By Kim Rossi

I've been thinking about Age of Autism, our relevance, our place in the community, our perceived value (or lack of value) the importance of longevity and history versus some of the shinier kids on the block with full staff and fat budgets.  Agonizing over it all,  as we approach our 14 anniversary in November and our 4th year without Dan Olmsted in January. I had been thinking about how to shift what we look like, what we do, how to use the social media base - for faster, up to the minute, 2020 ADHD snippet style reporting. As a one woman shop, which is what we are for all intents and purposes, I'm trying to find ways to bring readers a consistently valuable product.  And then I saw the above photo in my Facebook messages.

Holy spying, Batman.

A couple of weeks ago, I snapped a photo of a U-Haul in my neighborhood, and posted it in a PRIVATE group, saying I hoped the new neighbors were tolerant yadda yadda, autism, yadda. A PRIVATE group. One photo.

Yesterday, I got this message asking if I had SOLD the item I had listed in marketplace. I did not list anything in marketplace. The moving van must have triggered a bot-ish thing. The photo was in a private group. I 'm not naive. But this blew me away.

I've heard we're about to see a new Facebook layout, some folks are already in a beta version, and they all seem to hate it. Then there's been a memo from FB saying there's a major change coming on October 1st - that makes it sound like they can just delete posts nilly willy if their "fact checkers" don't like them. Just in time for the COVID vaccines, yes?

I think AofA will try to continue along in its current iteration - a little engine that can blog in a lopsided social media world. Especially under the watchful eye of SUCKerberg.