Moving away from Instagram
I’ve always had a love-meh-hate relationship with social media. I remember when I opened a Facebook account for the first time, in 2008. I was very reluctant at the time, not seeing the point in this new fad. Why should I create an account on a new platform, when I already had a Messenger account, and had all the social activity I could ask for on phpBB forums, or (this will shock you), IRL. But I finally succumbed to peer pressure, and started the long descent into the darkness of “modern” social media.
In the following 15-ish years, I’ve had (I almost typed “owned”, but the term would have been wrong) several Facebook and Twitter accounts, that I opened and closed a few times, tried Snapchat for a while but did not enjoy it, and lastly joined Instagram with, again, two separate accounts for specific confidentiality settings.
From 2015 to 2022, I started enjoying less and less Facebook, because of their privacy issues, and Twitter, because of the increasing toxicity on the platform. In 2020, I closed my 2 Facebook accounts. By January 2023, I had closed my 2 Twitter accounts. But I still had my Instagram account (opened in 2012), where I had a nice contact bubble, didn’t read too many comments on other posts, and led a relatively quiet online life.
Leaving Facebook was easy. In the last few years of my accounts, my activity decreased dramatically. I shared less and less, until it became obvious that I didn’t need an account anymore (I use the term “need” consciously). I recently re-opened an account after the birth of my daughter, because some services (child care, school…) only communicate on this platform. But I’m using this account as “read-only”, never posting anything on it.
Leaving Twitter was a mixed feeling. I had many good years on it, met really nice people. But I also got caught in the toxic “discussions” (if you want to call them that), hateful comments… Until I couldn’t take it anymore, and was only getting stress from the platform. At that time, a Mastodon instace was opened by a buddy, and some of us joined together.
Today I’m at a new crossroads. In the last few months, it has become obvious that Instagram was on a downward slope. The latest declarations of Mark Zuckerberg have shined a light of what should have been obvious (and probably was, for a lot of people), which is that, in the end, this network is not different from the others. The toxicity is there, always more uninhibited. Journalists, artists, are targeted for their opinions. Right-wing extremism is growing everyday. And the latest decision to basically remove moderation and fact-checking on the Meta networks is probably the nail in the coffin of whatever good remained.
In January of 2025, I created a Pixelfed account. Pixelfed, like Mastodon, is a decentralized social network. This means that you have to select an “instance” where you create your account. It can be linked to a location (I’ve created my account on pixelfed.fr, which is the main French instance), or a hobby (my Mastodon account is on masto.bike, which is, you guessed it, for cycling enthusiasts). An instance is managed by 1 or more admins, has some moderators who make a wonderful job at keeping the toxicity at bay, and regroups mostly like-minded people. Of course this means that it creates a new social bubble, but do we really want to be exposed to everybody and everything? I don’t. That’s why I’ve come to the decision to post first on Pixelfed, and maybe later on Instagram. But in the end, I think I will start using Instagram in a “read-only” mode, and at some point just stop using it altogether. This would be a major change, because Pixelfed is still a “niche” network, doesn’t have many users or content. It would mean losing a lot of social link.
If you decide to take the step, or already have, you can find me here:
- on Mastodon: @remygardette@masto.bike
- on Pixelfed: @remygardette@pixelfed.fr
