Some of you may be wondering what happened to me on Facebook, so I'll get right down to it and tell you. Seemingly my profile, which I've maintained, grown and cultivated on that platform since at least 2009, was flagged, and I opened Facebook one morning about a month ago to be greeted with a message of extortion. What was that message, and what did they want from me in order to give me back access to my contacts, friends and social media content?
Meta, aka the most intrusive anti-privacy corporation on the planet, it seems, decided that I should connect my webcam and allow them to take a 35 second long video of me "to determine if I'm really human". Now, if like me, that set off a whole carillon of warning bells, I'd say you're quite correct - and that is an instinct - given the power-hungry nature of the beast that is Meta and Mark Zuckerberg - I trust. A 35 second long video? From a profile that has been active daily since 2009 if not prior? There's more to this than meets the eye. Given Meta's proclivity for profiting off whatever data it can scrape out of our user data, its growing AI obsession, history of invasion of privacy - and concerning ties to Palantir (that's right, the one whose CEO proudly says the quiet part out loud (i.e. "sometimes our products are used to kill people"), I've a pretty good idea that video would be used to generate a facial recognition profile, and for purposes unknown. Yes, I don't live in the USA, but still... But besides all of that, being told what to do for no good reason by some faceless corporation triggers my PDA...
So therefore, I decided to not comply - and Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg can simply go fuck themselves. Royally - and up the ass.
Yes, there are plenty of videos showing my face on my YouTube channels - and most of these are shared on Facebook, so if that was what they really wanted, they could go and look at those. So I don't believe that this is what that is all about.
I used to use Facebook for various reasons, mainly to keep in touch with people I cared about. Friends, family, many of whom are now dead and gone. Some have fled the US and we have lost contact. The ones who were left, I made arrangements through third parties to exchange contact details outside of Facebook. WhatsApp also belongs to Meta, so as far as I'm concerned, that's also not a great alternative, for private communications, but it will have to do for now. I also used it to promote my books - but as a realist, I'm aware that it didn't help that much anyway - Zuck algorithms the shit out of everything posted on Facebook and Whatsapp anyway, so it doesn't really reach as many people as it would have otherwise. The only part of the platform I will actually miss, is the Marketplace function. I often used to buy and sell stuff on there, and I will really miss that. There's really no viable local alternative to that at all, or any social media equivalent - and it's sad how some foreign platform that milks its users for every bit of data it can scrape from them, to profit off it, was allowed to kill off every local alternative to its all-consuming march to world-domination as "the everything app".
It takes this to realize exactly how insidious Meta or Facebook - and Zucker really are, and other corporations like Microsoft and Apple - how they work to isolate their "users", formerly known as "clients" and "customers" - within their own ecosystems, making it extremely difficult and lonely to proceed outside of them, limiting their options and freedoms, until we are all trapped in those ecosystems and unable to exist or function without them. Currently I cannot even log in to delete my profile and any photos - fortunately, unlike some people I know, I wasn't using Facebook as a photo archive - though this does illustrate exactly who is in charge, and who gets ownership of your stuff, doesn't it? As "consumers" (I really, really HATE that term because of how it reduces human beings to powerless receivers and sources of income for parasitic soulless billionaire bottom-feeders) we literally own nothing online. They own EVERYTHING.
Admittedly, Facebook had its uses. For a time, I used it for conducting academic research, but I could always do that in future by creating another profile under another name. Facebook doesn't like that, but what do I care what they "like"? I might just do that just to feel the satisfaction of the naughty kid who kept getting told "don't!" and who persisted, and DID. I used Facebook as a broad-spectrum news source, especially about local and international politics, to read the subtext you don't see in mainstream news; now I get it from YouTube. It's not ideal, but for a critical thinker, it's not too hard to navigate, separating the bullshit - and the AI slop - from the more likely facts.
I've been pondering the reason why I was hit with this challenge. And why now? It's not like I posted anything unusual lately that was out of the ordinary (for me). I shared news and comments critical of Orange Hitler; I criticized monstrous Israel for it's Zionism and genocide against the true owners of Palestine; I opposed religious zealotry, malice, and stupidity; I supported Iran against the unwarranted imperialist aggression of the dying American Empire; I criticized the facetious Democratic Alliance and faux-feminist TERF demagogue Helen Zille for being false, pretend libertarians and false white hope for floundering white supremacists and the insidious rich fucks working to gentrify the hell out of any area of South Africa under their control. I took on racism and white supremacists, and gave Afrikarens some sorely-needed food for thought. I shared what pearls of wisdom I had to offer. And I also posted critical comments about Trump and his feckless pink-faced apartheid-loving white supremacist sock-puppet of an Ambassador, on the US Embassy's page. In retrospect, that last one must've been the straw that broke the camel's back. Can't have some uppity South African calling out the Trump regime, can we?
After all, the new government under the "Christian Taliban" doesn't really value the virtues of "free speech" unless that speech is supportive of itself - just like "Christian charity" is filed away with admonishments of tassels on clothing, eating shellfish and putting rails around roofs, not so?
So there we are - Facebook and I are done. I will miss the daily interaction I had with "friends" on Facebook. I will miss the minor spats and the small joys I experienced in speaking truth to power in a public platform with a following of 5000+ other people, but honestly, it's not worth the continued and increasing invasion of my privacy, or the potential risks to my safety which giving them what they want implies.
And so now, seemingly, my profile has disappeared from Facebook's feeds - every comment, every post, every photo, every message, every philosophical thought - likely archived somewhere until the day I decide to let Mark Zuckerberg have his little 35 second video of my face. I'm pretty sure the hell I don't believe in might freeze over before that happens - just on principle alone.
So there it is, I now have no "anti-social media" worth mentioning. You can catch me here to keep up with my thoughts in future. That is, until Google (who is also an insidious control-freak corporation eager to wall-off its own ecosystem) makes it impossible for me to post here as well.
Either way, the benefits of not being exposed to the toxic shit-show that Facebook has become are starting to bear fruit. I'm more relaxed, less anxious, less stressed - and have more time to focus on the things that really matter - like myself, my family, and completing my PhD thesis this year.
Thanks, Facebook. Now go fuck yourself.
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