I am not a heavy user of meta apps, but still i forced to use one or two meta apps daily for educational and work related communication. Also instagram was so addictive until i understood the dark pattern and toxicity in the entire platform. That was just a platform for comparison and show off, even though many users/customers uses it as a blog platform, broadcast, promotion tool or anything.
One of the harderst product to quit was whatsapp. I used it in my custom rom (lineageos) installed phone with bootlocker unlocked. Recently i started to get a popup saying “please use the official app”, no matter i downloaded it from anywhere (playstore, official website, apkmirror, aurora store). I know they detected that my phone is modified and installed a custom rom, they are intentionally doing this to millions of users. So, finally trying all the way to fix it, meta itself forced me to quit. I used one of my family members phone to just login and instantly deleted my account. Btw, nowadays i feel so peace. The most exciting thing is that, 2 of my friends actually contacted me via telegram and phone call to ask what happened. So, atleast 2 people noticed my sudden disappearing and cared to ask why!
The case of instagram is not like this, but random account restriction and “are you human ?” popups. Really meta can’t figure out are we humans or not with this massive of data they collect? After they forced me to add my phone number to account and the refusal led to disabling of my 5th account, i choose to quit again.
Figuring out fediverse platforms like pixelfed, mastodon, lemmy showed me a different world that moves slowly and gives peace of mind.
Really meta can’t figure out are we humans or not with this massive of data they collect?
That part really pisses me off. Asking for any kind of identity verification is just them gas lighting their users.
I refuse to rely on proprietary services. My remaining vice is Gmail because running your own email and family shared calendar is a PITA – been there, done that. My GOS tablet had no Google or other proprietary services. My GOS phone has Play sandboxed and runs a few apps I don’t strictly need (weather, Duolingo, Crunchyroll and Gmail and Google calendar).
Is Proton not better than Gmail?
I have a binary trust scheme: services I control (meaning: self-host) and those I don’t (hosted by other people).
While Google is notorious, I have no evidence that Proton is any better. Now they move their hosting to Germany and Norway. They could be all a honeypot for what I know.
If I finally ditch Google it will all be back to mice and a pumpkin (self-host) for me.
Congrats on making it, something like this can be quite hard.
By the way: You should probably move from Telegram to something like Signal to get strong end-to-end encryption by default back. Telegram’s secret chats aren’t the default, are inconvenient to set up and cryptographically strange.
I know and actually am a signal user, but the reality is there is no one to chat with and no publicly available groups or chats to get interact.
I’m so glad I quit facebook before any of the other services came out that apparently people “can’t live without”, and I’m perfectly content living in ignorance.
If you want to check up on specific accounts on instagram that you like to follow, you can access their content on imginn.com. It doesn’t always work, but it’s fine for entertainment purposes and keeping up with favourite musicians and what not every now and then.
It still supports them because you still go there. I avoid it all together.
I boycott bands or vendors that use it and am pretty vocal about it.
How do you reckon it supports Instagram to use Imginn to access the content on Instagram?
Because you are still using it. You are still participating, it’s still triggering thier api. Its still views.
Since I don’t use IG, I’m not aware of the dark patterns in it. Care to elaborate what you meant by that?
I got locked out of all Meta accounts presumably for speaking out about their change in policy that hate speech against trans people no longer violated their anti-hate speech policy. I was given no recourse to appeal and customer service was unable to confirm the reason my accounts were locked with no recourse. Made me leave the platform finally. No way I’ll ever go back if they do that kind of crap.
A weird mixture of “this is wild” and “not surprising”. F meta and the pervglasses they rode in on.
The toxicity of instagram and the hollow content on facebook made me delete them. I still have messenger however, since convincing people to install signal is difficult, and also it is useful to communicate with new friends (considering the alternative is unencrypted sms)
But wow its so good to be off it
How do you delete Facebook without deleting your messenger account? Or did you just uninstall the app?
Oh yeah i just mean delete the app to make me stop looking at it. It was an addiction for me. Well, not facebook but instagram was.
Ah fair enough, I did the same last year. I got a new phone and just decided not to install Facebook on the new one. I still need messenger and WhatsApp for now though
So what if it’s unencrypted SMS with new friends? Seems like supporting meta is far worse.
If they become actualy friends move them over to signal. If they wont then you don’t need to be friends with them.
Gotta make the move to a better future.
I see what your saying, its just my friends have no interest in signal (tried a few times) so messenger is a compromise.
Then they are not friends.
You might as well just write checks to Zuckerberg and skip the extra steps. The entire world is worse for giving meta money, I would have no interest in being friends with people who think funding him is ok.
And believe me, I know its hard. Where I live people use it for everything: businesses, doctors, friends, etc. But at some point someone has to say fuck no I am not doing it.
Btw fb messenger is unencrypted. Right?
There is an end to end encrypted feature, with a 6 digit pin to decrypt the keys I believe. a 6 digit pin isnt the most secure, but its better then nothing for typical conversations.
Annoyingly there is a feature that u can summarise texts with using AI, which ofc breaks privacy, but u can turn off message sharing (meaning you and the other person can no longer do that)
A few glaring alarm bells around privacy on messenger, but again, better then nothing.
I’ve been using beeper to chat on meta platforms and it seems to work. Private (from beeper) if you can trust them
Yeah I mean having other companies completely in control of my feed and shoving whatever mindless drivel they want is enough for me to quit the vast majority of social platforms.
Honestly never understood the supposed addictive nature because to me they are the opposite.
Actually i used it more when studying in school just because all friends use it. So that actually become an addiction to scroll and find something useful like mining for gold. That’s what i mean by addiction.
Years after getting into privacy communities and open source tools, discovered the evil patterns of meta. Then as you said i started to feel the opposite effect of addiction as you said.
