I love this article from Art Review We All Have Archive Anxiety Now drawing a parallel with the album DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS by Bad Bunny, to draw attention to how social media is colonized by corporations who can take your stuff down, or take over your stuff, on a whim. To me a take-down is less colonization than a takeover. 

I think it is very different however (you can’t remotely compare it to the actual colonization of Puerto Rico), because on social media, it is not a corporation colonizing your device, you are the one moving your content and most cherished moments into a corporate structure that you don’t control. I moved all my stuff out of social media and gave up on likes and engagement loooong time ago. 

I initially wrote a different post questioning whether or not the term “colonization” applies and then I had an instant flash in my memory about a certain platform that was acquired by a new corporation a while ago (before the pandemic), and where I still appear to be holding at least one account, to which I have zero access since the acquisition. Comments have been accruing without me being able to moderate or reply. I thought I had moved my stuff from everywhere on social media, but given my numerous pseudonyms, one that I can clearly remember right now totally slipped through, I just dawned on me that I have loose ends as we speak. 

So thanks to this really insightful article, I can now 100% claim that my content was indeed colonized by a freaking corporation! A bit flabbergasted, I am correcting myself on this unpleasant omission.