People who know me know I generally have a lot to say. More than once, an earnest and well-meaning person has told me to “please shut up”. I am fine with this. Exactly once, at a party, an earnest and well-meaning person told me “for an opinionated twat, you don’t post much on Facebook”. This is self-evidently true, but why?

It boils down to one thing: ownership. When I post something to Facebook I don’t know who owns it. I’ve tried to read the small print (and I’m pretty good at it) but I can’t get a definitive answer. I own the text but Facebook may use it, royalty-free for … what exactly? My words are precious to me and I like writing but I just can’t bring myself to do it if there is even a hint they won’t be mine any more.

So ages back I set up this blog site - nothing fancy, just somewhere I can put my words and be sure they will remain mine. From time to time I shall post things here and link them from Facebook. This isn’t some kind of shady self-promotion deal where I’ll soon be flogging you hard-on pills for a cut of the profit (mentioning no names, you know who you are). It’s just my way of posting to Facebook.

If you think this is a terrible idea and you refuse to leave the safety of the blue banner, fine, rant about it in the comments on Facebook. I am fine with Facebook owning the comments, I shall even reply to them. I feel that they deserve that for facilitating the conversation. It’s nothing to do with my technical inability to add comments to mattinn.es. Nope, definitely not. So, please let me know what you think about my quest for literary freedom.

The sharp eyed among you will cry “but you post a ton of stuff on Instagram, they are owned by Facebook so how is that any different?”. The truth lies in the difference between words and pictures. I take many hundreds of pictures. When I post something to instagram, I am posting something beautiful or interesting but I don’t feel like I am creating it. I just saw this thing and captured it. I don’t feel like I own it in the same way.

I probably write as many words in a year as I take pictures but each one was pulled from thin air. They are a pure reflection of me and I don’t want to lose that.