When Facebook Deletes Itself…

Jun 26, 2018

Facebook deleted Facebook today in a parallel universe.

It was a headline that many people wanted to share on Facebook, but couldn’t, since there was no more Facebook.

“Let’s bring the world closer together,” has been the motto of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg since its inception.  And with its deletion in the 5th dimension Facebook is living up to its word.

Many studies have shown that social media is linked to depression, isolation, and eating disorders.  Facebook has also played a big role in Russian trolls, cyberbullying, fake news, and the rigging of elections.

“So now meet me where the wild things are,” said Zuckerberg.  “And I mean outside.  Outdoors.”

Most people have some kind of love/hate relationship with the social media juggernaut.  Here at The Tilted Glass, despite our fan count, our posts only reach about one-half-of-one-percent of them due to Facebook’s pay-to-play model.  Sucks for us.  And we think sucks for people who have liked the page.  We put a lot of work into making cool and relevant content.

It’s difficult to survive as a content producer when Facebook cannibalizes your advertising revenue by keeping everything within their ecosystem and not sharing ad revenue.  Even worse, they squeeze you slowly to pay more and more to communicate with your own followers.  (See Funny or Die's excellent How Facebook is Killing Comedy article.)

This isn't a conspiracy.  Facebook’s stated intention is to throttle publishers of original content.  They aim to go back to showing posts by friends and family more. 

Except there’s issues with showing your friends and families more.

Your friends are either sharing cool links made by original content creators like us (now increasingly throttled).  They are using it to post minutia of their lunches, day hikes, and kids.  They are using it for lofty self-promotions and expressing ideologies.  Or they are creeping on partners and ex-lovers.  (Did we miss any?)

And your family?  Well it's mostly just nosey Aunt Rosie and your mom’s friend from high school who’s excited about the new Fifty Shades of Grey.

This is the Facebook model of today.  * Punishers of cool original content.  * Promoters of Aunt Rosie’s meatloaf recipes.  * Facilitators of extramarital affairs.  

So Facebook said—screw it.  Let's delete ourself.

That said, please like our page, while you still can.  We are going for it!  And tell Facebook that you'd like them to re-examine their algorithms and increase organic reach of cool content producers.