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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 of4547'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.
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
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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.