That’s just not the point. Of course dropping FB now may seem painful, but if you don’t do it now, you’ll be suffering from them forever. The only way Zuck will adapt is if he is forced to. And the way to force his hand is to vote with your feet and $. The argument about community just goes nowhere except to perpetuate the abuse. That “community” is being played by Zuck. I’d claim it’s smarter and more conducive to rip off the bandaid now and suffer some brief pain, than spend the rest of your life suffering from the same old agony that you are, essentially, enabling by refusing to take appropriate countermeasures.
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If you don’t use FB why troll FB users?
Understood. Fortunately Facebook does not have access to PII of those without an account who use pages on sites with Facebook links (or does it?).
I am sure your wife’s predicament is shared by many others but there is little positive to be said for a ‘service’ that people use because they have to not because they want to.
Bernard
I know some people who work in public facing positions that are required to use Facebook and/or Twitter for work.
Another oddity is you often need a public social media account to apply for jobs. Some companies don’t trust applicants who don’t have a social media prescence. Of course, that’s maybe less of a problem with the current labor shortage.
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Yes, but at the loss of being able to see where you took your photos, search on location, and so on. There’s a lot of data that you have every right to see and that significantly improves your life and iPhone experience, but that you shouldn’t have to ever share with the likes of Facebook.
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Seriously??? Wow. Just wow. That should be illegal as it’s a form of discrimination. I’ve contemplated lawsuits against companies who run promotions (contests) but you can only enter via FB, which should be illegal. I really hate this assumption that everyone has an FB account.
Decades ago when Facebook was just becoming a thing a relative sent me photos I couldn’t access because I didn’t have an account. I suddenly understood why FB was growing so rapidly. It so turned me off I refused to ever get an account.
Now with all the privacy hubbub I look like a genius. 
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Because Facebook tracks you weather you are a member or not. Using the information it collects from members about non members is a big source of revenue for them, and they cross reference among apps, locations, time frame, etc., etc. to more precisely target ads. They track both online and offline behavior that retailers share with them across their entire network, including Instagram, Etc. The more they can personalize ads, the more effective they will be, the more money they can charge for them. They sell ads across Instagram, WhatsApp, Etc., plus what is probably millions and millions more members of third parties that participate in Facebook’s Audience network:
It’s the reason why Facebook has gone bat s—- about Apple’s App Tracking Transparency.
Okay, here’s something that’s easy to say and possibly more on point: Keep Facebook off your phone and use it only on your desktop or laptop, where its settings and configuration can be more closely controlled with the use of system settings, browser settings, and browser extensions such as FB Purity. Keeping Facebook off your phone not only limits data mining and makes it more difficult, it’s the single most effective step for keeping Facebook interactions to a manageable level that’s less injurious to mental health.
To step up one further, download your Facebook data and make an archive of it, then delete your account. Set up a new account under a pseudonym and set your privacy settings as you want them from the get-go. Connect only with organizations and people that you trust completely. This is what I’ve done, and it’s the balance of privacy and connection that suits me best.
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Thanks! I’ve installed Metapho.
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Makes a lot of sense!
This is excellent advice; only 1.7% of Facebook users log in on a desktop or laptop:
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I wish all apps would have the Photos privacy setting for Add Photos Only like iCab has (left over from ios 11?). Much easier than setting up an album for each app (why yes, I do have too many apps…)
ViewExif is another good app that will show and strip metadata via the share sheet.
Facebook is the modern AOL. A huge number of people, companies, and even parts of government think that it IS the internet. Most restaurants and stores around here have ‘websites’ on FB, sometimes requiring an account for access just to see the menu. I’ve seen city and county information links to FB with no availability elsewhere. Twitter is bad too–many of our city and county services have twitter feeds for status stuff such as traffic reports and road closures with no other recourse. “But everyone is on FB and twitter!”
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I’m not, so “everyone” must be a limited set smaller than “all persons”.
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Hey, there are two of us! We should form a club! 
I’ve seen organizations decide to direct their patrons to their FB pages for information, and then ignore their carefully curated and logically laid out web sites. (Like musical organizations, public service orgs, and others.) All the while their own members are posting additional junk, jokes, cartoons, comments, and the like to their FB page, which normally should never be seen by “customers.”. And of course FB never posts a page the same way twice, and the utility of a web presence is lost.
Ditto. If someone asks me why I’m not on Twitter, I jokingly say it is because I’m not a twit. BTW, I think Twitter should actually be renamed “Tweeter” since that describes it properly.
Does anyone know if and when “removed” metadata is definitely unrecoverable or not? I’ve used the (downloadable) command line “exiftool” utility to remove metadata but (if you read enough) you are warned that the metadata hasn’t been deleted from the file. I did not read the explanation of how it’s recovered. I assume Facebook, Google, and Twitter would find your moved (and not removed) metadata if it is easily automated. I am aware that there is a command line tool (qpdf) that can be used to make such changes permanent for pdf files.
My photos are stored in the iCloud Photo Library. I do like having an approximate location stored with them, However, for ‘private locations’ (homes, offices, etc.) , I go into the info window on Mac Apple Photos and change the location to a nearby landmark such as a park.
After I do that, if I accidentally share it with the location, the result is pretty harmless.
Facebook is a quite wonderful resource. It lets me keep in touch with literally hundreds of people I wouldn’t otherwise and be part of their daily lives in a way simply impossible otherwise. So, no, giving up Facebook is not an option.* What is an option is trying to limit the amount of intrusiveness the company can manage, especially since they seem to be run by the 21st century version of the East German Stasi (slogan: “Yes, that’s a microphone. That is too. Also, your children work for us.”). One of the reasons I stay with Apple is that the company – despite a lot of failures – does seem to have a genuine commitment to some level of privacy, as opposed to FB’s commitment to getting everything they can, no matter how.
*Telling me I’m wrong about this will not be a useful reply.
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