Howdy Folks.

We've been Mucho Busy off-line, with the DC Bellamy tour coming in in June and work on our 3rd US tour and finishing tracks for the EFLH project.

Nonetheless it falls to me each time we have a show, to put out the little electronic posters. I've recently begun to take exception with one of the main social media platforms and their increasing limitation on the spread of our posts.

Facebook is not the web, we forget that. 

I live on a really really big island (citation required on the island-or-continent part) and when your country has as large a landmass as ours, you could be forgiven for thinking it the whole world.

I remember the story of some convict escapees who expected to find China on the other side of what's now the Hawkesbury river. This is a big place.

To all intents and purposes, what we see around us is the whole world. But we also know there's more to it - intellectually at least

I've been a web nerd since dialup (cheers Dad) so I can claim 'Original Geekster' status. Websites are still BBS's with pictures (yeah I know, Bulletin Board Services, look it up), and, they rise, and they fall.

I feel like the corporate entities that want to replace the Old Media are still infected with a common, walled garden, world view.

Facebook is not the internet anymore than Australia is The World. But if you live there, you might never think beyond it.

The 'mainstream' has been replaced by the Multistream (tm, copyright clever clogs MJEB here) - instead of standing around the watercooler talking about one tv show, we've all gotten back from holidays to our own little island state where the TV programming/Zeitgeist was slightly different.

Redditors/Tumblrs and 4Channers are NOT the same as Facebookers, even though you might have 2 accounts :-) It's different politics, language, culture.

To enter the 'mainstream', to be the talk of the watercooler, you have to do something that both transcends these tribal boundaries, can penetrate the culture AND has access to the information.

When facebook imposes a Post Tax, a Communication Tax, in a system that by its nature is about the free expression and transmission of ideas and their accessibility by multiple paths, well, it pisses me off.

Am I more pissed because they have withdrawn a 'privilege' we had when we first began using their site and that we employ for a commercial purpose, so why can't they?

Sure, I'll buy that, but I can acknowledge that and still be right about them being assholes for doing it.

The concept that our posts will be restricted from being seen by people who have already indicated their interest in what we're doing isn't imposing a fair commercial advertising right, it's restraint of trade, restraint of communication.

If they want to charge me to reach new people, sure, I'll pay. it's commerce. right? But charging me to reach my 'friends' is wrong and hopefully lethal - why, because it's already diminished my interaction with their site, reduced my interest in advertising and increased my intent to find an alternative.

I get that they have a commercial consideration, but Frick it, so does fricking Craigslist, and they enable commerce in an earth changing way without excessive Bastardy.

Yeah I'm steamed about this. I'm steamed about investing time and effort into establishing a presence in someone else's walled garden and then have a change of regime that makes it look more like a Trap than a website.

It's predatory and even better it's evolutionarily fricken doomed. Social Media is a function, it's not a website. It can be replaced by a client side app just like a torrent that allows you to connect to any other user without the strictures of an imperial tax collector.

There I've had my rant.

I accept that the fall of the empire might take time, but i'm sure it will occur before the Earth plunges into the sun. Give me my Jedi Training Kit, I'm off to join the Rebels.