Goodbye, Facebook!

When a piece of clothing no longer fits, what do you do? You replace it or throw it away. The same happens with social networks and now it’s Facebook’s turn, to receive our goodbye.

We were born on Facebook

Saying “goodbye” to Facebook is not a decision taken lightly, nor are we going to disappear overnight: back on August 26, 2019, we were born on the social network in question with a restrictedcontact list, and closing the doors for good would mean hurting ourselves and especially those who have followed us from the beginning cheering us on.

Fed up of algorithms

At the time we said goodbye to Twitter because its new terms of use did not meet our needs, and now the more days go by the more Facebook is hurting us like a tight pair of shoes: the algorithm shows what suits it, too much homophobia, people arguing cluelessly about any complex topic.

We are in the Fediverse

All the fault (or merit) of Elettrona @talksina if the Fediverse curiosity has involved Gifter as well; this is a different way to experience social networks: most popular Fedi platform is Mastodon but the Fediverse is not just that one, it is a decentralized network i.e. computers that connect with each other and every user can register on one server and talk to a multitude of them all over the world.

For years we have been working hard with services that automatically post to Facebook, now with the Fediverse we are free from paid providers and other frustrations, having implemented a feature on the blog that shares every post we publish, to the entire world.

It’s also a great way to build relationships with other digital content creators, in fact we are following the English posts “The future is federated” by Elena Rossini @_elena to learn something and grow, free of the shackles that algorithms force us into.

What about our old Facebook readers?

Saying “goodbye” to Facebook does not mean closing the profiles and the page, at least for the time being; our readers will continue to see what we write on the website and if they want to share them on that social, they are free to do so; nor do we take and slam the door in the face of those who discuss, argue or have fun with us.

No, we will simply little by little stop curating the page and interacting on public Facebook profiles on our behalf.

Let’s be realistic: as long as we have LGBT- and HIV-related associations on commercial social media, we can never get rid of them easily and it is out of our hands to insist that they be moved to the Fediverse.

They would lose all their followers and it would be hard to get them back. In the Fediverse, on the other hand, if we change our minds and from Mastodon prefer somewhere else? We can move the followers by taking them with us but this is not the place to say how, what, when.

See you around.