I haven't experienced the grief that others seem to have as a result of occasionally getting updates on the lives of distant friends and family that I'd otherwise not likely see. When I was younger I was annoyed by certain people on FB, this was relatively short-lived since I realized I could decide who was on my list and what content is displayed to me. If I dislike someone enough, unfriend. This is rare as I don't typically friend you in the first place if I don't want you on there. If I simply am not interested in receiving updates about every stupid thing they like, and they have a habit of mindless drivel - I elect not to receive those updates from them. Easy. In fact, way easier than any amount of energy expended to instead complain about those people.
As for all the privacy concerns - definitely agree that Facebook is not necessarily a trustworthy entity, if anything they've proven not to be - but there's also no reasonable expectation of privacy when using their free service that relies on data-mining on the internet. You'd be fooling yourself if you expect much different of any free online social media service.
Also consider that which is actually up to you:
- You decide what personal information went into your account in the first place. Your full real name, where you grew up, where you studied, etc etc.
- You decide what content willingly got sent up to their servers. Your pictures, all of your likes, etc.
- You have control over the individual settings in your account. What is shared with who, what content is displayed to you, etc.
- You have control over your browser, computer and local area network. If you are so inclined, you could run FB inside a virtual machine to give it relative isolation from the rest of your machine. If you're really concerned about what FB is doing, you can use a browser extension like Noscript to see what other sites are implicated, among other browser goodies. Maybe tedious, but you could set up a packet capture (something like Wireshark) from your machine to see what traffic is going and coming. The list goes on - you could obviously do a lot more to dig and dig, but at what point do you draw the line there?
On their Android apps, first you have to explicitly agree or disagree to allow the app permissions to utilize your device. Even after the fact, you can go into your permissions settings (or download an app to do so if your particular version of android doesn't have that in the settings) and deny access to any permission you like for the app. In this regard, even Google would be more concerning as certain permissions don't actually get disabled even if you disable them for Google services like Hangouts (try disabling the Camera permission to Hangouts -- Camera is still active in the app afterwards. Not so for other apps including FB). So, even if you are convinced of nefarious activity on their part but refuse to give up using it, you still have a lot of things you can do to protect yourself - it all depends on how much time and energy you want to spend on it.
Much of the same privacy concerns can be said about Google and others -- bottom line is often that you have to strike a healthy balance somewhere - you can simply disconnect entirely and not use these services, or you can mitigate any privacy risks as best you can while making reasonable use of those services and understanding what is actually occurring when you use them (ie, if you understand how the web is a public space, you might not post as much personally telling stuff).
As far as the social aspect where you're cool or uncool for using or not using it--- gimme a fucking break already. I've yet to encounter a situation where someone having or not having a Facebook account has adversely impacted me in any way. People I like continue to be part of my life regardless of FB. FB has its use, it has its time and place. You use it as you see fit and take the rest out of the equation.
It's like people saying they're so happy to have gotten rid of their cell phone because they don't like being on it all the time, etc. Uh, WTF? I pay for my phone for ME and not for anyone else. I use it as I see fit. I control what calls I make and receive, I control when, how and how much I use it. It would be completely asinine for me to get rid of it for no other reason than "I'm freeing myself from the cell". Sorry, but if you were a slave to your phone you were definitely doing it wrong. Same goes for FB. If it's having a dramatic adverse effect on your life, you are definitely doing it wrong.
Facebook
Twitter