Amerpie by Lou Plummer

Even after it became obvious that Facebook was an invasive cancer on not just the Internet, but all society, I kept my account. There were too many ways it was ingrained into my life. It was the way my cycling club announced rides and planned events. Friends who moved away years ago kept in touch with me through Facebook. So many people on the job where I worked for 20 years had accounts and I could up with them. I had 16 years of photos from family birthday parties, Christmas get-togethers and I could see my grandchildren's first days of school and their graduations. That's what kept me there. It wasn't for the opportunity to look at and post memes or to preach to the choir or lecture people on how to feel about this or that, although I did do some of all of that too. I'd use it occasionally when I got bored to see clips of the Beatles, old boxing matches and baseball games from my youth. It was good for that.

I had a Twitter account too, but it was never that important to me. I didn't have many real relationships there. I mainly followed hard new journalists and tech people. I liked to follow it during presidential debates, which make my stomach hurt if i try to watch them. I'd much rather read the astonished takes from journos about whatever put-downs the politicians were using on each other. When I started blogging, I used Twitter as just another place to put links to my app reviews and Obsidian how-to articles. I talked to a few people, but all my real interacting was happening on Mastodon. Finally, I decided I just couldn't be someone who hung out at that particular Nazi bar just to get a few more eyeballs on my little personal, n on-monetized blog. I closed my account and didn't have a single emotion as a result. It was just checking something off a to-do list.

When Mark Zuckerberg while wearing a $900,000 watch, announced last week that Meta was going to stop fact checking, I knew the end was near. Then that asshole went on Joe Rogan and lied. He claimed he was bullied by the meanies in the Biden administration who yelled at him for letting Republicans tell people not to wear masks or get vaccinated during the deadliest pandemic in a century. That was followed by an announcement that Meta was going to end its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. As if that weren't enough, Facebook deleted content it had bragged about creating for trans and non-binary people. I couldn't take it.

I sat down and marked my Threads and Instagram accounts for deletion. I requested an archive of the thousands of pictures and posts I had on Facebook, dating all the way back to the George W. Bush administration. When that comes through, Facebook is gone. Down here in the south we still have plenty of all white organizations ranging from private swimming pools, to country clubs to churches and ceremonial military units. Those are just the organized all white organizations. Lots of ad hoc groups are intensely exclusionary, too. I made a point a long, long time ago to avoid all of that and never, ever willingly participate or endorse all white spaces. I'm not going to participate in fact free or gay free or trans free spaces either. I'm not going to be responsible for a single set of eyes looking at a damn thing Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk profit from. I am embarrassed that it took me so long.

It's been a decade since Facebook ran an experiment on the accounts of a whopping 600,000 people to see if it could make them sad by what it exposed them to. Yeah, they really did that and it worked. People found about it. It made the news. Nothing ever came of it because in America, billionaires are like Ricky Bobby's sons. They get to do whatever they want.

You do you. I'm not here to tell you that using Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads makes you a bad person. If you stay, I'll assume that you have a good reason. I just can't think of one that would let me use something that will be a prime means if spreading disinformation to millions of people, disinformation that will hurt and possibly even kill them. Too dramatic? I think not. That's what it comes down to. The people running that company and the politicians they are now supporting don't give a shit if you live or die. They just want to extract as much wealth from you as they can.

Get a Mastodon account. Get a Bluesky account. Just stay away from billionaire owned manipulation machines.

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