Suspended on X, Betrayed by Facebook: The Ups and Downs of Social Media
Suspended on X and fed up with Facebooks clickbait, I have lost all trust in social media. Here is why these platforms have finally pushed me away.
By. Jacob
Edited: 2025-02-24 10:48
I used to have an account by the name of JacobSeated (my old alias) on X (Formerly known as Twitter), but my X account got suspended after posting something that was critical of Elon Musk. Not saying that is for sure the reason, but it is highly suspicions.
Now, I realized I might not want such negativity to show on my account, so I almost immediately deleted it and closed down X for the day. When I logged back in today, I realized my account was suspended. Oddly, it showed I was following- and followed 0 people. This was my only indication something was off; no notification of any kind that I was suspended. Other later indications was a message saying I was "Rate limited", and again, I was completely unable to make changes to my account. Ultimately I was presented with a message my account was suspended, but again without any concrete reason — something that is a huge democratic problem, and a blatant violation of users that should me criminalized.
It was a fairly new account, and quite inactive, as I was mostly using it just to read. No chance I had done anything inappropriate on it. I have done far more "inappropriate" things on my Facebook account, depending on how you look at it, but still nothing that would come anywhere near what I see others do. A few times I did write some very angry personal messages to people, doing COVID-19, but that is actually the worst I have done, and to an extent that was actually justified.
My X profile being suspended is not a big problem. I originally deleted it at a point I had thousands of followers, only to much later re-create it as I found myself locked out even from reading posts on the site... And that is actually another huge problem. For someone that claims to be a "free speech absolutist", Elon Musk really should open up X for public reading, without the need to create an account.
Now, I do have another newly created account. I was already in the process of changing my nickname. I guess never really having been happy with it, althoug I fancied the shape of the combined "words", or perhaps "lexical units". Anyway, I picked it somewhat randomly years ago, without putting much thought into it — now that I am working on a new portfolio website, I think it the perfect time to pick a new nickname.
Loosing trust in social media
However, my recent experience of having my X account suspended, so blatantly for no valid reason, just contributed to my growing skepticism of social media.
For example, after Meta started flooding my Facebook feed with clickbait garbage, I went from having an overall positive attitude towards Facebook and being a Meta Verified subscriber, to feeling increasingly enraged and insulted by their actions and inaction. In fact, I felt almost like I was being violated in some way — I was basically being "Algorithmically abused" and disrespected, and my valid reports of hacked accounts and other things was repeatedly being rejected.
Consequently, I stopped caring whether anything broke their guidelines, as they blatantly didn't enforce them. Frustrated and angry by their inaction, I began to repeatedly report inappropriate and unwanted material in my feed, but to no avail.
Because I was paying for Meta-verified at the time, I even discussed the feed-problem with the Meta verified support, twice, who were also unable to help me fix the problem both times.
To try and control the material that went into my feed:
- I blocked countless of pages and profiles I was not following
- Reported them for harassment or spam (they had no business in my feed)
- Tried clicking "not interested" on every single piece of junk that entered my feed
- My feed settings are set to not show low quality clickbait
Nothing helped. There is an endless flood of junk, and much of it from fake profiles and pages. I bet around 99.9% of everything that squats my feed has been and is undesired junk; unwelcome, insulting, and impossible to control. It has felt like an insulting violation of my personal space. I considered my feed a space for friends-only.
Mark Zuckerberg made dangerous defamatory remarks about fact-checkers
After Mark Zuckerberg baselessly blasted fact checkers, I simply completely lost any remaining trust I had that Facebook would at least try to fight the really bad stuff; I have an expectation that social media will label misinformation with fact-checks and evidence that disproves false claims and labels that adds important context.
Of course, what exactly Facebook will turn into remains to be seen, but I ultimately lost trust. Now I am highly skeptical of social media, including alternatives. Facebook is seemingly already flooded with Elon Musk references, clickbait of various kinds, and occasionally borderline porn images of big breasted women in bikinis.
Mark Zuckerberg smeared fact-checker by making the unfounded claim that "fact checkers are too politically biased", a claim that is obviously false, and for Zuckerberg, super irresponsible. It has just confirmed conspiracy theorists in their baseless claims about there being systemic bias. It is also quite grotesque for anyone to believe in such insanity.
Even if there were a few notable cases of bias, this must be considered within the broader context of the U.S. political landscape, and it just highlights the need even more for fact checkers.
Intellectually eroding, potentially undermining society
The content I've been seeing on my Facebook feed lately is not only unwanted but also potentially intellectually eroding for those who engage with it. I worry that it could influence sensitive individuals into adopting foolish ideas (if they haven't already).
The material, of which I have collected numerous of screenshots, include:
- Multiple pages sharing the viral story about some woman that had sex with 100 men in a day.
- Images of people with grotesque and disgusting body modification. E.g. Horn in their heads. I respect people's right to have such modifications done, but I also reserve my right to be disgusted by it.
- Sex and gender related content that is often presented in a way that evokes feelings of disgust. E.g. Typically people with unusual and grotesque styles, makeup, tattoos, and piercings.
- Numerous of pages labeled as "China state-controlled media" posting seemingly nonessential stories — I wonder what their agenda is (Facebook is also banned in China), why target other countries with stories from China? Building a disinformation network perhaps?
- Celebrity related clickbait, typically sensationalized stories of no relevance that attempts to rob users of their precious time. Often the same stories are posted by multiple pages, many of which are obviously fake.
- Stories and images of murderers. E.g. Luigi Mangione.
- A maggot infected chicken (Not kidding)..
I do not want to include the screenshots here, but I have them in my Nextcloud drive if anyone is interested: https://drive.beamtic.com/index.php/s/W55k9PJYQS7imaB
Ideas for improvement
The recent flooding of my own Facebook feed with worthless clickbait, and Mark Zuckerbergs false claims about fact checkers has, at least for now, pushed me more towards alternative social media platforms. I will continue to own a Facebook account in order to stay connected with friends, but I have started to view them much more critically.
Joining decentralized social media networks such as element and matrix.org is increasingly more tempting, even for users that might not have had a particular good reason to do so before. The amount of unregulated clickbait and disinformation might simply turn users against the platforms, as we find it near impossible and down-right uncomfortable having to contradict things.
However, I am also worried about the kind of damage that decentralized platforms might cause, since the material people post such places might go totally unchallanged.
Here are some of my ideas on how to improve social media. I should probably make a dedicated article for these, as I think they are super good ideas:
• Stop squatting people's feed with inappropriate and nonsensical clickbait material.
• Society should not allow social media to suspend personal profiles, and probably not for any reason. But there has to be regulation of content posted by users.
• Content can be regulated transparently by labeling it, adding important context, and linking to fact-pages about it. This is more transparent and better than deleting things completely.
• With AI constantly improving, it might become less of an administrative burden to moderate content and label various repeat postings of the same material.
• Community notes can be an important tool, but fact checkers should still be given priority. The two could work together.
• If debating a potential falsehood, arguments for and against could be transparently shown, both live while the debate is ongoing, and after a decision has been reached (E.g. In a documentation and sources section/page). Defeated arguments should not be allowed to repeatedly make it back into the discussion, but people who continue to repeat them should be redirected to a place explaining why the argument is defeated — we cannot allow defeated arguments and debunked conspiracy theories to flood public discussions repeatedly.
Tell us what you think: