Last weekend, I was put into a situation that I am sure many of you have heard by now. If not, then I could only summarize my weekend as Facebook really screwing the pooch.
It was on Saturday morning I woke up to finding out my account was SUSPENDED without giving any warning nor reason from the platform. I made an appeal, waited a whole day, and got my account back on Sunday. All is well, it ends well, right? Not exactly.
Even though I got my account back, everything on personal account was DELETED! All of those pictures of vacations, graduations, friends, and family were erased! Everyone on my friends list were delisted and I had to ask some of them all because when I tried to friend back some the people Facebook would go all Big Brother denying me from sending friend requests assuming I don't know those people (even though they were friends and family). I was upset, but I was able to get some of my friends and family back on my friends list and I still have pictures saved on my computer and other places (never save your files in one place, folks). The one thing that I am most ticked off about, however, is that I find out my page for The Kaijuologist is still up and running and, yet, I no longer have access to my Facebook page! My admin status on my page is GONE!
Of course, I did as any person would have done and tried to report this to the platform's help center. I have not received any responses as of writing this rant, but I even tried other methods such as going on to Twitter (or "X" or whatever the hell it's called now) and letting them know that they fucked up with my account over the weekend and I would like to have access back to my page, so I can continue sharing my blog. I got rid of Twitter back in January/February because I had enough of the political shit flinging. My have the tables have turned if I had to go back to Twitter just to tell Facebook to get off their asses and help me get my Facebook page back!
Did they see my plea for help? Of course not! Why would Facebook help me out? Ever notice there is no phone number or email for you to call or send when you have an issue? Ever noticed how it always directs you to some article in one of their Q&A's or no chat system that connects you to customer service? It's because there are no people for you to talk to! These people that work at Facebook don't want to be bothered with your complaints!
This is why I turn to alternative platforms such as MINDS, MEWE, GAB, and TRUTH SOCIAL. If anything happens to me on one platform, I can turn to other platforms (click on the images to go to my social media pages). Do I recommend any of them? That all depends. Minds and MeWe are actually not bad alternatives.
Minds is actually a place where you want to start your own blog space. Don't know how to make a website? No problem! With Minds, you don't need to start a website. You just sign up and you start typing up what you want to blog about. It can be about politics, entertainment, gardening, puppies and kittens, or home recipes that you really want to share. I mainly use it like a regular social media outlet like Facebook and Twitter, but it gets the job done.
MeWe is exactly as it set itself out to be: an alternative to Facebook. You can share pictures and videos, start or join groups, or you can create pages for your content. It is all straight forward. If you know how to navigate Facebook, you can navigate MeWe. The only issue is that it has a very small number of users. If there were more users on MeWe, then Facebook would actually have a real competitor because it is actually a lot easier to use and there are no ads on the platform (well, no ads from what I can see after turning off the ad-blocker).
Gab and TRUTH Social are places where you want to be slapped in the face with political commentary and news every few minutes. If you are so ingrained into politics and don't want to be censored for your politics these are the places for you. The real truth about them is that they are basically Twitter 2.0 and 3.0, but leaning far Trump instead of far left. These are echo chambers just like Twitter. Gab is more open about calling out Donald Trump if they feel he has made mistakes here and there, but TRUTH Social will slap you in the face if you even criticize Donald Trump even once. It is really not a place to share content either unless your content is about politics. It is like taking a dump on the streets of San Fransisco to get your poop validated on Google maps. It's there, but nobody will notice it due to the entire map being brown.
When it comes to alternatives, MeWe and Minds are the top two platforms I most recommend if you are looking for an alternative to Facebook and Twitter. If there are any other alternatives that you recommend, I am all open for recommendations and will check them out. Just make sure to leave your recommendation in the comments section. I know some people have recommended Instagram, but if it wasn't a part of Facebook then I would have considered making that my next home platform. In terms of my situation with Facebook, I may never even hear back from them. So I consider the Facebook page dead, for the time being.
Overall, I am just frustrated with Facebook and their lack of customer support. There should always be a person for customers to talk to when it comes to situations like this. There is nothing wrong with talking to people. We tend to call it "communication." When you are waiting hours over the phone with customer support, at least you are going to talk to that person and they're putting in some effort to fix your problem. Facebook, on the other hand, has none of that. Facebook would rather spend more time stealing your personal data and selling it to China or some third-party company. They would rather ban you just for posting memes about Zuckerberg being an alien (and I mean the extraterrestrial kind). They would rather spend more time telling you your opinion is wrong by "fact-checking" you with articles from Wikipedia and CNN. Lord Zucker-BORG needs to get his act together and revamp the help center! It does not work!