I’m just a writer guy, standing in front of you, a reader person, my fist clenched and hovering over the big red delete button on my Facebook account, asking you to help me out here.
Here in the Darkest Tmeline - the one where SOCIAL MEDIA (of all things!) and its ability to mega-amplify nonsense and transform it into Alt-truth - is the thing that destroys civilisation. I still find that hard to wrap my head around, but it's real and happening.
Regarding your Zuckbook account, I think Amos said it best to Clarissa Mao in The Expanse: "You breathe in, you breathe out. Eat. Shit. Sleep. You take whatever they give you, and you give nothing in return." Stay there for the good people; your friends, relatives and those who buy your books there. And give NOTHING to Zuckbook in return - click on nothing, link to nothing. Only take from them, give them NOTHING.
Amos simply understood The Churn, which is where we are as a global civilisation: fascist demagogues crushing democracy across the planet and Cthulhu in the White House again to speed the process; climate change and other environmental disasters biting increasingly and inescapably hard, especially for the poor; resource extraction curves all on the downside of marginal utility; 8.3bn people beset by ever-increasing inequality; and a global organisational model - nation states - that is no longer fit for purpose in an Age of Global Crises. As HST would say, seyla...
One reason why Twitter/X has had such a recent decline is that people designed a substitute that did roughly the same thing - Bluesky. The other reason why is declined is that when enough users got disgusted with Twitter (basically when its owner Musk was crediting it as the reason Trump won), these users migrated their asses onto Bluesky. Now Twitter is a sad memory of itself, while lots of people are now content being on Bluesky.
Facebook is a lot more complicated than Twitter, of course, but if someone works out a substitute that allows people to migrate themselves AND their friends, then that's when people are going to jump ship. That's why I'm staying put for now, but that's why I can also anticipate some event in the future (Zuckerberg going all in White Nationalist, maybe) where people say "fuck this" and evacuate en masse.
Someone has to work out a substitute, of course. I have enough techy skills to think of how it can be achieved, but I can't do it alone. But it's something I've been thinking about.
Not sure if others have mentioned this JB, but you don't have to "delete your FaceStalk account to reduce the head-noise and general shitfuckery. Although that would definitely work.
There's an option to "deactivate" your account, which is like hitting the mute button. You never need to go there again - I did it years ago, and oh the serenity.
The bonus is that taking this option allows you to keep access to FB Messenger, so you can still chat with your 'friends' but only those you choose to engage with, and only at your convenience. And there's a distinct lack of bots and unwelcome ads too.
Second this. I do this every year over the week of my birthday, to avoid the insincere greetings from a bunch of people I don’t care about. Last year I simply failed to reactivate as I enjoyed the space so much.
I know a bunch of important personally historical events remain documented there, and I have reactivated a couple of times for a specific purpose and shit down again.
Retaining messenger has proved useful. Have your cake and refuse to eat it too. It’s a great solution
Birthday has never been published. Privacy settings at maximum. But there is always that well meaning friend whose birthday greeting will give it away. So I shut down social media completely at that time
I was an early adopter of Facebook and I have to say, for years it gave me so much pleasure. Yes to cat videos, but also it genuinely gave me connection to friends and people with similar interests all over the world. My entire life over the past 18 years is on that damn platform.
I used to be very active in posting political posts and commentary, but I rarely do that any longer. First of all, they have all but killed your ability to share links, but also, I am really coming aruond to realise how much the platform itself has changed the way we communicate: people now feel almost obliged to offer advice when none is asked for; deny experiences you've shared because they haven't had them or don't see them. It's not quite the cesspool twitter became, because it's easier to curate your audience, but even people I love piss me right off over there most days.
But I have lived alone for 30 years and I have to say, it was a lifeline there for a long time, and I am loathe to cut it off. It's not that lifeline any more. I am sick of ads reminding me I'm old and fat, and that's pretty much all I see now. Zuck's fuckery has been well known for a long time, but my ability to tolerate the tech-bro fuckheads is over, I fear.
But here's the rub: I am admin for groups that have no other way to communciate and share events, news etc and for that reason alone I can't leave.
A relatively new friend, someone who I know in real life, contacted me today to organise coffee next week, and she made some reference to not being able to find a post of mine because I post a lot. I thought, honey, ya shoulda seen me in 2010.
I feel stuck. I hate them all. What to do? I have no clue.
A group that is one of the only reasons I go on FB has decided to move to Discord. I've dipped my toe in that but find it's well described as "drinking from a fire hose " due to the onslaught of notifs... I know I could learn to use it ... I guess ...
Anyway just sharing an option for a group - not sure what to do about friends but I've noticed even the former FB die-hards are dropping away fast.
I'm an Android user; in those we can create text groups and texts go out to everyone in the group, not sure if that's something Apple devices can do, maybe worth looking at, so to speak.
The catch is everybody has to have a mobile device o'course. Wishing you a good weekend regardless.
Best thing I did was delete the app off the phone. Shut off all notifications. I have to go through a browser to look. People on there I liked I keep in touch with messenger. After a bit of withdrawal the only thing I open it for now is FB marketplace which often has some bargains. Chasing some spare rims for my Jimny if you have any?
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. No more phone, no more Instagram, but if I want to contact someone I can use my laptop, go on, make contact and leave again. No random browsing, no groups, just a quick smash-and-grab social contact.
Instagram was easy to give. I only ever followed space agencies and professional photographers and at the end Zuck had so thoroughly enshittified everything that I never actually saw any of their posts.
I deleted Twitter & Facebook from phone & that’s made me happier. IG probably has to go too. A desktop check in to see which distant friend’s kid is graduating from where every week or so is about where I’m at. Enjoy Substack now as my daily time suck, because mainly long form and you get unlikely pieces of pure genius.
I still use it for many reasons - keeping in touch with some family, as an organisation/promotion tool for my bush care activities, and for plant identification among other things. And despite being THE ABSOLUTE WORST online platform for buying and selling anything, it IS where the people are.
But that doesn't mean I don't feel dirty about it and pissed off with Zuckerberg, Trump, Musk, Bezos et al and their gutless self-promotion and self-protection at our expense.
It's not INEVITABLE that billionaires fall on a spectrum from right-wing to uber-fascist (Bill Gates, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Warren Buffet as counter examples), but it does seem to be a pattern, with all they have to gain from maintaining the status quo.
Can we just do away with billionaires and let the hippies run the world?
My FB account is locked except to friends and family, who are spread all over the world. I only have 140 friends which has stayed the same pretty much for the last five years. I should do a full of some of these too. But because I make no posts set to “public”, it’s quite a good place for me. I have a few pages I follow, mainly birds and local stuff for my Labor branch. I somewhat unashamedly like the daily memories, as they come in useful for jogging my ancient memory, and reminding people of the ghastly years under dangerous nitwits like Abbott, Newman, and Trump round one.
I still find the science, nature pages like the James Webb telescope brilliant, so it’s still a good aggregator for me. If you have a publicly recognised profile, I imagine it could be a sewer, but I use the block quite judiciously too.
This is basically how I run mine, all private and I pick and choose who to follow. There are some good sources of info out there and all credible agencies run FB accounts.
Apart from friends, family & cat videos, I'm rarely on FB - but as you said, it's the only way to stay in touch with some of them - & if not for messenger, I'd have to actually get up & go to my son's room to ask him something 🤣🤣
Delete it. If you keep it but continue not to use it, sure as eggs at some point Meta will start generating AI content on your behalf. Nothing is too low for Meta and zuck and I bet they yet already have plans to do it.
I mainly use Facebook for Memories, because I find I need prompting these days to remember anything, partly because to live with certain stresses I've created an internal detachment. Or it could be incipient dementia. Whatevs. So I go to Facebook to read and look at pictures - ones that I've posted over the past 16 years. I read the comments under them from people no longer with us. Then I post things, including political snipes, so that I can see them in a year and think how astute I was.
By the time I've done all that, I figured I've wasted enough of it, and leave.
Loss of memory can often be attributed to the use of social media. When you don't have to remember things anymore, you don't, sort of thing. Like kids with no attention span because YouTube flashes up composite video mashes of 20 of their all-time favourite shows/movies.
The old adage, use it or lose it, is worth putting on the wall. Crosswords, number puzzles, quizzes, memory games can all help. They are trying to make us dependent on them. I refuse to be infantilised.
There will come a tipping point where enough people leave FB/ZB and the whole platform will become irrelevant and pointless - leaving the site to become the Chernobyl of the internet.
Should you dump FB? You are the only one who can judge. I was almost tempted to rejoin FB just so I could leave again over Zucks 'virtue signalling' BS. I jettisoned Facebook even before I dumped Twitter after Musk took over. It was years ago back when Zuck made some statement how he wasn't going to restrict Nazi's from threatening to do Nazi shit to people on FB. I however was never in danger of anyone cybersquatting on my Name/Face when I left. At least I don't think anyone did. I don't know if I am am any happier or more satisfied without Facebook (or meta) and twitter in my life but I certainly think I spend less time doom/rage scrolling now. I certainly think I am as well, if not more informed by getting information from other sources than these, (I rely on an RSS to collect my interests into a single digestible format.)
I’ve turned mine into a shell. Deleted all comments in public forums and unsubbed from all groups and pages. All that’s left is the connections to friends. Time consuming but possibly the best option, for now at least.
Here in the Darkest Tmeline - the one where SOCIAL MEDIA (of all things!) and its ability to mega-amplify nonsense and transform it into Alt-truth - is the thing that destroys civilisation. I still find that hard to wrap my head around, but it's real and happening.
Regarding your Zuckbook account, I think Amos said it best to Clarissa Mao in The Expanse: "You breathe in, you breathe out. Eat. Shit. Sleep. You take whatever they give you, and you give nothing in return." Stay there for the good people; your friends, relatives and those who buy your books there. And give NOTHING to Zuckbook in return - click on nothing, link to nothing. Only take from them, give them NOTHING.
I like this. I like this a lot.
Amos was definitely the smartest guy in The Expanse.
Amos simply understood The Churn, which is where we are as a global civilisation: fascist demagogues crushing democracy across the planet and Cthulhu in the White House again to speed the process; climate change and other environmental disasters biting increasingly and inescapably hard, especially for the poor; resource extraction curves all on the downside of marginal utility; 8.3bn people beset by ever-increasing inequality; and a global organisational model - nation states - that is no longer fit for purpose in an Age of Global Crises. As HST would say, seyla...
"𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝’𝐬 𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝟏% 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐢𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐧 𝐛𝐮𝐝𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓, 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟏𝟎 𝐝𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫.
𝐈𝐧 𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚 𝐡𝐚𝐥𝐟, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐡𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐲 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝, 𝐨𝐧 𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐞, 𝟐.𝟏 𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐧 𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬, 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐨 𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐎𝐱𝐟𝐚𝐦 𝐆𝐁. 𝐈𝐭 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝟓𝟎% 𝐨𝐟 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐚𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧."
(From Friday's The Guardian) How's that for a motive to eat the rich!
One reason why Twitter/X has had such a recent decline is that people designed a substitute that did roughly the same thing - Bluesky. The other reason why is declined is that when enough users got disgusted with Twitter (basically when its owner Musk was crediting it as the reason Trump won), these users migrated their asses onto Bluesky. Now Twitter is a sad memory of itself, while lots of people are now content being on Bluesky.
Facebook is a lot more complicated than Twitter, of course, but if someone works out a substitute that allows people to migrate themselves AND their friends, then that's when people are going to jump ship. That's why I'm staying put for now, but that's why I can also anticipate some event in the future (Zuckerberg going all in White Nationalist, maybe) where people say "fuck this" and evacuate en masse.
Someone has to work out a substitute, of course. I have enough techy skills to think of how it can be achieved, but I can't do it alone. But it's something I've been thinking about.
This
Not sure if others have mentioned this JB, but you don't have to "delete your FaceStalk account to reduce the head-noise and general shitfuckery. Although that would definitely work.
There's an option to "deactivate" your account, which is like hitting the mute button. You never need to go there again - I did it years ago, and oh the serenity.
The bonus is that taking this option allows you to keep access to FB Messenger, so you can still chat with your 'friends' but only those you choose to engage with, and only at your convenience. And there's a distinct lack of bots and unwelcome ads too.
I've found this path a much less annoying option.
Second this. I do this every year over the week of my birthday, to avoid the insincere greetings from a bunch of people I don’t care about. Last year I simply failed to reactivate as I enjoyed the space so much.
I know a bunch of important personally historical events remain documented there, and I have reactivated a couple of times for a specific purpose and shit down again.
Retaining messenger has proved useful. Have your cake and refuse to eat it too. It’s a great solution
.
Delete your birthday, and any other personal info! FB is a rich harvesting ground for data thieves and scammers.
Birthday has never been published. Privacy settings at maximum. But there is always that well meaning friend whose birthday greeting will give it away. So I shut down social media completely at that time
good idea !
I was an early adopter of Facebook and I have to say, for years it gave me so much pleasure. Yes to cat videos, but also it genuinely gave me connection to friends and people with similar interests all over the world. My entire life over the past 18 years is on that damn platform.
I used to be very active in posting political posts and commentary, but I rarely do that any longer. First of all, they have all but killed your ability to share links, but also, I am really coming aruond to realise how much the platform itself has changed the way we communicate: people now feel almost obliged to offer advice when none is asked for; deny experiences you've shared because they haven't had them or don't see them. It's not quite the cesspool twitter became, because it's easier to curate your audience, but even people I love piss me right off over there most days.
But I have lived alone for 30 years and I have to say, it was a lifeline there for a long time, and I am loathe to cut it off. It's not that lifeline any more. I am sick of ads reminding me I'm old and fat, and that's pretty much all I see now. Zuck's fuckery has been well known for a long time, but my ability to tolerate the tech-bro fuckheads is over, I fear.
But here's the rub: I am admin for groups that have no other way to communciate and share events, news etc and for that reason alone I can't leave.
A relatively new friend, someone who I know in real life, contacted me today to organise coffee next week, and she made some reference to not being able to find a post of mine because I post a lot. I thought, honey, ya shoulda seen me in 2010.
I feel stuck. I hate them all. What to do? I have no clue.
I’m with you, Judith. I feel the same way
A group that is one of the only reasons I go on FB has decided to move to Discord. I've dipped my toe in that but find it's well described as "drinking from a fire hose " due to the onslaught of notifs... I know I could learn to use it ... I guess ...
Anyway just sharing an option for a group - not sure what to do about friends but I've noticed even the former FB die-hards are dropping away fast.
Using FB Messenger seems to work for me. You can communicate with family and friends without having to trawl through the garbage they post day to day.
Use a telephone or texting. Fuck the Zuck. You're welcome.
Yeah, should have said it’s a whole family group chat thing. None of the one on one stuff.
WhatsApp was good for groups but meta bought that too so.. if you find a good alternative scream it from the rooftops, I'll hear you.
I'm an Android user; in those we can create text groups and texts go out to everyone in the group, not sure if that's something Apple devices can do, maybe worth looking at, so to speak.
The catch is everybody has to have a mobile device o'course. Wishing you a good weekend regardless.
This is what my mum does. She seems happy enough.
Best thing I did was delete the app off the phone. Shut off all notifications. I have to go through a browser to look. People on there I liked I keep in touch with messenger. After a bit of withdrawal the only thing I open it for now is FB marketplace which often has some bargains. Chasing some spare rims for my Jimny if you have any?
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. No more phone, no more Instagram, but if I want to contact someone I can use my laptop, go on, make contact and leave again. No random browsing, no groups, just a quick smash-and-grab social contact.
Instagram was easy to give. I only ever followed space agencies and professional photographers and at the end Zuck had so thoroughly enshittified everything that I never actually saw any of their posts.
I deleted Twitter & Facebook from phone & that’s made me happier. IG probably has to go too. A desktop check in to see which distant friend’s kid is graduating from where every week or so is about where I’m at. Enjoy Substack now as my daily time suck, because mainly long form and you get unlikely pieces of pure genius.
I still use it for many reasons - keeping in touch with some family, as an organisation/promotion tool for my bush care activities, and for plant identification among other things. And despite being THE ABSOLUTE WORST online platform for buying and selling anything, it IS where the people are.
But that doesn't mean I don't feel dirty about it and pissed off with Zuckerberg, Trump, Musk, Bezos et al and their gutless self-promotion and self-protection at our expense.
It's not INEVITABLE that billionaires fall on a spectrum from right-wing to uber-fascist (Bill Gates, Mike Cannon-Brookes and Warren Buffet as counter examples), but it does seem to be a pattern, with all they have to gain from maintaining the status quo.
Can we just do away with billionaires and let the hippies run the world?
It would be chaotic, but nicer.
My FB account is locked except to friends and family, who are spread all over the world. I only have 140 friends which has stayed the same pretty much for the last five years. I should do a full of some of these too. But because I make no posts set to “public”, it’s quite a good place for me. I have a few pages I follow, mainly birds and local stuff for my Labor branch. I somewhat unashamedly like the daily memories, as they come in useful for jogging my ancient memory, and reminding people of the ghastly years under dangerous nitwits like Abbott, Newman, and Trump round one.
I still find the science, nature pages like the James Webb telescope brilliant, so it’s still a good aggregator for me. If you have a publicly recognised profile, I imagine it could be a sewer, but I use the block quite judiciously too.
It sounds like you’re using it the way it was originally intended to be used
to rate hotness of women at Harvard university?
Sadly not for me any more, but you do you😏
This is basically how I run mine, all private and I pick and choose who to follow. There are some good sources of info out there and all credible agencies run FB accounts.
Apart from friends, family & cat videos, I'm rarely on FB - but as you said, it's the only way to stay in touch with some of them - & if not for messenger, I'd have to actually get up & go to my son's room to ask him something 🤣🤣
Delete it. If you keep it but continue not to use it, sure as eggs at some point Meta will start generating AI content on your behalf. Nothing is too low for Meta and zuck and I bet they yet already have plans to do it.
I mainly use Facebook for Memories, because I find I need prompting these days to remember anything, partly because to live with certain stresses I've created an internal detachment. Or it could be incipient dementia. Whatevs. So I go to Facebook to read and look at pictures - ones that I've posted over the past 16 years. I read the comments under them from people no longer with us. Then I post things, including political snipes, so that I can see them in a year and think how astute I was.
By the time I've done all that, I figured I've wasted enough of it, and leave.
Loss of memory can often be attributed to the use of social media. When you don't have to remember things anymore, you don't, sort of thing. Like kids with no attention span because YouTube flashes up composite video mashes of 20 of their all-time favourite shows/movies.
The old adage, use it or lose it, is worth putting on the wall. Crosswords, number puzzles, quizzes, memory games can all help. They are trying to make us dependent on them. I refuse to be infantilised.
There will come a tipping point where enough people leave FB/ZB and the whole platform will become irrelevant and pointless - leaving the site to become the Chernobyl of the internet.
Maybe your accounts are that tipping point...
Really good "rant" JB. I'm in a similar dilemma.
Have shared this with both my Millennials, whom are really only using Insta (which I also hate!).
Even WhatsApp is owned by Meta of which I have fantastic group chats with my mates back in old Blighty!
Funny, after reading your post this came up in my MS News Feed!!
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/zuckerberg-has-turbo-boosted-enshittification-and-we-re-all-going-to-pay/ar-BB1rcv19?ocid=socialshare&pc=U531&cvid=b52c476e50d949be905f3aa3c5e64d36&ei=18
Yeah, my wife uses WhatsApp to stay in contact with her swimming group. the only people who contact me on that app seem to be Chechen prostitutes.
I believe you mean Chechen sex workers?
Should you dump FB? You are the only one who can judge. I was almost tempted to rejoin FB just so I could leave again over Zucks 'virtue signalling' BS. I jettisoned Facebook even before I dumped Twitter after Musk took over. It was years ago back when Zuck made some statement how he wasn't going to restrict Nazi's from threatening to do Nazi shit to people on FB. I however was never in danger of anyone cybersquatting on my Name/Face when I left. At least I don't think anyone did. I don't know if I am am any happier or more satisfied without Facebook (or meta) and twitter in my life but I certainly think I spend less time doom/rage scrolling now. I certainly think I am as well, if not more informed by getting information from other sources than these, (I rely on an RSS to collect my interests into a single digestible format.)
I’ve turned mine into a shell. Deleted all comments in public forums and unsubbed from all groups and pages. All that’s left is the connections to friends. Time consuming but possibly the best option, for now at least.