I posted this to my Facebook account earlier, and am cross-posting here.
Hello friends! There continues to be some (understandable) confusion about my ongoing transition in digital communication, which has lately resulted in some missed communications and misunderstandings.
*** I will NOT see or respond to any Facebook updates, event invites, messages, etc from you. ***
The short story is: I am eliminating (to the greatest extent possible) Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Amazon, and all subsidiary services owned by these companies (such as GoodReads, Instagram, WholeFoods, etc) from my life.
As you can imagine, this is not very easy to do (not the least because Amazon keeps buying yet more companies), which is why the process has been happening in stages, will likely forever be imperfect, and is taking a really long time (2 years so far).
The remaining exceptions are my Facebook Author Page (which is why I still need a personal FB account… for now), and WhatsApp (which is owned by Facebook, but at least it’s end-to-end encrypted). I may keep the FB account active with just this post to refer people elsewhere, since it does seem to be where people will look first.
You can reach me in the following ways:
- Phone – call/text/iMessage
- Email – ProtonMail
- Secure Messaging Services – Signal (preferred), or WhatsApp
- Microblogging/Updates – Mastodon (https://wandering.shop/@quantumcowboy) or Diaspora (https://mondiaspora.net/u/quantumcowboy)
- Photos – Snapchat, Mastodon, or Diaspora
- Books – BookLikes (http://naratnayake.booklikes.com/)
- Professional – LinkedIn
- Blog – https://naratnayake.com
If you are unfamiliar with Mastodon, there is a great introduction here: https://joinmastodon.org/. If you are unfamiliar with Diaspora, you can learn more here: https://diasporafoundation.org/.
I will probably cross-post this to my blog as well. Sorry for any confusion or misunderstanding, and I’d love to stay in touch with you! Just, you know, not through supporting these companies and the profound negative impact they have on our personal identities, privacy, civil cohesion and democracy, local economies, wealth inequality, and the weaponization of information.
Happy Thanksgiving, and I hope you and your loved ones are well.