Social Media Disease

I have to quit Instagram for awhile.

I turned my Instagram page into a repository for anti-Trump memes - two posts of anti-Trump memes with every third post a picture of a beautiful woman to provide relief from MAGA.  (Instagram pages show posts in rows of three.)  I posted pictures in threes twice, sometimes thrice a day at times, because the memes bashing Trump and MAGA were too clever to resist.  I was going overboard and spending way too much time on Instagram, but hey, it was fun.

Then two embarrassing things happened.  One was that I reposted the original post of a friend who also posts on Instagram - that is, it was an image my had created himself - and he was a tad miffed by my failure to credit him.  (I credited Go-Go's rhythm guitarist Jane Wiedlin for reposting memes on her Instagram page that she had likely not created herself, even though I don't know her from Eve, but not my friend.  Embarrassing indeed.)  The other embarrassing thing was this meme I posted not on Instagram, but on Facebook.   And I had found it on BlueSky.  

The hearing referred to above did take place, and yes, Pete Hegseth did in fact say that to Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).  Senator Slotkin's comeback is masterful.  Except for one thing.   She didn't actually say that.   Someone I know who had seen the actual Senate hearing told me that Senator Slotkin simply replied "Oh, my God!" and rolled her eyes in response to Hegseth's inane comment.  I was already going to post this meme on Instagram, but after I found out that the Slotkin quote was made up by someone other than the senator herself, I didn't.  

And so I have decided to stop posting anything on Instagram - for the time being.  It might be a long time being.  Because, after these two faux pas, posting anti-Trump, anti-MAGA memes on Instagram - or anything else - stopped being fun.  And I don't think I was enlightening any Republican-leaning voters with my posts.  

I'm not big on social media these days.  I still go on Facebook and I'm active there because, well, that's still fun.  Instagram, Facebook's sister platform, has become a grind.  Threads is just boring.  And if not for the ability to post links to my blog on LinkedIn, Mastodon, and BlueSky, I wouldn't bother with any of those platforms.  (Yes: Meta platforms still won't let me post links to my blog there.)  So I'll just wait until I really want to post something on Instagram before I do so again.  And with all the time I save not going on platforms not named Facebook, I have more time to write blog posts here. 

Not that I will.  I need more time to enjoy being with my cats. 

Meta MAGA

Meta, the parent company that started Facebook and bought Instagram (to eliminate competition), announced recently that it will no longer fact-check posts on its platforms.

But I still can't post links to my blog on them.

Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg claimed that it was a move to simplify platform standards and foster free speech, or some sort of soda water like that, but everyone knows the real reason for his changed stance.  It's to allow MAGA right-wingers to post whatever misinformation they want to no matter how dangerously misleading it is and not have to worry about anyone at Meta taking it down for fear of retribution by MAGA - or Donald Trump himself - against the company.  Any responsibility to curb misinformation on Facebook or Instagram falls to users who report misleading content to the bots that run the damn platforms.

It gets worse.  Meta is also getting rid of its "diversity, equity and inclusion" (DEI) program in the wake of other companies doing the same.  Now, I've had my problems with programs that promote "diversity," because the very term suggests that differences are more important than common standards and qualifications, so why bother with any of that?  But by adding equity and inclusion as goals, these programs have made standards and qualifications more integral in the effort to include more women and people of color in professional entities, be they colleges of corporations.  DEI is far more comprehensive than "affirmative action," which was really neither.  But after demonizing former future President Kamala Harris as a "DEI hire" - forget for a moment that Harris' standards and qualifications for executive office are just the sort of qualities that DEI seeks to inculcate - no one wants to offend MAGA leaders or Trump for fear of offending them to the point where Trump finds a way to undermine their businesses.  For Meta, that means regulations the Sugar Mountain Man (again, that's what I call Zuckerberg, because his name means "sugar mountain" in German) would prefer not to deal with.  For McDonald's, which also ended its DEI program, that means . . . what?  That Trump orders his meals from Burger King?   

In other words, companies will be run almost entirely by white men . . . which, as I already explained by pointing to rock and roll, inevitably means unmitigated disaster.

As a Jew with a Chinese-American wife, Zuckerberg should know better.

Faceban

I got restricted on Facebook.  I haven't been allowed to post anything, comment on anything, contact anyone through Facebook Messenger, or even click "Like" on anything since Thursday.

Because, apparently, this picture of a little boy urinating on a Trump lawn sign is . . .

. . . frowned upon by the Facebook police!

Because, I am told, this is child sexual exploitation, though I don't know how showing a little boy's bare bottom while he's relieving himself on a Trump lawn sign is exploitative when you can't see anything worse than, well, a bare bottom.  

I got this from a friend's Instagram feed.  Guess who owns Instagram.

Meta!

Since the same people who use Instagram also use Facebook and vice versa, what the hell is Meta doing by penalizing me for posting this to Facebook?

Aah, computer bots are policing Facebook and Instagram now, not real humans.  What's really galling is that I clicked on a button for a form with which to fill out on Facebook to challenge the removal of the photo and the resulting suspension, but I got a message saying the feature doesn't work and that someone is working to get it fixed.

Yeah, right. 

The real reason  for this photo being taken down, I suspect, is because the real crime is demonizing Trump, whose hateful rhetoric has been very good business for Meta.  Meta has just lifted its ban on content promoting the fallacy that President Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and so has YouTube.  That is why I made this video. 

I plan to post this video to my Facebook timeline as soon as my restrictions have been lifted, which should be either tomorrow or Monday.

In the meantime, I would encourage Trump's opponents to take advantage of the right to free speech and speak out against him as much as possible.  After January 19, 2025, we may never get the chance again.

And Now, Instagram

Facebook isn't just in trouble after former Facebook employee Frances Haugen (below) blew the whistle on its encouragement of hate speech to make money.  Instagram is now under scrutiny for promoting itself to teenage girls and damaging their sense of self-worth.

It seems that teenage girls spend a lot of time on Instagram looking at pictures of perfectly beautiful women in their early twenties - the very sort of women that teenage girls always try to emulate - and develop inferiority complexes when they realize that they can't have perfect bodies or faces like the young women they want to be like.   Many of them starve themselves for that perfect body, and some of them engage in even more destructive behavior.   Instagram has created a whole generation of teenagers - not just girls, but, I'm sure, but boys also (imagine Big Man On Campus types Instagram on making geeks feel inferior because they have the cool cars, the cool clothes, and, ironically, the hot girls) - who feel like they're the most cursed generation that has ever lived.  And for reasons having nothing to do with a dying planet.

Oh yeah, I have an account on Instagram.  I mostly use it to look at pictures of cars from automakers and pictures of scenery from friends who travel.  But without a smartphone, I can't post pictures of my own.  (People follow my account anyway.  Go figure.)  I've tried to find a way to post on it with my laptop, but to no avail.  More and more, though, I feel like I'm better off not bothering.  Many of the pictures I see are pictures those same friends have posted on Facebook.  All it's really good for is to follow and communicate with friends who depend more time there than on Facebook or Twitter.   I spend enough time posting pictures on Facebook; why bother to do the same thing on one of Facebook's sister sites?  (I never visit WhatsApp.)

And it's not only  teenagers who get depressed by Instagram.  Listen to this confession from CNN's Anderson Cooper:

"I'm on Instagram and I enjoy it.  I follow friends and look at art sites and things like that. But I gotta say, it depresses me. I mean, I leave feeling worse than when I got on.

"I feel worse about my own life, I cannot imagine what a teenager feels.  I mean, I'm supposedly an adult. What some kid feels looking at other people's lives and how their lives seem much more exciting than their own."

And when I think about it, I get a little depressed too when I go on Instagram and see other people in exotic locales such as France and Holland.  And I'm stuck in New Jersey.  If my friends who use Instagram exclusively - both of them - were on Facebook, I wouldn't go on Instagram so much.

Oh yeah, don't expect Congress, after the Senate heard Haugen testify on Facebook and its sister sites, to go after Mark Zuckerberg like a rabid pit bull.  The Z-man has plenty of lobbyists to tame them.

Antisocial Media

Facebook is in trouble.  Real trouble.

Frances Haugen, the 37-year-old ex-Facebook employee who came out and revealed herself to be the Facebook whistleblower who leaked to the Wall Street Journal that the social media platform values content that gets people enraged because it keeps them engaged on Facebook longer and thus makes more money for the platform and its advisers.  Haugen, who appeared on "60 Minutes" this past Sunday, also said that Facebook prefers profits over safety, and it  changed its algorithms to downplay and limit hate speech during the 2020 presidential election but changed them back to allow more of it once the election was over.  Gee, what could possibly go wrong?

Oh, right . . . 

And the day after Haugen came forward on "60 Minutes," Facebook and its sister platforms Instagram and WhatsApp went out for hours and its stock plummeted.  Suddenly, Americans are falling out of love with Facebook . . . but so many of them rely on it for their businesses and to open other apps on their smartphones (I have a flip phone) that many of them need to use it more than want to.  

I have long enjoyed using Facebook for pleasure.  I use it to communicate with Beatles fans and fans of the band Family, meet people who love "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" like I do, and make friends with various people, among other things.  I use it to promote my articles on a hyperlocal-news site for which I labor.  I have, of course, befriended several fashion models - many of them my high-school crushes - and I started a Facebook group page for Olympic swimmer Janet Evans (my sports crush). But even on a social-media platform on which I and others express a lot of love, there is a lot of hatred, too.  Facebook is used to stoke hate and spread misinformation about everything from COVID cases to court cases.  It's also good at organizing fascist rallies.

One thing it's not good for anymore, at least not for me, is to promote this blog and my Mark 8 VW Golf Facebook still won't let me go back to posting links to it on its platform.  Apparently, more people find my blogs offensive than calls to overthrow the elected government.

Bearing all of this in mind, I won't be so sad if Facebook gets broken up.  I just hope I keep all of my social connections.

Especially with my friends in the modeling profession. 😉 

I'm glad it's back on for now, anyway.  But Facebook and its sister sites were not the only ones acting funny yesterday. I tried to log ion to Flickr and I needed  verification code to continue.  It took over an hour to get it in my inbox, and I might not have gotten it at all. if I hadn't complained to Flickr.

Then I got ten more codes - the result of countless hits of the resend button. 😲