Facebook Becomes Ever-More Oppressive

    This message just popped up on my Facebook Admin screen. Facebook becomes ever more oppressive with each passing day, and I continue to plot my reduction of use there, and eventual exit. This Epicureanfriends forum is the first step, but far from the last.


    Also: I am not familiar with the details of Crossfit as an organization, but from what I read I share their dietary views. More importantly, I consider Epicurean philosophy to be as much or more anti-establishment in philosophy as is Crossfit in the diet arena. And I share their concern on this topic:

    1. Facebook collects and aggregates user information and shares it with state and federal authorities, as well as security organizations from other countries.

    2. Facebook collaborates with government security agencies on massive citizen surveillance programs such as PRISM.

    3. Facebook censors and removes user accounts based on unknown criteria and at the request of third parties including government and foreign government agencies.

    4. Facebook collects, aggregates, and sells user information as a matter of business. Its business model allows governments and businesses alike to use its algorithmically conjured advertising categories as sophisticated data-mining and surveillance tools.

    5. Facebook’s news feeds are censored and crafted to reflect the political leanings of Facebook’s utopian socialists while remaining vulnerable to misinformation campaigns designed to stir up violence and prejudice.

    6. Facebook, as a matter of business and principle, has weak intellectual property protections and is slow to close down IP theft accounts.

    7. Facebook has poor security protocols and has been subject to the largest security breaches of user data in history.

    And finally,

    8. Facebook is acting in the service of food and beverage industry interests by deleting the accounts of communities that have identified the corrupted nutritional science responsible for unchecked global chronic disease. In this, it follows the practices of Wikipedia and other private platforms that host public content but retain the ability to remove or silence—without the opportunity for real debate or appeal—information and perspectives outside a narrow scope of belief or thought. In this case, the approved perspective has resulted in the deaths of millions through preventable diseases. Facebook is thus complicit in the global chronic disease crisis.

    https://www.crossfit.com/battles/crossf…ebook-instagram

    I once read a book titled Four Arguments For The Elimination of Television. One of the arguments was that there are very few people who control what you see on TV. That is probably less true today than it was back in the 60s or 70s when the book was written, but Facebook does enjoy a bit of a monopoly on social congregation. I didn't realize that there was a group for the Banting Diet, but that makes sense. I think only the South Africans typically call low carb diets Banting anymore, but I think just about anybody active in the LCHF community has heard of it. I am also a member of a couple of Carnivore Diet groups on FB. So far I haven't noticed any similar actions towards those groups, but we are only in the tens of thousands, not millions of members (I think the CrossFit page said that the Banting FB group had something like 1.6M members).

    Honestly, the only reason I am still on FB is to participate in the groups - mostly the EP groups. If you want to brainstorm ways to better utilize different platforms for building a community I'm happy to help in any way I can.