Resisting Zuck

I posted this on my Facebook Profile this afternoon, so here it is, reproduced in full on the the real Internet. If you’re here for the first time, please do subscribe to the page using the menu on the left or the comment area at the bottom. Or just create a bookmark! Remember those things!? I have bookmarks from 10 years ago that I haven’t gone to in 8 haha.

Take care all, get out and see the real internet world.

Here is a bit of the article this afternoon that pushed me over the edge:

Facebook and its execs have been labeled “digital gangsters” in a UK parliamentary report that calls for the company to be regulated. The 180-page document — which lays out the findings of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport committee’s 18-month investigation into fake news — concludes that Facebook wilfuly broke data privacy and competition laws.

And here is the text of my letter in full:

Hello Family, Friends, Acquaintances and all, 
This is going to be my last personal facebook post for the foreseeable future.

The TLDR version of the letter below is; I’m out, as out as I can be anyway, and I’m going to resist this corrupt corporation. I’ll be available on Messenger, and on my blogs which are re-posted on their own Pages. I encourage you to do the same, I am happy to help you make that happen, I hope you get out on the real internet, maybe come by my websites maybe not, but go see lots of other ones too, and here is why:

I can’t continue to support Facebook as a company. I’ve been considering leaving this platform for years even while I was committed to using it to communicate. The feeling and justification for leaving has only grown as Facebook’s motivations and tactics have come under further scrutiny. It and social media’s unregulated and unmitigated impact on all of us as individuals and as a society has only become more clear. 

This is no longer a case of a company just doing its best to extract information and money out of consumers like any other capitalist entity. It has never only been that way. That is only what we have been led to believe or have naïvely ignored.

Rather, this is a company that is using its research and experience into the psychology of its user base to manipulate billions of people and *sell that manipulation* to companies and governments, foreign and domestic, good intention and ill. 

This is a danger not unique to Facebook, but Facebook is by far the biggest and most destructive force. The system of “reactions”, sharing, comments, and algorithms used by Facebook, Instagram (owned by FB), Twitter, Snapchat and the many others has corrupted our minds in a way that we have not yet fully understood as a public but which the companies involved understand only as far as being good profit generators. You can see another report to this effect at the link at the end of this letter.

Unfortunately, this platform has become so incredibly intertwined into every possible activity that I recognize I won’t be able to sever the cord completely. Most of my traffic to www.alberniweather.ca, www.chrisalemany.ca, www.vifreightbyrail.ca, and my other websites, comes through posts on Facebook. That is the sad reality, Facebook has nearly become the whole Internet.

Likewise, I have made commitments to people to help manage Pages like the Air Quality Council and I have Carpool and other groups that I am responsible for. Many parent groups and activities and events are also only organized through Facebook or through Messenger.

That is how complete the capture has been by Facebook into its exclusive ecosystem of us as an internet-based society. I lamented a few weeks ago about how facebook is just one website on the entire Internet. Yet here we all are, stuck in this singular place as if it is everything. It isn’t, and worse, it is harming us for profit. 

I will interact in those remaining managerial roles and will be available to contact on this account through Messenger.
My goal now will be to build enough alternatives in the public web space for people to gain the same information from me personally and publicly without being beholden to a single company. 
I refuse to simply walk away and allow Facebook to continue on without actively resisting. So while I end this personal space under protest, this space will not be the limit of my protest.

I know too many people, young and old, some in positions of power and many other regular individuals, who have become addicted to social media (including myself obviously). Some recognize that addiction, some don’t, and that’s OK. We are amongst billions addicted to this still new medium and the drug dealers are making a killing.

Like any addiction, the best we can do is recognize when it harms us or others and then resist. I will resist the urge to use it, frequent it, consult it, value it. I will come up with better, less destructive alternatives.

I will still share with others, but I will do it on my own terms. 
Please go to my websites and bookmark them. (Or don’t, that is your choice to make without facebook controlling your timeline! 
🙂 ). They will be there for all to see and to chose to view or not view without a company making that choice for you intentionally or not.
In the words of the UK Parliamentary report released today and linked below, Facebook’s leaders are acting as “digital gangsters”. I want no part of any gangster, real or digital.

I will do everything I can to distance myself from it and disrupt it. 
P.S. I forgot to say, I do love you all. It’s not the end, it’s just the beginning. ðŸ˜½ 
🙂
https://www.engadget.com/…/18/uk-facebook-digital-gangsters/