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#DeprecateFacebook

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FarceboxI’m not quite ready to #DeleteFacebook. But recent events have me thinking that I need to move it away from the center of my online life.

Most people these days are concerned about how Falsebook is 1) mismanaging our personal information, and 2) helping Russia/Trump/etc use it against the people of the United States. And that’s a factor for me. But I’m also thinking about how Farcebook’s censorship system – with no clear guidelines and no appeals – is actively threatening to lock me out.

The overall problem is that I – along with so much of our society – have bought in too heavily into the use of Fuckedbook. They want us to use it for everything… and we’re doing that for them.

Back in olden days there was a service called AOL, and they tried to do the same thing. And it worked for a while, because there was so little else on the internet to use. But then the World Wide Web came along, and suddenly there were unlimited alternatives. You could get e-mail from one place, find web sites with forums on different topics, buy stuff online directly from retailers, and so on. There was also porn. We saw that the walled garden of AOL was putting limits on us. But Facebox has been luring us back into their own garden. They’re AOL 2.0.

So… moving away from that. What does that involve?

To start, I’m going to get this blog of mine active. I set it up a few years ago, and I’ve occasionally posted to it, but not much. Instead I’ve been posting on FB every day. Going forward, I’m going to post more things here – on my site – and let that get echoed to FB. So the folks there will still “see” me, but every post will be an invitation to come here. And as a side benefit anybody who wants to stay off Fascistbook won’t have to go there to keep up with me.