Did you take my Facebook challenge? Did it work?

A year ago, I posted a challenge:

For Six Months, Let’s Force Civilization on Facebook. 

In that blog, I made this pledge:

For the next six months, I will work to increase the amount of positive and/or real, first-person content on Facebook, in order to disempower the negative elements on the platform. I will not be less politically active or avoid posts about things I am angry about, but I will counter that with content that’s uplifting to both myself and my friends and colleagues. For the next six months, I will help make the platform of value to ME, personally, regardless of what its owners and “sponsored content” might do.

And then I made a long list of what I was going to do to live that pledge online. 

It’s now a year later, and it turns out that I didn’t just do it for six months. I did it for a year. 

And it worked: the ads I get aren’t horrible anymore. I even bought something that targeted me (one of Stefan’s Christmas presents). 

So I’m going to keep doing it. 

Sadly, the same strategy won’t work on Twitter. I miss Twitter so much. Hugely. I miss my Twitter friends SO much. I miss Cher. But any time I need to remind myself why I paused my activities there, I go read the fascist-adjacent, pro-Putin, pro-extremist tweets of Elon Musk and I stay off. Not deleting my Twitter account though, because that means someone else could come along and use my name. I still have to be on my professional account. 

I sure wish someone would create a real alternative to Twitter and Facebook. 

I’m easy to find elsewhere online, BTW. 

Happy New Year!