"I got rid of facebook" Jacina

 

I Got Rid of Facebook and Have No Regrets: My Thoughts On The New Meta Guidelines By JACINDA HALL, Independent Writer

As we all know, the new year started last month, and Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that he would end third-party fact-checking on his platforms and switch to a community notes model similar to what Elon Musk did for Twitter. And yes, I still call it Twitter because “X” is a dumb name for a social platform and I’ve always known the website as “Twitter.” With these new rules, Meta is now allowing users on their platforms to insult and dehumanize members of the LGBTQ community and women. Not long after these changes were made, Meta decided to withdraw their DEI program and disband their DEI team. These changes were made ahead of a second Trump administration. Users on Meta platforms are now allowed to call members of the LGBTQ community “mentally ill” and/or “freaks” and the company is also allowing users to call women “household objects” or “property.” After these rules had gone into effect, I deleted Facebook and Messenger and I didn’t look back. The only Meta platforms I still have are Instagram and WhatsApp, but I have my reasons for keeping those. Facebook has already become a cesspool of uneducated people who thought the COVID-19 vaccine was going to microchip you, yet also think that raw milk is the best thing for your health. The app did its job and helped me for the past four years by staying in touch with friends and family that I could not visit due to the COVID-19 pandemic, work and school. But over the same past four years, I’ve seen a lot of hate and misinformation spread around by people I knew and by the time 2025 came around, I didn’t feel safe on Facebook anymore. As a queer woman, I am disgusted by the fact that a social platform would allow such things to be said about both groups, but I am not shocked that it came down to this. Zuckerburg has shown himself to be an awful human being by being associated with Trump and now allowing even more harmful content to be spread on his platforms. This also shouldn't be surprising that Zuckerberg has exhibited misogynistic behavior in the past before creating Facebook. In case you didn’t know (don’t worry I didn’t know this until recently either), Zuckerberg testified in front of Congress in 2018 and admitted that while he was still attending Harvard, he created a prank website called “FaceMash” to rank the attractiveness of women on campus. This was brought up because Former Missouri Rep. Billy Long questioned Zuckerberg about the website and asked if it was still running, to which Zuckerberg responded that it was not running. Regardless of whether the website was a prank or not, it still doesn’t excuse Zuckerberg from bad behavior. We should hold Zuckerberg accountable for his actions, even if that means leaving Facebook. I have no regrets about deleting my Facebook and Messenger accounts I am glad I did it. ​ ​ ​