My current approach to Meta Platforms

I plan to write a longer post, or series of posts, about the reasons for the approach outlined below. I want to discuss why it’s so important to push back against the recent actions taken, and statements made, by Mark Zuckerberg. I also want to consider the challenges we face in resisting. But for now, I want to outline what I personally will be doing differently, and I want to briefly address why I am not simply stepping away from Meta, or closing my account.

When Elon Musk acquired Twitter in late 2022, it was clear what he intended to do with it, and so I made a quick exit. (I did leave my profile active, to prevent impersonation, and to leave people the ability to find me if they wanted.) It was very much a “storming out of the meeting to make a statement” type of action. The problem was that I’m just not that popular or influential. Relatively few people followed me out the door at the time. It was difficult. I had made quite a few friends in the local area over Twitter, and I greatly missed those regular conversations and exchanges. I don’t want to make that mistake again.

I also very much value the connections made with local businesses. I actually started using Instagram for that purpose about six months before Musk took Twitter, and I’ve discovered any number of worthwhile businesses and artisans there. Local connections will be vitally important in the coming months and years.

Finally, I want to avoid giving Zuckerberg any more of my creative and intellectual labor than is absolutely necessary. He clearly doesn’t care for me, or the good of the nation or the world or its people. Why should I continue to enrich him?

This time around, rather than “storming out,” I plan to do what I can to “stand by the door, holding it open and letting in the cold air,” hopefully encouraging (and helping) as many people as possible to make their own exit as well.

To those ends, I have adopted two dicta governing what I post on Meta:

1. I will never post any content on Meta exclusively or first.
2. I will never post the full or best on Meta.

With respect to (1), everything I post on Meta (generally on Instagram, which then auto-repeats on Facebook) will have been shared somewhere else first. Generally that will be Bluesky or Mastodon (usually politics on the former, fun on the latter), though I often cross-post. I also plan on using this blog a good deal more (and it automatically propagates to both Bluesky and the “fediverse”). And I’ve been trying to make more use of Signal stories for things like pictures of family or whatever random stuff I feel like sharing with a more select audience.

Where possible, I will provide a link to the original location for whatever content. Instagram works very hard to keep people from leaving, so links are tricky, but I’ll do what I can. If Signal is the original location, I might just leave a message to that effect. Basically, I don’t want to post anything on Meta platforms without “leaving the door open.”

(2) mostly means that the version of the content shared elsewhere will always be superior in some way to what I share on Meta. Instagram actually makes this easy. I never use the filters, so I’m not editing my photos there. But Meta enforces the same aspect ratio for all photos in a post. That means that often, you’re seeing a cropped version of a photo (like watching the “fullscreen” version of a movie on an old TV). Going forward, I’ll also deliberately hold back some of the better photos in a set. Captions on Instagram, or posts on Facebook will now only ever be summaries or excerpts. With smaller stuff, it might only be a single snarky comment, but I promise there will be something more elsewhere.

A corollary to (2) is that I won’t keep posts on Meta for long. I plan on leaving enough to be a “teaser” (and to hope to convince the algorithm that I have a pulse). I want to leave a reason for people to follow me out the door.

A third principle is that I don’t want to engage in conversation on Meta if I can help it. I’d much rather chat on Signal, or have discussions on Bluesky or mastodon. Or I’d love to help others build their own blogs, and we can go back to the kind of long-form blog-based discussion that existed in the late ’90’s. That does mean that I won’t respond to comments, unless it’s a query asking for help finding your way to a different forum for conversation (I’ll happily help you install Signal, for example).

I hope this will be the first of a number of posts on our approach to social media, information, conversation, and the “public square.” At the very least, I hope it will help my friends, family, and colleagues understand why I continue to be active on Instagram and Facebook, despite being so self-righteous about leaving Twitter two years ago.