Facebookless Musings [en]

It’s been less than 24 hours since Facebook suspended my account. I don’t know if I’ll get it back, honestly. Maybe this evening it’ll be back online and this day will seem like a bad dream – like the 60 minutes a few weeks back when I thought that I had made a mistake that had killed my cat (he’s fine, he doesn’t know anything about it, it was in my head; another blog post). But maybe it’s gone forever.

I want to capture what I’m feeling, because it’s very strange. I’ve been on Facebook since late 2006 or early 2007, shortly after joining Twitter, if my memory serves me right. Ah, memory. That is my biggest feeling of loss right now. Nearly 20 years of personal documented history that have been disappeared. It feels like having sudden amnesia. Of course, there are also people and connexions. The people I’m in touch with now, I’m pretty confident that we’ll find each other somewhere else. But what saddens me the most is the people of the past, encountered at various moments of my life, loose ties that the common platform keeps just under the surface, a click away if needed. Gone.

I poured a lot into Facebook. Thank goodness it’s not critical to my professional activity right now. Thank goodness I still have my blog. Thank goodness I’m already present on other platforms, even if they’ve been largely in the background of my online presence until now. It really feels like a betrayal.

I’ll share screenshots of some of the posts Facebook took down these last months, posts from years ago, with innocent content, but labeled as spam, no avenue to appeal. And the post that trigged my removal, clearly, the link that freaked out the algobots, was in a closed online community I run, a comment telling people that we’re exploring another tool for the future of the community, here is the link. No, I don’t believe in anthropomorphising the machine to the extent of saying “oh, they didn’t like that you were pointing to the competition”.

As ChatGPT told me, it’s a structural issue. I’m the admin of a large, active, engaged group (and other groups too). I share a lot of links. Posts in the group I manage are flagged multiple times a week as spam because people are talking about giving insulin to their sick cats, or donating partly used syringe boxes because their cat no longer needs them – the happy story is when they’re in remission, the sad one is when they’re dead. We don’t remove inactive users, we encourage people to stick around. So the group is big, but maybe engagement is sliding down, even though the community is active and vibrant. There are 50 to 60 support posts a day in it.

It feels like a betrayal because I have done nothing if not “be social”. I have connected with my pears, I have shared knowledge, troubles and wisdom, exciting food and grief. I have connected people, brought them together, built online communities that are healthy, where people are nice to each other, free from spam and sales pitches. I have given more than I have taken. I have trusted that if you are an authentic human being, if you’re not trying to manipulate others or act only in your self-interest, if you are truly there to be “social”, then things will work out for you. The trust you have built with others will protect you.

You’ll recognise this thinking – it’s what I’ve called, in my mind, the “Cluetrain belief”. There are probably better labels, but that’s my personal mental one. It’s a vision of the online world where capitalism doesn’t win, where humans are at the centre, where truth rises to the top. It carried me through over a decade as an online consultant. Until it started seriously crumbling down a decade ago.

So I’m not naive: I’ve known for years I could wake up one morning and find that Facebook had arbitrarily taken down my group or my account. I’ve known for years that these platforms do not care about people anymore, but about money and influence. I’ve known for years that my behaviour as a real human being online regularly raises red flags. Nevertheless, I persisted. I shared links. I shared thoughts. I shared photos and videos of the shows I went to. I shared poetry. I responded, discussed, exchanged. I connected.

It feels like a betrayal, even though I knew it could come. I do guess I didn’t believe it would be so brutal. Two months ago my account had a spotless record. Then suddenly, Facebook told me it had removed 9 posts of mine, going back to 2016, because spam, because reasons, because I’m not adhering to “community standards”. Nine posts out of thousands, tens of thousands probably. No way to appeal. I was going to do a separate post for this, but let me show you some. You can judge for yourself.

I’m so glad I still have my blog. So glad I took care of keeping it up and running even when I didn’t write much, even when I couldn’t really bring myself to write here anymore.

So, have a look at my facebook crimes.

I’m not even going to comment, honestly. It’s just ridiculous.

Thankfully my communities are safe, even though mangled by the disappearance of all my content. I was cautious to make sure I was never the only admin of a group. I lost my Pages though, and that hurts a bit. When it became possible, I should have created separate accounts for them, to decouple them from my profile. I guess I thought the chances of something happening to my profile were really low – even though I knew it could happen.

So, 20 hours cut out of facebook, how do I feel? It feels like yet another blow in a string of losses. Over the last two years, I’ve lost too many loved ones. Five months ago I had a ski accident that resulted in “mild” cognitive issues that have been keeping me off work and out of a “normal” life. (Quotes, right.) About a month back I asked for the Facebook account of a recently deceased friend to be memorialised, and that resulted in its immediate and complete deletion (another blog post, was waiting to have the courage to write about it). It was extremely brutal. Just like this suspension is brutal.

Leaving Facebook on one’s own terms is one thing. Being kicked out feels a bit like being fired from the job you’ve held for twenty years and sent out without even being allowed to collect your stuff or say bye to your colleagues. Sure, there are other platforms. Sure, it’s a time-suck. Of course there will be “blessings”, we can always look for them, and often find them (not always). But let’s deal with the loss of connections, the betrayal, the erasure of history and lived time, the negation of hours and hours of work, of care and engagement. Let’s deal with that before we try and “look at the bright side of things”.

My main feeling right now is one of disconnection and loss of community. I feel like I’ve been digitally deported (yeah, sorry for the metaphors, I know losing one’s job or being deported is way worse than what I’m going through). My online life has been a large part of my life, and losing a big chunk of that in such circumstances is not trivial.

This also makes me sad about the way in which the world is changing. For the hopes and ideals I had as a younger adult, and how disillusioned I’m growing as the years go by, as the internet I loved and lived in breaks down, as our institutions crumble and money and fascism take over. Yes there are also very good things in today’s world. I’m not going to go all “good ol’ times” on you. But there are ugly things, and we can regret that they are so present.

If I do get my account back, the first thing I’ll do is ask for a complete export of my content. I did it when Facebook announced they would stop keeping Live videos online indefinitely, but gave up when I realised I had to download 50+ 2Gb archive files that made my connection drop again and again. Yeah, that many archive files – that’s how much content I poured into that platform.

I’ll continue preparing to migrate my support community off of facebook in the months or the year to come – I don’t want to rush things if we can get away with it.

And whether I get my account back or not, the way forward is going to be heading back to the times before Big Platforms, when we owned our content and our connections.

If you miss me, or just want to keep me somewhere in your digital rolodex for old times sake, here is where I am now: Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads (but holding back somewhat there), Instagram (same, Meta-land, right?), LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr (maybe need to resuscitate my presence there?), Youtube (videos will be going there, need to check out Peertube too), and Discord as stephtara. WhatsApp is best for casual day-to-day chatting, instead of Messenger (my number isn’t hard to ding.) I’m dormant on the bird site.