Artist plans to quit Facebook over Meta’s new terms

Artist Sara Jóna plans to close the Facebook page she has used to promote her work for more than a decade, citing new terms from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, mbl.is reports. “I’m just losing all of this,” she told the news outlet.

Sara has built a following in Iceland and abroad through the page. She had planned to close it before the new terms took effect on October 30, but Meta announced on Friday that the change would be postponed until November 20. It is not yet clear whether the delay will affect her plans.

She paints landscapes and animals and publishes greeting cards featuring her work. The changes come at a difficult time, she said, as she has recently finished preparing the cards for printing. She is looking for another way to promote her art but has not found an option she likes.

A website of her own is one possibility, but it would require time and money, resources many artists have little of, she said. She has also considered more traditional promotion, such as advertising in a local newspaper and handing out business cards. She does not plan to move her art page to Instagram, though she will keep a personal account there.

Sara said she had wanted to leave Facebook for a long time, but that doing so is difficult because so much communication and information-sharing takes place on the platform, including around horse riding and children’s sports. She compared it to the Hotel California in the Eagles song: users can check out, but cannot leave.

Her concerns also include the effects of artificial intelligence on jobs in creative fields and the technology’s environmental impact. She plans to close her personal Facebook account before the end of the year, although she has not found another platform for all the communication that currently takes place there.

Meta’s new business terms have drawn criticism over provisions concerning the automated collection of content from websites connected to business users.