The whole essence of a social network is the network effect, which is what makes it hard to start new social networks and hard to leave existing ones. It doesn’t help to be somewhere privacy-respecting and open source if no-one else from your daily life is there.
Social networks are free to use, but as the saying goes – If you are not paying for it, then you are not the customer. You are the product. So quitting social networks would both be protecting my privacy and denying them a microscopic amount of their sales potential.
I also have a motivation for leaving social networks other than sticking it to the American Man, which is the unhealthy amount of time I spend scrolling endless reams of bot-generated copyright infringement and algorithmic hypnotism that most social apps encourage today. If being frustrated with the current American administration is the extra push I need to do something that is healthy for me anyway, well, I’ll take it.
So here, in order from easiest to hardest, are the social networks I have to take a long, hard look at:
X-twitter: I stopped using it in 2017 when I realized that was getting angry every time I scrolled through my feed, and I can hardly imagine it’s any better today. I never got around to actually deleting my account before last week. I did not have a single moment of anguish doing that.
Snapchat: I originally was drawn to the idea of ephemeral pictures, but never really got into it. My wife and two of my friends occasionally send me things, but I’m pretty inactive myself. Not a terribly big loss.
Instagram: I never post anything, but my brother sends me a lot of funny memes, and I follow funny things. The algorithm has me clocked and provides a stream of funny things, but when it runs out of material it defaults to scantily clad ladies. Awkward. Losing access to funny memes will be sad.
Facebook: I was an early convert back when it had just opened up to people outside of American colleges, but it’s been a decade since I really posted anything there. This probably goes for most people I know, since my feed is an endless mishmash of bots posting copyright infringing content from Star Wars, comic books and Reddit. However, a lot of school-adjacent activities are organised on groups there, so I kind of need access to it to not make my wife do all the work. I have joined the new, friendly and made-in-Norway alternative Hudd, now I just need to convince everybody else in my school district to join up as well.
LinkedIn: This is literally where I am publicizing these blog posts.
The net result of this will probably be me quitting some, but not all of these social networks.
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