Leaving the Meta Empire Please leave as much or as little detail as you feel comfortable with. I won't use your name, identifying details, or contact information in any published work, though I'll generally describe the tren...

hi y'all - if you left Meta platforms because of ethical principles, can you please kindly take my survey? all anonymous, no name or personal info required. If you know anyone (else) who left Meta for ethical reasons, please pass on to them too - thanks!
docs.google.com/forms/d/1eqH...

i have a lot more to say about this topic, but i'll leave it here for now.

finally -it doesn't seem to be a coincidence that the loudest anti-Meta "on principle" voices are from ppl who have non-abusive partners, local friend groups, and robust in-person communities. it's easy for them to refuse a service that provides benefits they don't need!

because there will be connectivity gaps. and people less fortunate than I am will fall through them. if you quit Meta on strong ethical principles, i want to know what you're doing to make sure people stay connected, as we must, because we need each other.

quitting Meta, for most of us, may individually be a smart choice and one that alights with our values, but it is not a long-term ethical solution. The long-term ethical solution involves providing, using, and strengthening more ethical networks that can fill in connectivity gaps.

phones break all the time. if i or anyone else were in a place where we NEEDED to reach out, because of years of developed networks and habit, we'd have to go through the Empire to get a response.

compare this to messages on Meta platforms (Facebook, Instagram) which are much more entrenched than their less evil, less empire-seeking competitors. Users are more likely to actually check their messages and to respond fairly quickly.

email works, but it's not as efficient as messaging. so how do i get people's attention? how often do you check this site? how long would it take you to get a message?

let's say i needed to get in touch with someone quickly. i had an emergency, i needed help, i needed advice, the guy i'm seeing got frustrated and made me feel unsafe (remember, i can't call a rideshare service).

quick thread, may be of interest to y'all who quit Meta:
I broke my phone (fell on it while jogging) and hopefully, the new one is coming Monday night. in the meantime, i'm phone-less. this is a minor inconvenience, not uncommon among cell phone owners. i'll be fine. HOWEVER:

Hi does anyone read this? Tl;Dr I've never felt so sad or alone or like throwing myself in front of a train and I don't have health insurance because I missed the open enrollment period so therapy is out of reach and I'm not complaining, 😭 m just telling you the facts

everyone's getting their NEA grants rescinded/the "no-pants" look was popular at the met gala/is anyone else collapsing in despair i know it's not just me

I continue to think this story deserves wall-to-wall coverage. (It's front page on WaPo right now, but the NYT's long story on this is now buried at the bottom of its US News section, and the LAT is running the AP story below "More Headlines" in its politics section.)

Excuse me?

YOU WANT TO MODERNIZE THE MIDDLE PASSAGE

have people noticed much of a community yet here? i know it has to scale and it takes time to build, but i'm curious (doing some informal research, i guess--i'm writing about online activism)

You don’t have to love or even like people to work with them effectively. I don’t think there will be one effective strategy of resistance against Trump; I think there will be MANY. An overwhelming rainbow of pushback and outrage.

But again, I ain’t saying nothing. I’m minding my business.

The thing about ACT UP, as Sarah Schulman notes, is that there wasn’t time for protracted disagreements over strategy; people were dying of AIDS left and right.

SO, if some folks want to do X strategy for a protest but you wanted to do Y, ACT UP’s approach was to say “you do X and I’ll do Y.”

@nevadafast.bsky.social i'm sure you've considered alternative ways to fill the Meta vacuum in re: support groups of all kinds, would love to hear what you've found

who has recommendations for online mental health support groups that aren't Meta-based? thx in advance

not even a month into the second Grump administration and we're already marching into kakistocracy -- how is everyone holding up?

like i don't think rush meant that one of those choices was more moral or better than the other? still

the science writer elizabeth rush said in an interview that when you choose whether or not to have a child, you're choosing what kind of person you want to be in the world; i think about this quote a lot if you're wondering why i have "childless sociopath" in my bio

thanks for having me, bluesky. i had a dream last night that i wrote this clickbait headline: "I walked away from Omelas. It wasn't worth it."

i'll raise you 1 i can't stop thinking about