Leaving Facebook

The Metal Storm staff have decided to cease operation of our official Facebook page. Consider this to be on a trial basis: we'll revisit the idea down the line to examine whether any consequences of this decision have changed our minds, but for now this marks the end of Metal Storm's presence on social media.

Since that's something of a major step, and because a bunch of folks specifically requested that we keep Facebook open when we mothballed our Twitter account last year, we felt that we should offer a somewhat comprehensive explanation of our motivations. This is going to be a mix of policy and personal reasons coming from both Metal Storm as a whole and myself, ScreamingSteelUS, as the page manager, so pardon me if this gets a little "old man yells at cloud", but literally all I use Facebook for anymore is Simpsons memes, so I can't help it.

Over time, for various reasons, we've grown more ambivalent about using Facebook. There wasn't necessarily a particular inciting incident, and we each probably have our own preferred reason for giving it up, but due to various factors, we realized gradually that we don't actually need it. And more than that, we don't want it. The simplest summation is that social media sucks. Facebook sucks, social media sucks. It's a cesspool. Some of us would have preferred never to take Metal Storm there in the first place. While it was a handy tool for a while, so it seemed, the more we think about it and the more things suck, the less we get out of it and the less we want to put into it.

When you get right down to it, social media has always been at least moderately sinister. There are benefits, sure, but there's always been a trade-off: there's the extremely negative psychological and social effects these platforms have had from the very beginning, the illicit use of data and user privacy breaches, the propensity to cause addictions, the easy distribution of misinformation and radicalizing propaganda, how much power they've given to malicious corporate and political influences, and probably a whole litany of other things. We're not really interested in that stuff, so the appeal is already limited. And as Facebook specifically gets tied more and more to dangerous campaigns of information disruption, totally disgusting content slipping through filters, hate groups camping out all over the place, and the blatant controlling ambitions of the enterprise's owners, we find ourselves more repulsed by it. We see Mark Zuckerberg sitting next to Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk behind Donald Trump at his inauguration, we see him pushing his AI expansion and "Metaverse" bollocks, questing after an ever-expanding market share of the internet's free space, and we figure our values aren't really aligned here. The billionaire tech elites represent pretty much the opposite of what we want out of society, the internet, government, our personal associates, what have you; if we can do without them, we'd like to. So we left Twitter, so we leave Facebook.

This is concerning Metal Storm specifically; some of us still use Facebook in our personal lives, and not everybody with a page to run enjoys the freedom to simply cut themselves off from external public channels. But when we're thinking about how we want Metal Storm to serve the community, we find that our goals no longer involve being on Facebook, and we are in the very rare and fortuitous position of not having to care about what kind of impact a move like this has on the success of the site. We don't run ads, we don't need publicity, we have no owners or shareholders. We make zero money, net or gross, before or after tax. We have the freedom to exist on our own without piggybacking on anybody else's 1s and 0s.

And thank goodness for that, because if we did rely on Facebook, we'd be up the paddle without a creek. Among our considerations was the fact that we don't actually receive much practical benefit from being on Facebook anyway. Metal Storm's page has 31,000 followers; I usually figure a post has done pretty well if it gets a few dozen reactions. I can't remember the last time we broke a hundred, and I can't check because it's too difficult to scroll that far back. The fancy tools I get as page manager tell me that at best maybe a couple thousand people might get the chance to see our most popular posts; usually it's more like a few hundred, and who knows how they're calculating that anyway. We've crunched the numbers and the amount of traffic we get to Metal Storm coming from Facebook is paltry; for all the time it takes to keep the page updated with our waterfalls of publications, it's not a noticeable contributor to our readership. And we don't need it to be, so there's our solution. The most significant benefit we got was alerting bands to our reviews by tagging them, and I've already found that it's more effective to contact folks via e-mail.

All that doesn't even take into account how much Facebook's UX totally sucks. If you remember Facebook from 20 or 15 or even 10 years ago, it's unusable now. What was once a convenient way for artists, labels, and publications to connect to fans more directly is now a garbage disposal. Trying to scroll through your news feed is like reading the summer fashion catalogue of hell: pages you don't follow, groups you're not part of, people you've never heard of, advertisements, sponsored posts, suggested posts, and all manner of wannabe-viral Soylent Meme, and half of it is AI-generated. It's insulting to look at, and it's so bogged down with lurid refuse that I don't even want to go near it long enough to post our latest album reviews. It gets worse all the time and I'm sick of being part of an online ecosystem that's more polluted than the rusty surf at a shipbreaking yard. It's also a pain in the cassock for me as the page manager; Facebook's management UI has gotten less and less intuitive as its capabilities have compounded, increasingly geared toward businesses and content creators who are incessantly online or who pay people to be, trying to make a quick buck off their following. Tagging pages is now cumbersome and irritating. After literally every post, I receive a popup asking whether I want to boost my engagement by spending $15 to let another 200 followers see that post. No, I do not. If I have a spare $15, I am buying an album.

Forgive me my Luddite tendencies, as this may sound like a stupid problem to have, but I'm about as tech-savvy as those pigs who were trained to play Pong, and I don't have the time or the motivation to learn about all of the tools I don't need to use. It's cluttered and busy and that's enough to turn me away. In any event, I don't have the time to spend running the page to the fullest degree. I never check messages or mentions and I've almost never replied to comments. I've been doing the bare minimum for the better part of a decade and already that's a big time sink for me. But even if I did have the time, it doesn't really make sense for me as the editor-in-chief to focus on something that isn't actually part of Metal Storm, and it doesn't make sense for us to incentivize having discussions with people on social media instead of Metal Storm anyway - social media has been the major predator of forums like ours ever since its arrival, after all. As much as I'll miss being able to engage in buffoonery when I write blurbs for our reviews, I can spend that time better in other ways.

Well, there you have it. We don't like the social impact of Facebook, we don't actually need it, and I hate using it. As I said, we'll see how we feel after a while; for those of you who do regularly follow our Facebook page, thank you for paying attention to it, and I apologize for possibly making things less convenient for you. Right now we feel that this is the right move for us. If you'd like to keep receiving updates on our stuff, you can utilize our RSS feeds instead (and they'll be a lot more up-to-date than the Facebook page was).

This decision makes perfect sense in the current context of social media and the new nature of Metal Storm.

Thanks for the transparence.

I use fb,but I have not posted,shared or liled there since 2017 i think, i just look band relaterad information and local events ,
Even I hate twitter more and wont buy testa it sucks in my place climatic conditions .
Same time only reason i would like ms has fb is if site is down for ling time ,we can get updates. Oterwise all is here,we dont need it.

PS Who still Looks at Facebook all seems are on Instagram

Congrats ! I have never had any SM and i am still alive. F*** SM, metal is freedom !

Written by Bad English on 05.07.2025 at 23:00

PS Who still Looks at Facebook all seems are on Instagram

Yeah if there's any social media that could really bring new blood to MS these days it's probably Instagram, but as SSUS already eloquently explained, the website doesn't particularly need it anyway

Yes! Thanks for taking the time to explain.

I didn’t even know MetalStorm was on FB to be honest. But for sure it’s a horrible UI and a burden for any artist

I don't mind FB I mostly use it to keep up with friends and family and for groups. But really whatever works for metalstorm that's all that matters.

Totally reasonable and respectable. I support this.

Much admiration for making this decision, and thanks for posting this reasonable and thorough explanation as to why you made the decision to do so. I have to admit, although I've never really been a regular Facebook user myself, I did check the updates on the MS page regularly, more so for the fact I wanted to show some kind of support, as it seemed out of the 30k+ followers hardly any one really took any notice of what was being posted, and I had fears of it becoming obsolete and your work at keeping it updated would be for nothing in the end.

I did have an inkling this was coming though due to the inactivity recently, so I'm not surprised it has come to this. Tbh, it's not like it's the end of the world though, at least you can now focus on things you feel are more worth your time. Although I doubt it will have any significant effect exactly, we'll just have to wait and see how this decision plans out and if it does have any impact over here on MS.

I agree that MS doesn't need Facebook, but I feel like the 31k followers could have some ad revenue benefit, no? Keep the ads off MS but generate a little bit of operating cost return.

Written by Boxcar Willy on 07.07.2025 at 16:11

I agree that MS doesn't need Facebook, but I feel like the 31k followers could have some ad revenue benefit, no? Keep the ads off MS but generate a little bit of operating cost return.

I don't know how it would work, since I've never attempted to delve very deeply into Facebook's business operations, but from everything they've ever pushed at me, it seems like you're the one having to pay Facebook to advertise you, so I'm not sure there's revenue to be gained unless we actually did start hosting ads on MS itself again. Even if that were the case, though, I don't think we'd be interested; just the idea of getting involved with advertisements again feels icky, which is why we've gone to such lengths to minimize users' third-party exposure and prevent tracking here. I'd rather stay cut off from that completely.

As MS grows bigger, the operating costs are creeping up, so we are still talking about establishing a way for users to donate if they so wish. Community contributions would definitely help once that's a possibility, but for now things are manageable.

This was pretty refreshing to read after I keep seeing too many friends/family members scrolling through social media all the time and hearing about "brand awareness" at work too much. More metal, less shallow BS!

Written by ScreamingSteelUS on 07.07.2025 at 18:06

Written by Boxcar Willy on 07.07.2025 at 16:11

I agree that MS doesn't need Facebook, but I feel like the 31k followers could have some ad revenue benefit, no? Keep the ads off MS but generate a little bit of operating cost return.

so we are still talking about establishing a way for users to donate if they so wish. Community contributions would definitely help once that's a possibility, but for now things are manageable.

Brother you know I wanna help out! I've got very little time but a bit of money. Let me donate

Just curious, why isn't it a possibility? Is it an outside restriction or simply a choice?

Written by Guib on 08.07.2025 at 00:26
Just curious, why isn't it a possibility? Is it an outside restriction or simply a choice?

It's mostly that we haven't tackled it yet. Platforms like Patreon are not an option for us as we want to limit our dependency to external entities and their Terms of use. So whatever we come up with will be something of our own, but it will take some time.

In the meantime, we're content running MS out of our own pockets and just keeping our costs minimal. It's not like we're a several-million-active-users project. A lot of the fun in running MS as it is, is working with the resources we have and still being able to run a decent operation. And we as a team really value full independence. You will never see a sponsored review on here, or any kind of paid or externally-influenced content. And the less we make ourselves dependent on third parties, the easier this model is for us. To a certain extent this includes the community.

When you bring money into the picture, there's always also entitlement and expectation. We don't really have a plan for how to approach external funding, but we also don't want to rush it.

In any case, it's mostly the UI update that will enable us to aim a little higher in the future. And so far we've been mostly occupied with working to make this happen.

Kinda based, honestly.

If its not a secret hos much money goes in total for month to keep ms as it is now

I completely understand the decision. Facebook can be a toxic place. I had some horrible experience there. I don't go there anymore. My account is alive, but I don't engage in comments or posts and don't even visit FB often anymore. The only reason why I don't delete is, because sometimes some companies use their page to reach them faster.

Thanks for not only communicating the decision, but also explaining the rationale behind it and even going into detail on the various options that have been considered, including further evaluation.
I do appreciate the transparency and the thoughtfulness that goes into all decision-making here.
More frivolously, I equally appreciate you making this an entertaining read as well and painting a vivid picture of the personal reasons that contributed.
The reasoning makes sense to me.

(...and I have only now noticed the preview button for the posts. Nice!)

The right step! 100% behind your descission. SM not only sucks but has the exact oposite effect then the name suggests - it´s anti social. THX also for the explanation and the transperacy!

I agree that in this time and age, there really does not seem to be any benefit of maintaining a Facebook page for MS. In terms of social media, Facebook isn't even relevant anymore as it has deteriorated into a source of disinformation, while other platforms (Tik Tok comes to mind) seem to be taking over the actual social media aspect. With this said, I still think that social media remains an important aspect of increasing the reach of MS. So instead of maintaining bespoke pages on social media, what MS should focus on is making it as easy as possible to share articles, reviews etc. to social media. Obviously, one can just copy the URL and share that, but perhaps a dedicated 'Share' button would be preferable, since it also serves as a call to action. Just my 2c

Written by jupitreas on 08.07.2025 at 13:44
With this said, I still think that the ability to share articles or reviews on social media remains an important aspect of increasing the reach of MS. So instead of maintaining bespoke pages on social media, what MS should focus on is making it as easy as possible to do exactly that. Obviously, one can just copy the URL and share that, but perhaps a dedicated 'Share' button would be preferable, since it also serves as a call to action.

However, we're not looking to increase our reach. We removed the old share buttons because nobody interacted with them. Instead, we made sure that our pages provide the relevant information for rich link previews. This means that if users want to post about MS on social media, they'll have a good experience that way.

Personally, I would hate to return to dedicated share buttons. MS is now completely clean and free of any platforming, except for Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and a tiny bit of Spotify in the WAM!TIM! feature. That's a great position to be in. Just as we provide RSS feeds for news, users are free to do whatever they want with our links. But we don't dictate the platforms or the means of sharing.

What benefit would it bring us if we started encouraging users to share MS links on TikTok? We don't care about clicks, and a community like Metal Storm can't offer the average TikTok audience anything. We're the antithesis of doomscrolling media, and anyone expecting instant gratification will be disappointed. We'd have to explain to this audience a version of the internet that mostly doesn't exist anymore, and we'd have to do that repeatedly because it's unlikely that anyone coming here from TikTok would be motivated to stay or contribute.

I'd much rather (and at this point that's team consensus) we do our own thing, on our own terms, with our own community who value what we do, are willing to contribute, and know how to behave in a forum. In my opinion, Metal Storm really is the best version of itself right now. We've worked hard to get here, and I'll try to fight any attempt to take that away from anyone here.

Written by corrupt on 08.07.2025 at 13:55

However, we're not looking to increase our reach. We removed the old share buttons because nobody interacted with them. Instead, we made sure that our pages provide the relevant information for rich link previews. This means that if users want to post about MS on social media, they'll have a good experience that way.

Personally, I would hate to return to dedicated share buttons. MS is now completely clean and free of any platforming, except for Bandcamp and SoundCloud, and a tiny bit of Spotify in the WAM!TIM! feature. That's a great position to be in. Just as we provide RSS feeds for news, users are free to do whatever they want with our links. But we don't dictate the platforms or the means of sharing.

What benefit would it bring us if we started encouraging users to share MS links on TikTok? We don't care about clicks, and a community like Metal Storm can't offer the average TikTok audience anything. We're the antithesis of doomscrolling media, and anyone expecting instant gratification will be disappointed. We'd have to explain to this audience a version of the internet that mostly doesn't exist anymore, and we'd have to do that repeatedly because it's unlikely that anyone coming here from TikTok would be motivated to stay or contribute.

I'd much rather (and at this point that's team consensus) we do our own thing, on our own terms, with our own community who value what we do, are willing to contribute, and know how to behave in a forum. In my opinion, Metal Storm really is the best version of itself right now. We've worked hard to get here, and I'll try to fight any attempt to take that away from anyone here.

Do note that I did not mention dedicated share buttons but rather a single button that might open a modal with specifically formatted links
(for example https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=[article-url])
Given the direction you mentioned I agree that integrating SDKs or APIs from social media is not a great idea, but a CTA with clear instructions is just more user friendly and engaging than copying an URL, particularly on mobile.

But yeah, if the consensus is not to increase the reach of this website then I suppose it doesn't really matter. If we don't want new users then we don't need to go fishing for them!

"Old man yells at cloud" is me at work every day. Not upset by this at all, but an independent status page would be neat. Something like status.last.f- oh wait they moved that to Twitter...

Never had a Facebook account. Never will.

If there's one thing MS and its admin team have, it's integrity. And that's part of what personally makes MS my favourite place on the internet.

Appreciate the honesty in this update, social media as a whole is a complete cesspool of addictive fake junk.

I mostly agree with the statement. But I would like to maybe add some nuance. To me, most of the counter arguments for being on Facebook are more like criticisms at Facebook (and how it works), rather than against social media in general. As a Facebook user since the beginning I also have seen the platform hit a peak at one time, but a steep decline in the last few years. This is indeed reflected in the care that goes in the UI, for example. I would say Facebook is a bit of a "has been" in the social media landscape.

I would honestly look more in the direction of Instagram, for a platform that is more "hot and happening". But then the question remains for Metal Storm if they want to be there to connect with an audience.

Some questions to consider are probably:
- Does Metal Storm want to connect with an audience? (outside of this website, of course)
- What audience? (existing members of the site, or potential new users)
- If MS wants to connect with this audience, what does it want to say/share?
- Is there a social media platform that offers Metal Storm the right fit for all the above?

But, like I said, I mostly agree with the statement. This site is a nice place to relax, at a slower pace, as a counter to the fast moving world. If you're a person looking on the internet for quick "dopamine fueled" content, MS will not be the place for you.

Possibly one of the the best things I've ever read on MS! Great decision, I support it.

Written by Miohn on 13.07.2025 at 20:12

Some questions to consider are probably:
- Does Metal Storm want to connect with an audience? (outside of this website, of course)
- What audience? (existing members of the site, or potential new users)
- If MS wants to connect with this audience, what does it want to say/share?
- Is there a social media platform that offers Metal Storm the right fit for all the above?

But, like I said, I mostly agree with the statement. This site is a nice place to relax, at a slower pace, as a counter to the fast moving world. If you're a person looking on the internet for quick "dopamine fueled" content, MS will not be the place for you.

The announcement is nominally supposed to be about Facebook in particular, but it folds in some broader circumstances of social media in general, simply because this step marks the end of Metal Storm’s involvement with social media as a whole and we never really explained our hitting the eject button from Twitter last year (because I don’t think anyone actually needed an explanation), so if it feels like a mixture of intentions, that’s pretty much what we were aiming for. Facebook is definitely not the hip-hop-happening place it used to be for social media users, so there’s a lot to criticize about the platform itself and the people behind it, but this is also us washing our hands of the whole concept at the same time, which is why we wanted to address both elements.

If we were to try to engage anyone on social media, I think Instagram would be the place for it. We do actually have an Instagram account, although it’s just as a placeholder and not for real use. There are great reasons to leave Facebook without necessarily abandoning the concept altogether and I think artists get decent use out of Instagram the way they used to with Facebook.

We won’t go that route, though, and I’ll answer your questions to illustrate.

Does Metal Storm want to connect with an audience outside this website? Well, it depends. If you mean “connecting with people who are outside this website”, then the first consideration is that whatever growth we could pursue, it’s not something we need, in the sense that we don’t require revenue or popularity for us to persist. It would be to grow our community or to spread a positive example and not because we need expansion as part of a business model. And we wouldn’t want that growth to come at the expense of the current community and user experience; I’d want MS to retain its character rather than increase its standing. So in that sense, I personally am ambivalent: I’d like it if more metal fans were able to appreciate what a site like Metal Storm can offer, but a larger community is more difficult to moderate and keep aligned with our goals. If it happens, it happens, but it’s not something I feel a special need to seek after.

If you mean “connecting with people in a setting outside this website”, then not really. Part of the motivation for leaving Facebook (and Twitter) was to move conversations and connections back into our own forums. If we’re after building a community, we have to do that here, on our own terms. Reaching out through other platforms isn’t entirely negative on its face, but using those tools just isn’t appealing anymore. Possibly there IS a social media platform that offers benefits we’d find productive and agreeable, but I don’t think there’s a platform in the world that isn’t at least a little bit evil or subject to external whims in a way we don’t approve of (e.g. find one that isn’t selling your data). The basic premise of social media isn’t doing it for us in terms of how we want Metal Storm to operate, and the present form of social media is so disgusting that it’s kind of a moot point anyway.

Basically, I think the metal community at large could benefit from what Metal Storm offers in terms of our values and intentions, so adding to our circle would be good, but that will need to happen organically and by bettering ourselves rather than by trying to cultivate a following somewhere else.

Your last paragraph says it all: I’m really glad you feel that way, because I like that about Metal Storm, too. Being different in that way is important to me and I’m sure I’m not alone among the staff or among the users in feeling so.

This post made me love you guys more and I already loved you a lot.

I deleted my Meta account this year. I love to write. I love to see what my friends are up to. I love to be informed on events. It wasn't worth the rest and I don't regret my choice at all.

Awesome move, team. ❤️