8 years on…
After 8 years, we’re stepping back from Facebook and moving our community to our own home.
When we started the Life in Abruzzo group to go alongside the blog, Facebook was a friendly place. You posted a question about a comune, a recipe or a family name, and people who knew the answer saw it and replied. Many of you found each other there, and some of you have become real friends.
That Facebook has gone. Today the platform decides what you see, charges us to reach you and wants to use our work to build its own products. I can no longer, in good conscience, ask you to meet us there.
Why We’re Going
The algorithm decides who sees what. Facebook quietly hides posts that send people off the platform. Our articles, event listings and guides all link back to this website, so most of you never see them. Large groups also make real connections hard: you scroll past adverts and strangers to find the handful of people you actually wanted to talk to.
We’re Asked to Pay to Share our Own Work
Facebook now wants small companies and cultural associations like ours to pay before we can post more than 2 links to our own articles, which it then shows only to a tiny fraction of our community because it takes people off its platform. Life in Abruzzo doesn’t make that kind of money, and I already pay the website’s running costs myself. When a platform charges you to reach the people who chose to follow you, it’s time to find another way.
Our Writing and Photos Could be Used to Train AI
Meta has new rules for businesses from 30 October 2026, and businesses agree to them by continuing to use Facebook. The rules let Meta copy the websites that business accounts link to. The first version said Meta could use what it copies to “train” its AI. After complaints, Meta took the word out of one version. But days later, it was still in the UK version. And Meta doesn’t promise to stay out when a website asks it to.
We’ve seen this before. In July, Instagram launched an AI tool that let anyone turn photos from public accounts into new images, without asking the people who took them. After 3 days of backlash, Meta withdrew it, saying only that it had “missed the mark”. There was no apology.
We spent nearly 20 years writing, researching, and photographing Life in Abruzzo, made possible in large part by local people who trusted us with their stories. That work should not be harvested to enrich a few very large companies.
It isn’t only our work. Since 2025, Meta has used public posts and comments from adults in Europe to train its AI. That includes every comment you have left on our Facebook Page, and every post and comment in any public group you belong to, unless you have said no. Private groups, friends-only posts, and private messages are excluded unless someone shares them with Meta AI. Your comments should be a conversation with us and each other, not free material to teach an AI how to serve you another advert or keep you scrolling. You can personally object within 2 minutes using Meta’s Facebook and Instagram objection forms. Business accounts are excluded.
Children Aren’t Protected Equally
In 2026, Meta agreed to new protections for teenagers on Facebook and Instagram as part of a settlement in the United States. Those safeguards apply only in the US. Families here in Italy, and across Europe, Canada and elsewhere, don’t get them.
Its Record on Data and Democracy
This week, a US court ordered Meta to pay $25 billion for misleading Facebook users about how it used their data. The case grew out of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Meta is appealing. If you haven’t heard of it: in 2018, it emerged that a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, had collected the Facebook data of up to 87 million people through a personality quiz. Most of them never took the quiz; their friends did. The data was used to target people with political adverts in the 2016 US election, and the scandal also raised serious questions about the UK’s Brexit vote.
Whatever your politics, the danger is the same: people were shown different messages, often designed to stir up fear and anger, based on data they never agreed to share. At a time when we need to pull together, that kind of targeting pulls us apart. And it keeps happening. In Brazil, President Lula’s campaign had its advertising account switched off weeks before this month’s election, and Brazil’s electoral court has ordered Meta to treat both candidates equally. In the US, the Instagram account of the “No Kings” protest movement went offline on the day of its nationwide rallies on 17 October. Meta says both were errors by its automated systems, and apologised for the second. I don’t want our community to depend on a platform with that record.
What We’ve Already Done
Lifeinabruzzo.com already blocks Meta’s web crawler, so it can’t scrape our articles and photographs. This week we also added a formal notice, in the machine-readable form EU copyright law describes, refusing permission for any company to use our work to train AI, and told the main AI training crawlers to stay out. Search engines are still welcome. We’ll keep the Life in Abruzzo page and group open for now, but from today they’ll point you here. Before Meta’s new rules start on 30 October, we’re removing the links to our website from our Facebook Page, so those rules give Meta no way in. Businesses can’t opt out of Meta’s AI training the way individuals can, which is one more reason to go. In January 2027 we aim to step back from Facebook altogether: we’ll close the group and switch off comments on our Page. The Page will stay only as a signpost, so people can still find us. We’ll give plenty of notice before any of this happens, so everyone who’d like to move across has time to do so.
Where to Find us Now
Here’s where we’ll be:
• Right here on lifeinabruzzo.com. Every article, comune guide and event listing is free to read, as always.
• Our free newsletter. It’s been quiet for a while, and we’re bringing it back. It’s the best way to make sure you never miss a story, straight to your inbox with no algorithm in the way. Sign up here.
• The Abruzzo Insiders Club, for anyone who’d like a place to talk.
The Abruzzo Insiders Club
The Club is our own community space: no ads, no algorithms and no one watching over your shoulder. Its members love Abruzzo warts and all, whether they live here, visit, or have family roots in a village they’ve never seen, and they’re Italians and people of many other nationalities.
As Instagram showed this summer, when your community lives on someone else’s platform, they decide what happens to your words and photos. We looked closely at ready-made platforms like Patreon and Skool. They’re polished, but using them would be like renting a room in someone else’s house. They set the rules, they can change them, and they take a share of every membership. So we chose to build the Club ourselves, on our own website. Your details stay with us and are never used for advertising. We decide how the space grows. More of what you pay goes into Life in Abruzzo itself, which helps us keep the annual Founding price at €30.
We love Abruzzo, warts and all, because life here is not just a postcard. Strikes, road closures and taxes affect all of us, so local issues are welcome. Our one rule is simple: be kind, be respectful, and show love and understanding to one another. Attacks on anyone’s faith, nationality, sexuality or identity are removed.
Members also get the Members’ Library downloads, the Living Calendar, a trip planner, and every comune guide in full, and can contribute by sharing their businesses and others they most want the outside world to see. Founding Members pay €30 a year (about $35), including Italian sales tax, and keep that price for as long as they stay. Join the Abruzzo Insiders Club.
A bookmark app that waits for you. The Club app is a simple shortcut on your phone’s home screen. It doesn’t buzz, ping or send alerts to pull you back in. You open it when you choose to, and it stays out of the way the rest of the time. Social media is built to grab your attention and keep it, which takes a toll on focus and mental health. We’d rather you spend that time enjoying Abruzzo.
Coming soon. We’re now working on 2 ideas that only a community like ours can make happen. The first is a house exchange, so members can swap homes as an affordable way to travel in and out of Abruzzo. The second is a spare-room network: members can offer each other, and their pets, a spare room if wildfires or an earthquake ever force them from home. When disaster strikes, our nearby friends are often facing the same thing, so a member in another valley or province can make all the difference.
We know €30 isn’t possible for everyone, and nobody will be left out of the news. The website and the newsletter stay free, and that won’t change. We’ll keep our Facebook Page and group open for now, but from today the conversation moves to the Club, and Facebook will simply tell people where to find us.
The Abruzzo Insiders Club is an add-on project run by Samantha Dunham. It is separate from the Life in Abruzzo cultural association, but shares its aims and helps support its work and publishing for free.
Thank you for 8 years of conversation on Facebook. I hope you’ll carry on the conversation with us on the Abruzzo Insiders Club join here!
A presto
Sam
Sources
- Meta drops “train” from its website-crawling terms after backlash, The Next Web
- Meta’s AI training clause still in 30 October terms after report of removal, PPC Land
- Meta’s new commercial terms will allow the scraping of news sites, legal experts say, Nieman Lab
- Meta’s teen safeguards on Facebook, Instagram apply only to US, Bloomberg Government
- New child safety measures Meta pledged in US settlement not coming to Canada, inSauga
- Meta must pay New Mexico $25 billion, its biggest fine ever, for deceiving users about Facebook privacy, PBS NewsHour
- Meta ordered to pay $25 billion penalty in New Mexico Cambridge Analytica case, CNBC
- Meta admits Lula glitches, denies bias, The Rio Times
- Meta apologizes after suspending “No Kings” Instagram account, The Star
- 3 days after introducing an AI feature, Meta hits pause in wake of privacy backlash, Inc.
- Meta faces backlash over AI feature mining Instagram photos, TechBuzz
Alongside raising a teenager, Sam hosts guests at her family’s traditional home, the Little House of the Firefly in Abruzzo, offering a warm welcome and insider tips on local culture, food, and hidden gems.
Author: Sam Dunham
Sam is a freelance SEO content creator and IGCSE Geography and English teacher in Rome. She also runs the Life In Abruzzo Cultural Association, sharing stories and insights about this captivating region. Alongside raising a teenager, Sam hosts guests at her family’s traditional home, the Little House of the Firefly in Abruzzo, offering a warm welcome and insider tips on local culture, food, and hidden gems.
