On this auspicious day of Diwali (yes, I’m celebrating), I dropped a bomb on my IG handle.
I am migrating from Instagram to Pixelfed. Soon, I’ll do the same with Whatsapp → Signal. This is a painful decision for me not because I have any emotional connection with my account. In fact, these cronies have clawed more from us than they have given. This is because majority of my friends and family members still use this gullible social media app and the places where I’m going don’t have them. This is understandable because an app which is inherently decentralized overwhelms people who are not used to it. As a result, they can find it hard to navigate. Btw, if you are one of them, mastodon might be a good place to start.
I joined instagram in 2017. I remember the time when instagram was THE place where most of my classmates used to hang out. Less ads, Less features, Less distraction. Instagram today is sludge. I don’t understand how people still use it. I stopped using/posting on IG for 6 months now and don’t plan to go back. I opened IG this other day to peek at my ex’s account and couldn’t scroll past the stories TL. I don’t understand what a/b tests the engineers at Meta are trying because the amount of ads is just staggering. More than 40% of the stories and about 3 out of 5 posts are ads, sometimes 4 in a row. IN A ROW. There are more ads than posts. And the recommendations are awful. TBH, Pinterest’s algorithm is the only good one out there, which not flavoured with cheap dopamin hits to boost the “psyche” as pretentious woke people call it.
I am tired of blocking spam accounts on whatsapp pretending to be a hot salesperson, an acquaintance, some eatyourshit6969 agency wavering 20% on their latest astrology course, or a thousand other things. I believe that a good app can give it’s users an exit option at the least where they can take their audience with them.
Fediverse is just so cool. No ads, No algorithm. If you get banned, just join another instance or run a server of your own.
Happy Diwali to those who are celebrating!