The ceaseless lock down that many states are experiencing has lead to the inevitable push back. Protests have already taken place in a number of states and more protests are being planned. Unfortunately, many of these protests are being organized on Facebook and Facebook has decided to remove them.
It probably doesn’t surprise anybody that I have friends interested or participating in the protests in Minnesota. When I saw them posting on social media saying that the latest protest event had been removed, I saw a number of people recommend other centralized social media sites such as MeWe and Minds. I have a tradition when I see such recommendations. I point out that jumping from one centralized social media site to another simply kicks the can down the road because they could decide to implement restrictions at any point and that the only long term solution is using self-hosted services to advertise events. The usual rebuttal I received is a variation of we have to post the event where the people are (falsely implying that many people use MeWe or Minds). Apparently there is a lot of misunderstanding about using self-hosted services to organize events.
When you use a self-hosted service, you don’t have to isolate it from everything else. You can advertise your self-hosted service on Facebook, Twitter, and other centralized social media sites. The point of a self-hosted service is to be authoritative and under your sole control. When you share a link to your self-hosted service, you note that the website you’re hosting is the place to go for official information. If Facebook removes your post, it doesn’t matter because the people who have already seen it will know where to go for updates to your event and because Facebook cannot remove your website. The official information still exists and can be shared with interested parties.