A Link to the Spoons

Changes to Facebook, Instagram, and other Meta Products

Update 11/25/24 11:00 P.M.: The ‘A Link to the Spoons’ Facebook page was suspended exactly 10 minutes after posting this same post there. We have no idea when -or if- we will be able to recover the page.

There will be significant changes upcoming to the A Link to the Spoons facebook page.

Due to the newly updated “Terms and Conditions” for all Meta products (Facebook, Instagram, Threads, etc.), we will be removing a bulk of our content on Facebook and Instagram -and cease posting content that we wish to keep our rights to- on any ‘A Link to the Spoons’ Meta social media accounts.

A screenshot of Section 3.3 of the updated Terms of Facebook titled, ‘The permissions you give us.’ Certain key parts of the section have been highlighted in blue, such as a part stating, “you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, and worldwide license to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly inform or display, translate, and create derivative works of your content…”

Fear not: ALL of our content will be available here on the A Link to the Spoons website, where we can best control and maintain the rights to our writing, photos, graphics, etc.

We vehemently disagree with bullying the very creators that keep these apps running into indefinitely giving away labor to a capitalist entity, such as Meta, for free. Lying about the true intentions behind the scraping of artworks en masse is unsurprising, albeit maddening. They simply do not need all users to give them extremely broad legal permissions to posts, photos, videos, and more.

The cherry on top is that if you do not agree to the updated Terms, or you wish to terminate the agreement to this contract, they’re very emboldened to tell you to GTFOH. That means ALL Meta apps/products.

A screenshot of Section 4 of Facebook/Meta’s new Terms, titled, ‘Additional Provisions.’ Highlighted in blue is a section that reads: “…if you do not agree to our updated Terms or wish to terminate your agreement to this contract, you can delete your account at any time and you must also stop accessing, or using Facebook and the other Meta Products.”

They truly believe that everyone will agree to these terms and go about their business as usual. And they’re not entirely wrong— they’re merely preying on the complacency that users have had for their bs for years. The evidence that users have become so accustomed to the monopoly on connections with friends, family, and communities on Facebook/IG/Threads, that it becomes daunting to go elsewhere. Many people have countless posts and photos accumulated on their profiles over time; perhaps too many to want to delete.

It’s all very well orchestrated and predictable, but we refuse to be complacent to these changes. We saw this coming, it was only a matter of time. This is a very important decision to be made by each user who uploads content to their apps. Some will treat it like it’s no big deal, but it absolutely needs to be approached as seriously as any other major legally binding contract one would enter into.

We sincerely hope that our followers will continue to support what we do, and visit our website and other socials to build reliable Community connections outside of a single entity like Facebook. Though our posting here will not stop altogether, it will significantly decrease. We have a chance to grow our resources in ways that staying in one or two toxic places would not allow and we want to seize that opportunity. We’d love for you to join us.

You can find our content in the following places:

Our website: http://www.ALinkToTheSpoons.com
Ko-Fi: https://ko-fi.com/alinktothespoons
BlueSky: ALinkToTheSpoons.bsky.social
Discord: (coming soon)

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