2018 has been an interesting year.

For me, the biggest news story that stands out is the rampant censorship that has been taking place. From Laura Loomer to Alex Jones, I went from a sense of impending doom to outright panic. Although my awareness of alternative social media platforms started in 2017, 2018 was the year I decided to take the leap of faith and dive into the pristine waters of alternative tech. Although I still have a Facebook account, I make a concerted effort to refrain from using it as much as possible. I always say that I am one bad day away from #DeleteFacebook, I refrain from doing it because my friends and family are still on Facebook. I am trying to convince them to migrate to Minds, GAB, MeWE, and other platforms that are not in the Silicon Valley Big Tech club. If a majority of my friends and family moved away from Facebook, I would happily #DeleteFacebook. I never liked Twitter primarily because I never used it, which is why I chose to delete my Twitter; but when I saw the dark clouds of censorship approaching Twitter, I almost thought myself clairvoyant (although Milo Yannopoulos getting censored from Twitter was an early bell weather for me).

This is a list of my Top 5 highlights from 2018:

1. In February, I joined GAB. I learned about GAB when Andrew Torba was on Infowars talking about censorship in 2017. After months of consideration, I chose to take the plunge and join GAB. Although my use of GAB was limited to my desktop at first for 6-7 months, I received an email notification from GAB detailing how I could get GAB installed on my iPhone because GAB was removed from the app stores of both Apple and Google. I followed the instructions and now I am a faithful GAB user. Way to stick it to Silicon Valley, Andrew Torba. GAB’s de-platforming scare this year really got my blood boiling.

2. In April, I joined Minds when I became familiar with Styxhexenhammer was on Infowars when alluded to Minds being a viable alternative social media platform. I did some research on Minds and I came across a Minds tutorial video by Dave Cullen (Computing Forever) and I chose to join Minds.

3. In June, I learned that John Fogerty and ZZ Top were holding a concert in their Blues and Bayou tour in Southaven, Mississippi and I decided that this concert would be the perfect Fathers Day gift to my dad (being that my dad is of the baby boomer generation, he always enjoyed Creedence Clearwater Revival and I figured that seeing John Fogerty would be the closest thing to seeing CCR).

4. In August, I saw that Alex Jones got censored from Apple, Facebook, Spotify, and YouTube. One week later, I chose to delete my YouTube channel (along with my entire Google account) and joined BitChute the same day. Side Note - I’m glad I chose to download the Infowars Official app for my iPhone BEFORE it got removed from the Apple App Store. Side Note - I also joined Steemit in the month of August.

5. In December, I joined MeWE. This social media platform resembles Facebook in many ways and it looks really good. I recommend anyone reading this post to look at MeWe.