The #DeleteFacebookNow hashtag was trending yesterday, lots of people at Facebook are resigning over the fact that Zuckerberg is choosing to ignore the hate-filled, racist rhetoric of Trump.
source:
https://twitter.com/jasontoff/status/1267318891203530752
- jasontoff
The outrage stems from the fact that Facebook’s policies censor and ban average people for ridiculous reasons, but yet, Trump spews violence and racism with zero consequences. Depending on how much power you have, the rules change. Twitter decided to put a ‘glorifying violence’ notification under Trump’s last racist tweet, but Facebook decided to do nothing. Meanwhile, Facebook bans and censors regular users for posting real photos of Trump and his daughter:
source:
https://twitter.com/dithomasito1/status/1267327152678199296
- dithomasito1
Mind you, those are publicly available real photos on the internet.
He didn't alter the photos at all and was banned for posting them. What does this say about where we are?
This most recent disgust of Mark Zuckerberg is reaching a new fever pitch as our cities burn to the ground from years of ignoring racism, police brutality, corporate-controlled power structures, poverty, economic inequality, a healthcare system in shambles, and now the Coronavirus, which was completely ignored by Trump in the beginning and now has killed 108,000+ Americans.
The killing of George Floyd was just the final match that lit the failed American system on fire.
And Trump was there all along, when not on the golf course, spouting off the hatred and racism that provided the endless fuel for this now impossible-to-ignore American-born disaster. Our streets don’t look like the America you knew, but the pain and suffering was there all along. The only difference is that now you can you see it clearly. The wound is now open, gushing blood and pulsating.
If you’re still on Facebook, you might be having that weird sensation in your stomach after learning more about who Mark Zuckerberg really is.
You might be on the verge of deleting your Facebook account. Congratulations, you’re on the right track because you’re following your gut.
But, you might also have a serious social media addiction, too. Join the club. I was once like you. And as you know, addicts cannot simply go cold turkey. If you are a Facebook addict, I have some good news for you. There are viable alternatives right now that you can use. So once you delete your Facebook account, you can replace it with healthier alternatives.
So before I talk about alternatives to Facebook and why you should delete Facebook, it’s necessary to know why Facebook’s design is flawed.
Think about the physical world for a minute. In human societies around the world, there exists different kinds of villages, communities, cities, religions, belief systems, countries, norms and lifestyles. They are all there co-existing independently of each other. There is no algorithm deciding what is acceptable. Life doesn’t run through one funnel, nor should it ever.
Now contrast that with how Facebook is operating. You have a psychopath at the helm deciding who and what is “not acceptable”. Different rules apply to different people, depending on how much power they have in the world. A leader can freely spew hate and violence, while a regular person gets banned for posting a real photo of Donald Trump with his daughter. Your position in the power pyramid determines how you are treated on Facebook. So these “Facebook rules and policies” don’t actually have any legitimacy.
I don’t have all the answers, but one thing is painfully clear: letting Mark Zuckerberg control speech of the entire world is a mistake. Facebook is an experiment gone wrong.
So, what are our options now? What do we do?
We decentralize the power structures.
What does decentralization of power look like?
Decentralization of power in the digital world should mirror the real physical world of people voluntarily forming into groups and building societies in a way that benefits them, instead of a small group of psychopaths.
In real-world communities, leaders know what is good for their community members. Right now, a person cannot freely build a community on Facebook, because Facebook can just ban you without any good reason. So imagine if you spent a lot of time and resources building your Facebook Group, and overnight, it was just taken away from you. Facebook does this all the time, to people. This does not mirror the real world and how it operates. This is why I think Facebook is a failed experiment. It doesn’t operate the way that humans operate in the physical world.
There are a number of alternatives to Facebook right now, but one stands out as a good decentralized solution. It’s called Hive. Hive can be thought of as an operating system, not a standalone app. One social site that runs on Hive is called Peakd.com, and it’s a place where people can build their own communities that they own themselves.
What is Peakd.com?
On Peakd, you are rewarded for your content, and you can create your own Community, which is not programmed by heavy-handed algorithms. When you follow your friends on Peakd.com, you see their posts, and you see the posts from your favorite communities, too. It’s similar to how Facebook Groups used to be, way before the targeting and paid advertising took over.
People can choose to sponsor certain posts, but it’s not anything like how Facebook algorithms distort feeds. You are in way more control on Peakd.com. And the best part of Peakd.com is that instead of Zuckerberg pocketing all the money from your content, you are the one who earns from your content, based on popularity. You also own your own content, and cannot be banned from the site. There does exist a department of people who makes sure that no illegal stuff like child porn ends up on the platform. And there are strict rules about plagiarism, too. The best part is that if you decided to create your own Community, you own it, and no one can take that away from you.
So how does Peakd.com work?
image credit: Voip.review
Peakd.com runs on a different system than Facebook. Peakd uses a blockchain called Hive. It’s an open blockchain, and you can think of it like an operating system. Many different websites use the Hive system because it’s run in a decentralized way, without a central authority controlling it. If you’re familiar with Bitcoin, then imagine a social media site run in a similar way as Bitcoin.
So, basically, there is no Mark Zuckerberg deciding who can say what. Now if you’re a regular Facebook user, you might be uncomfortable with the idea that there is no single person policing the platform. But think about the real physical world and how it operates. It is operating in a decentralized way, with different countries, communities and families deciding what is best for themselves.
Instead of one person deciding everything, groups of people decide how to deal with plagiarists and illegal content. Is it perfect? Of course not. But anyone can help to improve it. That is the main difference. It also has a decentralized fund that is available to people who want to help build Hive. It relies on voting to determine whose project gets funded. This is a new mechanism which is different from the legacy system of having a CEO and managers decide everything.
This is a very simplistic overview of Hive and Peakd.com. If you are a curious person, and want to fall down the rabbit hole, get a free Hive account here: https://hiveonboard.com/create-account?ref=hivepeople
Once you have your Hive account, select Peakd.com, that is your Facebook replacement.
The referral system will notify me that you made a new account, and I can assist you with any questions you might have. Follow the @hivepeople account on Peakd.com for more information and user guides: @hivepeople
I started the Hive People project to help make the onboarding process a lot easier for people. Let me know if you have any questions. If Hive isn’t your cup of tea, there are other new social sites like https://newlife.ai/. I can give out 8 free creator accounts to Newlife each month, so if Instagram is more your thing, comment below and I’ll give you an invite link to Newlife. Newlife is way edgier than Instagram.
Cheers,
Stellabelle