If you, like me, live in the EU, Facebook is now entirely clamping down and forcing free users to make their personal data available for monetization.
Attempting to access any Facebook domain and perhaps also other meta products will redirect you to the following prompt with a choice between either accepting the monetization of your user data, or coughing up a region-dependent monthly subscription fee: base (for me ~10€) + an additional fee (~7€) for each additional facebook or instagram account you have.
Now, the hidden third option. At an initial glance, it seems like there is no other option but to click one of the buttons - however, certain links still work, and grant access to important pieces of functionality through your web browser.
If anyone has information to add regarding Facebook or Instagram, please do share it. I've only (begrudgingly) used the former up until now, but I know many others use Instagram and don't feel like giving a single cent (nor their personal info) to Meta.
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https://www.facebook.com/dyi - perhaps most important of all, now is a good time to make a request to download your Facebook data. Don't forget to switch to data for "all time" and "high quality" if you intend to permanently delete your account.
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https://www.facebook.com/your_information - here you can find and manage your information, but crucially also access Facebook messenger.
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The messenger app: Still hasn't prompted me with anything, though I expect that will change in the not too far future.
Currently my plan is to use messenger to inform any important friends that I intend to leave FB, and where they'll be able to reach me in the future.
Isn't that incredible? Turns out that connecting people to one another in this way fosters some healthy interaction for those who choose it but also amplifies loads of unhealthy bs. I'm one of those idiots who 15 years ago thought the internet and social media would bring about something of a second enlightenment, a golden area of progressivism, being well-informed, connected to one another in new and beautiful ways.
I mean, it sort of did, it's just not quite that simple. A lot of amazing things have come about because of social media. So many artists able to reach people directly without needing gatekeepers like publishers. Movements able to be organized where previously those people would have never interacted.
Commenting this on a post about one of the new gatekeepers is quite ironic.
The route to getting something posted on Facebook or other social media involves 1 gatekeeper who barely involves itself. The route to getting a book or news article published involves more, and they micromanage the content much much more. Just compare what percentage of people have posted something on Facebook vs have had an article published by a newspaper or magazine.
You can post all you want, if you actually want to reach an audience you must comply with silly rules (try putting an innocent non sexualized nipple on an albumcover and posting it to facebook) and you have to pay for visibility because algorithm heavily favours money. On top it's vendor locked-in, there are only very few networks with a very large userbase, and even fewer corporations behind them.
None of that affects people's ability to disseminate information anywhere close to the constraints put on people by traditional publishing. Again, how many people have ever posted to social media vs how many people have ever published a book?
you're disseminating into the void and this conversation we're having is a fine example. The gatekeeper (in this case: facebook) determines who gets a very wide audience and who gets to scream into the void.