lirazel | let's just not do social media anymore

let's just not do social media anymore

I think the time has come for me to fully stop using social media with the exception of Tumblr (which, I would argue, is barely social media, but that's another topic).

I tried Bluesky and didn't even last two weeks. When I made the account, I followed a ton of writers and podcasters I love. Within a few days, I had to unfollow all of them because their content was 90% The State of The World Is Terrible, and while I agree, my mental health does not need an endless stream of reminders. So I unfollowed all of them and kept only the people I actually know elseweb.

But then...what's the point? If I'm already following y'all on Tumblr or Dreamwidth, what do I need Bluesky for? It just doesn't seem worth the investment. So I don't think I'll be using it going forward.

And now there's all this nonsense with "Meta."

Honestly, I am dumb and totally forgot that Zuckerberg owns Instagram too. I was listening to the changes being made on Facebook and thinking about how terrible they were but not thinking that they would affect me in any way.

But I do have an Instagram. It is set to private, and I have 72 followers, all of whom I know either in real life or elseweb.

I am following more than that, around 150--the bulk of the accounts I follow are people I know, but there are also musicians I like (Hozier, Vienna Teng, Carly Rae Jepsen, Rhiannon Giddens, Infinite boys, Dreamcatcher girls, etc.), comedians I like (Chris Fleming, Tyler Gaca, etc.), artists I like (the Chocolate Guy, the lady who does the Frog and Toad videos, Liz Climo, Sarah Andersen, some local artists, etc.), museums and cultural institutions (all the libraries/special collections I've worked for, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, Invisible Histories, etc.), some local activist groups, some Youtubers I like, my shul, and a few random things (TCM, the official Vienna account, the National Trust, the Leonard Bernstein account).

It works for me. I check the app every few days, see what some people I know are up to, catch up on some cultural things I'm interested in, and then log out. I spend...maybe 30 minutes a week on it total, and some weeks far less.

I could continue doing that. But today an extremely moderate political account I follow (Sharon McMahon) posted that Meta had blocked her MLK video in which she quotes from the "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. In the past, she has posted dozens of videos quoting from or referencing MLK. And today, for the first time, her video has been blocked.

It was only when she was talking about this that I remembered that Meta owns Instagram and that all the horrific nonsense Meta is up to (if you've somehow missed the details, the best place to read about them is 404 Media's reporting) actually does affect me. I really had not realized that.

So. I think I need to delete the Instagram app. At this point, I don't intend to delete my account, but I do think I need to not use Instagram anymore. This is a shame, since I do like how I can keep up with people through it and I had found a way to use it that really worked for me. But the way Zuckerberg is wallowing on the floor in front of 4547's throne is so awful that I don't think I can reconcile using it anymore.

So. This may be the end of my interactions with social media that started in 2005 when a friend of mine grew frustrated with me and made me a Facebook account. (I was wary of it from the first, though not for the reasons it would turn out I needed to be wary of it.) Almost twenty years later and the whole social media thing seems to have been a net negative for humanity, tbh. I still love the internet, but I've always had a conflicted relationship with social media and now it seems time to put an end to it.

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I find blue sky good because I can block certain words for all time, but it's a faff. I've just deleted meta from my phone and it's made such a difference to my wellbeing. I have to use FB for work so it's on my work computer only.

I don't think I've ever heard from someone that they got rid of a social media app and their mental health didn't get better.

I saw a meme the other day with a quote "The man who created Facebook to rate his female classmates' looks is still a misogynistic asshole, what a surprise." Which. Yeah.

A lot of people over on Mastodon have been promoting Pixelfed. So far the only negative thing about that I can think of is that their logo looks way too much like Patreon's logo.

Yes indeed.

is that their logo looks way too much like Patreon's logo.

You'd think that someone would have noticed that and designed something different!

I essentially left Tumblr in the wake of the 2016 US election, when it became clear that on multiple occasions, innocuous-seeming posts from strangers (usually having something to say about race in the United States, on the blandest, most superficial 'diversity is great' level) that I had reblogged were actually the work of organised disinformation campaigns instigated by state actors — going back years. I didn't want any part of that, and because almost everyone I actually knew on Tumblr I was in touch with elsewhere (either Dreamwidth, in real life, Twitter, or fandom group chats), there didn't really seem to be any reason to stay.

I left Twitter when Musk took over, and replaced what I'd been using it for (on-the-ground, English-language coverage of global current affairs by journalists and activists and experts from the regions in which the events were taking place) with newsletters and other longform journalism.

With Meta platforms, I'm kind of stuck, because I can't replace what I'm currently getting there. Staying feels like complicity, for all the reasons you've outlined.

Real-time, rapid-fire, algorithmic social media platforms, which make money by accessing and selling your data and using what they know about you to keep you glued to your feed there have done such irreparable harm, and the appropriate response — if they cannot be regulated — is, as you say, to leave. I come at this more from the dangers from the ease with which they allow disinformation to be spread side of things, as opposed what you're talking about here with Instagram, but really they are two sides of the same coin: the power given to the platforms to boost or bury content, according to the whims of their owners and the political expediency of the day.

Ah, see, I only use Tumblr for fandom and book-related stuff; I have every conceivable political tag blocked so I don't see it. So I'm able to avoid that pretty easily, but yeah, there's probably not a site that wasn't inundated with bad actors.

on-the-ground, English-language coverage of global current affairs by journalists and activists and experts from the regions in which the events were taking place

Yeah, I much prefer newsletters and operations like ProPublica and 404 Media for things like that.

With Meta platforms, I'm kind of stuck, because I can't replace what I'm currently getting there.

Yeah. Which sucks.

Real-time, rapid-fire, algorithmic social media platforms, which make money by accessing and selling your data and using what they know about you to keep you glued to your feed there have done such irreparable harm

YES.

I come at this more from the dangers from the ease with which they allow disinformation to be spread side of things

Another reason I have tried to avoid using them for political/current events information gaining!

the power given to the platforms to boost or bury content, according to the whims of their owners and the political expediency of the day.

I hate the table being set by billionaires, so to speak.

It would be a nice idea if everyone I knew online was on tumblr or dreamwidth...

Yeah, I have a ton of people I used to be friends with from old forums and from LJ who never made it Tumblr or Dreamwidth, but I've long lost touch with them. So there's no real fandom loss for me narrowing my usage to just those two sites.

My mental health has been in a much better place without social media. As a bonus, I enjoy that for lo, these last many years, tiktok, meta, and twitter have been the only ads I see ib Duolingo. It's nice to know they're frittering away their money on me, confused as to how I cannot possibly have their apps on my devices.

It's nice to know they're frittering away their money on me, confused as to how I cannot possibly have their apps on my devices.

Hahaha, I love that!

It's really a shame because generally, the idea of social media is good. But since it's now only used by companies to sell whatever shit they currently fancy to their userbase, with pushing shit no-one wants to see through their algorithms, and now all of them bowing down to their great fascist dictator... it's become pretty much unusable.

I've deleted pretty much all my personal posts from Facebook - I only used it rarely so there wasn't much, perhaps 6 photos and a few posts. I've got an Instagram that I don't ever use - I only got it to perhaps look at some fanart accounts but then didn't. XD One of my friends earns her money with Instagram but since she doesn't seem to be aware of all the background shit that's going on because she's in a weird bubble there IDK how much it actually will affect her anyway. It might be different here because it's EU laws anyway.

I've basically only been using tumblr and DW for quite a while. It's such a shitshow... I also had to unfollow several people on Bluesky because they only kept posting political stuff etc.

Yeah, all the social media platforms started out being actually useful and all of them devolved into the exact same cesspits.

I feel very grateful that we've got Tumblr and Dreamwidth!

I do think having hard personal rules for online is the only way to do it and stay sane. I've been strict 'no politics' (and mostly 'no current events' entirely) for a good few years but came to realise that sticking to those rules just isn't possible on microblogging sites. It's still sometimes an issue on tumblr, but there are enough people there just doing fandom that it's manageable.

I think DW is interesting because obviously people do talk about politics and current events, but it's just easier for me to avoid (people generally use cuts and even if they don't, it's easy to realise when something I don't want to read is being discussed and scroll past) without feeling bombarded. It's something about the longform way of blogging - any discussion tends to be more level headed as well, in my experience.

My instagram feed is well-trained enough that I still have a scroll pretty much daily, but if that ever stops I don't think I'll have any issue deleting it. I'm already uncomfortable with how it's impossible to be anonymous on there, and prevent your account being recommended to anyone whose number you have in your phone. I went private for that reason last year, and have given up on ever using it to post my art.

That first paragraph resonates with me a lot. Totally agreed.

I think DW is interesting because obviously people do talk about politics and current events, but it's just easier for me to avoid (people generally use cuts and even if they don't, it's easy to realise when something I don't want to read is being discussed and scroll past) without feeling bombarded. It's something about the longform way of blogging - any discussion tends to be more level headed as well, in my experience.

YES. I can choose or not whether to read it and if I do read it, I know it's going to be thoughtful. The conversations around, say, Neil Gaiman have been useful to me, though I am equally glad other people can avoid engaging with that.

I'm already uncomfortable with how it's impossible to be anonymous on there, and prevent your account being recommended to anyone whose number you have in your phone.

The people who design such things do not understand that not everyone wants to be completely transparent with every single person they interact with. Which is wild.

I have been enjoying Bluesky for the artists but it is going to soon become unbearable. I may just limit my time on it. One thing I've done is put certain Reddit feeds into an RSS aggregator so I can see all the Bad Headlines in one go when I want to and not keep refreshing and scrolling. I am in a position where I do need to keep updated but not that updated.

RSS was a great invention!

I am in a position where I do need to keep updated but not that updated.

THIS.

It's at once sad and infuriating to see something I once ardently defended and genuinely believed in come to this.

Do you currently have a Facebook-proper account? I am struggling with deleting mine in a "what if I need it one day" sense.

Yeah.

I do still have one, but I haven't posted in over a decade and I almost never log in except for those rare occasions when I have to. I have also kept mine out of a sense of "what if someone from, like, high school wants to get in touch with me?" but I am starting to consider deleting. I don't know where I'll eventually land.

I wish I could delete my Facebook account, but my queer book club/social group is organized there and uses it to set up events, make polls to choose our books, etc. (I used FB Messenger myself today to hold a virtual writing session with other members), and unless the mods decide to experiment with a new platform, I can't leave and give up that community. :( I also find my neighborhood's Facebook groups pretty useful for things like Buy Nothing and finding contractor recommendations. I could survive without them if need be but not my queer book/social club. /o\ It's so frustrating and infuriating to rely on these platforms/tools that have the capacity to do good and instead are being used for evil.

Ugh, that sucks! The buy-in thing is real!

It's so frustrating and infuriating to rely on these platforms/tools that have the capacity to do good and instead are being used for evil.

INDEED. It sucks to be in a position where you have to make these decisions.

I lasted about two weeks on Twitter, in 2010; the format just didn't work for me. I looked at Bluesky but it's basically Twitter-as-was, which just didn't work. Microblogging and me do not go well.

I still have facebook because so many IRL people are only on facebook, and it's a way for me to have a way to contact various relatives and people whose emails addresses I don't have or it's not up to date. I guess I have good facebook-hygiene or whatever because I never understood all the complaint about algorithm and seeing things, because aren't you just seeing things that people you follow are posting? It's not like it's injecting various other stuff in there. So I guess if you have a really wide facebook crowd, you'll see too much? Never happened with me. I have a hard enough time getting facebook to show me things from people I actually do want to see everything they post, so I basically go to facebok, use the search to bring up the last few people I searched for, read back their latest posts, and get out.

I am on instagram only because my current-generation relatives -- for reasons unknownst to me but knownst to them -- only post their kid pictures as instagram stories, so if I don't check instagram once a day, I won't see the kid pictures. I do nothing else on there; instagram makes no intuitive sense to me because everything has to be an image, and to this day I haven't figured out how to meaningfully search it.

I never saw the point of tiktok since I'm not a video person, and the only tiktoker I know about by name (B Dylan Hollis) also posts on youtube, and youtube lets me do RSS feeds, so I'm set on that.

Edited 2025-01-21 02:20 (UTC)

because I never understood all the complaint about algorithm and seeing things, because aren't you just seeing things that people you follow are posting?

That used to be the case, certainly, but I don't think it is anymore? I think you also see what other people are following, not just what they're posting. But I could be wrong.

I have a hard enough time getting facebook to show me things from people I actually do want to see everything they post

Yeah, that sounds like a big problem--if it doesn't make the algorithm happy, it just won't bother to show it to you.

only post their kid pictures as instagram stories

They're essentially using it as snapchat? How frustrating!

Looove B Dylan Hollis! He's another I follow on Instagram, so I'll just have to add him to my Youtube subscriptions.

Came across a post on Mastodon:

https://mastodon.social/@sylv_a/113866786740212465

Don't know if it'll help, but I am half asleep so you get it in lieu of a better comment.

Oh that's nice! I'm glad there's a whole initiative. I will make January 31st the last day I use Instagram then.

I lurk on Twitter for some boyband stuff and to keep up with one of my ancient fandoms which just got new content in the 2020s, but god…to quote John Mulaney: “It seems like everyone, everywhere, is super mad about everything all the time.” How do people do fandom when they're so mad all the time???

Pinoy Facebook is okayish because we like to stay in our own little pockets of community, but venture a little bit out of your bubble and it’s Conservativesville. And Zuck is just fanning the flames. And a lot of Facebook policies (or lack of them) helped bring the hot mess that is our current government into power, so fuck him.

“It seems like everyone, everywhere, is super mad about everything all the time.” How do people do fandom when they're so mad all the time???

I KNOW!

Fuck him indeed!

Cutting the cord can only be healthy. I still have a Twitter account, but only so nobody can claim my username and impersonate me, and I'm barely on FB/IG except to post photos and keep track of artists. I'm hoping that if Zuckerberg sees the tide moving against him, he'll switch back, but right now we're in the bad place.

I'm hoping that if Zuckerberg sees the tide moving against him, he'll switch back

That would be nice, but I'm not holding my breath, unfortunately.

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let's just not do social media anymore

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