Di Brown

I think there are a lot of people really ratioing the social media atm. Stressful times.

Hunh. call me crazy but I think I'm starting to see why the Great Businessman keeps declaring bankruptcy....

bsky.app/profile/nixi...

American citizens in Lisbon, Portugal today
#HandsOff

Glad they are back as they ought to be - for now. :) And yes - a great lesson in how social media works, highlighting some elements that lots of us don't have reason to really be aware of but totally need to know - especially in these uncertain times.

So glad if the article was helpful!

Same. Good eye

Facebook Didn’t “Delete” HCR (but what they actually did matters) | Nixie Net Yesterday's circus about a historian's broken facebook feed illustrates a pressing need: When someone points out that the billionaires are doing what they always do, instead of running in circles shou...

Same - 3/9 and older only.

Thanks for this - THIS is the kind of thing that helps us understand what's happening. Both as troubleshooters and as citizens.

FWIW - here's what I've put together from the info folks are sharing:
dianabrown.net/facebook-did...

Facebook Didn’t “Delete” HCR (but what they actually did matters) | Nixie Net Yesterday's circus about a historian's broken facebook feed illustrates a pressing need: When someone points out that the billionaires are doing what they always do, instead of running in circles shou...

Thoughts on yesterday's furor around @hcrichardson.bsky.social 's Facebook feed

dianabrown.net/facebook-did...

Thank you! Someone else noted Jay Kuo specifically too - does their page look right again, now that Heather's is?

Thanks for this really useful detail.

HCRs feed seems normal again at this time - I'm curious to know whether the others now look as they should to you?

Clearly not. But thanks for your constructive contribution.

But remember that your resources are finite - so invest your energy where it can best have an impact. /End

If you're worried for HCR's safety (I am!), start thinking about how you'd network an Underground Railroad to get threatened academics out of the country in an emergency.

if you're worried about the republic - well HCR has already made a lot of good suggestions on that. :) /18

Eyes on the prize, my friends. You only have so much bandwidth. if you want to help understanding what's happening on FB - start looking at other truth speakers to see if you can find patterns that would help illuminate this or add data to HCR's troubleshooting /17

So - start planning now on what to do next. Much more important than 'saving copies of facebook posts of information that appears on substack of things that heather typed and saved on her computer'. /16

there's no one replacement for all the functions of FB - which means right now, if f is not viable, people get fragmented, scattered, with no way to reconnect.

If you think FB is silencing HCR, then you must logically believe they will silence others. /15

It took more than a year for folks to leave X- because there wasn't a clear destination and options were fragmented. Just as with the eventual consolidation around BSky, if existing platforms can't be trusted - moving only works if everyone goes to the same place. /14

2. Is Facebook silencing truth-speakers? If so, who's impacted? what's the plan for ensuring information keeps flowing? Do we have a way of identifying who's being targeted - so that if things escalate, there's a warning signal for all of them?
/13

Restore a free republic and she won't need protectin' :)

Meantime - boil it down. There are two stories here, and only one of them is worth this much energy.

1. HCR is having issues on one of the multiple platforms she uses. Be sure to check others / subscribe so you don't miss her updates. /12

"I'm having trouble finding my posts and think FB might have shadow banned me" has turned into a viral worldwide story about how HCR is being erased from the net?

HCR is smart. She doesn't need us to 'save her work'. She needs us to save her country. /11

Hmm.. "get folks riled up about something that isn't a problem so they spend all their energy there and don't have any left for what's over here" - who uses that tactic?

<3 HCR and follow her stuff. But isn't it just a little strange that in less than 24 hrs, /10

There are so many things that need your energy right now. "Protecting Heather's content" - which hasn't been deleted, which hasn't been erased from the internet, which exists in multiple places including it's origin point (her substack, which she controls and presumably backs up) - is a diversion /9

Some of the potential causes for that are certainly cause for concern (and some are benign). Of all the possibilities, the only one for which we have any indicators would be FB trying to downrate her - which is a thing we already knew these platforms do. /8

But it's empirically demonstrable that her content isn't being deleted or (as that infamous FB post claimed) "being wiped from the internet" as though Zuck has deleted her substack and her YouTube channel.

/7

Remember the Russian troll farms running USy groups to froth up division in 2015? how they'd take a true thing ("Heather's feed it messed up") and blow it up into all kinds of paranoid insanity and turned that into...MAGA?

What we KNOW is that heather's page isnt working correctly. /6

the first post I saw - repeatedly shared on Facebook - was full of misinfo and misdirection. "Heather says to escape the platform immediately" - followed by heather's actual quote, same as here "if you're looking for my stuff here's where you can find it." /5

Understanding group/class of folks vs one person can help narrow down intentional act vs random glitch. :) It would be weird for Zuck to suddenly jump in the fray by screwing with Heather's page, wouldn't it? So if it's a thing - understanding will more likely come from zooming out. /4

Not helpful: freaking out, amplifying conspiracy theories, flinging chaff

Helpful: check your other truth-speakers. Anyone else impacted this way? impacted 'correctly' - posts not showing in feeds and such any more?

/3

@hcrichardson.bsky.social theorized they might have shadow-banned her - changed things to limit the visibility of her posts. Possible - and what you're seeing is consistent with doing that and screwing it up in a way that made it highly visible, though that's not the only possible explanation. /2

Posts appear to be fine - but the *feed on her page* is broken. Posts still come up in search, links to them still work - all the content is present.

No-one's deleting her stuff (and folks who are saving her posts to preserve them - it's on her SS, and she presumable has backups) /1