I am so torn about Facebook. I'm rarely there lately but I do keep up with friends and acquaintances that I otherwise wouldn't. My feed has been blessedly free if the sort of BS that is causing such angst but I also hate that I'm adding to Zuck's subscriber base by which he can set ad rates.
Stick it to the Zuck. I miss people I used to keep up with. But FB banned me, so it’s like I was erased. Some I hear about and others I have lost somewhere along the way. But Zuck is a power-hungry weasel. I hope my data has been deleted and not kept somewhere. Although I’ll have to say that a FB data breach dumped my info on the dark web. So good riddance to Zuck rubbish.
I am coming up on the 40th anniversary of getting fired from a job I was at for 11 years with excellent performance evaluations. It happened after I sent a letter to the state administration about concerns I had about professional and legal issues. I was fired for insubordination when I told my supervisor that I will no subordinate my self to anything illegal, immoral or unethical. My fellow employees voted in a union one week later. Did not benefit me but no regrets here.
I was laid off after asking in a meeting where they bragged about hiring new people and providing them all these trading classes if they would provide those of us who held the company together by threads that same training.
When they told me to get my stuff off the laptop they provided I wiped the whole hard drive, including their stuff. They spent a month calling me and asking me questions about the very stuff they told me they didn’t need me for. I told them my rate was $50 an hour and they left me alone. It was a joy to see them go under the next year.
I remember that Edward Bernays (who had Sigmund Freud as one of his double uncles), inspired Goebbels.
That's bad enough, but I also remember back when I was still a Republican, amazed at the in depth research the Cato Institute could document but then publish conclusions that seemed so out of line with what their more verifiable research would suggest.
The general case I recall was on the oil companies cheating on oil leases, paying for only a fraction of the oil they took, especially from Native Americans. An oil field instrumentation technician (who's truck I repaired the wiring on), told me they had filmed oil tankers making six trips to a refinery when they claimed that one truck had picked up the oil from all six tanks before delivering it to the refinery. He seemed to indicate they stole 3 times as much from the Native Americans as they did from other lease holders. Many years later, I heard they had won a lawsuit proving that, but that may be very much harder to find than it was back then.
N O surprise, a friend from Michigan told me that Cato was a propaganda org, along with ALEC, I started paying attention, but the fix was in, and this was in the 90’s. Damn, I thought Jack Abramoff was the best scammer of the natives. Yea to natives who could win a lawsuit against the oil companies. Their lawyers are the best at fraudulent practices…
I'm not sure what site I'm on (not FB) but I get you violated community standards all the time. I don't even use profanity. It seems that if you give too many details and facts to prove your point, they get upset.
Most of the right wing garbage I get is from my former work cohort. You would not believe the garbage that they believe. These are people I once respected. Not anymore.
Reading some trumper comments like libotards should stop name calling. I told her I learned from her leader and proceeded to list the terms (and who they applied to), I got censored. I tried again without names although Sleepy and Crooked Joe were acceptable :(
I figure he will fake it anyway s so might as well take what I can. But the crap has so overwhelmed the reasonable stuff that I am no longer sure if it is worth it.
Bluesky is more a replacement for Twitter/X than Facebook. I deleted my Twitter account and use Bluesky mostly for quick access to news, but it’s not really like the community of friends I have on Facebook.
My Facebook is full of horses and cooking with almost zero political content, although yesterday I noticed that I somehow, suddenly, was following DJT against my will. Obviously I’m not anymore but that made me angry. Same thing happened on Twitter with Elon, despite blocking him twice.
I was happily using Bluesky until I needed to reset my password. I was never able to get back in. They're system for resetting your password is insane and despite several attempts at using it then trying to contact them several times I gave up and made a new account using a different e-dress. A couple of days after doing that, and despite very little activity, my account was suspended for spamming despite the fact that my only activity was liking and reposting the posts of others. I tried again to get into my original account but again was faced with the reset code not working despite copying it character for character. I've finally given up. I know they're suffering from growing pains and hope they succeed at fixing the technical issues but it has helped me feel less enchanted with social media altogether.
You'll find other ways to stay connected with your family and friends. You really must permanently delete any Zuckerberg related accounts. Among his other despicable actions, he's a Jew who supports a team led by a man who twice made the Nazi salute.
If you are on the fence about quitting Facebook… apparently Zuckerberg automatically signed people up to follow The White House and trump and Melania. People are putting out instructions for how to unfollow, but there’s no guarantee you won’t be signed up again. As for me, I’m done. Advertisers are watching. I hope META loses a lot of revenue.
I was also conflicted about FB but decided in the end to delete my account. Today is day 1 and I do not miss it. It will not be hard to find new communities particularly outside of the internet. Good luck. N
Mine too, most (like 99%) of my FB friends are thoroughly anti-Trump / Maga. Maybe Trump, who is backed by Big Oil, has friends in Alberta, Canada. Smith, the premier, couldn't find a seat in Washington to attend the Inaug so was headed for the Canadian Embassy to take it in. Not sure she managed that! Alberta is more interested in selling oil and gas to the US than joining the rest of Canada's leadership in opposing likely tariffs as Trump still boondoggles American public into thinking, falsely, that foreign sellers pay for the tariffs.
There are days I wish Alberta would secede from the Confederation. Or wake up and smell the climate chaos. Danielle Smith is as exactly the wrong leader as the orange felon is. But her #ucker Convoy mini-MAGAts love her.
Remember Zuck is still mining your data and all guardrails will be gone now. I deleted mine years ago and keep in tough via text and email. It has worked well since 2018.
Have you looked into Bluesky Social? bsky.app It appears to be a decent social platform with a lot less of the malarkey found on FB and the other platforms. Encourage your friends to join you there and give Zuck the middle finger on your way out.
I deleted Facebook 13 years ago when Wisconsin politics turned wicked, and I was disgusted with finding out what some of my relatives and acquaintances truly believed. I have never regretted it. Friends let me know of invitations. And I've kept up with distant friends and relations in other ways. I made sure to get email addresses or phone numbers before I quit. It isn't hard.
I never signed up for Facebook, despite the many climate activists and others that made it almost essential enough to have to do it. Not doing so was limiting but I'm still glad I didn't. I makes me certain now that I never will.
As another Mainer from Standish, I never signed up for FB either. Every time there’s a breach, I don’t have to worry. Today, I don’t need to be concerned about removing myself from this invasion of privacy or support these techies in any small way!
I, also left FB years ago as it turned out to be Junior High all over again. Who needs that?! I thought I had followed all the protocols to cancel and remove my account. Recently I ran into an old acquaintance who “followed me on FB” and noted current content. What? I cannot get on FB to check because “My account has been canceled”. So I am in FB Purgatory evidently, unable to remove my former page, but advertisers still able to put up content.
Facebook accounts are really difficult to delete according to several people who have tried. If you even attempt to see if your account is inactive in the next 30 days or so, it automatically reactivates the account. Anyway, that's what happened to my wife when she canceled her account a few years ago. She ultimately was able to cancel it.
Here’s what I did. It was time consuming but worth it. I deleted all my friends, all my images, and all my posts. Basically I had a blank account. Then I deleted Facebook. There was nothing left for them to mine even though they can get it from the wayback or their stored data. But that’s more work.
What to do? I did not turn on my TV yesterday except to watch the Ohio State/Notre Dame game. I use my Facebook account primarily for political reasons. So, I'll keep it.
Last evening we skipped all the news and sports to watch a new to me Climate Scientist, David Swain on Adam Conover’s “Debunking L.A. Wildfire Myths with Climate Scientist Dr. Daniel Swain” at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P2O1F_6ikY
He is milder than, Peter Kalmus, (the one I was most concerned about since I knew where he lived in Altadena), and Swain patiently explains the counter arguments to myths and goes at great length to explain the current and growing risk from inattention to the realities of measurable climate change. To me it is a great demonstration of how you can explain the real science and conditions to others, no matter what their preconceived ideas have been.
We also watched
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED
It was presented 5 months ago, before Helene and Milton hurricanes and the latest California fires so things are so much worse even in less than 6 months.
“…Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change…
...We Earth system scientists and climate scientists are getting seriously nervous. The planet is changing faster than we have expected.
We are, despite years of raising the alarm, now seeing that the planet is actually in a situation where we underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring in a way that is way beyond the realistic expectations in science.
As if this was not enough,
Impacts across the economy. We are seeing that this is now causing impacts across the entire economy.
We're seeing bigger and bigger invoices being sent by the Earth system onto societies across the entire world, in droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-reinforced storms, scientifically attributed to human-caused climate change.
Forty degrees Celsius of life-threatening heat across all continents, occurring in 2023.
Fifty-two degrees Celsius hitting the over 1,000 who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June in Mecca.
Higher climate change risks.
Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change.
2023, up to 12,000 deaths, 200 billion US dollars of cost, just in the US, up to 100 billion US dollars.
[not including hurricanes Helene and Milton or the Altadena and Palisades Fires]
Thank you Dr. Richardson. It is a sad day in America. I deleted my FB and Instagram accounts today. I am very happy to find you here at Substack.
I am so torn about Facebook. I'm rarely there lately but I do keep up with friends and acquaintances that I otherwise wouldn't. My feed has been blessedly free if the sort of BS that is causing such angst but I also hate that I'm adding to Zuck's subscriber base by which he can set ad rates.
Stick it to the Zuck. I miss people I used to keep up with. But FB banned me, so it’s like I was erased. Some I hear about and others I have lost somewhere along the way. But Zuck is a power-hungry weasel. I hope my data has been deleted and not kept somewhere. Although I’ll have to say that a FB data breach dumped my info on the dark web. So good riddance to Zuck rubbish.
But FB banned me,
An honor I'm sure.
They said I violated community standards by saying that repubs used Goebbels rules for propaganda. Well duh
I am coming up on the 40th anniversary of getting fired from a job I was at for 11 years with excellent performance evaluations. It happened after I sent a letter to the state administration about concerns I had about professional and legal issues. I was fired for insubordination when I told my supervisor that I will no subordinate my self to anything illegal, immoral or unethical. My fellow employees voted in a union one week later. Did not benefit me but no regrets here.
I was laid off after asking in a meeting where they bragged about hiring new people and providing them all these trading classes if they would provide those of us who held the company together by threads that same training.
When they told me to get my stuff off the laptop they provided I wiped the whole hard drive, including their stuff. They spent a month calling me and asking me questions about the very stuff they told me they didn’t need me for. I told them my rate was $50 an hour and they left me alone. It was a joy to see them go under the next year.
Wow, couldn’t tolerate being professional and legal. Yea for the union. We all are gonna have to take a stand, sooner or later…
I remember that Edward Bernays (who had Sigmund Freud as one of his double uncles), inspired Goebbels.
That's bad enough, but I also remember back when I was still a Republican, amazed at the in depth research the Cato Institute could document but then publish conclusions that seemed so out of line with what their more verifiable research would suggest.
The general case I recall was on the oil companies cheating on oil leases, paying for only a fraction of the oil they took, especially from Native Americans. An oil field instrumentation technician (who's truck I repaired the wiring on), told me they had filmed oil tankers making six trips to a refinery when they claimed that one truck had picked up the oil from all six tanks before delivering it to the refinery. He seemed to indicate they stole 3 times as much from the Native Americans as they did from other lease holders. Many years later, I heard they had won a lawsuit proving that, but that may be very much harder to find than it was back then.
N O surprise, a friend from Michigan told me that Cato was a propaganda org, along with ALEC, I started paying attention, but the fix was in, and this was in the 90’s. Damn, I thought Jack Abramoff was the best scammer of the natives. Yea to natives who could win a lawsuit against the oil companies. Their lawyers are the best at fraudulent practices…
So much for free speech.
They did not like me calling them what they were.
I'm not sure what site I'm on (not FB) but I get you violated community standards all the time. I don't even use profanity. It seems that if you give too many details and facts to prove your point, they get upset.
They don’t like any vestige of the truth.
Transition to Bluesky
🦋Bluesky has a search function, Directory & other stuff like friends🦋
I did that…but don’t have any friends on it. In fact, being old, most of the ones I had don’t exist anymore.
Jeri check out Rachel Maddow on 🦋. So far, Rachel has 70posts & 498.9K followers. [@maddow.msnbc.com] Bluesky 🦋
Thanks for the tip, Counselor.
<trundles off to Bluesky for a moment>
Will do, thanks
You have plenty of friends on here, Jeri.
And this letters subscribers are my sanity, along with TCinLA, Steady, and a few others
Hey, I friended you, but I really don't get that platform yet.
Me too, yep, it’s still a mystery, also have been ill so haven’t had time or energy figure things out. Hope progress soon…
The Unbearable Lightness of Being..
I have the same feeling - it’s a way to keep up to date with family and friends, and like you none of the right wing garbage shows up on my page.
Most of the right wing garbage I get is from my former work cohort. You would not believe the garbage that they believe. These are people I once respected. Not anymore.
Reading some trumper comments like libotards should stop name calling. I told her I learned from her leader and proceeded to list the terms (and who they applied to), I got censored. I tried again without names although Sleepy and Crooked Joe were acceptable :(
You can start a family chat group. It works for us
I figure he will fake it anyway s so might as well take what I can. But the crap has so overwhelmed the reasonable stuff that I am no longer sure if it is worth it.
I felt the same way. I'm only on BlueSky now, where I'm keeping a wary eye on developments.
I feel this way too, although I can’t say I’m rarely on FB.
Be sure and delete Facebook if you don't use it. Otherwise they use your data.
Think about transitioning to bluesky.
Bluesky is more a replacement for Twitter/X than Facebook. I deleted my Twitter account and use Bluesky mostly for quick access to news, but it’s not really like the community of friends I have on Facebook.
My Facebook is full of horses and cooking with almost zero political content, although yesterday I noticed that I somehow, suddenly, was following DJT against my will. Obviously I’m not anymore but that made me angry. Same thing happened on Twitter with Elon, despite blocking him twice.
I was happily using Bluesky until I needed to reset my password. I was never able to get back in. They're system for resetting your password is insane and despite several attempts at using it then trying to contact them several times I gave up and made a new account using a different e-dress. A couple of days after doing that, and despite very little activity, my account was suspended for spamming despite the fact that my only activity was liking and reposting the posts of others. I tried again to get into my original account but again was faced with the reset code not working despite copying it character for character. I've finally given up. I know they're suffering from growing pains and hope they succeed at fixing the technical issues but it has helped me feel less enchanted with social media altogether.
Try Mastodon
You'll find other ways to stay connected with your family and friends. You really must permanently delete any Zuckerberg related accounts. Among his other despicable actions, he's a Jew who supports a team led by a man who twice made the Nazi salute.
If you are on the fence about quitting Facebook… apparently Zuckerberg automatically signed people up to follow The White House and trump and Melania. People are putting out instructions for how to unfollow, but there’s no guarantee you won’t be signed up again. As for me, I’m done. Advertisers are watching. I hope META loses a lot of revenue.
I was also conflicted about FB but decided in the end to delete my account. Today is day 1 and I do not miss it. It will not be hard to find new communities particularly outside of the internet. Good luck. N
Mine too, most (like 99%) of my FB friends are thoroughly anti-Trump / Maga. Maybe Trump, who is backed by Big Oil, has friends in Alberta, Canada. Smith, the premier, couldn't find a seat in Washington to attend the Inaug so was headed for the Canadian Embassy to take it in. Not sure she managed that! Alberta is more interested in selling oil and gas to the US than joining the rest of Canada's leadership in opposing likely tariffs as Trump still boondoggles American public into thinking, falsely, that foreign sellers pay for the tariffs.
There are days I wish Alberta would secede from the Confederation. Or wake up and smell the climate chaos. Danielle Smith is as exactly the wrong leader as the orange felon is. But her #ucker Convoy mini-MAGAts love her.
I felt the same way! I left and decided to make peace with it.
Remember Zuck is still mining your data and all guardrails will be gone now. I deleted mine years ago and keep in tough via text and email. It has worked well since 2018.
Have you looked into Bluesky Social? bsky.app It appears to be a decent social platform with a lot less of the malarkey found on FB and the other platforms. Encourage your friends to join you there and give Zuck the middle finger on your way out.
My children are all on Facebook. I don’t visit it nearly as much as I used to, but I do dip in occasionally, just to stay in touch.
I deleted Facebook 13 years ago when Wisconsin politics turned wicked, and I was disgusted with finding out what some of my relatives and acquaintances truly believed. I have never regretted it. Friends let me know of invitations. And I've kept up with distant friends and relations in other ways. I made sure to get email addresses or phone numbers before I quit. It isn't hard.
More and more folks ate going to bluesky
I never signed up for Facebook, despite the many climate activists and others that made it almost essential enough to have to do it. Not doing so was limiting but I'm still glad I didn't. I makes me certain now that I never will.
As another Mainer from Standish, I never signed up for FB either. Every time there’s a breach, I don’t have to worry. Today, I don’t need to be concerned about removing myself from this invasion of privacy or support these techies in any small way!
I, also left FB years ago as it turned out to be Junior High all over again. Who needs that?! I thought I had followed all the protocols to cancel and remove my account. Recently I ran into an old acquaintance who “followed me on FB” and noted current content. What? I cannot get on FB to check because “My account has been canceled”. So I am in FB Purgatory evidently, unable to remove my former page, but advertisers still able to put up content.
Same!
Facebook accounts are really difficult to delete according to several people who have tried. If you even attempt to see if your account is inactive in the next 30 days or so, it automatically reactivates the account. Anyway, that's what happened to my wife when she canceled her account a few years ago. She ultimately was able to cancel it.
How?
Here’s what I did. It was time consuming but worth it. I deleted all my friends, all my images, and all my posts. Basically I had a blank account. Then I deleted Facebook. There was nothing left for them to mine even though they can get it from the wayback or their stored data. But that’s more work.
What specifically did she do?
What to do? I did not turn on my TV yesterday except to watch the Ohio State/Notre Dame game. I use my Facebook account primarily for political reasons. So, I'll keep it.
Last evening we skipped all the news and sports to watch a new to me Climate Scientist, David Swain on Adam Conover’s “Debunking L.A. Wildfire Myths with Climate Scientist Dr. Daniel Swain” at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9P2O1F_6ikY
He is milder than, Peter Kalmus, (the one I was most concerned about since I knew where he lived in Altadena), and Swain patiently explains the counter arguments to myths and goes at great length to explain the current and growing risk from inattention to the realities of measurable climate change. To me it is a great demonstration of how you can explain the real science and conditions to others, no matter what their preconceived ideas have been.
We also watched
The Tipping Points of Climate Change — and Where We Stand | Johan Rockström | TED
It was presented 5 months ago, before Helene and Milton hurricanes and the latest California fires so things are so much worse even in less than 6 months.
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vl6VhCAeEfQ
Mind you this was presented 5 months earlier,
“…Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change…
...We Earth system scientists and climate scientists are getting seriously nervous. The planet is changing faster than we have expected.
We are, despite years of raising the alarm, now seeing that the planet is actually in a situation where we underestimated risks. Abrupt changes are occurring in a way that is way beyond the realistic expectations in science.
As if this was not enough,
Impacts across the economy. We are seeing that this is now causing impacts across the entire economy.
We're seeing bigger and bigger invoices being sent by the Earth system onto societies across the entire world, in droughts, floods, heat waves, disease patterns, human-reinforced storms, scientifically attributed to human-caused climate change.
Forty degrees Celsius of life-threatening heat across all continents, occurring in 2023.
Fifty-two degrees Celsius hitting the over 1,000 who lost their lives at the Hajj pilgrimage in June in Mecca.
Higher climate change risks.
Three times higher climate change risks now attributed to our cause of climate change.
2023, up to 12,000 deaths, 200 billion US dollars of cost, just in the US, up to 100 billion US dollars.
[not including hurricanes Helene and Milton or the Altadena and Palisades Fires]
Zuckerburg added Trump and Vance to my followers! Break that glass house down!