There’s a saying: “If there’s a Nazi at the table and 10 other people sitting there talking to him, you got a table with 11 Nazis.”
It’s been reported that Mark Zuckerberg recently had dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago. For me, this was the last straw. For a while now, I had been wanting to leave Facebook. But that’s it for me. I’m quitting Facebook.
I’ve made my last posting on Facebook, telling my Facebook friends how to find me on Mastodon and Bluesky. But in a few weeks, I’ll cut the cord completely.
It’s now been about 16 years since I signed up with Facebook. Facebook suggested a number of people I should connect with, and I was impressed with how accurate the suggestions were. But then I realized how they did it, and I was less than impressed. Even before I had signed up, they had developed a profile of me and my on-line contacts.
But for a while at least, Facebook seemed like a cool place to be, with a lot of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances. At one point, I had more than 200 Facebook friends. And I found a couple of useful groups, in the realms of music and genealogy. I even was able to reconnect with some old classmates from high school.
At first, Facebook had options to let me prioritize what I wanted to view. But after a while, these options disappeared. It was now Facebook that made the decisions about what I should see. I wasn’t happy about that, but I grudgingly stayed. However, I was still never happy with the fact that we, the users, are not the primary concern of Facebook. Their customers are the advertisers, and we are their product.
When Google Plus came along, I readily joined it. It seemed like a good mix of Facebook and Twitter features. I saw a lot of potential with G+, but Google lost interest, and it faded away. I did try out Twitter, but I didn’t see much point in it, and generally ignored it. When Elon Musk bought it, I deleted my Twitter account immediately.
Which now brings us up to the present time. I signed up with Mastodon, and I’ve been pretty satisfied with it. And now we have Bluesky, and everyone seems to be jumping on board, primarily after leaving X (AKA Twitter). The two seem very similar is design and concept. Mastodon has the advantage of being totally distributed, which means it can never be under the control of a faceless corporation or selfish billionaire. On the other hand, Bluesky has the momentum. It’s now the attractive place for the disaffected masses.
For the next little while, it will be difficult finding alternatives to Facebook. There are still a couple of groups that I will miss. But it is important to take a stand and send a message. Zuckerberg has made his choice, and has sided with the Trumpists. We must now make a choice too, to side with Zuckerberg and his ilk, or stand with what’s right.
During the Nazi era, my grand-father spent time in prison for his political beliefs. We must not forget the lessons of history as we face a couple of difficult years.