So, Last week my account was hacked and I was kicked off Facebook. It wasn’t my fault, but Facebook don’t want to give me the account back and I’m passed caring. I’ve written about this in detail here.
But this whole process set me thinking about my relationship with big tech.
For the last 16 years I have been handing my data, personal photos, work information, location, interests and thoughts to an enormous faceless tech giant who has whored out this information willy-nilly, bombarded me with adverts, provoked me into heated arguments with friends and near punch ups with strangers, probably lost me a few work opportunities, spent billions of pounds trying to hack my brain and then deleted all my information without so much as a thank-you-very-much when some scally in Vietnam decided to hack my account to promote his shitty Vietnamese junk shop.
And Facebook is still demanding I pay for the Vietnamese junk shop adverts.
So that’s just Facebook. But what if Google did the same? Or Twitter? Or Facebook said I couldn’t use Whatsapp either. In the last week I have found out that these companies really really REALLY don’t give a shit about you, your family or the photos of your children you naively thought would be well looked after in a Silicon Valley server farm in lieu of getting them printed out like the olden days.
So here’s my slightly half-baked workaround: mayne.org.uk
Anything I post here will be automatically shared to my account on Twitter and a new page I’ve made for the purpose on Facebook (via a backup account – how long I keep it for is anyone’s guess). This means I keep full ownership of all the content.
Facebook comments can be posted directly to the posts on my website or to the posts on my FB page if so desired.
Facebook messenger is replaced with a free chat widget that also syncs with my mobile phone. You cna use that to contact me just like FB messenger, but I actually have an element of control over this.
I can still write nonsense from my mobile at 2am, becasue I have setup a link with an app that will post directly to the website.
I know engagement will fall to almost nothing or less and that’s fine. But it’s my very small FUCK YOU to Facebook and it feels good.