I remember what made me quit facebook, way before it became Meta: the TV serie Person of interest. It gave me a big awarness of the scale of mass surveillance. I already had the project to quit because of Zuck’s shenanigans and the lack of interest i had in the platform, but this was the last straw for me.
I quit most of my FB usage years ago, when I realised how toxic it was… and Zuck has ways been creepy as hell. I sometimes still visit the website to check on people, but it’s usually only once every few months or so.
I could feel Tiktok’s algorithm manipulating me in real-time, so I deleted that not long after trying it for the first time.
I stopped using Instagram when they suddenly appeared to mess up the algorithm on purpose, so that people would buy ads to advertise their art and whatever else they posted.
I still use X sometimes to follow video games and some art. I muted Musk and other Russia loving propaganda bots. I’m left wing on some issues and right wing on others, but I can’t stand the constant ragebait propaganda. I also find it annoying that I have to block onlyfans bots every time I open the app.back when one could make the little text ads in facebook i saw how one could use the facebook graph to basically zero in on one person and then thought “wow this is gross imagine if i was a bad faith actor zero-ing on one facebook person to target them repeatedly through these little text ads” and that was enough for me off of facebook.
that was like 2008 or so.
when I saw the graph and the possibilities of bad actors abusing it i drove myself off most social media. here isn’t too bad. i like the federated nature.
Twitter/X was easy for me, as soon as Musk touched it I closed that account. Wasn’t too active on there anyway.
Still on Instagram but planning to close that soon. Facebook is a bit trickier with all the older friends/family on there that probably won’t move elsewhere. Then again most of the friends/family I see regularly already stopped posting/commenting on Facebook so there’s a lot of dead accounts on there.
Left Reddit during the API exodus.
Snowden’s Permanent Record book was a strong motivator for me.
I left reddit over API stuff, obviously.
Twitter had a few weeks where the algorithm was so broken people were getting recommended gore videos. Just a description of the most common one set off my OCD trying to avoid it. It was always kind of a shit website and not worth having an episode over, so I just deleted my account.
Tumblr’s nsfw ban also nuked a bunch of communities that aren’t inherently nsfw, but have large factions that are. Think like the furry fandom. I just woke up one day and my tags didn’t work and my favorite creators were gone. PLUS the wording included the phrase “female-presenting nipples”, which just sounds wildly transphobic and has no definition so they can ban whoever they want. And they doubled down on it a week later. Immediately uninstalled, heard they’ve only gotten more overtly transphobic since.
I don’t even remember when I stopped using Facebook. I don’t like being stalked by every heterosexual mom I went to church with as a teenager, so I never used it long.
medias
Media is the plural
Medium is the singular, for those not aware
Similarly, data is also the plural for datum
Stop using my Facebook in Covid, most of what I saw was shit about Covid being fake, saw good friend from high school falling for it and realized that the algorithm was tailored to do just that so I delete it shortly after
Stop using Instagram last month. Keep seeing the same shit over and over and when I start flagging it the app revert to show me thirst traps and conspiracy shit. I miss my antifacist bro over there, the dogs and all the illustrators I had followed. So if you know where they at
Thinking of deleting Reddit because my regional sub is cesspool of people thinking they’re the left but are spewing the same Trump argument about immigration but the RPG community is lively there
I left Twitter sometime after Elon bought it. The content in my feed drastically changed and was filled with racism, Nazi glorifiction, and child prawn. Reporting these posts did nothing, the automated respone system kept claiming there was no violation. So I deleted my account and never came back. I also actively avoid clicking on Twitter post links.
I didn’t quit Reddit, but it quit me. Reddit perma-banned me for speaking out against the genocide in Gaza. An admin even called me a “disgusting Nazi simp” because I opposed the genocide. The amount of admin and mod gaslighting & abuse is at an all time high.
I don’t do the Meta stuff because of all the cross platform account linking. I still have a FB account, but it’s not my real name, it lacks personal info, and it’s only to stay connected with family and IRL friends.
I got banned from Tiktok preemptively and I never learned why. I didn’t even have an account, but when I went to make one on my work phone, it said I’m banned. Weird. I tried making an account using my home phone as a test and it worked, but I just deleted it afterward without posting anything.
There really needs to be a digital bill of rights or something.
Getting children and realizing that privacy is important with all the data leaks, misuse of data, maybe not having their pictures and videos out there, trained on, misused. That’s when degoogling started and with it quitting fb and Twitter and looking for alternatives. I am still lurking on LinkedIn and reddit though. But using foss redreader, reddit is actually still quite nice as a link aggregator and information source. And well , although LinkedIn has degraded so much over the last years, it somehow still seems to be a good source of information for everything job related.
But as this was my last straw, how do you see the future? Teenagers will still be teenagers and they will be urged to use anything that is popular due to peer pressure. When I am thinking of that, it will probably be an impossible undertaking to prevent them of using any of these platforms
Stopped using Facebook when they killed the feed and started inputting random shit instead of posts of people I actually know. Slowed way down on reddit and came here when they killed RIF. Never had Twitter because it was a cesspool even before Elon. Never had Snapchat, or be real or tiktok because they all seemed stupid, and in the last one’s case, I didn’t want the CCP having any information about me. I still technically have a Facebook for marketplace and will check it on occasion, but I haven’t posted on probably like 8 years.
All dumped for fuckwits actions against Canada. All social media and every American service. Personal, small business…all of it. Those chucklefucks and their technofacsism can fuck right off.
I stayed away from FB for a long time, and my cousin finally convinced me to join to keep up with our big family. I left in 2016 because I kept getting in fights on there.
