How and why I'm leaving Fakebook this month

I’m leaving Fakebook, deleting my Meta account. These words about how and why I'm doing so are slightly premature - it’ll actually be a few days more before my final post on there. 

But I want to go on about it a bit because I want as many of my friends as possible to see the posts. And the way FB's algorithm scrambles the timeline does make it a bit like dealing with a dementia sufferer. 

I'm going to miss some of you. And some features of this (really rather crappy) platform. I have to admit I’ve gained from using Fakebook over the last 15 years or so. I’ve recontacted old friends, I’ve advertised courses and events and shown support for things I approve of. I’ve had some laughs, enjoyed some amusing memes. 

But I’m going to have a good old moan before I pack my bags. In the hope that maybe some of it will motivate you my friends to make the effort, to move onto a more civilized platform and join me on Bluesky. 


So what’s wrong with FB?

- Stupid algorithm rather than just timeline. Is it too weird to hate the whole principle of some bot choosing what you’re likely to see? 

- Broken algorithms: recently I tried to send a Friend request to someone I’ve known for 50+ years, and it refused, telling me I don’t know her.

- One thing in particular that grinds my gears: that ‘most relevant’ judgment about replies to posts; I mean, just fuck off and die!

- Advertising for small businesses is throttled by not allowing links in the main body of the post. This is getting worse; if you share a post which has a link in the Comments, it strips the comments out now. 

- Tolerance of fake news: Recently it's got so bad you can’t trust anything you read on Fakebook; which is pathetic. 

- Zuckerberg himself: his loathing of that basic human need, privacy; and his grotesque brown-nosing of the Pedofuhrer. (And that stupid company name, Meta!).

Many of the above idiocies fall under the useful term ‘enshittification’ (from Cory Doctorow), ‘to describe the process by which online platforms deteriorate over time to serve corporate interests.’ 

An example of that is Instagram. I left it a couple of years ago, for various reasons. One, it’s a pathetic platform: It’s supposed to be for pix, but it handles pix worse than any other platform. You can’t even stretch them with 2 fingers. You can’t put links directly in post. I’d put up with that - if at least ⅔ of my feed wasn’t ads. 

So in future what I’ll be doing is:

- Networking my stuff on Bluesky

- Socialising on Bluesky & Mastodon 

Bluesky is rather like Twitter, but without the arsehole constituency. Which is to say it's got pix, videos, music and discussions about magic. With far fewer of those weirdo Nazi stalker creeps who keep pretending they’re trying to have a conversation with you. 

It’s very good, lots of entertainment, good pix, etc; the only downside is that it’s not easy to screen out the political shitstorm, should you want to take a breather from the World of Horrors. But at least it’s not a shitstorm run by the far right, like it is on the corporate platforms. 

Mastodon is like a tiny village in a remote mountainous region. You can talk to people over the garden fence about nature, pets, gardening, cooking, even enjoy the occasional nude photo. As far as interaction about magic or related weirdness goes, I got more of it in a week on Bluesky than I did on Masto in a year. Not exaggerating. Forget anyone responding to anything other than pet or gardening pix. It also has to be said that there is a small but influential population of annoying prigs on Mastodon. 

Hopefully Masto will get livelier as FB and Xitter die off from excessive fascistification. I stay on Masto because the trend seems to be towards deeper enshittification of socials, which is going to lead to their imploding. When that happens, maybe it will motivate people to join Masto, and make it a more interesting place. 

Some people say Bluesky will get enshittified. This is entirely possible. I may be driven back to the inaction of Mastodon, but that’s no big deal. Socials can be good, fun, funny, useful. But I lived without social media for over 50 years of my adult life, and I’m sure I can live without it again. 

Consider the alternatives: Sophisticated and secure messaging apps like Signal, which have all the richness of social media -  your pix, videos and music - and can be used to build communities that don’t involve trolls, fake news or enrich rich parasites and their twisted agendas. 

Go on, leave the shit places. Join me!

This is where I’m at:

Bluesky: @dave23lee.bsky.social 

Mastodon: @davelee@pagan.plus

Blog: https://chaotopia-dave.blogspot.com/ 

Free Chaotopia newsletter email list: https://chaotopia.us11.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=bad98b0a038112e56579f4fba&id=117224d42b

Newsletter archive for a sample: https://us11.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=bad98b0a038112e56579f4fba&id=117224d42b

Chaotopia School of Magic: https://www.udemy.com/user/david-lee-1201/

One takeaway: https://linktr.ee/david23lee

And I've just joined a new social media platform, Monnett. Its slogan is 'Built By Humans', which is very appealing in this age of A'I' slop. The interface looks a bit like Instagram. I haven't even worked out how to use it yet, but my name is: dave23lee 


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