this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
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Privacy

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Here’s an evergreen take: There has never been a better time to get off social media.

Social services have evolved even further into becoming sticky traps for doomscrolling and AI-generated slop, and are hitherto unprecedented frontiers for rage bait. Bummed out about all the misinformation and being part of a profit machine that funds one increasingly unhinged billionaire or another? Well, there’s a way out.

Unfortunately, social media companies don’t always make it very easy to rescind their grips on your attention. They bury deletion and deactivation options deep in their sidebars and menus and do everything in their power to keep you engaged and scrolling.

It’s not always easy, but if you’re eager to exorcise the demons of social media from your life.

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[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 6 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

The irony of posting this to social media...

Yeah, I know it's not quite the same as the scummy corporate enterprises, but it's still got basically the same addictive features - just somewhat better about privacy.

[–] cardfire@sh.itjust.works 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

I've noticed many, many Redditors (and by extension Lemmy folks) completely and utterly forget that this is a place for displaying media and messages, and that we are sharing in it socially.

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 1 points 23 hours ago (1 children)
[–] Zulu@lemmy.world 3 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

There's definitely nuance though, albeit it always comes down to self control anyway.

I choose when i engage with lemmy. I limit what i see on lemmy. I feel more in control and therefore more thoughtful of how i social the media.

I keep my phone on silent. I hide all notifications besides texts from loved ones/work. You have to call me twice in a row to make it make a noise.

Choosing when and how you engage with your phone vs letting the phone and companys choose when they engage with you definitely helps prevent a lot of the downsides of it all. (Also less algorithm stuff. More manually searching for what i want to spend my time doing)

Only social accounts i have are lemmy / discord with direct friends i know. Its helped me a lot.

[–] SanctimoniousApe@lemmings.world 1 points 19 hours ago

Dunno about iOS, but on Android you can do the same things even with the commercial apps with regard to notifications, ringing, etc. You're right about the algorithms and various methods of trying to keep you "engaged," though.

[–] AntiBullyRanger@ani.social 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I need instead a how-to eliminate the network effect from folks in discord, Meta, Instagram, BlueSky, Twitter, Slack, Matrix, etc..

[–] HubertManne@piefed.social 2 points 21 hours ago

I doubt I will delete most of my social media because I never used them. They are just placeholders with some limited use do to certain things like communicating with family. I deleted reddit because I actually had used it a lot but thats not the case with facebook, xitter and such. Linkedin I would love to get rid of after I retire if that day ever comes but then I have responsibilities to younger folks I have worked with for references and such.