Andrew Orr, MacObserver:

We’ve shared plenty of tips on how to delete Facebook, remove third-party apps, control privacy settings, and delete bulk content. But what if you want to go even further? It turns out we can, and we can block Facebook completely by editing the hosts file.

In this guide we’ll be adding Facebook-owned domains to the hosts file, which will block them from our system. This is important because even if you deleted your Facebook account, Facebook can still track you around the web like Google does via its advertising platform.

This whole Facebook thing really has me torn. Personally, I was never a fan, at best a reluctant user. But I do get the benefit of reconnecting with old friends, that sort of thing.

But what I really hate is how deeply Facebook has embedded itself into the details of people’s personal data. So much so, that it has become almost impossible for the average person to extricate themselves from Facebook’s clutches.

Read the linked article, which walks you through one way of eliminating Facebook from your Mac. I’m not recommending this path. I don’t like any solution that has you disable a critical part of your Mac’s security infrastructure (in this case SIP). And, as is pointed out for iOS, and as Kirk McElhearn points out is possible for the Mac as well, you can use an ad blocker to achieve a similar end.

I take no fault with Andrew’s article. I’m using it as an example to point out how inexorably tied we’ve all become to Facebook.

What I’d like is a switch that let me remove myself from Facebook’s databases entirely, a do-not-track setting that Facebook would be required to respect. Fat chance of that happening.