I Now Have A Facebook Insurance Plan

Some excellent ideas! I intend to set up a MeWe and Minds accounts. As far as DuckDuckGo is concerned, I have used StartPage for years to avoid Google harvesting my search results. Here's what they have to say,

As kids, we’re all taught not to touch stuff that doesn’t belong to us. It’s a good guideline. So why are online companies harvesting our personal data without our consent? They shouldn’t. That’s why we’re developing online tools that help you stay in control of your personal information. Search is done. Expect other private versions of common digital services soon. Why?

Because it’s our belief that personal data should be your data, not Big Data. Period.

So, take your pick, but don't use Google!

As for Minds, I'm not a big Twitter user, except to share blogposts, but I think I'll check it out.
 
From Complete Christianity

By Shane Schaetzel

You’ve probably heard the news. Big Tech is spying on us. No, it’s not a conspiracy theory. It’s true, and they’ve admitted it. Primarily, the spying was for marketing purposes, but now it’s entered into the political realm, and Big Tech is hell-bent on influencing our political and social decisions, while simultaneously selling our personal information to advertisers and political strategists. Facebook appears to be the biggest offender, along with other Big Tech companies like Twitter, Youtube and Google. The Facebook privacy saga is the most well-documented at this time and you can see all the details here.

While privacy is one major concern, political, moral and religious censorship is a much bigger one in my estimation. Big Tech wants to influence elections and social trends. They all seem to have a Left-wing agenda in mind. This means controlling what users actually see on their platforms. When it comes to Facebook, you can read more about this here. While much of this has to do with stopping people from posting things related to pornography, violence and racism, the Facebook algorithm has set up a somewhat arbitrary system. One of my own posts was removed recently for stating that I violated Facebook standards. If I remember correctly, I believe it was something I said about religion. I appealed the decision, and Facebook restored the post stating that the original decision was incorrect and I did not violate Facebook’s community standards. That’s nice to know, but the conversation thread was already dead and people moved on to another post. So even though I won the case, I lost out on the debate, because by the time my post was restored, it was basically over.

A few weeks later I received a notice from Facebook that my Facebook group would be monitored for community standards, and I was expected to click-sign an agreement that I would comply with them. All of Facebook’s group administrators received this notice, so there was nothing special about me. But upon reading the agreement, I realized the text is so vague that it could be easily construed to apply to just about any type of comments or posts that the Facebook police arbitrarily decide they don’t like anymore. For example: I could post something like “homosexuality is sin” and if Facebook ever decides that’s unacceptable speech based on their community standards, the post can be removed, and/or my account could be suspended.

The problem is manifesting itself on a wider scale with systematic methods of censorship Facebook employs called de-boosting, de-monetizing and de-platforming. De-boosting is when Facebook decides a certain user, group or page is a little too controversial for their taste. So they make sure their ads and listings are buried so much that very few people ever see them. De-monetizing means curbing monetary flow of a user, rejecting ad payments, and/or working to make it difficult for a user to do business online. De-platforming is just a way of saying “kicking you off the platform” or suspending your account. A lot of this has been going on with Big Tech services, especially on Facebook, ever since the end of the 2016 presidential election. (I wonder why?) All of these are concerns, which led me to conclude that no matter how big I build my group on Facebook, or how many followers I have on my Facebook page, the platform could censor me anytime, for any reason (or no reason at all), without warning and without adequate explanation. Considering the Left-leaning temperament of the company, and my right-leaning traditionalism, I decided enough was enough.While Google, Youtube and Twitter also present similar problems, I’m currently dealing with one problem at a time. Facebook is in my crosshairs now because it’s the biggest problem. I’ve been wrapped up on Facebook for about a decade. I’ve got lots of good contacts there. I’ve shared lots of life memories there. I’ve used Facebook’s page and group features to promote this blog, and I’ve even paid for some advertisement on Facebook. All of that has come to an end though. I’ve decided to get a “Facebook insurance plan.” What’s that? I’ve opened up accounts on two alternate social media platforms that market themselves on protecting user privacy and no censorship. That way, if the Facebook police ever decide I’m just too much of a “problem” for them, and they cut my reach or suspend my account, my readers can still find me on alternate social media…


MeWe.Com is a social media platform that is similar to Facebook in the way it works. It doesn’t take longer than a few minutes of navigating the new layout to become totally familiar with it. In some ways, it’s more versatile than Facebook, and in other ways “not yet.” It’s a work in progress, but it’s been around for a while, and it doesn’t appear to be leaving. So in other words, it’s reliable. For this reason, I’ve moved over to MeWe and I love it! It’s like how Facebook used to be before it got too big for its britches, and it’s fast, lightning fast, compared to Facebook, which is constantly lagging due to advertisements.

Privacy is the primary marketing feature of MeWe. The gist is this. They don’t track your personal information, and they don’t sell it to advertisers or anyone else. In fact, MeWe doesn’t have any advertisers, so that means no advertisements or commercials. It’s user funded. All the basic MeWe features are free. Most of the things people do on Facebook can be done on MeWe free of charge. However, there are some additional features that can be unlocked for a nominal fee, and when I say nominal, we’re talking like a buck ($1) nominal. I have yet to find a need to unlock these feature though. I’ve been using MeWe for almost a year now, both for personal use, and public groups, and so far I haven’t found a need to pay for anything. Pretty much everything I did on Facebook, I’m doing for free on MeWe, with no advertisements, with the corporation’s promise of privacy and no censorship. Basically, I’m a satisfied user.

So if you want a Facebook alternative, an “insurance policy” if you will, that works pretty much the same way as Facebook, and gives you more privacy than Facebook ever will, along with no censorship for arbitrary political or religious reasons, then MeWe is the way to go. I highly recommend making the switch, and telling your Facebook friends and family members to do the same. This is Facebook insurance, for when Facebook becomes such a manipulated and controlled environment that real social communication becomes impossible. Privacy is already gone there, so if that doesn’t make MeWe an incentive, I don’t know what will.

As for Google, I’ve switched my preferred Internet browser’s search engine to DuckDuckGo.Com, which is a powerful search engine, and markets itself on the similar privacy agreement as MeWe. They don’t track you or censor your search results. So I’ll be monitoring this for the next year to see how effective it is.
As for Twiter, like Faceboook I am maintaining a presence there for the time being. However, I have a mirror channel on Minds.Com, just in case things start to go bad on Twitter as well. I’ve already seen signs of this in the making. Minds is a superior alternative to Twitter, which has more features and is much more versatile, with no character limit. Minds is in every way better than Twitter, with no censorship of political, moral or religious speech.  Minds allows users to reward channels they like with tokens. These can be used for advertisement to help the channels you like promote themselves and get more followers. Minds also uses crypto-currency, if you’re in to that sort of thing.

The long and short of it is this. Faithful Catholics, as well as other conservative Christians of good will, need to start taking their social media activities into our own hands. There are forces in Big Tech that are hell-bent on making sure our worldview is censored. Already, defectors coming out of Big Tech companies are warning the United States Congress, and the Whitehouse, that Big Tech plans to heavily influence the outcome of the 2020 election. If they can do this, censoring religious and moral speech is small potatoes to them. We have got to start looking out for ourselves. I’ve moved my social media presence over to platforms where I don’t have to worry about censorship, and as an added bonus, my privacy is better protected on MeWe and DuckDuckGo. As for Minds, it’s kind of like Twitter. It’s a totally public platform. I wouldn’t post any family photos there, but it’s great for free speech and no censorship. If we don’t take control of our social media presence, others will, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready for a Big Tech muzzle yet.