I stay on platforms like Twitter/X and also this one, despite their despicable owner/CEO’s practices, because the community that had grown up there is the supreme value of that network. Both blossomed under the realization of the value of staying in touch and speaking our minds, and even building movement strength (even discovering those movements we might not have even known about without these platforms).

It is not , therefore, the prerogative of those in “leadership” to seek to usurp it for the desire to wrest that power away, for money, or for influence of their own. The power of the platform comes from it’s “nodes” (the people, in this case). That’s much like the case with the church. When large swaths of its people are drawn away from the mission in order to seek political power or become ensnared in monetary gain and greed, the people do not cede the mission to those who would corrupt it.

And just as Chief Seattle told the U.S. government when it offered to “buy the land from the people”, it is not land that can be owned by anyone. Not the U.S., nor the people who have lived on it. They live there as gift, and so are citizens and members of it. “Purchase” and “ownership” is a human economic insistence that simply isn’t a part of that reality. So it is with the people who inhabit Social Media.

I don’t say the above to claim that I think people who leave those platforms are wrong to do so. I definitely understand the desire to punish and usurp a business by non-participation. I simply have assigned a deeper significance and understanding of the absolute value of common spaces that became possible by technologies that were built with “common good” and “communication for all and by all” in mind from the ground up. It was to be a gift of technology to the social spaces made possible by the creative urges of the human reflection of the divine image. This is “the good” that I highly valued and anticipated in joining “Virtual Community”, and I found it, and refuse to give it up when contrary and dishonorable efforts seek it’s colonization. I might say “Here I Stand”.