Nope: 5 years after I feel good about not being a dopamine-addicted sheep (At least to Meta). It makes me sick to my stomach whenever I go to a public place and see so many people mindlessly losing their life watching reels and stories full of ads. I Used to take the Caltrain and I estimate >50% of the people were mindlessly scrolling instagram during the 1 hour train ride.
The best time to delete * Meta was yesterday. The next best time is Today.
(To be honest I recreated a bogus account to sell things on MarketPlace and I cannot believe the amount of crap constantly pushed to me)
Sure, I can talk to my close friends on any number of IM platforms, but if I want to get out and have new experiences, join club meetups, be notified of events at venues I care about, etc. - it's Meta or miss out.
Berlin, Germany
Most venues and places are slowly going away from closed gardens.
They are? Honestly, first time hearing about this. I've noticed only big events get posted outside of the IG/etc. Even in Tokyo, a simple thing like checking if a place is open on a public holiday is to check their Instagram.
I gave up and got Instagram.
We need to shame artists/events/clubs that only post on Instagram
I'm part of some local photography groups. There's a Discord where members plan informal get togethers, but the big events are all posted on Instagram.
I follow a number of local bartenders, and their popup events are all on Instagram. Same for local performing artists.
My bike club coordinates through a Facebook page.
Honestly, none of my non-tech interests are viable (in a group setting) without Meta properties.
It’s like saying “none of my group interests are viable unless I smoke”.
I already spend my entire work day surrounded by tech workers, I'm not going to change my hobbies to spend more time around them.
Being difficult in this way, when most other people, particularly non technical people, don't have a problem with this, in my experience significantly hurts your opportunities and limits the types of people you socialize with in real life, which I think can eventually be harmful.
You really can live without social media.
I’ve deleted all my Meta accounts and other social media accounts and have lost touch with many people and find it much harder to meet new people.
Personally, I accept that tradeoff but can see how others wouldn’t (or can’t).
(note - this is snarky and I don't actually fully disagree with you)
If there is more friction to communicate with me I expect to hear from people less often.
As an example, my friends that only use Discord and not SMS or Signal definitely hear from me less frequently. It doesn’t mean we’re not friends, but we do communicate less frequently.
Just as I'm sure the number of people blocking the account got to some middle manager somewhere who made it that day's mission to "fix" it.
“I don’t want a solution, I want to be mad”