Dispatch from Detroit: Life After Facebook

Two months ago, I walked out of the Facebook factory. I was tired of spending countless hours every day checking notifications. I had become addicted to that nice feeling of a picture being “LIKED” 5 times, 10 times, 100 times…

What do all these likes and comments and “friends” add up to in the end?

Big money. For Facebook. Billions.

And for us, we grow farther from our friends when we bury our faces in our phones. Our deeply personal relationships become commodified and monetized, packaged into nice 1’s and 0’s and wrapped up with advertisements. Our private lives on sale for someone else’s profit.

So I packed up and said goodbye, returning only for the occasional check-in and to encourage my former factory workers to join me in my revolt. And I joined Tsu, a new social network that pays me for my content and whose users support low-income families in Detroit by donating some of their earned revenues to help people pay their bills and put food on their table.

In short, I left Facebook for good – to do something meaningful with my online time. And many of my friends have joined me: even my 1 year-old goddaughter Ella Mia is on Tsu now and is earning revenue for her college fund (I donate $2/week…)

Will you take the dive and join me? Sign up here and begin to reclaim your digital life.*

In peace and much prosperity,

Justin

*Full disclosure: when you join Tsu, my organization the Detroit Water Brigade (DWB) earns a third of half of the revenues you receive. You earn half of 90% of all ad revenues of the site: the other 10% goes to the platform to keep it running. DWB uses these earnings to deliver water and financial assistance to low-income families in Detroit.