In the end I went with my gut instinct.
You'll know how I switched from Twitter to Bluesky fairly early but kept my Twitter account because of friends I'd made there and because I was running my Samaritans Branch Twitter feed and because my LibDem candidacies necessitated me being available and promoting my party, which then got little enough media coverage as it was. The horrid pile-on and then Elon's imperious (I have chosen that word for a reason) meddling around our summer race riots was the trigger for me to close my Twitter account forever.
There's been a similar process with the Meta empire this week. I had somehow managed to overcome my distaste at the subverting of democracy in several states in conjunction with Cambridge Analytica and shrugged my shoulders a bit at the egregious manipulation of credulous people by enabling far right propaganda. I had lost friends and extended family members whose ignorance or susceptibility had been exploited since before the Brexit referendum. But on the other hand, it showed me who they were and that's no bad thing.
I somehow tolerated the data-scraping for use by unwanted advertisers and, more recently by Artificial "Intelligence" providers. You wouldn't want to be regarded as some sort of lunatic conspiracy theorist, after all. Being a joyless miserabilist isn't sexy, is it?
In the end, though, Meta's capitulation to Trumpery pushed me over the edge. Zuckerberg's suspension of fact-checking and rewritten rules of hateful conduct in the name of free speech were bad enough. What finally tipped it for me was the rollback of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programmes at Meta (and other big corporates.) Appalled at the sudden, gleeful dismantling of something I've fought for all my life, I wanted to take a stand in support of those real, vulnerable, human people whose livelihoods and working conditions are threatened because they can now be treated as less than equal by people for whom Equity is seen as a loss. If I don't stand up against this, what do I stand for?
Then came this week of wrestling with the consequences of my decision: what about the small producers that use Insta to market their wares? What about my friends and family who only contact me through Meta apps? How about Niall and his Thai rescues, the frst thing I turn to in the morning? How about my daily P365 photo group; Gemma's puppy group; the AGA people? The campaigning?
Should I not stay and fight instead of removing my voice and my strength from these public fora? Is walking away not just a manifestation of my privilege? And WhatsApp is so embedded in my daily life that it's impossible to leave that, surely?
The thing is, I have fought and fought on Twitter and my voice was no match for the lies that people told about me. It's not a level playing field because those who want to humiliate and destroy you don't care about Marquess of Queensberry rules. That's what we have become.
I've listened to people's suggestion of workarounds like blocking annoying ads or only appearing in certain groups but that's not really the point, is it? Tempting as it is to limit my Facebook experience to what I want to get out of it, that's not a protest.
After a week of terrible, horrible news from the US and the understandable-but-awful damage limitation statements of our governments and others, I've had enough. I will be leaving Facebook. I will try and persuade people to Signal, but most have never heard of that, though I have had an account since Hong Kong's change accelerated when I lived there. I left Instagram earlier in the week and it freed up enough time to complete the Samaritans' updated Equity, Diversity and Inclusion course. I'm enjoying the irony.
I will miss those media and the people on them so much. I saw with much pleasure yesterday that Niall will be posting more about his dogs on Bluesky. I have this blog and my weekly digest on Substack, and you can always email, text or call me. (Do, please come and find me with my phone number on Signal.) But enough is enough. Sometimes you just have to stand up for what you believe in, for the human rights of people who are having them systematically removed.
Member comments