The following is adapted from the post I made to my own pages on Facebook and MeWe
I’ve set up accounts on MeWe and Parler. I’m in the process of figuring out their functions and deciding what I’ll post on each site. I’m not leaving Facebook. Like most, FB has become an archive of my public facing life, mostly nature, travel, gardens and botany, funny and stupid memes, and of course family events. All safe. Rarely do I post anything controversial and even then, it’s usually just data sets or a proven fact summary. So why set up shop elsewhere?
We’ve all heard stories of FB doing someone wrong and taking down an innocent post. Add to that, this election season, many of us posted information that got an ominous warning label slapped onto it. Our ‘parent’, Mark Zuckerberg wanted to keep us safe. The implication was that he had to warn us to go only to his approved sources for election information, Big Media.
The next step in this paternal process is to suspend your account if Mark deems your share is ‘dangerous’ to the community. If it’s egregious enough, now or in the future, your FB account will be permanently closed. You will be locked out of your virtual tenant house and will have no access to whatever belongings were left inside, essentially, what has become the archive of your life.
Be assured, the noose of what is deemed dangerous is being drawn tighter. It’s a risk that must be mitigated. You might not be judged a wild fanatic now, but that doesn’t guarantee that Mark won’t think so later. In the event that Biden is ever officially declared the winner, is seated as President, and delivers the long “dark winter” that he promised in his campaign, and when you become critical of that crackdown, you may suddenly find yourself virtually ostracized from your friends and family on FB, totally at the initiative of Mark Zuckerberg.
Some will say or agree with the oft repeated defense, that shutoffs are a glitch in the algorithm and that Mark is not personally responsible. I don’t buy that. The patterns of suppression are consistent. Mark employs software engineers, they program the bots. Those software engineers are documented to largely share Mark’s values. Mark knows exactly what information is being filtered.
If you’re inclined to believe that Mark Zuckerberg always has your best interest at heart and you appreciate his censorship, don’t join MeWe or other new social medias. For me, I neither asked for, need, or want his oversight. I have my own process for vetting news and information.
As said, I’ll still be on Facebook posting stuff that makes Mark happy. If you’re migrating content, just a few recommendations: Give yourself(s) a week or two to sort out how to use MeWe (or Parlar). It looks like FB but maybe not all the bells and whistles of FB right now. Get used to the idea of migration, say, another 5 years or more. Progressives are successfully buying out conservative havens left and right. There’s no absolute guarantee it won’t happen on other sites. See you on the other side.