My Impending Departure from Facebook

Also, a recommended read, and an announcement about my upcoming summertime and early fall series, geared toward parents!

Saturday, June 8th, 2024

I am 100% certain I am not alone in being deeply frustrated by Facebook’s endless censorship and content manipulation. In fact, to use one of my Dad’s favorite terms, I find it absolutely galling.

Of course, this is nothing knew in human society. I imagine good people living under the tyranny of street gangs and organized crime families find the hypocritical blend of illegal activities with the trappings of good standing and economic success to be infuriating, as well.

Wrongness is wrong, and there’s nothing more obnoxious than watching people succeed at being immoral, unethical, and downright brazen in their misdoings.

Yet, what’s a person to do? At every time in history, criminal elites have controlled entire swaths of society, industry, enforcers (corrupt cops), the judicial system (corrupt judges), and governments (sold out politicians).

Through the ages, we grit our teeth, we carry on…

And we watch the wrong-doers. We wait for our opportunity to oppose them, doing our best to not let their existence and the grotesque unfairness of their ill-gotten gains get us down. We learn to tolerate the intolerable when we can’t do anything about it — all the while, preparing ourselves to take action when there is a reasonable chance of success.

And so it’s gone for me with Facebook.

Every year, I feel more and more grossed out. Simply by having an account, and participating, I feel dirty — complicit. Facebook is a corrupt institution, a weapon of totalitarian forces, a territory controlled by evil people, a tool of illicit societal manipulation & hidden agendas, a soul-less company happy to sell people out for profit, and a dangerous platform dabbling in government aligned thought control and the machinations of risky algorithms and computer programs commonly mis-labeled as “artificial intelligence.”

There is nothing “intelligent” (or alive) about sophisticated computer programs that fool humans!

And, that’s all they are. Super fast, complicated computer programs designed to provide output that fools atheist humans into anthropomorphizing wires, chips, plastic and coding into a modern Frankensteinian form of “artificial life.” It’s our high-tech version of an old, old trope — our generation’s desperate bid for godhood, just as delusional and desperate as all the people who have come before us.

But, I digress.

Today, Facebook went one evil step too far, and I just can’t. I just CAN NOT remain involved with this platform. Here’s why.

I take politics in America very seriously. Politics creates the world we live in at this moment and every moment to come. We want our bus drivers to not be drug addicts, our doctors to not be alcoholics, our teachers to not be predators, and our police officers to not be bigots. Right? In the same way, we should give a damn about the human beings being lifted up by our campaigning, our votes, our debates, and our constitutionally protected speech as we advocate on behalf of one candidate or another.

Obviously, one’s personal page on Facebook is an excellent venue for expressing one’s views and hopes and prayers for a decent man to be placed within the Oval Office. Two mornings ago, I did exactly that, sharing my own thoughts, along with a link to Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s campaign website.

BAM!

Fifteen (15) seconds later, I receive a notification about content being removed for being “Spam” and “Manipulated Content Designed to Get Likes.” What? And then…within the next hour, I was alerted me to four (4) new posts that had been reviewed, were being removed, and others that now contained a “note” by Facebook. See images below.

I did follow up on all of these, following the prompts to see which posts they opposed, what their “fact checkers” said was true instead, and it was pathetic. My posts generally offered “opinions” or evidence-based commentary on various topics, yet the “fact checkers” simply stated opposing opinions and (from their artificial position as truth tellers) called their own opinions real, true, and factual.

I swear, if I let my jaw drop every time it had cause, I’d be constantly walking around with a black and blue chin.

It seems highly likely my support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s campaign triggered Facebook to target and threaten me. In so doing, Facebook proves we are already living in a dangerous early version of totalitarianism, a la 1984. When people begin to wonder, “Should I share my thoughts on this? It might piss off Facebook, and I’ll be deplatformed,” that IS A HUGE RED FLAG!

So, today I’ll be figuring out how to cancel my Facebook account. It’s a bummer, because I live in a quite small community, and I’ve used Facebook to do all sorts of great things. It is and should be a fabulous platform for community interaction and cohesion. But, it’s been weaponized by massively powerful, totalitarian-leaning forces, and this egregious overreach is so dangerous I cannot continue to “support” Facebook with my presence.

With reminds me — as you all know, I don’t have the time to research, write, and publicize my content. It’s up to you all to decide what I’m saying is worth sharing. If so, please do!

I was recently inspired by Margaret Anna Alice's article: Against Defeatism: The Apocaloptimist Manifesto. In it, she speaks of R. Buckminster Fuller, quoting him and saying:

“If I had not in 1927 committed ‘egocide,’ I would probably have yielded long ago to convention and therewith suicide of my ‘only-for-all-others’ initiative.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller, Guinea Pig B: The 56 Year Experiment

In 1927, thirty-two-year-old R. Buckminster Fuller perched on a cliff overlooking Lake Michigan. Destitute and unemployed, he decided his life insurance would be worth more to his wife and daughter than his life.

Just as he was preparing to jump, Bucky suddenly felt himself floating, enveloped in light. He heard a voice say:

“From now on you need never await temporal attestation to your thought. You think the truth. You do not have the right to eliminate yourself. You do not belong to you. You belong to Universe. Your significance will remain forever obscure to you, but you may assume that you are fulfilling your role if you apply yourself to converting your experiences to the highest advantage of others.”

Now, I am not suicidal, nor do I suffer from egoism.

If anything, I see myself as no better than anyone else and it is my belief that all people have what it takes to improve their understanding of and engagement with the world around them — this is what gives me hope for humanity!

But, I do often wonder — “Is there worth in what I do?”

Our world today is one of eager consumption of content with little to no reciprocity or expressed appreciation for the creator.

When I grew up, music had to be purchased, unless you recorded a song off of the radio, and that was hard to do. The result was tangible evidence of consumer appreciation in the form of records or 8-tracks or tapes or eventally CDs purchased.

Nowadays, with music, podcasts, art, photography, and recipes available for free every which way you turn, I think there’s been a subconscious cheapening of created content in the minds of those enjoying it.

We forget that artists (just like consumers) have to pay their property taxes ($7,800), buy groceries ($9.99 for a loaf of bread!), fill their gas tank ($5.79 a gallon), heat their homes ($4,000 a year, on average), and buy grain for their chickens (what used to be $18 a bag is now $31 a bag).

Substack gives good data to content creators. I have around 400 subscribers — only 3 are paid. For my posts, the “open rate” ranges from 29% to 42%, depending on the subject. Of those 150-250 readers, only 2 routinely take the time to “leave a like” on my page. Comments are equally sparse.

All of this is to say, I have no idea how much value you all are receiving. But, I’m still trying!

I’m still writing. I’m still offering my thoughts, in hopes that you’ll not feel alone. That you’ll be relieved to hear another person seeing, experiencing, recognizing and saying what you, yourself, are saying — or want to say.

Also!

In R. Buckminster Fuller fashion, over the summer, I’ll be sharing a series focused on the many schooling and vaccine choices available to parents.

So many have woken up to a frightening new world, where schools set policies requiring teachers, counselors and staff to INTENTIONALLY LIE to parents. Adding to parental stress is the clear as day corruption, blatant and exposed lies, and power hungry agenda of the pharmaceutical industry and their dangerous allies — leaving busy parents anxious and uncertain.

My series will not tell you what to do. It will simply open door upon door upon door, showering you with confidence-building viewpoints, empowering options, and a reminder that you and your children live in the United States of America.

You have rights, but there are many who wish you didn’t. To get what they want, they will do all they can to convince you that you don’t have rights. You don’t have a say. You don’t have a choice. These people are brainwashed themselves, often believing what they say, and you need to NOT let them bully you.

To claim your rights, you must know what they are and be able to communicate them firmly and without compromise to those who wish to undermine and weaken your family.