How Facebook helped me find

Long after I'd given up looking, a short message from a kind stranger reopened a chapter I thought was

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Diana Neille with her stolen violin and the man who brought it back to her 12 years later, Kyle Fenton.

(Diana Neille)

You won't catch me singing the praises of Meta on an ordinary day.

I've spent years of my life researching, writing and making films about the evils of Big Tech (and, let's be honest, many more years battling an addiction to their platforms. Dopamine, amirite?)

But Sunday, 25 January, was no ordinary day. I had to begrudgingly give Facebook its flowers for — of all things — a reminder that amazing and good and kind things happen, even in the darkest of times (fascism, amirite?). A reminder that being human and living in a society that functions, however nonfunctionally, is a privilege and a profundity that we should never take for granted.

Let me explain.

Just more than 12 years ago, at the tail end of a torrid year, I created a Facebook page appealing for help in tracking down several stolen violins. They had been cleaned out, along with my worldly possessions, during a break-in at a house I was staying in, after a traumatic breakup that left me temporarily homeless.