Metaplexities

The landscape of social media has become more complex recently, or perhaps more unstable, restricted, biased, and otherwise uninviting. Maybe it is me, and my experiences that have colored my opinion of the “Metaverse” and other platforms. In any event, I am forced to reevaluate my use of these ways of interacting. This is painful, because in real life, in my small town where I am a socio-political minority, I have no friends at all, even after three years.

My history of adopting social media has been one of reluctance, but Facebook has been an almost daily ritual since I joined back in 2009. Friends had to twist my arm to register, but I quickly found it to be a useful tool. I set up an Instagram account on December 14, 2021, and even made a handful of posts from my computer. When I logged in on January 20, 2022, I found my account had been permanently disabled for “violating community standards,” with no more specific information. I have not, and will never, set up another Insta account.

I cannot pinpoint when I joined Twitter, but it was apparently prior to June of 2014. I mostly neglected it initially, but gradually it became more of a habit. In July of 2019 I noticed the format had changed, and I didn’t like it. By late November of that year I was complaining that fifty percent of my Twitter feed was advertising. It was all downhill from there, and I left “X” for good on November 7, 2024.

Fortunately, Bluesky became a much more friendly alternative to X, and I made an account there (@bugeric) along with a legion of ex-X users. We shall see how long this honeymoon lasts. While I am also on LinkedIn, and have an account on YouTube, that is the extent of my online communities.

Lately, Facebook has become more of a hassle than a comfort. It has become nearly impossible for me to use it easily on any device other than my phone. On desktop, and now laptop, it requires two-factor authentication, and never recognizes either of them even when I ask it to “trust” the device. Messenger, the chat function of Facebook, now encrypts messages, and I can never see messages sent, just the notification that they were delivered. I do not recall ever getting an option to create a PIN for accessing encrypted messages. Consequently, I have largely given up using Messenger.

Other factors complicating my relationship with Facebook include the Meta corporate decision to abandon fact-checking of public posts; and Meta is now more tolerant of hate speech, especially when it is directed at the LGBTQ+ community. Lastly, the dedication of Meta to scraping images and other user content for use in training generative AI (Artificial Intelligence), and announcement that it fully intends to create artificial user accounts to boost its algorithms, has many of us questioning whether we want to be a party to all of this.

I consider myself average, if not slightly above average, in my ability to curate my newsfeeds, so that I usually get to see most of what I want to see. What has become a supreme frustration now, on Facebook, is criticism from ”friends”, whenever I post almost anything.

The other day I posted that I was proud of my partner for deciding to do more of our grocery shopping at Aldi, instead of Walmart. About two comments in, people started saying “Well, Aldi isn’t that great [socially responsible], either.” Wow. We live in a small town with limited options, we are doing the best that we can! We also utilize a farm store farther out in the county, and the downtown farmers market when it is in season.

I mentioned these exchanges over on Bluesky, and got 152 “likes” so far. One person commented that “Moral choices are hard and imperfect. Snarking from the sidelines is easy.” Another said “Tell them they sound like shame bots. These people really have lost themselves to a mind virus that just looks to discourage. We call these detractors.” Another reply: “I think we need to take a stand against people who believe in ‘purity tests’ like you describe. That kind of behavior is NOT helpful.” I especially liked the “shame bots.”

My strategy from this point forward will be to post little from my Facebook private page, with few, if any, images or videos, so I am not feeding the machine of AI (I have also changed the settings on my “off-Facebook activities”). I will post almost exclusively from my business page, Eric R. Eaton – Writer. I’ll use my private account to keep up with friends and colleagues, and share posts I find useful.

I hope that I can be better at regularly putting content on my blogs, Flickr photostream, and iNaturalist account. I will perhaps investigate other social media outlets and services as I learn of them, and adopt those with a user interface compatible with us old people. Now, if the local townspeople would all wear something (I rarely see MAGA attired) that identifies them as an ally or an adversary, that’d be great.

Postscript: I get a lot of “don’t take things so personally” advice. Well, I do take things personally. I am an only child who was never properly socialized. I think it is a minor miracle that I get along with anybody. Maybe stop assuming I am normal?