I hope that will make it "OK" career wise to not have facebook. I keep mine around just in case HR needs to "check" it as part of the hiring process. Id love to delete mine but im afraid that would negatively impact my ability to get a job or future "Social Score" (see china)
This one factoid is the thing that keeps me the least interested in having a jobby-job. The fact that it is now de rigeur for some fuckin' HR flack to sniff around your social media feed before they'll offer you a job is fucking horrifying. I can think of nothing so demotivating. The last jobby-job I had, the HR bitch that laid me off tried to friend me on LinkedIn a week later. I can't recall if I actually wrote her back "you're fucking kidding me" or thought better of it. I heard they laid her off six months later.
One of my friends suggested that if I created a Linkdin account and a fake Facebook profile for myself, my job hunt might go a bit easier. I straight up told them that any company that wants to snoop on me as a factor in whether or not I'm employable is a company I don't want to work for.
I'll defend the LinkedIn suggestion. I have a LinkedIn account I keep sort of up to date. I do not have a Facebook account. LinkedIn can show an active interest in the employer or the career path, and that can help convince an employer that a candidate isn't looking at them as a passing fad or just a paycheck. It isn't about having a fake account or even pretending to be interested when one isn't.
My use of facebook is limited to checking for events, checking wich events my friends are going to and connecting with peoples by real names. I don't look at my feed and use sms instead of the facebook chat. Nothing other then facebook fills the same need and if a service was to compete in the same space it would have a massive adoption problem. So what can we do?
We've been looking at it carefully. Facebook gets $150 a month from us and according to Google Analytics, accounts for 3% of our pageviews. I was able to nurse us up to the front page through pure organic search legwork (our SEO was limited to making sure we passed Google's mobile qualifications and their general "you're not a spammer" worksheet).
It's honestly not that hard. The problem is if you look online, the general attitude of SEO is "you must practice the Black Arts exactly as I say or you will sink into the mire! spammit spammit spammit! Subscribe to my newsletter!" My needs won't parallel yours as mine are for a brick'n'mortar for-profit with one location but my needs were pretty easily met simply by abiding by Google's tools. Of the evil wizards, Neil Patel is the least annoying and most pragmatic.