Meta holding me hostage

I got the Meta “we are going to use your stuff for AI” emails a couple of weeks ago. I went through the infuriatingly laborious process of objecting. I had to find the form myself because the link in my email wasn’t taking me to the right place, once I found it the form heavily implies there is a review process but it’s automatic once you submit (in the UK at least, thank you EU privacy laws).

Meta is not even pretending it’s not an underhanded evil corporation anymore.

I spent a day feeling really bothered about it. It makes me sad and angry because Instagram has long been one of my favourite apps, and the only social media I’ve had to keep up with IRL friends since I deleted Facebook around 8 years ago.

I’ve talked before about how it is less fun now, and I dumped the public account I’d had for bookstagram/blogging stuff a while ago. However I’d kept my public embroidery and private personal account, and (despite the repetitive Content Reels) had been fairly content at that.

But now, I’m increasingly uncomfortable participating in their services. I’m lucky I can opt out in the UK but many other countries don’t have the same legal protection.

Because of this growing discomfort I’ve been considering dumping my embroidery Instagram. I get next to no engagement on it, especially as I’m a sporadic poster and often done even open it for weeks. I’ve never been good at social media community (nor IRL to be honest), I don’t have the motivation to game an algorithm to be seen. I don’t have any plans to make my hobby into a business, so that’s fine with me. And now I have this blog it fulfils any desire to share and discuss my creations, without any of the other noisy bullshit that comes with Instagram.

But, what I do get the most from Instagram is it’s great for inspiration and finding other creatives, and I don’t know where else I can go to discover amazing embroidery artists as I do on there.

I don’t really want to clutter my personal feed with embroidery stuff and miss posts from my friends & family, so for now I’ll keep the account for following until I find another option for finding that kind of content… And if I’m keeping it I might as well continue to occasionally post I suppose.

It’s feeling more and more like they are holding me hostage. Or I’m trying to escape a cult. I want to leave but then I’ll be cut off from my friends and family!

I do still enjoy my private Instagram as a place to share photos with my IRL friends and family, I like seeing their stuff! Recently I’ve taken to posting very “millennial” photo galleries for the end of each month, I like the process of reviewing my camera role and sharing the memories. And that is the kind of personal and private content I don’t want to put out on the open web with this blog.

There isn’t a non-evil replacement I can see my friends adopting.. so I’m stuck with it, along with this vague feeling of guilt and shame. Just like I have every time I use an Amazon service.

I feel sad in general that the endless corporate greed squeezed the joy and life out of everything. Things that used to be simple and light and fun and now come with added costs and stress.

It is a thought that I keep coming back to.

I had it after listening to the Sixteenth Minute (of Fame) podcast episode on The Dress (great podcast, Jamie Loftus is fucking great at podcasts), which looked back at a time when Twitter was still kind of fun, back when the algorithms were still young and inspired more good than bad feelings.

It feels like nobody can just have a laugh at something silly on the internet any more (highly recommend the most recent Sixteenth Minute episode on the guy who ate 40 rotisserie chickens in Philadelphia).

I also had it after reading A User’s Guide to Make-Believe, in which fictional Imagen was definitely based on Facebook/Meta (no spoilers but… there are some Cambridge Analytica-esque elements). If somebody did invent something cool like Make-Believe I don’t see a world in which people would not ruin it by using it for evil just to squeeze profits.

And this extends beyond just the tech. companies. I’ve had similar feelings about Disney after Jenny Nicolson’s Star Wars Hotel video but those thoughts are still processing.

[gif by pickle via Tenor, it’s perfect, god bless you].