The Corporate Thought Police

I remember the time back in the early 90's when I had a show on a local college radio station.  After coming home from having just done a show consisting of a string of especially unpatriotic musical selections, I picked up my land line (which back then was referred to as "the phone") and rather than hearing the familiar dial tone, I heard three beeps followed by a recorded message:

Because you have violated community standards, your phone line has been disconnected for thirty days.

And then they gave me a toll-free number to call if I felt I "had received this message in error."  I couldn't call the number from my disconnected phone, of course, but when I went to a friend's place to use their phone, I was disconnected every time after being on hold for two hours, and never got to talk to a representative of the phone company.

Did this ever happen to you?  If so, I'd love to hear about it.  But it never happened to me.  I just made that up.  What did just happen to me is in every way identical, except that Facebook is an unregulated monopolistic corporation, rather than anything classified as a public utility like phone, broadband, or electricity.

What I woke up to two days after my 51st birthday, four days before I'm flying across the Atlantic to start a tour of Europe, was yet another message from Facebook that I was banned from the platform for a post from years ago that no one will ever come across sharing a song by the satirical London-based band, the Commie Faggots.  After the last ban a couple weeks ago I tried to delete all posts related to the band, but apparently I failed, and one came up and randomly got me banned again, this time for 30 days.

Whether satirical band names should be flagged as hate speech is one question.  Whether such posts should get you banned from publicly posting to the platform is also a question.  But I think it's important for people out there to understand that when someone gets banned from Facebook, they are not only banned from making public posts, but they also can't reply to private messages.

There have been a variety of questions that have come up in the recent Congressional questioning of Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg.  One of them was related to whether Facebook was capable of policing its own content, whether Facebook was capable, for example, of telling the difference between satire and hate speech.  The answer, clearly, is no.

Another question that's perhaps far more relevant that came up is the question of whether Facebook is a monopoly.  I suppose the answer depends on how strictly the term is defined, but if we go with the definition of a corporation that is singularly dominant in one or more major forms of public and private communication, then Facebook is clearly a monopoly.

Many people who are not professional journalists or professional artists may not realize that when Facebook changes their algorithms this can (and often does) have a clear, measurable impact on how many people are likely to see different kinds of posts.  Years ago, Facebook devastated musicians around the world when they changed their algorithms so that all of a sudden posts related to gigs or tours would hardly be seen unless you paid to boost them.  More recently, Facebook changed their algorithms again, supposedly to deal with the problem of fake news.  With their new algorithm, progressive websites such as Counterpunch and Alternet suddenly started getting far less traffic, and with that, fewer donations.

Facebook is like other massive, profit-driven, predatory corporations, but far bigger, and they buy up or mimic the competition, swallowing much of it up, becoming so dominant that if you want to communicate with many people privately or spread the word publicly about gigs, tours, albums, protests, or whatever else, you can do this without Facebook, but you won't reach or stay in touch with nearly as many people.

My own numbers seem to be typical as far as indy artists go, and they clearly show what a dominant platform Facebook is.  Notwithstanding the fact that there is of course some overlap between platforms, the numbers are still revealing.  I wrote a post last week where I listed ten good alternatives to Facebook -- that is, ten platforms that do the same things Facebook does, or better.  Which is great for people who want to live without Facebook for one good reason or another.  And it's great in terms of the quality of these alternative platforms in terms of user-friendliness.  But in terms of scope there is no competition.  Between "friends" and "followers" on Facebook there are around 15,000 people.  If you combine everyone who's on my email list with everyone who follows me on all of the other platforms I mention in last week's post, only when you add them all together do you approach the number from Facebook alone.

I wonder how many people out there who aren't artists realize that when you post a link to a video on another platform such as YouTube on Facebook it will get far less attention than if you post the video using Facebook's video-posting application.  Post it directly and it gets the eyeballs, at least comparatively speaking -- even if you don't pay to boost it, unlike announcements related to gigs, tours or albums.  For example, I posted a song on April 8th about the most recent Land Day massacres of children in Gaza by Israeli soldiers.  After uploading "Land Day" to YouTube and posting about that on Facebook and other platforms, the song on YouTube has so far been viewed 360 times.  Since uploading the song on Facebook the same day, without sharing the fact that the song had been posted to Facebook on any other platform, it got several times as many views -- 1,600 so far.

Because two billion other people are on the platform, including most of the people I know, Facebook is extremely useful.  But the algorithms they use are very destructive in many ways.  The fact that billions of dollars are invested in thousands of brilliant people who spend all their time figuring out how to make the platform more addictive and thus more profitable results in a platform that seems to cause as many problems as it solves.  In a weird way, I have found this phenomenon to play out directly in the numbers.  I only just realized that although I did successfully use boosted posts on Facebook to slightly increase attendance at gigs to the extent that I made around $2,000 more last year than I made the year before, I spent over $3,000 in Facebook advertising.  Maybe I'm just bad at advertising, but it had become clear that non-boosted posts about gigs were not being seen.  I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the folks at Facebook have figured out how to make their post-boosting function just barely useful enough to keep people doing it regularly.

It is very obviously a tragic thing that we have gotten to this stage, where what could have been (and what briefly was) a free internet became such a destructively corporate-dominated space.  We clearly need to either strictly regulate Facebook and social media in general so that it behaves in the public interest as the public utility that it has become, or we need to leave the platform en mass.  While I can't effect either of these developments myself, I'm going to experiment with deactivating my Facebook account at least while I'm banned from posting, commenting or messaging on the network.  While I'm banned from doing these things, it seems like the most sensible move, since I don't want people thinking I'm ignoring them for a month when I don't respond to their comments or messages.  My hope is people who want to find me will have the wherewithal to look me up on the web.  Realistically, with people being as they are, some will and some won't.

While I am absent from Facebook, please rest assured that although I'll miss some of the comments and conversations, I'll overall be happier with less noise, and I can easily be found by anyone who wants to find me, which I hope will be more than a handful of people out there who manage to notice through all the noise that I'm not there anymore.

A brief rundown of ways to keep in touch with me that are also dynamic and interactive like Facebook is:

• Go to www.davidrovics.com, where you will find links to all of the platforms listed below, and where you can also get on my email list -- email lists are great!
• Follow me on Twitter @drovics -- www.twitter.com/drovics
• If you follow me on YouTube, that's where I post songs I just wrote -- www.youtube.com/drovics
• Most of those phone-made broadsides also end up in audio form at www.soundcloud.com/davidrovics
• Whenever I put out a new album, it first appears on Bandcamp -- www.davidrovics.bandcamp.com
• At www.songkick.com you can follow artists you like, and hear about when we do gigs near you
• Whether I'm home or on tour, hanging out with my kids or at a protest, I post a lot of pictures at www.instagram.com/davidrovics (I know, it's owned by Facebook)
• My phone number is +1 503 863 1177 and I can be called or texted directly or via WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal and other messaging platforms
• There is a David Rovics app you can get for your phone or tablet on the Google and Apple app stores, which allows me to send you relevant, occasional push notifications
• I blog at www.songwritersnotebook.blogspot.com

If you want me and other indy musicians to be able to keep making music, don't ever say "I'll look out for you on Facebook."  In recent years, if you saw a post of mine in your feed on Facebook it's probably because I paid to boost it.  This is not how Facebook used to work, when it first wormed its way into everybody's frontal lobes, and it's a far cry from the great possibilities that the internet still offers -- potentially -- for us humans to interact and learn about each other and the world we live in.

Life After Facebook -- Ten Suggestions

A lot of people lately are more fully realizing the many down sides to Facebook.  Yes, it's only one of many massive corporations dominating much of the globe's online communications, but it's an especially problematic one on many levels.  With billions of users, it's so dominant it's almost impossible to ignore, especially for certain people, such as artists who need to be able to communicate with their audiences.

I'm not going to announce here that I'm joining the #deletefacebook movement.  It might be good for my mental health if I did so, but I'm not sure if my career would be able to take the hit.  And I say that despite the fact that in order for any significant number of people on the platform to hear about things like my tour plans or upcoming gigs, I and other artists like me more often than not have to pay to boost the post, since Facebook changed their News Feed algorithms years ago.  Ma Bell also really sucked, but deleting my Facebook account today seems a lot like living life without a phone line in 1980.

However, I've spent most of the past couple weeks being banned by Facebook for old posts related to a satirical London band called the Commie Faggots (mentioning their name is considered hate speech on Facebook, where satire is allowed but unrecognizable by whoever or whatever decides who gets banned on the platform).  It's been nice listening to the crickets, though more than a little inconvenient to be unable to respond to Facebook messages, less than two weeks before I embark on a tour of Europe.  And the experience has got me thinking about all those folks out there who have just deleted their Facebook accounts and may be wondering how to proceed now.

Mainly to all who have left Zuckerberg's corporation behind I say, take heart.  You may lose touch with a lot of people you probably didn't want to be in touch with so much in the first place, since so many people never leave Facebook, but you don't have to be like that.  And most of the things that Facebook was actually useful for are done better elsewhere on the web.  Rather than being a passive recipient of how Facebook's latest redesign or change in algorithms affects your life -- what you read, who you communicate with, what you hear about -- you can spend a little bit of time figuring out what you want to keep track of in life, and do it all without Facebook.

Here are 10 alternative ways to do some of the things you you might have been doing on Facebook, but better:

• Songkick -- among touring independent artists, this platform is very well-known and well-used.  You sign up to follow artists you like, and then when they are doing a gig near where you live, you'll be notified by email and with notifications on your phone and/or on your Google calendar if you have one.  Artists and labels also generally sync their Songkick gig listings with Bandcamp, Spotify, and other platforms, so people can see where their upcoming gigs are when they're listening to their music.  There is no need to hope you'll notice a Facebook Event invitation, at least when it comes to following artists who list their gigs on Songkick.
• YouTube -- yes, I know it's owned by Google.  The point for now is it's not Facebook.  When it comes to following independent artists of any kind, they may be posting videos and other content directly to Facebook, but they do that because it's more likely to be seen that way than if they post a YouTube link.  They are probably also posting all that stuff on their YouTube channel, where they may also be doing live broadcasts just like on Facebook Live.  You can follow channels on YouTube so you'll receive a notification by email or on your phone when artists you follow have just uploaded a new song or are doing a live broadcast.
• Bandcamp -- when most artists that I know of make a new album, they release it on Bandcamp.  It's another for-profit corporation to be sure, but it's a popular platform nonetheless, and if you follow particular artists on Bandcamp you're unlikely to miss any new releases from them.  You can also Subscribe to artists on Bandcamp, and automatically receive all of their new releases on the platform while financially supporting artists.
• Soundcloud -- this German company isn't nearly as well-known as Facebook, but among artists it's a household name.  Most artists that I know of who put songs up on Facebook and YouTube also put them up in some form on Soundcloud.
• Twitter -- it's more than just a big social media platform that isn't Facebook.  It's also used by pretty much every journalist and artist on the planet (in countries where the platform is not banned), so if you're into following journalism or music, it's at least as good as Facebook.  Plus, it seems to lend itself much less to endless debates that don't go anywhere.  Either that or I haven't figured out how to notice the ones that may be happening.
• Instagram -- yes, it's owned by Facebook, but if you don't link your Instagram account with Facebook, at least you won't be banned from Instagram when you get banned from Facebook, I've discovered.  Also with the editing tools, the photos look better.  And many of the people you might be wanting to keep in touch with are quite likely on the platform (including me).
• Blog -- one of the things about Facebook that tends to cause depression among users is the phenomenon of scrolling through one's News Feed.  But many of the people posting truncated, Facebook-friendly stuff are writing much better and more interesting things in their blog.  Find out what platform they're using, and follow.  Of course you can still miss posts when you're overwhelmed by TMI and don't see emails notifying you about new stuff, but at least you're exerting some control over what comes in to your new, self-made feed.
• Mobile Apps -- many artists, news outlets and other entities have mobile apps (including me).  Downloading their app can be the best way to reliably see notifications about breaking news (in the case of apps like the Guardian or AP) as well as for announcements from artists about gigs, new songs, etc.  With mobile apps it's also often possible to only receive notifications relevant to your geographical area.  This sort of feature is very handy in the age of TMI, you may find.
• Email List -- At the bottom right on my website, as on many other websites, you can sign up for my email list.  Even in the age of social media, marketing professionals still talk about how email lists are the most effective communication tool.  Not everyone you want to keep track of maintains an email list, to be sure, but many people still do.  Since Google divided the Gmail inbox into three categories people often don't notice emails from people like me that get relegated to the Promotions folder.  But if you click the little box to the left of the sender's name indicating emails from this sender are Important, those emails should in future arrive in your Primary inbox.
• Websites -- yes, many websites of many artists and organizations have become disused or disappeared altogether, as we all have probably noticed at some point.  Others, however, are still there, and regularly updated, often very nicely, as more and more people learn the ins and outs of Wordpress and realize the importance of taking more control of their online presence and being more independent from Facebook.  There's all kinds of cool stuff on my website that don't exist on any other platform, much of which I put a lot of work into and put up there recently, such as my Musical History section.  And I'm not alone like that.  You won't have probably seen anything about it on Facebook, unless you happened to see a post about it on the day I posted it.  And if you did see that post, it's because I paid to boost it.