Edward Rovera

The recent news of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg deciding to allow hate speech on their various platforms has been discussed on social media quite a lot of late. Same with how they are bowing to Trump and dismantling efforts to find and remove fake and misleading posts. These developments have caused some people I know and with whom I communicate regularly to abandon Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. (I refuse to call Twitter X in deference to the memory of Malcolm X.) I, too, have considered doing this, but I don’t think it would make any difference in the long run. If I cannot avoid the bullshit on those platforms, at least I can ignore it.

But what of the people – family and friends – with whom I maintain contact via these online services? Well, those who are truly important will find a way to let me know what’s happening in their lives. This is how life works; people who choose to be part of my life will find a way to maintain contact.

To help with that, I will maintain my accounts on the various services and monitor them. I just will not post on them other than to post links to this blog or one of my other blogs here on the Posthaven service. Think of this as social media voyeurism. People are free to respond on those platforms if they wish. Or not. Either way is fine with me. People can also respond here in the comments. They can also provide their email on a Posthaven blog post and opt to receive notices of new posts via email. This is seriously old school to many. But it works. And there is no Algorithm deciding what you get to see and no ads for hair restoring gels, gold coins, or discount solar panels to wade through.

Why did I select Posthaven? It’s a fee-based service that I can afford ($60.00/year for up to ten blogs). In addition, it allows me to post to my blogs via email. Posthaven was created by Garry Tan and Brett Gibson, two people whom I have never met but greatly admire. Back in 2008, Garry and Brett were part of the team that created a service called Posterous.com.  Posterous filled a need for a way to post quick announcements as well as long-winded essays. While you could go to the Posterous site and create your blog post, you could also send what you wanted to post via email. No other service at that time allowed posting via email. It was this that first attracted me to Posterous for posting information for the School of Nursing at SF State.

Posterous was purchased by Twitter in 2012 and unceremoniously shut down a year later. Twitter considered itself the place for quick announcements and built a following for their 140-character messaging service. Twitter bought Posterous to eliminate it as competition and to own the copyright on the Posterous code. Garry and Brett felt that the need for a quick email-capable blogging service was still there so they rewrote the code –- which is perfectly legal, by the way -- and created Posthaven.com as a new slimmed down blogging service that could be supported by low user fees. And the cost of storage is now so cheap a Posthaven blog will remain online even if you stop paying the monthly fee. (See: https://posthaven.com/pledge) Once you stop paying the monthly fee, you will no longer be able to add to your blogs, but what is already there will remain available essentially until the end of time or until AWS can no long keep their servers running, whichever comes first.

Here is what I’ve decided:

1.      I will keep my current active social media accounts and will periodically monitor them.

2.      I will create posts like this one via email and post to my blogs on Posthaven.com – mainly this one and Goooats.com. Then I will create posts on the other services that point to these Posthaven entries.

3.      I will respond to comments here.

4.      I will also respond to people on those other platforms as needed, but, when appropriate, I will provide a more thoughtful response in a post here.

Have a great day, everyone.