Today I made what should be my final regular daily post on Facebook.

This is not an April Fool’s Day joke. It is a matter or principle

I have been active on Facebook for a VERY long time. I’m no longer sure of the first date, but I initially was able to join way back when only those with .edu email addresses were eligible.

The initial promise of the service was quite special and seemed altruistic. We could join and then find and follow accounts that interested us — Facebook was the medium for choosing who to connect with and enabling those connections.

In addition, if we chose to publish/share material on Facebook (thus providing Facebook with its actual content) we would be rewarded with “reach” and followers who were drawn by the quality of what we provided. This (obviously! )benefitted Facebook, but it was a fair trade-off as we also benefitted when interested individuals followed us, interacted with us, and shared our posts if they were interesting.

In the early days I had many thousands of followers. Facebook connected me to all sorts of fascinating individuals who eventually became real-life friends and associates. It was powerful, heady stuff and it looked like the future.

But from early on there were warning signs. It bothered me from the beginning that FB never provided a way for users to embed web links in their posts — even though linking was the fundamental feature of the web. I wondered why, and it occurred to me that this was a way to “capture” users and attempt to turn the free, open web into a Facebook product.

Then they began to throttle “organic reach,” and supplying content for Facebook was no longer rewarded with new followers and connections. Every new development was presented as being an altruistic benefit for users (free business page!), but every one of them was ultimately taken away or warped into something else entirely.

More and more, posts by the people we came there to follow were hidden by the infamous algorithms — the people I wanted to see were gradually removed from my feed. And more and more of what I saw was noxious click-bait, intended to trigger emotions and engagement with all kinds of stuff I’m not interested in.

And, as time went on, it became increasingly clear that FB’s business is NOT about the noble goal of “connecting” people. We now know that they have their electronic claws in all every aspect of our online lives. You can hardly visit or use any major website without FB tracking this and analyzing what it might imply about you — your location, what you buy, who you like, your politics, and much, much more.

Big Brother had nothing on Facebook.

And, increasingly, the platform has been a vehicle for spreading mistruths, conspiracies, and hate — for which Facebook fails to take responsibility.

I’m not going to participate any longer.

I’ve had many wonderful friends on Facebook, and I’ll miss the possibility of interacting with they there. But I can no longer accept the compromises and dangers to society posed by the platform. I wish this were not the case, but I cannot ignore reality.

I’m removing as much of my presence from Meta/FB as I can. (Facebook makes this extremely difficult and awkward, no doubt intentionally.)

As of today I have stopped sharing my daily photographs there.

I do not use Messenger. I’m weaning myself from Instagram and Threads and other Meta products.

I have terminated the popular 16k+-member Sierra Nevada photography group that I ran for years. (I do have a Flickr alternative: https://www.flickr.com/groups/rangeoflight/ .)

For now, I am not deleting my account. It will remain alive though inactive for the most part. (This allows me to occasionally check in if necessary.)

I appreciate that some Facebook followers have said, “we’ll miss you!” or “We’ll miss your photographs!” The good news is that YOU DON’T HAVE TO MISS OUT. Today there are alternatives.

Perhaps the best option is to visit my website at https://gdanmitchell.com — where my daily posts continue to appear, alongside everything I have published in the. last twenty years! You can easily subscribe to the daily posts by email at the site if that is more convenient. Look for links on this post!

I continue full participation on non-Meta platforms, and I encourage you to start accounts at one or more of them. It might seem awkward at first, but dive in and soon you’ll figure them out.

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gdanmitchell.com
Mastodon: https://sfba.social/@gdanmitchell
SubStack Notes: https://gdanmitchell.substack.com/notes
Spoutible: https://spoutible.com/gdanmitchell
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gdanmitchell/

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G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist. His book, “California’s Fall Color: A Photographer’s Guide to Autumn in the Sierra” (Heyday Books) is available directly from him.

G Dan Mitchell: Blog | Bluesky | Mastodon | Substack Notes | Flickr | Email

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