Proof of Life

It occurred to me a month or so ago that I might want to officially note here that I'm no longer on the major social media platforms. I've personally had the experience in the past where I can't find someone and my mind quickly jumps to "Oh no, did they block me?! What did I do?!" I never announced I was leaving or anything, so I wanted to reassure anyone else whose mind might work in the same way that, no, I definitely didn't block you!

I've had a hate/hate relationship with most social media for quite a few years now. It wasn't always that way. Just now I was looking through my archives for social media references, and stumbled across some posts from many years ago. There was a moment when I was a big fan of Facebook: a way to keep in touch with my friends from college after we all moved to different cities! But I soured on Facebook in particular fairly early on, mostly because I couldn't trust them. They aggressively rolled out new changes and features that didn't give you any options or required you to explicitly opt-out, and always in the direction of less privacy and less personalization. There was a period back in... 2007 or so, I think, where I was doing some early mobile software development with the Facebook API, and I was shocked at how much data I could see from other people on it. This was in advance of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and in retrospect I wish I'd complained loudly about how cavalier Facebook was with user data. For a long time I kept Facebook as a site I'd log into once every couple of months and scroll for a couple of minutes: the saving grace was that their algorithm did a decent job at putting important information at the top of my feed (new births, new careers, new moves), and I would just log off again for a few months once I got past that stuff. But after the last election and the announcement about revising their content moderation policy, I was out and felt compelled to vote with my feet. Zuckerberg's fawning obeisance at the White House reassured me that I made the right choice. I opted to straight-up delete my account, not just suspend. Facebook (and the other networks) do have an option to download your data before deletion, which I did; it's hanging out on my hard drive, I kind of doubt I'll do anything with it but if I ever did want to see my old posts or photos they'd be there. I went ahead and deleted my Instagram too to make a complete break with Meta; I don't think I ever posted on Instagram, and hadn't been viewing it much recently, so that wasn't a big move.

I'd deleted my Twitter even earlier. I was never very active on Twitter; I mostly saw it as a replacement for my beloved Google Reader, as many people and organizations I was interested in deprioritized or removed RSS content. I think I made a handful of posts around 2010 or so, including a couple of Game of Thrones memes, but for the most part just followed people I found funny and/or insightful. I should have removed Twitter shortly after the Musk takeover, instead I stuck around until the actual site performance started tanking. As with Facebook I did a full account delete, but I'm sure nobody ever noticed. I'm really glad that I got out when I did, it sounds like things have gotten even more miserable since, with the addition of paying for viral tweets, Grok, and the increasingly violent and unhinged agitation of the owner.

I guess that's it! I still use a couple of social-y apps but don't really post anywhere. I've been enjoying Bluesky as a straight-up Twitter replacement; it feels a lot like Twitter did back in 2010, which is nice. I'm sure at some point it will stop being fun and I'll get rid of that too. I've had a Reddit account for ages, but Reddit doesn't really feel like social media: nobody follows anyone, it's all about community discussions. I rarely post there, when I do it's in very niche subreddits about obscure video games and podcasts. And I still have LinkedIn, which feels a lot like Facebook used to, in that I'll log in once every couple of months to see what people have been up to.

This blog is kind of a social presence for me, I suppose, though I very rarely post personal things on here. If you'd ever like to catch up, please shoot me an email or text! I feel like our species' experiment with social media has largely ended in disaster, I'm curious if we will find an improved path going forward (possibly via the fediverse or some other innovation we haven't heard of yet), or if we'll RETURN to more old-fashioned analog ways of relating.