Despicable Me(ta)

Kyle Ford
2 min readJan 11, 2025

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It was just a little over a year ago that I briefly softened in my general disdain for Meta (which I held not only for their overall anti-web walled garden approach of the last 20 years, but especially for their role in the last decade’s rise of misinformation).

Watching what was going on with their new Twitter clone, I raised an interested eyebrow as I followed their rapid progress in connecting Threads to the larger Fediverse. While I’d long since kicked Facebook proper to the curb, I was encouraged to see the company at least make baby steps in the direction of interoperability with one of their other products.

Shame on me for giving Zuck a second chance.

While his MAGA heel turn has been a long time coming, the events of the past few days have finally let him fully remove the mask. A few “highlights” if you haven’t been following:

Facebook Deletes Internal Employee Criticism of New Board Member Dana White

Meta Says It Will End Its Fact-Checking Program on Social Media Posts

Meta disbands diversity team and says DEI has become ‘charged’

Meta Deletes Trans and Nonbinary Messenger Themes

Meta’s head of civil rights is leaving

Really shameful stuff all around. I hope the Mar-a-Lago VIP suite was worth it.

Obviously everyone has to draw their own lines in the sand in this wondrous era we live in, but for my part I’ll be moving to as much of a view-only experience with Meta products as possible, ideally ditching some/all of them entirely once more of the non-nerds in my life migrate to greener (and open) pastures.

I’ve turned off Threads sharing to the Fediverse (and kudos to my home instance for defederating from them), removed all of my posted content (except for this post!) and will no longer be including Threads posts in my weekly newsletter.

Hope to see you in better places, friends!

Originally published at http://houseofkyle.com on January 11, 2025.

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Kyle Ford
Kyle Ford

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