Hello Friends,
As some of you have undoubtedly noticed, I have become a non-person on Facebook.
All I know for sure is that I have been banned from the FB platform.
Recently (seemingly without warning) I was shut down and told I had “violated community standards”. I was not told what exactly I had done wrong. Very quickly thereafter I received an e-mail stating that my appeal had been denied (before I even knew that I had appealed) and that no further appeals would be allowed. I had to wonder. Was it something I said?
The last thing that I had posted (this may or may not be just coincidental) was a question asking people if the first year of the second Trump administration had been better than they had expected, the same as they had expected or worse. As most people started responding worse, I followed up with a question asking them to explain in what ways it has been worse.
And so it goes. It may all be a coincidence. Mark Zuckerberg is still the majority owner of “Meta” (as FB is now supposed to be called) and has clearly been trying to curry favor with Trump and his administration of neo -fascists. Perhaps he is beginning to cull FB of voices that are no longer convenient to his current business model. I am particularly curious to learn whether this is happening to other people.
Truthfully, I enjoyed my experience on FB (until the abrupt termination) but now that it is over, I am looking at it like an addiction. I posted more on FB than most of my friends and when asked I usually responded with these 3 things that I liked best. 1. I had a self-created virtual community of nearly one thousand people with whom I shared news about life, politics and culture. My community had once been substantially larger but then October 7 happened and I eventually culled many former friends. It created an opportunity for me to see news links every day that friends in my community thought interesting or important. 2. I got to follow the lives of children and grandchildren of friends and family in distant corners of the country. Quite simply I loved watching the videos of my great nephews and the grandchildren of my now long-gone best friend playing little league baseball and junior soccer. and 3. I had developed a habit of checking my “memories” every day and being reminded of highlights (and lows) of my life on the same date over the years. It was not that I had “forgotten” most of those memories, but they are not always brought up for recall. This is the addiction (the daily checking of my memories) that I am finding the hardest to break.
I still struggle when I see an interesting article or video with the urge to “post” it to share with my friends. Mostly though I feel the loss of the sense of community that I had with my 1000 friends.
If you would be willing to do me a favor, could you please post the link to this on your personal FB page so it will increase the chances of being seen by mutual friends who I cannot otherwise reach.
If you want to reach out to me, please write me by e-mail at adrchildlaw@hotmail.com.
That is probably the best (and maybe only ) way for me to know that this reached you. I’d truly love to stay in touch.
I will post more so this is the place to look if you are interested in updates about me and the kinds of things I used to share on FB.