Leaving Facebook

Just a note to let people know that I have deleted all my Facebook accounts. Yep, gone cold turkey, switched it all off, personal, SOS Computer Rescue and the pages for my EV – Squirrel the Minicab Miev

In fact it was this last page that was the driver in saying goodbye to Facebook. Last week, I went in to add a new post on this page, it had followers in 3 digits, so I thought it was worthwhile letting people know what owning an EV like Squirrel was like. However, there was a big red notice on the page saying that it had been “Unpublished”, is that even a word? Apparently one of their algorithms or bots got upset with something on these posts, and unpublished it. The reason given was that something was not up to community standards. There had been multiple breaches of these standards, but no indication of exactly what the offense was. I researched the process about appealing this decision, and from what I read, it is just not worth it. It would take months, they would not tell you anymore, and would not reverse the decision.

I was a little unusual in how I use Facebook, I have no friends and no one is able to send me friend requests. I have a few followers, but they don’t bother me. I publish for my own information and entertainment, if others like it, they are welcome to follow me.

The Squirrel pages covered many topics, but most of the posts are links to posts in my personal blog in WordPress (hosted on my ISP server) which hosts the pages you are reading now. What few posts were purely Facebook were simple posts about tyres, milestones in vehicle use etc.

So why was I unpublished? Apparently Squirrel has a few meanings in internet slang, it can refer to a male prostitute who is particularly promiscuous, it can also refer to female prostitutes, and to females in general when you want to refer to one without actually drawing attention to the post.

Anyway, after spending a few hours researching what had happened and what I could do about it, I realised I was spending way too much time on Facebook, both on this issue and in general. So goodbye Facebook. I have downloaded all my posts and interactions with Facebook over the last 9 years, and I will go through it to see if there was anything important, and repost it. I am busy reducing my digital footprint, so will be revamping my whole web presence over the next few months. Crazy Domains have started to annoy me after they took over my ISP, so I may look for an NZ based ISP and move a subset of my stuff.