Category: Social Media

I left Facebook a dozen years ago. I closed my Instagram account last week, but to be honest I probably just transferred my own online addiction to Tumblr and Reddit. I won't say they're hate- or disinfomation-free, but at least on those platforms the hate and disinformation isn't so obviously, constantly in my face.

In case you want to follow me there:

It's been three weeks since I put my Instagram account in stasis, and quite surprisingly, I haven't missed it at all. Granted, I'm finding myself on Tumblr and Reddit more often, but with very few exceptions, the toxicity level of those two platforms is way less than on Insta.

I mean…where do you guys think I get half my content?!

And add snake-oil cures to that!

My Top Nine of 2023 from Instagram. (If you want to follow me there you'll need an account and have to request access as I've got the account locked down as private.) I'm always surprised at the photos that are popular, because they're not necessarily my favorites of the year…

I fear the days on my last remaining social media website are numbered. I'm done with this bullshit.

First they tweaked their API so you can no longer use third-party apps to access their content. (GRIDS allowed me to filter out ads completely.) While I can still get online with them using GRIDS, I get knocked off randomly and I'm forced to log in again via a pop-up Instagram window. Once I'm logged in, I automatically get logged out of the native app on my phone, forcing me to log in there again. Rinse and repeat ad nauseam.

And now this bullshit. Apparently leaving less-than-flattering comments on their imported Chinese crap ads isn't allowed… (That isn't being racist; 90% of what is being advertised on the platform ships from mainland China.)

For the past few months I've been having intermittent trouble staying logged into Instagram. Each time I wrote it off as some kind of glitch, but during the last 48 hours or so it's been constant.

I use an app called Grids to view my Instagram feed and save those images I find interesting. I also use something called 4K Downloader to back up my (and to be honest a few of my favorite posters) pictures wholesale. I can no longer use either. I'll log in, get presented with a bunch of verification bullshit, and then after successfully getting in, I get knocked out about three minutes later and the apps are just broken until I go through the whole login process again.

Instagram's web version and the native iOS app work just fine (although after getting knocked out of Grids or 4K, both prompt me to log in again). I did some cursory investigation and apparently Instagram is now blocking all third-party apps.

Instagram is the last bit of social media I participate in. (I don't count Tumblr as a part of that, although I suppose technically I should.) I don't know what prompted this draconian lock down of their APIs, but I have a feeling it has something to do with Elon Musk's ongoing destruction of Twitter. I'm sure Zuck looked at what was going on over there, and thought…

Meta needs to fail. Twitter needs to fail. These social media mega corporations in general need to die, but sadly that won't happen as long as people use them.

I left Facebook almost a decade ago; I left Twitter—after having returned a year ago solely for the porn—much more recently. But Instagram is going to prove to be more difficult. I killed my account back in 2012 when it was taken over by Facebook and immediately regretted it, rejoining the service almost immediately.

It's an addiction, I know.

Thankfully I had the foresight to back up my photos from all the years leading up to 2012, and I have backups of everything since, but where to post them? Right now I have about 5200 images from 2012 onward, and probably a third of that prior for the years I was on prior to that. Should I post them here? Innundate my tumblr? What do you guys think? Would you be interested in seeing any of it?

Just discovered Spoutible. Seems to be a nice Twitter alternative for those so inclined to that kind of social media—and setup is much more intuitive than Mastodon.

If you're interested, you can find me here. I haven't posted much of anything yet.

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