If you have quit social media, what was your last straw?

[Kie]

What lead to me quitting social media once and for all was Meta changing their hate-speech policies last January. I had been thinking about leaving Instagram for a while at that point, and that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

If you have quit social media, what contributed to your decision? Was it one big event or a series of factors? Are there any videos or articles you'd recommend to other people who might be on the fence about quitting social media?
 

[Paprika]

A lot of things actually. I did a lot of this before 2019 because I wanted my "content" to make money. I wanted to monetize my free time. Everyone else was making content, youtubers were making money and it felt unfair to me that I hadn't claimed a piece of the cake of fame.

I do understand that it is a bad mentality and now I've grown out of it but I didn't knew better at the time. Things I'd post online had to be popular, relevant and shared. I needed clicks because I thought clicks would make money. I had an ad-sense google, i rmember earning like €0.18 within a few days. Today I laugh at this but starting here I believed I could make enough money with this.

Except my hyper-perfectionism saw every attempt as failures and I deleted everything after a while because I genuinely thought that I had to be "lightning in a bottle" and not building an audience over the years and everything. So I more or less gave up for a while.

During COVID, I made a Tumblr thinking that since everyone was locked inside, I would have an audience. It failed like the rest and I will never forget that evening in 2021 where I cried that I would never be able to make money and that I was worthless. Following this I deleted absolutely everything related to social media, thinking that it was pointless to keep trying.

Every post with any speck of success was making me boil with jealousy and envy. I really felt angry and frustrated. I gave up on watching youtube shortly after because seeing major French youtubers that made big money made me really mad. I know it's childish and stupid.

Quitting completely social media made me sad for a while and I quickly felt better because there was nothing to compare, nothing to be jealous of. When I launched my Neocities I promised myself that I wouldn't make any attempt at earning money and for the first time in my life, I would post something for pleasure and for myself instead of hoping having an audience or earning money.

I had a mastodon account for one year more or less but I have deleted it because I felt overwhelmed by the fact I got a "that's not what I need" vibe. Now I have my website, Melonland and my status.cafe which is honestly enough. It's a bit fun to see that I've made more quality encounters since I have my own website without ads than all my life on the web before.

Maintaining my own website gives me a lot of pleasure and I've made contact with a handful of people via e-mail or DM here and I really appreciate it. I do not despise social media users, I despise the balance of power that money has introduced along social media. Add to this the fact we're in an era of "allow the cookies to protect the data we stole from you" and you see why I gave up.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Elon Musk's takeover of Twitter and the Reddit API debacle were clear cut moments where I broke my relationship with those social media, but not all of them. After this initial break it took me quite a while to get to the point where I am not on social media altogether. That's because, while the initial quitting was motivated by bad platform decisions, I was not put off by social media in its entirety yet. My friends were on Instagram, that's where I got all my news and event updates. Aside from not wanting to, I had a feeling I couldn't.

Thanks to being in all these indie web spaces, I saw more and more examples of people deliberately choosing to stay away from everything new and 'quick', instead favouring things that were slightly or even extremely inconvenient for the sake of their beliefs. I know people sometimes mock internet manifestos, but seeing so many people commit to making their internet/tech usage more deliberate and even harder for themselves was genuinely inspiring. Seeing other people doing it made me think: "Surely I can also handle these inconveniences."

At this point, the only social media I am still on is Tumblr, which is formatted differently than most modern things. For Instagram I check a specific page (on my browser) once a week to get the bare minimum information and then I leave it. Truthfully, if it weren't for seeing other people take these steps in digital minimalism, I wouldn't have realised that I can easily do without appeasing the big tech overlords. I've really internalised "inconvenience is counterculture" now.

[zeroxmachine]

honestly social media has been so draining for me for a while now there are actually a few reasons i quit using it quite recently.

• i would always end up feeling terrible after doing nothing but being on my phone for hours on end. it always felt like i wasnt making the most of the world that i live in and that i was spending too much time online
• i've also been posting art online for years (since i was maybe 11 or 12?), and i got sick of the mindset that i began to develop which meant that a lot of the work that i created was for the sole purpose of gaining traction. i wanted to make art for myself!
• i didn't really have much of a reason to use it after i got back into coding again, too - making sites became a way for me to get my genuine thoughts (without a character limit) out for other people to see if they found it without the fear of being judged or getting as much interaction/response. i found myself making extensive pages about things i just really wanted to talk about. i always felt so much happier making posts on my own sites, too; i was able to be so much more creative making web-pages (even though a lot of my blog posts aren't especially well-formatted). also, my friend irl has her own neocities site, which was motivation for me to keep working on my own one and to view it as a more social platform, too. i'd been annoyed for a while about the modern web (which is probably obvious by the fact that i'm on this site). it's just so dead!!!!! being able to make my own sites and pretend like all the rest doesn't exist is something i really enjoy.

all that i really use (& need) now is e-mails/text messages to contact real-life friends, neocities to browse and host and youtube!! after i quit, i discovered in retrospective that a lot of modern social media spaces weren't ones i particularly wanted to be a part of, anyway. platforms that i used to use just began to decline, most prevalently musk buying out twitter, and for others i just noticed how detrimental they were, like tiktok's promotion of shorter attention spans and quick trend cycles. i feel like so many modern social media spaces have made people's art and content so ingenuine just due to their nature (linking to my second point).
 

I've really internalised "inconvenience is counterculture" now.

i loveee this too! definitely also one of the reasons i favour personal websites and more inconvenient forms of web stuff i'm very passionate about my beliefs and i think that inconvenience is sometimes a sacrifice you have to make in order to create the kind of thing you really want to achieve; and oftentimes results in a much more genuine form of self-expression, which just isn't possible in mainstream web spaces.
i really admire everyone who's a part of this counter-cultural movement of old web revival - for having the ability to step away from social media which is such a large and almost essential part of everybody's lives, and for inspiring me to do the same. for me it's been so healing.

[Kie]

My friends were on Instagram, that's where I got all my news and event updates. Aside from not wanting to, I had a feeling I couldn't.

^^^THIS!!!

One of the main reason it took me so long too get rid of Instagram is that all my IRL friends were on there. We had a group chat where we sent each others funny posts and I felt like I would have been missing a component of our group interaction if I was not on there. That's why I kept the app despite not enjoying the platform anymore. I had originally made an account (in 2016 or around that time, I think) to share my art. I had a small community of artists I was mutuals with and I enjoyed browsing my homepage and seeing their art. But a lot changed once Instagram pivoted to reels and after they decided to sort posts in the home feed by popularity and not by time. It came to a point where I was getting only "popular" posts and nothing from those mutuals whose work I had been following for years. And I've been disliking the platform progressively more since then LOL. It makes me sad to realize I kept using the app for years despite actively disliking it

Well! I'm glad I quit it in the end. Tumblr is also the only social media I still use

[thearistocats]

I've been slowly quitting social media for a few years, which hasn't been very dramatic because it never did a lot for me. I was only on Instagram and Tumblr for a while, and a couple years ago I started taking the month of October off of social media and social commitments, which let me reorient periodically and make sure that I'm living my life in the right direction. The first time I did this, I uninstalled Instagram and just never reinstalled it, except one time where I tried to go back and found that it did nothing for me anymore. Last October I did the same thing with the Tumblr app, and now I only occasionally open it on desktop. In short, my move away from social media has just been part of me trying to live a life that works for me, and algorithmic endless-scroll social media sucks a lot of time out of my day and leaves me stressed and unhappy.

[DiffydaDude]

The primary thing that made me leave was Discord. I used it a ton between November 2021 and June 2023. I spent soooo much time on that app. On the bus, in school, after bedtime. I couldn't go a long time without checking the app on my phone. And I mentioned this in other threads but it wasn't a great time. I still check it every now and then since most of my Discord friends won't agree to leave or use other messengers. Theyre furries with commissions to take and drama to rile themselves up over so not having that outlet would be like a peanut butter jelly sandwich with no bread.
The way I found the web revival was because I decided to check it out one day and found that sadgrl website everyone here probably knows. I found the Yesterweb too, but by the time I'd arrived, it was a relic. They'd already split after that one guy came through and tried to turn the thing into a socialist revolution movement. This forum was one of the first places i found in this new part of the web I found.
I really wanna be able to not use my phone at all but I dunno how to do that. Im hoping I can do it one day, but how do we convince other people to stop using phones?

[whalefall]

honestly, i haven't quit completely, but i'm rarely on Instagram (and my account functionally does not exist, i don't post on it and i tell people to actively avoid it). i think i just started hating & fearing more and more with each day what it and AI are doing to human creativity & human connection. i really only use Spacehey and misc. forums like this one.

[cynderthekitsune]

mostly the burnout from it, but i think the targeted harassment and constant drama from modern Vocaloid is what my last straw was.
though i still use YouTube a little bit lol

it's mostly cuz i just don't wanna be in constant drama over things that shouldn't even matter, let alone feel at risk of it
i see playlists and videos constantly mocking Project DIVA, heaps of people actively spam-reporting older songs, etc. that's probably my last straw :P

though i'd still probably come back to social media... maybe hehe

edit: after reading this whole thread

i think there's more reasons than simply just targeted harassment, though that was the very final reason for me.
mostly it was because:

• on Discord, back in 2022-2024, i was constantly being ostracised (and later in heaps of drama), i couldn't get off it even when i was in bed, and some days i was literally on it for 16+ hours (not counting breaks)
• on Reddit, i was really exhausted from how many posts broke my boundaries. i didn't wanna see things on r/all at this point(or in general any subreddit tbh)
• with Reddit again, i was just getting really sick of all the "support" subreddits (for tech and stuff) all just being people blindly telling the OP (original poster) to pay for something, or "read the wiki". you see it a lot in pretty much any of them, it's not limited to just a few.
• 'positive vibes only' online, are mostly because there's been a weird pattern of me hoping to go into a genuinely supportive place, only to be ostracised, and then later in heaps of drama. i myself am queer & neuro, and i'm genuinely supportive; all i mean is so many burn me out and some even had lasting effects on me.
• YouTube i haven't fully quit yet, as it's the only platform i can post my nightcore to and also find good videos from eons ago (and find good VTubers), but i've largely gone off it for several reasons i'd rather not talk about.
• with YouTube again, this is lesser but it's still one of my reasons. i like the HoloLive VTubers themselves, but them (and Nijisanji tbh) just genuinely make me super uncomfortable in other ways.
• fun fact, a popular Australian mental health service has a peer support platform. but the reality is it's actually super dangerous. it turned into an echo chamber fast, most people get ostracised, harassment is common on it, and the moderators did nothing to stop it.
• i don't hate modern Vocaloid, not at all. as i've already said though, i'm just really sick of targeted harassment and stuff just because i'm different. on YouTube especially, there's heaps of videos hating on Project DIVA, older fans, older views, spam-reporting older videos, etc. it's like it's a whole subculture insdie Vocaloid at this point.

those were all i could really think of off the top of my head.

sorry to get all depressing like this, but these were my own reasons for leaving 

[sejedensekh]

the Reddit API debacle

That was what made me stop using Reddit fr, I'd already drifted away from it to return to Tumblr but that was the last nail in the coffin. The client I used (I think it was called Boost?) was way better than the official Reddit app, and I've just never really used it on PC, so no more Reddit for me... but it's not the social media I'm most upset about because I'd already lost interest in it for other reasons.

I quit Tumblr because logging in just made me kinda miserable lol. But I still miss the memes and I'd been really into the writing tumblr community so I'm still kinda salty about that. The only social social I'm on rn is Bluesky because a bunch of my artist friends are there. It's really good for art and I be posting my creative stuff there too, but I don't expect that to last forever. which is why I made my own site lol, I like having control over my own stuff.

Also this is my first post on here so.. hi! I'll make a proper intro post or something later because I don't wanna derail the convo, but I'm kindaaa new to forums so I hope this looks properly formatted and everything!

[cynderthekitsune]

Maintaining my own website gives me a lot of pleasure and I've made contact with a handful of people via e-mail or DM here and I really appreciate it. I do not despise social media users, I despise the balance of power that money has introduced along social media. Add to this the fact we're in an era of "allow the cookies to protect the data we stole from you" and you see why I gave up.

that's actually pretty inspiring~

since i ended up moving to Neocities last year, and especially since i dropped SpaceHey (and migrated to NekoWeb) and joined this forum etc, it's genuinely made me feel better
and plus i did end up in an unhealthy mentality where i 'needed to make art for money', though now that i think of it, i only need to make what i want to make, that being for myself. if anyone genuinely likes it, then that's cool! but i feel like making it because i want to make it has really made me feel less pressured, it's kinda like there's no longer this weird weight on my shoulders

i've wanted to be a VTuber for a while,  and a Vocaloid/UTAU producer as well, but i ended up feeling the VTubing side i might just make to be a rant channel, or something? i wanna get my feelings out and i love infodumping!
and Vocaloid/UTAU moreso because it's a way for me to express my feelings in a song, without my own singing. and the whole community vibe it originally had, i kinda still feel i have that, so it's more about making something that i genuinely want to express than to make money or something!

and yea, my own website gives me pleasure too, though my whole self can't go two weeks without changing some thing dumb lol, but even then it's more because i felt like it, not because i wanna make an impression :D

[Yuvi]

I have a lot of reasons why i left social media, but my "last straw" was realising that the indieweb existed. that there was an internet out there that was social, was also still good for you .

The reason I hadn't left social media for so long dispite all the issues i had with it was simply because i thought that social media and the modern web was the only way to have social interaction and connection via the internet. Plus the only way to consume individual-made media on the internet as well.

I believed that being able to talk to people from all over the world was still worth all the shittiness of social media, but finding the indieweb was such a blessing for me. I could finally get what i wanted from the internet without needing to get so much of what i hated about it!

So i made a website, made a blog post outlining why, posted on my story that i was leaving linking to my website and blog post, gave a big ol' middle finger to meta and left .

I also quit because i realised how many hours i spent on reels per day... haha...

[Kie]

I have a lot of reasons why i left social media, but my "last straw" was realising that the indieweb existed. that there was an internet out there that was social, was also still good for you .

The reason I hadn't left social media for so long dispite all the issues i had with it was simply because i thought that social media and the modern web was the only way to have social interaction and connection via the internet.

This is also such a great point. I feel like so many of us have been sold the lie that social media is the only way to "connect" with others on the internet.

It's interesting because although I was aware that there were alternatives (I have been on forums since I was a kid and had already made a site long before quitting), I was still worried that those alternatives would not be "enough". I worried that after so many years of using social media the older forms of connecting on the web would seem clunky and outdated to me. And yes, they are definetly a bit clunky, and definetly unconvenient, but absolutely not outdated. I just needed to taker a leap of fate and do it

[xwindows]

I'm an introvert, so my experience is quite different...

I have never signed up to social-control media platform-that-must-not-be-named in the first place.

But I had such account for quite a long while... because an impostor signed it up in my stead; which you probably could guess how I felt about my affair with such platform from the start. Long story short, I took full control of that account, and used it to meagerly communicate with some group of people (which I will not name) who see fit to coerce others into using such communication channel or be completely left out of the loop on life-essential information.

However, it is important to note that there were actually several stages of "leaving" in my case, spanning a decade in total-- each stage bearing its own different reason...

• Once I no longer have any business with the group of people I mentioned, I no longer use it regularly; but still used it occasionally for some personal projects.
• Once that platform started using AI-gorithm to arbitrarily filter subscription feed-- destroying integrity of my information intake; I stopped using it in any real capacity; but my account still remained there, "just in case".
• Once that platform crossed over my "data protection red tape" by extorting me to hand over my phone number (which I consider off-limit for this disservice), threatening that my account would be seized after a deadline if I didn't budge; I wrote my "last word notice" with my most-recent contact information to my parasocial acquaintances (many of whom "Like"d it in acknowledgment), downloaded my data dump, then I deleted my account within the same week.

Since I had deleted my account at the point I mentioned above, the following point is inapplicable to my case with that particular social-control platform-that-must-not-be-named; but I'm going to list it anyway, as it may apply to other platforms in the future:

• If that platform started to sell or use my data as feedstock for content-laundering disservice (1); I would delete my account and associated data immediately.
  
  • Which, for the record: social-control media platform-that-must-not-be-named I'm referring to has been doing this for at least 2 years now (LLaMa et al. that they have been building). So if you're still staying at this point, be aware that you're just a feedstock to them.

For YouTube, I only use it anonymously purely as a video-on-demand service (nearly always via classic YouTube-DL^* and Invidious nowadays) and not as a social-control media. All of my few channel/playlist "subscriptions" are done off-site via RSS feed. YouTube waging wars with Invidious and YouTube-DL also resulted in me cutting down my usage quite a lot as a side effect as well.

Note that I have never installed a software client of any social-control media on my computer or mobile device. With me stopped using (2) a PDA phone (3) half-decade ago, returning to a simple feature-phone life; my escape from digital concentration camps has now been complete.

Inconvenience is counterculture

Cheers; as good fence makes good neighbors, purposeful barrier to entry makes meaningful interactions.


^* Not recommended for beginners, since they no longer produce packaged release several years ago; so users have to build manually from a VCS repository. I'm still using this original one because it supports my time-traveled-from-the-past desktop GNU/Linux setup; which more-modern variants like YouTube-DLP wouldn't run on.

(1) Usually euphemized by their proponents as "Generative A.I."

(2) The phone broke after around 8 years of service; no longer turning on.

(3) Some people would opt to call this "smartphone", but it was almost nothing like what kids these days have. It ran Windows Mobile 6.1, had a Start menu, and it used resistive touch that operate with a stylus just like PDAs of old, but it also had cell phone functionality; so it was called a PDA phone back in its era.

[BlazingCobaltX]

Machamp somehow looks busted in both versions. Charizard's JP sprite is bad but improved for NA, but the opposite happened to Blastoise. Mankey's NA sprite always made me think it's pulling its own ears up.