Clearing away the digital debris - Goodbye Flickr and Facebook

The year started with an unexpected email from Flickr, the digital photo hosting service, that I've been using since 2004. The email stated that the annual fee for my Pro Account had doubled to $49.99 (£39.67) and this has prompted this post and some action. In the early days, I was a much more active user connecting and sharing photographs with friends and acquaintances all over the world. This was my early entry into sharing media content in a social manner. After signing up to Facebook in 2007 and then Twitter in 2008, Flickr's attraction gradually eroded over time. But I still kept up paying for the Pro account as it provided me with large amounts of storage, organised collections, and folders of specific events I'd captured. Paying £1.50 a month to ensure that all the images and videos across my devices were automatically backed up using the excellent app, seemed like good value to me.  However, I now pay for Dropbox to back up my digital files ( as well as having a physical back up on a hard drive) and this has superceded my use of Flickr. Seems silly to spend money on both.

This price hike has made me think about what I pay to support my digital life, but it also made me reconsider the digital spaces I spend time in. The [digital] culling is coming! 
I've been threating to get rid of Facebook for some time but there has always an excuse to not delete it: all my contacts are there ( no longer the case), lots of pics (now easy to download) and how will I know what's going happening (plenty of other spaces). Using the site has become frustrating and I've been getting less and less value from the amount of time I've spent there. Not to mention the tracking and security  Well, I've downloaded all my content and connections and now this is also gone. I'm not missing it yet and don't think I will. So its farewell to Flickr and farewell Facebook.