@Wen

I have no defence of Facebook because it's sodding awful. But I suspect there'll be an awful lot of people like me, who don't use it for soshul meeja, but currently rely on it for a target audience for work. Because it's what other people use.

Whilst I'm looking for alternatives - there aren't really any affordable local advertising options, and I can't afford to get a website built - I do need to maintain a presence there. I don't post for reasons other than work, have fewer friends there than I have followers on Mastodon, and I certainly don't scroll for content.

I'm actively looking to leave, but it will take time. There'll be quite a few of us, so the initial exodus will be only half the story. Over the next few months, more will leave, I think, than they currently anticipate. Zuckerberg, who I've heard eats kittens and kicks puppies (yay, unchecked free speech) has zero ability to add any value to his platform, and just seems cowardly and hapless. How did we get here?

@Badgardener I understand that. Although a web site is not that difficult to put together (even with a little help) - and maybe redirecting people who visit you Meta posts towards it will hep?

@Wen

I *love* it when techy people tell me how easy it is! 😂

My kids look at me like I'm a baboon with a stick when I'm on the tablet: I have four things on it, and no idea how the rest of the internet works. But in truth, a website wouldn't really help me get to my core clientele - they tend to put out distress calls on the village Facebook page, and I go help them. We used to have a paper-form village newsletter, but unfortunately that folded.

@Badgardener I know techsplaining 😤 but I did make a proviso .

Different circumstances I know but I did set up a number of small community websites over 20 years, plus a couple of commercial sites as well (was particularly proud of the (now defunct magazine - Recumbent UK and a coiuple of commercial sites for UK builders- we even got a review or three https://microship.com/tag/recumbent-uk/). If you ever want a go, trying out something like jalbum - with useful templates. Anyway good luck.

@Wen

Don’t get me wrong, I hugely admire the techno-wizziness, and I’m aware that terms like ‘dinosaur’ are circling over me. But I still operate in a fundamentally local environment, which when it uses the internet, does so at the most basic level - and you don’t get any more basic than Facebook. I suspect I’d have more problems getting my client base to my website than I’d have building the thing.

But I’m pretty certain I’ll be off Facebook completely by the end of the year, as my work circumstances change. This is really the point I was making, that there’ll be an attrition in the next few months, where new users aren’t flocking in and established users are drifting away - not in an immediate flounce, but because they’re either finding better options or realising they don’t actually need FB in their lives. Partly because of the latest shenanigans, but partly because it’s a bad product which can’t really be improved because of its inherent limitations.

Zuckerberg is failing.