Facebook is a shit show

I was first going to call this “Why I am quitting Facebook”, but since I am retaining my account for reasons of communicating with those still active, I figured a name change was in order.

I first joined Facebook at Dalton State College back in the late ‘00s, when My Space was still a big thing.  But I didn’t really do anything with it until the Green Movement broke out in Iran in June 2009, when I joined with countless others distributing news and information about what was going on inside the country. 

As far as I know, the Green Movement’s use of Facebook was what began the website’s use to disseminate news and to politically organize.  I kept posting information almost solely about Iran for the next couple of years as the movement continued, if in a somewhat shrunken form.  Then came the Arab Spring, the indignado movement in Spain, and the Occupy movement in the USA and the rest of the world.

Remember the Wall?  That was the old set up, the one operating when I first joined back in the ‘00s.  It was great; you could post as much stuff as you liked to your Wall and it was then accessible to all those on your Friend list and anyone else if you wanted to expand that.  Then Facebook completely fucked that up with Timeline. 

So I created a group that eventually became Terran News, so titled to show its global character news-wise, and later Chattanooga Queer News.  I have now archived both those and will limit my posting to strictly local news, moving to Twitter for national and global news both regional and world, for the reasons given below.

Before I get into my stuff, it has bothered me for quite some time that Facebook has without much justification eliminated large swaths of groups such as news group for Palestinians with little justification, while allowing some of the most heinous right-wing and fascist crap to remain.

On 10 February, Facebook hit me with a 24 hour suspension from posting or commenting based on my posting this article from The Guardian, saying it violates the website community standards on nudity:

On 23 March, Facebook suspended me from posting or commenting for 3 days then upped that to 7 days, restricting me also from Messenger for posting this article from The Guardian, saying it violates the website community standards on nudity.

The most egregious case came on 25 May, when Facebook suspended me from posting and commenting for 30 days for "hate speech" because I posted the following article, yet again from The Guardian, with the comment "American Idiots", confirming its degree when I protested, despite the fact that (1) I am an American myself, (2) my comment is a clear reference to the song by the band Green Day, and (3) the behavior of these people who crowded beaches and pools over Memorial Day weekend with no distancing or PPE is not only idiotic but potentially harmful to vast numbers of people, and may indeed be the spark which restarted the COVID-19 surge.

If you want to follow me for the news I used to post to Facebook or just to stay in contact, follow me on Twitter; my ID is natty4bumpo.  Being on a 30-day suspension from Facebook taught me that I can do on Twitter what I did on Facebook in half the time.