Leaving is hard ...
but when it's time, it's time ...
Yesterday, the news broke that Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was kicking truth to the curb. His argument is that free speech has been reigned in for too long and that the community needs to be able to say what they will. He posted a video outlining his free speech plan to LinkedIn today. Those who use the platform will be able to monitor whatever lies others are telling and make sure that truth wins out in the end. Right. Just like Twitter was going to self-regulate. If you don’t know where that has led, trust me, it isn’t pretty. I left Twitter a couple of years ago for exactly that reason: no checks and balances, the rise and normalization of lies, and the outrageously toxic rhetoric.1
So, today I posted my last Facebook post. I’d been thinking about it for a time as I became increasingly uncomfortable knowing that my participation enabled one of the most extreme instances of personal wealth accumulation ever known on the planet. Combined with that concern is the sad awareness that such wealth accumulation, obviously, provides individuals the power to use that wealth however they wish and often, it is not for the betterment of society or the wellbeing of others beyond a token of charitable giving. Bill and Melissa Gates have each developed ways to use their fortunes for good. Zuckerberg’s contribution to Trump, his pledge of fealty to the man who is currently the greatest threat to current and future life on the planet, made it clear that he is not interested in doing good at all. He is only interested in his own personal privilege, safely ensconced as he is in his own gated Kauai haven.
Engagement
We have become connected through, and dependent upon, online social platforms. Through them, we share ideas and stories about the things we find important in our lives, both those we embrace for their uplifting and awe-inspiring insights and those we rail against because of their outrageous affronts to human community and wellbeing. Friends and connections on the platforms expose us to new music, poets and spoken word artists who speak truth to us as we have never heard it before; they present us with news items our connections find relevant and meaningful - the latter a complicated task in Canada which currently prohibits posting news to social media. And they keep us connected to people we would, otherwise, not see because of distance or schedules or both.
Additionally, on social media, we can get caught up in debates, long threads of the back and forth with people we may not know and never meet. We have used it for good and benefitted from our various engagements on these platforms. Such conversations might have previously taken place in the local pub, during coffee hour at church, or over the backyard fence, a practice once so common that my late mother-in-law used the phrase as the name for a newsletter she prepared regularly for retired clergy and their spouses.
But social media can also limit our exposure. It is too easy to build our own interest silos, read what we want, and live without any knowledge of what’s happening in our own neighbourhoods. And if a platform willingly and knowingly provides misinformation an equal presence alongside truth, that has to have am impact on relationships, families, society, and the world, itself. How many of us have relatives or friends we no longer engage because their worldviews are overcome with conspiracy theories, fears stoked by online catastrophists, or who have simply dropped out of family discourse because they think you utterly mad? It is easy to do. Believe me.
That weird little thing called “Truth”
We play too easily with the concept of truth. Any two people, even those married for decades, may have perspectives on it that are dramatically different. Listening to the audio version of Heather Cox Richardson’s Democracy Awakening, I’m stunned that I’m stunned by all the lies that have gone into the making of contemporary America. And yes, that double “I’m stunned” is intentional. I mean, yes, politicians lie; for the last several months we’ve been watching that kind of crazy destroy the nation to our south as truth becomes optional. But I had no idea the depth of duplicity and manipulation of the public that has gone on in America, almost all of it racially motivated, since the 19… well, since e.v.e.r., quite frankly.
But we still value truth. For the moment, anyway. I often find my understanding of truth has to shift as reality becomes clearer or I spend time exploring at depths I hadn’t previously. I think I’ve dragged you through some of that awakening over the past few years. It’s painful, dammit. Who wants to leave behind the comfortable assumptions or the safe delusions that allow us to get up every morning? Often, we are not willing to risk it, but when we do, we are stronger. I know I am, even if I am broken in the process of learning my way toward it. The movement into truth is infinitely more crucial for humanity than preserving our personal beliefs in jars we line up in the basement.
When individuals in positions of power abandon their roles as a stewards of truth, it is important that we notice, that we call it out, and most of all, that we resist. Even when, personally, we don’t have the energy to do that, we can at least refuse to promote them. Pathetic though my fiscal contribution to Zuckerberg’s or Musk’s wealth may be, I’m still not willing to continue to enrich them.
You may feel that contribution is minimal enough and the social connection important enough, to overlook the downside of the engagement. I understand that. Not everyone can flip to another platform and rebuild their community; indeed, I’m not even sure I can. And I won’t condemn you for staying connected to your family and friends. For so so many, it is the only way they can stay informed, send appreciation, recognize accomplishments. If FB is the way you do that, if staying connected means staying on FB, then staying is what you need to do. Please know that I would not at all judge you for remaining on FB. I get it.
Where you can find me
Substack will remain my blogging platform; maintaining my own website to handle that work is just so much more work than I really want to undertake regularly. So this is a great way to connect with you. Please point any friends or family who may be interested in my writing in this direction.
I recently found Bluesky, a short form social media platform. It is heavily weighted with American content right now (but what news media isn’t completely saturated with US news?). Although, some of the disinformation that has become the norm on Twitter has shown up there, those who post it are quickly “outed” and often leave the platform. You can find me there.
And I’ll be building my presence on LinkedIn more intentionally as I switch to posting these Substack blogs there. It will likely, too, become the place where I build a community interested in the things that I believe are crucial to well-being, yours, mine, ours, and the planet’s. I hope you’ll find and follow me there, even if it means setting up your own account! My email address is on my LinkedIn profile if you wish to reach me by email.
Thank you for being with me. Thank you for your understanding. And thank you for your patience during this transition.
Unfortunately, when I left Twitter, I abandoned my username which was picked up by a pervert who posted the most outrageous stuff for some time before anyone alerted me to the fact. If you were spammed with any of that, my apologies. Note to self: when you leave a social platform, do not abandon your identity entirely or someone else will gladly take it over.
Dear Gretta,
Calling Trump "the man who is currently the greatest threat to current and future life on the planet", and connecting this straightforward, in black and white language, with "truth", is a very dubious statement. I am no fan of Trump, and I know he is seen as a danger on the ecological front for instance, but there are other world dangers where very many people have seen Trump as the solution for obvious reasons. Think of the geopolitical front, where China joined Russia, Iran and North Korea with the explicit goal of advancing autocracy against the human rights based international order. And we know for sure that those regimes considered Biden a weak leader (which may have encouraged Putin starting his war in Ukraine), while Trump is someone they rather fear and respect - while Trump did not even wage any wars. Trump also managed the Abraham accords, a unique chance for Muslims to start reversing the old ways of explicit Arab hatred against all things Jewish - but he hardly got any credits for it. So picturing Trump as particularly dangerous to the world is, to my understanding, not so clearly a "truth".
There are other considerations to make. First of all, half of the American people wanted Trump re-elected, and it is hard to believe they are all just idiots who do not care about truth, or about the "current and future life on the planet". Also, the reasoning that the personal issues of a powerful man would make it impossible for him to still make correct political observations, is not rational, it is a 'puritan' projection. All the more because there's lots of advisers in the game too - some of them great geo-strategists. Congress too is there to keep the President in check.
On Mark Zuckerberg: did he only change his policies because of Trump? He was subject to enormous pressure by the Biden Administration for years - Zuckerberg was aware of the strong tendency of cancelling free speech much earlier than last elections. Zuckerberg will not cancel fact-checking, but eliminate official curation by left-wing media. Everyone (including left-wingers) will still be capable to fact-check themselves and add notes to posts they consider not factual - the Twitter model.
On Heather Cox-Richardson I want to be short: She is an excellent historian but she is also extremely woke. She is not a (geo)political thinker, but a historian who sees things through the lens of the Democratic party. Her book "Democracy Awakening" zooms in on Trump's first presidency as if she is describing history - but no one today can possibly make a fine historical assessment of what exactly it is that the Trump administration has or has not achieved.
However, you seem quite aware of the problem with cancelling free speech, as you warn against "interest silos" and living "without any knowledge of what’s happening in our own neighbourhoods". But then you complain about a platform that "willingly and knowingly provides misinformation an equal presence alongside truth". So you correctly identify the problem, but then. somehow implied in the latter quote is a suggestion that we can (easily?) tell "misinformation" from "truth". But, as I tried to illustrate, "truth" is a hard-won jewel, especially in political issues. If we can only point to a lack of morals in a leader, and suggest this makes him "a threat to the world" - is that the discovery of truth? Is the observation that Zuckerberg did wrong by trying to get back to respecting free speech, really enmity against "truth"?
With kind regards and all due respect.
You are not alone, Gretta. My own thoughts here >> https://words-gather-here.blogspot.com/2025/01/information-chaos.html <<. I continue to spell neighbour with a 'u' even though X blocks it as hate speech. I hope our grandchildren will find this all hilarious from their perspective in a saner world.