Is it time to swipe left on Meta?!
A letter to Mark and his cronies.
Early February I had the great joy of attending an
workshop - you can read all about it here. One of the activities she got us to do was write a letter to the one person in our life who we would have to abandon, disappoint and betray in order to live our true selves.
The idea wasn’t to actually give this person the letter, but more of a cathartic exercise. Recently there’s been a lot of chat and anger amongst authors after learning that Meta has fed pirated books (aka stolen ones) into their AI to train it.
Why?
To create soulless, machine-generated imitations of the stories we poured our hearts and souls into. To profit off the very words we spent months, sometimes years bleeding onto the page to produce. And they didn’t even ask!!
That’s not only bloody rude but also hugely unethical. No wonder the overwhelming feeling among most authors I know right now is a mix of rage and helplessness.
I’ve seen plenty of authors venting their outrage on Facebook and Instagram (Meta-owned platforms, of course), but I held back. Because it felt like feeding the beast. Doesn’t the algorithm thrive on conflict and scandal? The more we rage, the more we engage — and the more Meta profits. ARGH!
That’s when I thought about Elizabeth Gilbert’s letter exercise, so without further ado…
Dear Meta
I’m going to betray you now. I’m going to abandon you now. I’m going to disappoint you now.
And honestly? I’m not even sorry.
When we first met, you were fun. You gave me a space to connect with readers and other authors, share book recommendations, ask Random Rach Questions and occasionally humblebrag about hitting a list. You offered a platform where authors and readers could engage in a way they never had before. You told me that if I wanted to sell more books, I needed to have a strong presence on your platforms.
And in a way you were right. My book sales have grown along with my followers over the last decade of our relationship.
But at what cost?
The truth is this hasn’t felt like a partnership for quite some time. Recently it’s been feeling one-sided at best, entirely toxic at worst. I’ve been the girlfriend who keeps making excuses for your bad behaviour, turning a blind eye to all the red flags, because I’m too scared to walk away and lose everything I’ve built.
Which is exactly where you wanted me and all my other author friends.
You promised us visibility if we posted regularly, making us believe that if we kept feeding the algorithm with witty reels, personal photos and daily insights into our writing lives, you’d reward us. But when we gave you what we thought you wanted, you kept shifting the goal posts.
You kept demanding more. More posts, more videos, more content, more engagement. And when that wasn’t enough, you suggested demanded we pay to boost posts – PAY to reach the very people who had already asked to hear from us.
But if all that wasn’t bad enough? You STOLE from us!
You didn’t just suck time away from our creativity, our family and friends, you didn’t simply threaten our mental health…
YOU STOLE OUR WORDS
You took our books from pirated sites, took all our words and fed them into your AI model – training it so it can spit out poor, soulless imitations of our novels that you can cash in on.
The key word is STOLE. You seem to think because you are a company worth billions, morals don’t matter. You never asked us if you could use our work, you didn’t even pay for it in the first place!
I’m going to betray you (aka delete my account, delete your apps, try and pretend you never existed) because I can no longer in good conscience be part of something that steals from creators. I’m going to abandon you because I refuse to waste another minute that I could be walking my dog, writing my next book, reading one, feeding YOUR pockets. I’m going to disappoint you because I’m choosing to take my words – and my audience – somewhere I feel has values and ethics that align with my own – although I’m guessing you won’t even notice.
Warmest regards (to literally anyone but you),
Rach!
That’s the letter I want to send to Meta, BUT unless us authors abandon Meta EN MASSE - and our readers support us by coming with us to other platforms such as this one – nothing will truly change.
If you have a suggestion for where else we all could gather, let me know in the comments. xx
I felt this post. Going on social media these days feels like having a cigarette for my brain! It makes me dumber, more anxious and occasionally less bored. I need to find a way out.
I decided yesterday during our conversation that it’s time to go. I first contemplated it a year ago, when I learnt Meta was training AI off our public posts without opt-out in Australia, but yesterday I decided it’s time. I think a six to 12 month transition period is what I will enact. And I am ready to workshop the crap out of how it will work with whoever is ready to workshop it with me, and support the efforts of others to do the same. If we need a slogan, a profile pic, a hashtag, a team effort, a campaign central, let’s bloody do it.