Friends, Family and Co-workers friends with me on Facebook:
My circle isn’t large by any means, but Facebook was an important account to stay in touch with my friends, my family, current and former co-workers. I like to come in, read posts from all of you, read posts from groups and influencers that I like to follow. Facebook has become one of my nightly go to websites to read the latest, watch live videos of events, and document important dates and times in my life for future me to watch.
Recently, I feel like Facebook is changing. Not only changing for the wrong reasons, but changing for the worse. I believe there is a different between disagreement and misinformation. The owner of this social media website is willing to put our democracy on the line by removing fact checking safeguards. I can agree to disagree as long as I am disagreeing to facts.
Misinformation is a serious problem in our country because a lot of people choose to believe information based on their political ideology. When Covid-19 became a pandemic, I was wearing a mask and encouraging folks around me to mask up. I heard a lot of moaning and groaning about how “our freedoms are being taken away”. When they found a vaccine, I heard plenty of people discrediting vaccines. It seems so obvious to me, vaccines work because you don’t see kids getting sick with polio anymore. However, to some people, they believe vaccines don’t work because their politician says so. Believing something that your favorite political candidate says just because they say it, without facts is dangerous. If you are going to discredit vaccines, come to the table with facts. I don’t want to hear what Don has to say, I want to hear what science has to say. When the owner of Facebook allows their favorite politician to say whatever he wants, and there is nothing to make sure what he is saying is truthful, its hurtful to the platform and to the public as a whole.
With that being said, I am taking a break from Facebook. I am setting my profile into maintenance mode, meaning I no longer have additional content to share here on Facebook. I will not likely scroll through the news feed, so I am sorry if I miss anybody’s anniversary’s, birthdays, or important days of celebration. I will continue to log in daily to check for tagged posts, and to archive old posts. I will continue to use Facebook Messenger to stay in touch with folks. I take the stance that as long as I am not using this platform as much as I was, that the owners of Facebook will have one less target to advertise to, hence reducing zuck’s income. I encourage everybody reading this to do the same, because it takes a majority of users to exit to get them to change.
However a soft quitting of Facebook is not enough. Meta has these “tags” that are embedded in the script of a lot of websites you visit and read, enabling them to continue to monitor you even if you are not a user of Facebook. They sell the data collected to third parties so they know what advertisements to show you. I recently downloaded privacy badger as an extension to Google Chrome, and not only does it filter out Facebook spy tags, it filters out most of the companies that are trying to spy on you in this way.
I encourage everybody to follow me on my other social media profiles on Bluesky, Youtube, and Discord, which I will post links to. There is no suitable alternative to Facebook that I have found. However the social media giant before Facebook was Myspace, and people left Myspace for a reason. If I find an alternative to Facebook I will open a new profile and I will pick up where I dropped off.
I realize that I also have many connections on here, family, friends, and professional contacts, so my profile will not be deleted. I will still use Facebook messenger to keep in touch with everybody. If you invite people to any event you are having, tag me so I can see it and I will read/respond. I appreciate your understanding as we move into different times.
Thank you
-TJ McIntyre