With the same moderation changes that resulted in a torrent of hate speech and disinformation on X now set to roll out on Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) it was time to pull up stakes and spend time places that respect facts and people instead. As for what you can expect at Meta moving forward:

 Users are now allowed to, for example, refer to “women as household objects or property” or “transgender or non-binary people as ‘it,’” according to a section of the policy prohibiting such speech that was crossed out. A new section of the policy notes Meta will allow “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality . . . The policy also now allows for content arguing in favor of “gender-based limitations of military, law enforcement, and teaching jobs.”

 

I've already left Facebook (and Twitter/X before that) and am currently in the process of packing up my Instagram account. Many of my favourite photographs from 2007 to the present have moved to Flickr. My final day on Instagram will be January 19th. 

 

Here are some other places you can continue to find me:

✮ Bluesky: caramartin
✮ Spoutible: CaraCKMartin
✮ Mastodon: mstdn.ca/@ckkellymartin
✮ Tumblr: ckkellymartin
✮ Flickr: ckkellymartin
✮ Goodreads: C. K. Kelly Martin

 

 

Once Bluesky's photo-sharing app Flashes is available I'll post photos there too. And of course there are always my websites:

www.ckkellymartin.com
www.caramartin.ca
www.justlikeyousaiditwouldbe.com

You can find up to date links to the social media networks I appear on at each website. 

I’ve never doubted that Justin Trudeau loves this country and am gravely disappointed that he’s leaving under such fraught circumstances. We’ll never know what his fate might've been if Canada still had a free mainstream media (not owned by a foreign extreme right constantly in attack mode) and a hardcore social media disinformation campaign hadn’t been waged against Trudeau, in particular, and progressive movements in general. As one BlueSky user aptly described the mainstream media and social media onslaught: "2 years of character assassination." 

A politician’s political life doesn’t last forever, but it shouldn’t have ended this way. Trudeau had a bright, optimistic and inclusive vision of Canada and at this point the party ahead in the polls stands for the polar opposite.

In happier days, at the Montreal Pride Parade, August 2016

In 2015 Trudeau ushered in Canada’s first gender-balanced cabinet, evenly split between men and women. He helped see Canadians through the early days of the COVID pandemic with the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) which was instrumental in keeping Canadian COVID fatalities markedly lower than those of the United States. In recent years Trudeau increased Old Age Security (OAS) benefits for seniors seventy-five and older by ten percent, launched a national $10-a-day child care program, and a dental care program for seniors and under 18s with an annual family income of less than $90,00.

The new social programs are unlikely to survive under a Conservative government and cuts to others, including healthcare funding, would likely be harsh. Poilievre voted to stop the dental care program, and a pharmacare program providing free diabetes and birth control, and in 2023 he voted to cut funding for surgery and emergency room wait times by $196.1 billion. Under a Conservative federal government pensions would be slashed too. Poilievre has already voted to increase eligibility for Old Age Security (OAS) and the Guaranteed Income Supplement eligibility from sixty-five to sixty-seven. In 2021 he also voted against the ten percent increase to OAS for seniors seventy-five and older. (Read more about Pierre Poilievre's record on pensions here.)