This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
.... just don't use instagram?
I never have, and I don't feel like I'm missing out
I asked a younger coworker something similar about Facebook and facebook messenger a few years ago in relation to cyber bullying. I asked her why the younger generation doesn’t just get off social media if they’re being bullied, and her response was that these platforms are how people communicate now. Without them, you don’t find out about parties, trips, events, etc. Without them you get left out. If you abandon them, you’re essentially ostracizing yourself.
After hearing that I understood why just giving them up is difficult.
It's not just younger people. A lot of my fellow GenXers only communicate via Facebook messenger.
It's why nobody left Whatsapp when Meta bought it.
i hate it, but we are gonna be slow boiled into having meta read everything we say over there if we aint already
As soon as they're forced to allow interoperability with other apps, I'll be deleting WhatsApp. Had a Facebook from the beginning but deleted it when the Cambridge Analytica scandal happened. Have never had an Instagram. Fuck Meta and its horrible owner.
Can confirm. I'm a bit older, but when I stopped using social media it was like my aquaintances forgot I existed. Sure, close friends would usually still invite me to social events, but even that tapered off after a while. When I'd call someone out for not inviting me, their response was always "but you never shiw up to anything". It's not like they don't know that I'm not on Facebook. What, you think that when you don't invite me that I'll just magically know it's happening? I'm finally getting some people to use Signal groups but that has been an uphill battle.
I agree up to the point that someone could use Facebook for the parties and stuff, and then not use any of the main page stuff. I have Messenger because that's the prime option for those I know, but I don't use it for anything but messaging and don't have a Facebook.
I’ve had a facebook account since it was first unleashed on the world, but these days I only use it for messenger and marketplace. I’ve changed all my privacy settings to as strict as they can possibly be, and I never browse or post anything.
Facebook is only useful for the ancillary stuff. The main page and status updates have been monetized and engagement hacked to death.
Without them, you don’t find out about parties, trips, events, etc.
Ding ding
Getting info on events and businesses is so much tougher now that I don't regularly use Facebook. I missed both holiday garbage pickups because my county waste management company ONLY posts schedules on Facebook.
I'd bitch to the county commissioners about that.
One thing about the town I'm in, they do a fairly good job of keeping the services running, and most of the normal stuff is fairly easy to find on the town's website. Stuff like "Who do I talk to about installing a detached garage on my property" is an act of open heart dentistry...
Okay and on the topic of garbage I will bitch about one thing: they posted a map of the town with some teal area and some purple area, and it said "Teal is Schedule A, Purple is Schedule B." And then didn't say what that meant. I'm sure it was discussed verbally in the meeting that map was presented in.
For a while, it was full of pictures. Only pictures. That "lunch" thing was trendy but not at all the main content. Whatever you wanted, it was there. It was no different than any other platform. Some great content, some bullshit. Now it's shitty "reels", ads, and fraud. You'd have to sift through a lot of forced garbage to find your subscribed content.
and just like FB, reddit, xitter, tiktok, et al, you're not. it's just another place for the vainest, most vapid, self-absorbed fucktards to post pictures of their lunch (in between selfies)
-post pictures of their lunch
That was Instagram 5-7 years ago.
It's just american TikTok now
Yep I was thinking the same. I guess it's a generational thing. Instagram is maybe like water to some young people, can't be without it or life is sad.
No, it's not because life without Instagram is sad. Read the other reply for a real reason. People stay on platforms to keep in touch with others and those others do the same.
It's only "generational" because half the world didn't grow up with the Internet as their primary form of communication. But I'm against that label because it's true for anyone who uses a service a lot.
I would LOVE to stop using Discord but there's no way I'm convincing all my friends to run two chat programs (Matrix for me, Discord for their other friends)
Can't you set up a Discord bridge on Matrix, so you can still participate at least in text convos? I did that years ago and it worked pretty well.
If that works, you can convince them one at a time since the switching cost would be lower.
Will it only be seen as an alternative once a critical mass of users move there?
I mean, yeah? That's how social media works.
“what’s your alternative?” the answer is always lemmy am i right guys 😎
Always has been
Flickr, Tumblr and Hipstamatic
What virtue signal. These don't have fact-checking either lmao
I love Pixelfed and the federated versions of it.
Just.... Don't use it. It's easy. I don't even know what Instagram actually is.
"But all the other lemmings are there! I can't leave or I'll be left at the top of the cliff by myself!" 🙄 Guess what, there's more of us up here who aren't jumping than you realize.
Sorry to be harsh, but that's how I feel about it when people say they have no choice but to enrich these social media oligarchs by participating in their exploitation machines. By contributing their "content" to be collected, sold, used for training their generative AIs, by viewing their ads, and by making themselves targets to be manipulated by propaganda of all kinds.
They already exploit us enough in ways we can't control, without us willingly participating in their schemes.
I use Instagram only to follow my friends, does pixelfed have private accounts ?
Yes it does! Check out pixelfed! It's a lovely supportive community, in my experience.
the fact that people are so obsessed with social media that they cant even realize the simple option of just stopping all together really says how toxic and addictive social media is.
Instagram is like 15 different things at once.
Its a messaging service with a TikTok like video service and a pixelfed like photo sharing service.
You could just not share every little scrap of your mundane lives in its full photographic glory?
We really don't need to see another picture of a coffee with a little swirl on top, next to a mass produced bun.
You could just not share every little scrap of your mundane lives
We agree on that and I find people who do that really annoying -often muting them-, but that's not really how I use Instagram for myself. I use Instagram to post vacation photos or to share some unusual life news, maybe four or five times a year and that's about it with posting. I just checked and I posted 3 times in 2024 and 9 in 2023, all vacations, death of a pet or moving news - All worthy of sharing with friends, imo. Otherwise, my main use case for Insta is to track things locally, like restaurants, bars, clubs, shows, events, etc. Unfortunately there's not a better alternative for that sort of use case in another app right now. It's a bummer because I would love to move off of social media and use an alternative, but local stuff can't be accessed by things like RSS feeds and lots of businesses don't really do newsletters anymore - or in some cases don't even bother with websites.
There are a lot of people circlejerking in this thread about not using social media and patting themselves on the back, but people who like to go outside their house and who want and actually try to keep in touch with friends can find it pretty useful. Also, Lemmy and forums are practically social media - so stop being so hypocritical with your reality warped dissonance. I see too much of that already on Instagram and reddit.
Life?
