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TL;DR: I’m leaving Meta, and you can find me over on BlueSky (https://bsky.app/profile/nadiavanilla.bsky.social). Looking forward to seeing you there!
Let’s be real here – it would probably be much better for my visibility to be on Facebook. Just by eyeballs, there are a lot more than there are on the other apps. I was never very good at social media anyway, and I have always avoided it if I could. In the bag of tricks my ADHD Chaos Pixie carries around with her, she’s always got a good reason why social media should be the last on the list.
It’s probably cost me a lot of opportunities, if I’m honest. The job of an artist is now ALL the jobs – marketing director, accountant, videographer, technical director, and more. There are a lot of hats we have to wear, and somehow the one that is most likely to lead to financial success, is the one I can’t bring myself to do.
But that’s not why I’m phasing Meta out of my business and life.
It’s because of a couple of things.
First, it’s because of their new terms and conditions. They explicitly allow “certain kinds” of hate speech. This is from Meta’s own website, under “Hateful Conduct.” You can see it here on their site: https://transparency.meta.com/policies/community-standards/hateful-conduct
People sometimes use sex- or gender-exclusive language when discussing access to spaces often limited by sex or gender, such as access to bathrooms, specific schools, specific military, law enforcement, or teaching roles, and health or support groups. Other times, they call for exclusion or use insulting language in the context of discussing political or religious topics, such as when discussing transgender rights, immigration, or homosexuality. Finally, sometimes people curse at a gender in the context of a romantic break-up. Our policies are designed to allow room for these types of speech.
They have leaned right for far too long, and now they are saying that people can shit on the LGBTQ community because of religious reasons, political reasons, moral reasons, or anger at people of genders different from yours. Why else do people shit on each other, than one of those reasons?!
Considering how involved Facebook was in trying to kill TikTok at a legislative level, and then how heavily censored it is for the work I do, I can not square with them allowing hate speech just openly and explicitly on their platform. Their goals are to steal my attention and siphon off whatever information they can get their thorough little fingers on. They fuel the xenophobia attached to China and TikTok, and for what? More market share for themselves.
This is a big deal because TikTok is where information, organization, and protest are formed, in the current era. Or, rather, WERE formed. The stunt that happened right before inauguration came with a message from the CEO of TikTok, thanking President Trump for saving the day.
A day before he was in office. How’d that happen?
They use our information to try and steer our thoughts, keep us from organizing in a meaningful way, create rage as though it’s water condensing from thin air. They don’t even provide anything meaningful in return. Google, at least, can be treated as an executive function machine. Facebook sows discontent, and steers public thought and public policy… always in ways that harm my community, its various beautiful intersections, and me.
Not interested. Can’t give my attention to that nonsense. I’m not lighting a fire to my entire account, until I have fully migrated away from their products.
I’m over on BlueSky for now. It’s pretty much the only place I’m regularly dusting off and participating in. So far, the vibes are pretty good. They are explicitly okay with the kind of work I do. I don’t need to be censored in a way that feels gross. I only have to tag my art appropriately, and hit a radio button with a content warning. The content options are many, so viewers can choose for themselves what kind of an experience they want. They trust adults to behave like adults. So far, I am very, very interested.
Come find me at BlueSky. https://bsky.app/profile/nadiavanilla.bsky.social