in the first place, we reward Facebook financially for distracting us from the friends and communities that brought us here in the first place.

(6) I’m going to take my amygdala (my lower brain) off Facebook. I’m going to try to use Facebook for reasoned exchanges and emotional expression—NOT emotional reactiveness. Facebook algorithms aim to amplify posts that spark anger. Alongside its efforts to reach into our wallets, Facebook is equally interested in shutting down critical reflective thought and keeping our brains awash in chaotic emotional energy. Those unsettled emotions follow us even when we log off, making critical thought, contemplation, and civil discourse harder to come by in all the rest of our lives. To really un-game Facebook, we need to keep our amygdales in check.

(7) And—just in case—I’m going to make a pointed request. If you appreciate my thinking out loud like this, which I do on my blog and then share to Facebook, please subscribe to my blog directly. That way, if either you or I ever feel compelled to exit Facebook altogether, we can still carry on these conversations as part of our “off-Meta” activity.

Finally, I need to make a couple of hard closing observations, precisely because I take Audre Lorde’s caveat seriously. If enough of us make good on the commitments above—and persevere in building genuine communities of support and solidarity despite Meta’s core commitment to monetize every corner of its mediascape—eventually Facebook will find other ways to squeeze us and undermine our aspirations. It’s their beast, and their belly, and we won’t change that.

Moreover, one of my friends shared a “warning” allegedly posted by a Meta employee, encouraging people to leave Facebook if they can because the content is going to get much more toxic. And asserting that Meta continues to collect our data even if we disable the settings—especially if we use Meta apps directly. Again, it’s their beast and they have no plans to tame it.

So, I also commit to keeping tabs on other less beastly social media options. (I jokingly told my daughter, maybe I should open up a MySpace account.) I’ve never done much with my Twitter/X account, but I hear BlueSky is a rising and worthwhile alternative to that. I just set up an account on BlueSky for myself. (Plus, visit www.FreeOurFeeds.com to learn about an intriguing venture to help BlueSky maintain its founders’ aspirational goals.) Still, that’s not a real alternative to the type of connections Facebook has offered. I’m not sure a real alternative is out there yet. Maybe endlessly reinventing our means of parrying Facebook’s thrusts into our pocketbooks and our personal data is the best we can do. Until we sense that the risk of harms ultimately outpaces our ability to parry them.

But this is hard. For many of us the social connections on Facebook have accrued slowly and deepened significantly over a decade or longer. And, despite its undeniable insidious character, there are a lot of people for whom Facebook has become a primary and crucial social community—for a host of reasons. Marginalized identities or geographic isolation; physical, mental, or neurodivergent challenges that make in-person relationships and community difficult. The metaphors are mixed and imperfect, but for these people, the ask here is to relocate an entire virtual refugee camp from one platform to another, with the alternatives being getting left behind in a pool of toxic sludge or getting lost and isolated off Facebook without ever finding another space to land in.

Certainly, not all of us face this stark dilemma, but many of those most at risk do. I get that Meta is no friend to any of us. But in a deeply imperfect world and social media landscape, I’m hesitant to leave behind those whose options to find safer space are far more limited than mine. So, I’m staying. For now.

And I’ll be doing my best to put Facebook to work against its own desires, using my posts to build community and call out (or call in) harmful posts, and using my clicks to humanize rather than monetize my social media presence.

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Now, for those of you also interested in disconnecting your personal web time from Facebook’s monetary monitoring, here’s how you turn off Meta’s access to your “off-Meta” activity. Recall from my caveat above, this may not be fool proof. Still, if you disable this AND don’t click from Facebook to outside websites (you can choose to access any websites you want to on your own, rather than clicking from as Facebook link), you should be able to limit Meta’s reach into your life.

NOTE: These step-by-step instructions are from a laptop—and a Mac at that. They may be slightly different on a phone or PC.

Go to your Facebook profile (not your newsfeed). In the top right corner click on your tiny profile pic and go down the menu to choose “Settings & privacy” (Fig. 1). This will take you to another menu, still on the top right. From this menu choose “Settings” (Fig. 2)

A third menu will appear, this time on the left side of your screen. On this menu you want to go into your Accounts Center (the first heading); click on “See more in Accounts Center” Fig. 3). When you do, you’ll go to a page where you’ll see a list of all the Meta apps you use—AND on the left side an Accounts Center menu. From here, click on “Your information and permissions” (Fig. 4)

Now you’ll see a set of options, including “Your activity off Meta technologies” (Fig. 5). Click on that, which will take you to a screen titled “Your activity off Meta technologies” (Fig. 6). From this screen you’ll want to click on both “Clear previous activity,” which lets you click a “Clear” button to remove any data about your previous web movements (Fig. 7), and also “Manage future activity,” which lets you switch from Facebook’s default setting to “Disconnect future activity” (Fig. 8) and opt out of future tracking. Supposedly, choosing to disable future tracking also clears your previous activity, but I cleared my previous activity first.

If you take these steps—and also discipline yourself to not click directly from sponsored Facebook ads to websites (instead, access those websites directly from your browser)—you should limit the amount of data Facebook gathers about your activity outside of Facebook. This lessens the extent to which Meta can monetize your presence there.

Remember, nevertheless, that all of us who choose to use Facebook, are choosing to maintain friendships and form and cultivate communities “in the belly of the beast.” We do so at great peril, recognizing that sometimes we cannot avoid peril to pursue the things we care about. So, we pursue them here with caution and vigilance, matched by determination to nevertheless make connections that serve our needs, pursue the greater good, and just maybe give the beast a little gas now and then. 🙂

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David Weiss is a theologian, writer, poet and hymnist, “writing into the whirlwind” of contemporary challenges, joys, and sorrows around climate crisis, sexuality, justice, peace, and family. Reach him at drw59mn@gmail.com. Read more at www.davidrweiss.com where he blogs under the theme, “Full Frontal Faith: Erring on the Edge of Honest.” Support him in Writing into the Whirlwind at www.patreon.com/fullfrontalfaith.