Two weeks ago, Meta announced a sweeping new TOS (terms of service) that would basically give them blanket permission to crawl professional Instagram / Facebook accounts *and any linked websites* to train their AI.
The date the new TOS was supposed to go into effect: Friday, October 30. Just four days before a major election in the United States.
Not at all suspicious, right?
And of course, it had the intended effect: people panicked, especially artists and small business owners. People had fucking HAD IT, and were ready to abandon Meta RIGHT NOW, electoral consequences be damned.
Luckily, intense public backlash caused Meta to delay the effective date of the new TOS until November 20, and efforts are still underway to get them to abandon the new TOS entirely. BUT. The movement to abandon Meta completely has taken hold of the public consciousness, and I don't see it going away any time soon.
People are tired of being abused by the tech oligarchy β and in the attention economy, they are prepared to take their focus elsewhere.
Meta thinks they can play these games and exploit their users because of their grasp on us, because theyβve designed their platforms to be addictive. But I keep seeing people say we can and HAVE moved before β exoduses from Friendster to MySpace, from MySpace to Facebook β and we never went back. We can do that again.
The difference is that at this point, some of us have been on Meta platforms for DECADES. We have built our lives and our livelihoods around them. Facebook and Instagram are our photo albums, housing everything from drunken nights out in college to our babies' first steps. Which is maybe only further proof that we have offered so much of ourselves to these platforms, and still, somehow, it's not enough for them.
As someone who works in social media, Iβm trying to figure out divesting from Meta will look like for me both personally and professionally. Itβs going to be hard and messy, and it will probably not happen before their November 20 deadline, but I'm tired of being a pawn in their quest for literal supervillain world domination. I think Iβve finally had enough.
In the meantime, here are some other platforms I'm trying out in case you want to join me!
β‘οΈ Bluesky: Probably the most well-known of the non-Meta platforms, it was founded by Jack Dorsey, models itself after the original Twitter, and is a registered PBC (Public Benefit Corporation).
β‘οΈ Monnett: Based in Europe, this privacy-focused platform is modeled on Instagram and has a paid tier for longer carousels, longer videos, and higher posting frequencies.
β‘οΈ UpScrolled: Built by a Palestinian-Australian developer, itβs similar to Instagram, but also allows for text-only posts.
β‘οΈ eh! Social: This is a Canadian platform that is open to users globally, and most closely mimics Threads / the artist formerly known as Twitter.
See you on the internet, boos π§‘
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