I deleted all my meta accounts a couple years ago (Facebook, Instagram). When I did it I was afraid I would miss out.
Nope: 5 years after I feel good about not being a dopamine-addicted sheep (At least to Meta). It makes me sick to my stomach whenever I go to a public place and see so many people mindlessly losing their life watching reels and stories full of ads. I Used to take the Caltrain and I estimate >50% of the people were mindlessly scrolling instagram during the 1 hour train ride.
The best time to delete * Meta was yesterday. The next best time is Today.
(To be honest I recreated a bogus account to sell things on MarketPlace and I cannot believe the amount of crap constantly pushed to me)
What does your social life look like? Because the reality for me is that in any major city, a significant number of places - even if they technically have websites - post all of their events and happenings on Instagram/FB.
Sure, I can talk to my close friends on any number of IM platforms, but if I want to get out and have new experiences, join club meetups, be notified of events at venues I care about, etc. - it's Meta or miss out.
> Most venues and places are slowly going away from closed gardens.
They are? Honestly, first time hearing about this. I've noticed only big events get posted outside of the IG/etc. Even in Tokyo, a simple thing like checking if a place is open on a public holiday is to check their Instagram.
Sadly in Tokyo, most businesses post their info to twitter or instagram, but in both cases you're able to read without an account (not well, but it's possible).
Instagram makes it extremely frustrating without an account. Many times I have checked a small business's opening times on Google Maps only to arrive and find them closed... the only place they reliably post their times is on Instagram.
Yeah the instagram posting is such a complete BS. I have a bogus instagram account where I don't follow anyone for the couple times a year I need to find set times for an artist or that kind of stuff.
We need to shame artists/events/clubs that only post on Instagram
Sure, for one category of music in some cities there's a resource. There are often community-curated lists that have some things, but if you want specific things or if you want everything/most things, it's the big platforms.
I'm part of some local photography groups. There's a Discord where members plan informal get togethers, but the big events are all posted on Instagram.
I follow a number of local bartenders, and their popup events are all on Instagram. Same for local performing artists.
My bike club coordinates through a Facebook page.
Honestly, none of my non-tech interests are viable (in a group setting) without Meta properties.
I find a life surrounded only by people who already do the things I do unfulfilling. I also find that almost no one who works outside of tech cares enough about privacy or other issues to care to move off the big platforms.
I already spend my entire work day surrounded by tech workers, I'm not going to change my hobbies to spend more time around them.
I deleted my Facebook account years ago. Recently I tried to make a new one in order to get access to the WhatsApp API to use it for my business, and I just get banned right after the account is created. I'm not sure why, but I guess they don't need my money.
I tried threads but had to leave it so quickly. All the posts I see are just baits, people trying to say controversial/stupid things just to seek attention and reaction. I don't know much about social media algorithms, but if the result is that I'm constantly fed with things I don't want to see, maybe it's not the platform I want to be in.
I feel like the suggestion to just delete your Meta account is unhelpful and even harmful in some situations. I know a lot of us in this field don't mind having a small social circle, but for us that struggle to even have that, or that the process of doing that, requires you to be as open and reachable as possible to make it easier to create or maintain friendships, this often requires having an account to use Messenger (I know regionally this may differ).
Being difficult in this way, when most other people, particularly non technical people, don't have a problem with this, in my experience significantly hurts your opportunities and limits the types of people you socialize with in real life, which I think can eventually be harmful.
I do some IRL activities where many of the participants use social media apps to coordinate and plan sessions. I don't have any of these accounts so while I do miss out on some of the casual things, I just show up and still get 80% or more of the interaction and all of thething I'm after in the first place: doing stuff.
I am not a sparkly special pretty princess. My friends are where they are. In the trade off between meeting people where they're at or doing something unique to me with friction to them, I know which one wins.
(note - this is snarky and I don't actually fully disagree with you)
If there is more friction to communicate with me I expect to hear from people less often.
As an example, my friends that only use Discord and not SMS or Signal definitely hear from me less frequently. It doesn’t mean we’re not friends, but we do communicate less frequently.
AI features are so good, you're forced to use them whether you chose to or not. I guess the reason is to justify all of this datacenter buildout because the "demand" is so high?
Facebook's whole conception of tagging is a disaster. It's pure noise. What do I gain by seeing you tag someone (or worse, a bot) in a post? Just share it with them privately.
Yup, on the internet these days it is fine to talk about the most vile and disgusting things you can imagine, to a point. And that point is if you say joke about apoptosis and an elected official or some billionaire in the same sentence, it is [ Removed by Reddit ]. It is amazing the era of censorship we find ourselves in today and no one seems to be complaining about it either.
One nice thing I heard about recently is you can block the Claude user on Github to create nice yellow banner on vibey repos. It doesn't stop you interacting with the repo if you want to anyway, but has still ended up being a very quick filter for me.
Nope: 5 years after I feel good about not being a dopamine-addicted sheep (At least to Meta). It makes me sick to my stomach whenever I go to a public place and see so many people mindlessly losing their life watching reels and stories full of ads. I Used to take the Caltrain and I estimate >50% of the people were mindlessly scrolling instagram during the 1 hour train ride.
The best time to delete * Meta was yesterday. The next best time is Today.
(To be honest I recreated a bogus account to sell things on MarketPlace and I cannot believe the amount of crap constantly pushed to me)
Sure, I can talk to my close friends on any number of IM platforms, but if I want to get out and have new experiences, join club meetups, be notified of events at venues I care about, etc. - it's Meta or miss out.
Berlin, Germany
Most venues and places are slowly going away from closed gardens.
They are? Honestly, first time hearing about this. I've noticed only big events get posted outside of the IG/etc. Even in Tokyo, a simple thing like checking if a place is open on a public holiday is to check their Instagram.
I gave up and got Instagram.
We need to shame artists/events/clubs that only post on Instagram
I'm part of some local photography groups. There's a Discord where members plan informal get togethers, but the big events are all posted on Instagram.
I follow a number of local bartenders, and their popup events are all on Instagram. Same for local performing artists.
My bike club coordinates through a Facebook page.
Honestly, none of my non-tech interests are viable (in a group setting) without Meta properties.
It’s like saying “none of my group interests are viable unless I smoke”.
I already spend my entire work day surrounded by tech workers, I'm not going to change my hobbies to spend more time around them.
Be fucking serious
Being difficult in this way, when most other people, particularly non technical people, don't have a problem with this, in my experience significantly hurts your opportunities and limits the types of people you socialize with in real life, which I think can eventually be harmful.
You really can live without social media.
I’ve deleted all my Meta accounts and other social media accounts and have lost touch with many people and find it much harder to meet new people.
Personally, I accept that tradeoff but can see how others wouldn’t (or can’t).
(note - this is snarky and I don't actually fully disagree with you)
If there is more friction to communicate with me I expect to hear from people less often.
As an example, my friends that only use Discord and not SMS or Signal definitely hear from me less frequently. It doesn’t mean we’re not friends, but we do communicate less frequently.
“I don’t want a solution, I want to be mad”