The Diogenetic Light: Why I’m No Longer on Facebook

Why I’m No Longer on Facebook

Remember a few weeks ago after that Facebook update f lagged all those legitimate news stories as fake news? ⁱ It seems that’s when the problems began . . .

It was a few days after that update and couple weeks after the massive toilet paper shortage began. I was living in Hanoi and astounded that there were bare store shelves in America. I was always told that communism is what leads to bare store shelves, yet this was happening in America? And there I was living in the heart of a communist dictatorship. To understand how weird it was, you need to see just how bad the store shelves were in Vietnam.

(My apologies for the bad video quality. I rarely even take photos, much less video. Also, I was wearing a thick mask that forced the heavy breathing. But you can clearly see that the stores were better here than back home.)

Ok, things weren’t bad in Vietnam. Other than the coronavirus, things were actually pretty good. My apologies again for the poor video quality. But you can see the store shelves were fully stocked.

Then a woman returned from a trip to Europe and fell ill with Coronavirus the next day.

Some convenience store shelves in the immediate area were cleared out that night, but they were fully stocked again the next day. That was the worst of it. It also didn’t hurt that the Vietnamese government took the virus seriously.

Her illness was confirmed late on a Friday evening. The next morning the Vietnamese army deployed a chemical weapons response team that literally disinfected the streets ⁱⁱ. A few people said they thought it was overkill, but, at the very least, they showed their nation 2 things. First, that this virus was deadly. (This was when Trump was saying it was a Democratic hoax.) Second, they showed the citizenry that they were taking the virus as seriously as the deadly threat that it is. Can you imagine how many fewer people would have died if Trump had taken the virus seriously when he was first briefed about it back in December?

This is what it looks like when a government takes Covid-19 seriously.

Seeing how badly things were going back home compelled me to show others that it doesn’t have to be this way. Others needed to see this too. Just after the video posted on facebook, I saw an odd message that disappeared before I could read it. I was logged out of my account and couldn’t, for the life of me, remember my password to log back in. Oddly, though, I could click on some links and they still worked. Over the next few minutes, though, all those features were killed off too. I have regularly posted videos from YouTube onto both my personal page and the The Diogenetic Light’s facebook page, so it couldn’t have been the video. I knew that facebook’s new algorithm had some major issues and figured it must have been something to do with that.

This was right in the middle of the greatest global threat of our lifetimes, though, and facebook was the primary contact that I had with friends & family. So I made a new account to stay in touch with family and friends. The setup process is a pain and they demand a LOT of personal information. That’s creepy, but I needed to know if my friends and family were alright.

Facebook began suggesting all the people on my friend’s list to me in the new account. The vast majority of my friends are still from America, so why would facebook suggest friends from literally half a world away? I guess that it’s somehow related to the device ID number, but this is still really creepy. I had no time to deal with that, though. I needed to know that my loved ones were ok. I figured that I’d contact facebook later to get it straightened out and get my old account back.

At that time, I was confronted with another problem. Until then, it seemed that we would turn the corner at any moment on the pandemic. Especially in Vietnam, which has received international praise for effectively handling the virus. ⁱⁱⁱ But then a few more new cases were found in Vietnam. The pandemic was now getting worse, and there was talk of closing down the national borders. My wife and daughters were still in Thailand. I needed go and look after them. My wife and I scrambled to find a plane ticket to get me out before the country went on lock-down.

I arrived in Thailand, went through the airport health screening, and caught some much needed sleep. The next day, while scrolling through facebook, a porn pic scrolled through my feed – again. I was furious. It came from a facebook group that regularly bashes religious hypocrites and is usually good fun. It first popped into my feed when I was in the Hanoi airport. I’m no prude, but there is no free speech here in SE Asia. Here’s an example to show how it is here.

In 2014, a military junta seized control of Thailand’s government. ^iv At the time it said that it would only be a temporary measure as there had been violence against anti-government activists. Instead being responsible government and protecting citizens, the military chose to seize power. T he temporary junta still controls Thailand in 2020. In 2016 an anti-junta activist’s mother received a private message through facebook Messenger criticizing the government from one of her son’s friends. Not wanting to be bothered, she replied “jaa,” the Thai equivalent of “whatever.” She was arrested and charged with lese majeste – the crime of disrespecting the monarchy. ^v ^vi ^vii

Let’s review those facts: This lady did not agree with the activist but dismissed him, yet that was considered the same as insulting the king, and threatened her with 3 – 15 years in a Thai prison. ^viii Further, she did not say that on someone’s facebook post, but in facebook’s Messenger app. The Thai government hacked not only the accounts of democratic activists, but even their mothers to shut them up. Thus, you are not allowed to say anything less than praising the monarchy, and, ripping a page from 1984, the governments here will use facebook to spy on you and charge you with thoughtcrime. ^ix That is how draconian and backwards the governments here view freedom of speech.

So when that porn image scrolled through my facebook feed three more times in the Bangkok bus station, I was justifiably angry. The group admins did nothing when I reported the image. I had initially complained about that image on the post itself, which is why it came through my feed the second time in Vietnam, but I had deleted that comment. That post should not have come through again. It never should have been posted in the first place, and now I was furious. Far too many Thai government officers see foreigners as an easy extortion payday, and facebook was putting me at risk. So I posted a complaint into that group, and was promptly told to “f off” by several group members. That’s too bad, as I had enjoyed that group until then.

It had been a week or so since my first account had been killed, and I had been using facebook as ususal. I had been posting news articles, YouTube videos, and memes like normal. I had been so busy that I didn’t think to repost the grocery store video. So I posted it again, and had no problem. For a couple hours.

Then my second account was killed off by facebook. Damn it! It seemed the trolls in that group decided to beat me to the punch by reporting my profile over and over. Sure there was no justification, but facebook’s community guidelines are so so vague that they are meaningless. Additionally, moderators have only seconds to review both a report and the accompanying post or comment. ^x^, Sometimes the moderators do not even speak the language the post is written in. ^xi Besides posting videos for the past week as normal, I had received several nasty comments between posting the video and getting killed off, so it seemed that I was getting jerked around by people exploiting facebook's rules.

So I had to make my third account. Facebook tries to force you to connect your email and other accounts to them. I really did not want to do that. We know that facebook is data mining us, that the platform has been used to hack people, and they have been less than forthright about actually changing and protecting our privacy. ^xii^,^xiii I cannot trust the platform, but, again, everyone is there. So I made another account and connected it to my main Gmail account, which also connects to my blog and YouTube accounts.

Even though facebook profited from purveying Russian propaganda during the 2016 election and even more before and after the election, they refuse to clean up their platform. ^xiv^{,^xv} The fact checking program they announced in 2018 was so pathetically useless that Snopes withdrew from it. ^xvi One former Snopes employee even went so far as to claim that facebook was merely using Snopes to make itself look less awful in a crisis management scheme. ^xvii As if that was not bad enough, facebook announced that they will not fact check political ads on their platform, despite having the biggest liar ever recorded in American politics occupying the White House. ^xviii They are, however, more than happy to spread propaganda for anyone that has the money.

In between all the havoc of those days, I began writing Gut Check. Now, with my Gmail account connected, everything should be fine. So I posted Gut Check, and everything, again, was fine. For a several minutes. Then my third account was killed off. That was it.

Let’s put this all into perspective. Facebook is absolutely with fine taking money from Russian spies to spread propaganda and undermine the American democratic process. They refuse to do anything meaningful to actually weed out disinformation from their platform. Yet, I post a fact-based story based on direct observation and went so far as to record video to document the facts, and I get killed off. Yeah, seems legit.

I do not have the time to waste with a propaganda platform that refuses honest, fact-based writers from having a voice to counter that propaganda. I even cite sources in my satire pieces. So, if fb’s content moderation is that flawed, why bother with the platform?

At this point, what is the best explanation for facebook’s behavior? While Occam’s Razor suggests this is just corporate greed using bots instead of actual people to monitor disinformation on their platform, can we trust that? Facebook has been repeatedly criticized for relying on faulty algorithms and not allowing their human employees to have adequate time to meaningfully review problematic posts. So, is it mere corporate greed, or is the platform simply compromised? Either way, facebook is not trustworthy and I can see no reason to waste more time making another account at this time.

On the plus side, though, friends of back home have been able to post stories from The Diogenetic Light on facebook without a problem. If you like the stories we create here, you can help to support this blog by subscribing and sharing.

Thank you for reading. If you need a break from lockdown boredom, I've linked some satire pieces below to give you a laugh. If you want to see something that will make you further scratch your head about the American system, check out Gut Check .

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