I am deleting
my Facebook account,
but I am not unfriending you.

Jeremiah Lee

Facebook is optimized to spread hate. While not an intentional design, it is irreparable because the people who work at Facebook deny or refuse to understand the problem and therefore cannot fix it. The appropriate response to something systemically harmful is to stop participating in the harm.

By using Facebook myself, I give you a reason to keep using Facebook. I want you to have one less reason to use Facebook. I hope your other friends also leave Facebook until you no longer go to Facebook because there is nothing there to see.

Jeremiah Lee

The quick answer:

1. Facebook, Google, and Verizon Media Group are in a race to collect as much data about you as possible. They believe the company that knows the most about you can show you the most relevant ads. Invading your privacy is essential to the operation of their businesses.
2. Companies that earn money from showing you ads, like Facebook, must create reasons for you to see the ads. Facebook’s primary goals are to keep you coming back and spending more time than you intended. Facebook creates a fear of missing out to keep you coming back. Facebook prioritizes content that is likely to illicit an emotional response from you so that you spend time commenting and returning to view replies. Once Facebook knows what triggers you, Facebook amplifies similar content.
3. Facebook’s design has been optimized in every way to keep you in a reactionary state. Because you become desensitized after repeated exposure to the same type of content, the content gradually drifts to more extreme positions.
4. Facebook’s content moderation policy is to permit as much as possible, as determined by laws and advertisers’ tastes. Polarizing content evokes the most reactions and the most re-shares. Facebook defends not moderating harmful content because it is the most profitable content.

Wealthy-Facebook-investor-turned-wealthier-critic Roger McNamee wrote the best answer to this question in his book Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe.

Hundreds of businesses suspended advertising on Facebook in July 2020 as part of the Stop Hate For Profit protest, but it takes two—advertisers and us using Facebook—in order for Facebook to make money.

Jeremiah Lee

I’m not on WhatsApp.

I use and recommend Signal, the non-profit that created WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption protocol.

Did you know Mark Zuckerberg broke a contractural promise to WhatApp’s founder, so the founder quit and gave $50 million to Signal? WhatsApp Cofounder Brian Acton Gives The Inside Story On #DeleteFacebook And Why He Left $850 Million Behind