Starting to leave Meta
I wrote earlier this week about how I’m withdrawing from Meta social spaces and investing my attention elsewhere, on Mastodon and Bluesky.
What does that look like? I’m writing down some practical steps that I hope others might take advantage of. If you have your own ideas, please let me know! I’ve just enabled comments on phiffer.org, but you have to subscribe/sign in first.
This short guide is about the part you do to prepare for a Meta departure. I’ll write more about backing up your account archives and actually deleting things in future posts.
Easing out of Instagram
For most of my friends Instagram is the one they use the most of all the Meta apps. If Instagram is an app you use a lot and you want to use it less, consider removing it from the home screen of your phone. You can still access the app, it’ll just take a little more intentional effort to open up. Replace it with a different app you want to use more.
Instagram has a feature called Daily limit that lets you impose a daily time limit for your use of the app. Here’s where you can find the setting (the Facebook docs describe a slightly different path):
- Tap your profile on the bottom right.
- Tap the “hamburger menu” on the top right.
- Tap “Time management.”
- Tap “Daily limit.”
I’ve had mine set to 15 minutes for a while now and it’s been totally fine. I thought I might need to bump it up, but it hasn’t felt necessary. When you’re approaching the time limit, Instagram gives you a warning so you can wrap up anything you might be doing. And if you actually do need to keep using the app past the limit, you can dismiss the interface and let it bug you tomorrow. This is legit a Really Good Feature and I applaud whoever made it happen at Meta.
If you want to go one step further, delete the app from your phone entirely. You can browse Insta from a web browser, and even post new things, the website interface has improved a lot!
Gentle encouragement
If you’re ready to actually get off Meta (yes!), Start by letting your people know that you’re leaving and encourage them to do the same. At the time I’m writing this, leaving Meta is part of a larger collective action. Coordinating your migration to other networks while others are doing the same will make it more likely that your connections are retained and it sends a stronger message to Meta that they’ve made a huge mistake.
I started by posting a message on every social network where I have an account: “hey, I’m gonna be leaving Meta soon, let’s keep in touch!” And I gave myself one month to get my social media affairs in order. I noticed that people only seemed to see my announcement on Facebook when I attached it to a profile picture update, due to how their algorithm works. The feed algorithms are probably not tuned to surface these kinds of messages!
It’s important to me that I not come off as dogmatic while still encouraging people to embrace their agency. I’ve gotten some private messages from friends who are agonizing about how they know they should leave these spaces, and want to, but don’t feel able to right now. That’s totally fine, I really mean it! I intend to check in with folks who are staying put and find out what I’m missing.
Tending the contact list
I’ve started taking my contact list more seriously. I’m shifting the source of truth for who I keep in touch with away from my social media follow lists to something that I can control. There are a lot of people I only know “on the internet” and they do not exist in my contacts! I’m trying to correct that, just using the built-in Apple Contacts app. Your list could live anywhere (paper!) so long as you keep it updated.
For each person I’m connected to I’m trying to find an email address, phone number, and following them on Bluesky and/or Mastodon if they have accounts in those places. If they have a personal website (hell yes!), can I subscribe to an RSS feed? Newsletter? Subscribed. If I know them on Facebook, I make a note of their birthday.
I’m also paying attention to how I know people. Are they connected to other people I’m connected to, are we part of a larger community? I’m discovering some patterns like “they live nearby” or “we went to school together” or “we’ve collaborated on projects.” I think this context will be essential in the long term for making sense of my social graph and making sure I can continue being a functioning socially-connected human.
Taking over some work
Meta’s products have been doing a lot of work on my behalf—keeping a list of contacts, showing me their updates, maintaining spaces where we can interact—and I intend to take ownership of that work. This year I'm making an effort to be more intentional about keeping in touch with friends, so exiting Meta dovetails nicely with that New Years Resolution. But yes, it is actual work, and I need to set time aside for it.
I’m thinking a lot about the people in my life who feel overwhelmed by this stuff and who might find learning a new platform a daunting project. I’m trying to think about the rough edges that I can help make less difficult to navigate. I’d like to create easy to understand guides about social media data portability and explore ways to collectively maintain them (does this exist already?).
Clearing paths for others
As you wind down your Meta accounts, start getting comfortable in new online spaces. And while you’re doing that, see if you can make it easier for others to follow in your footsteps. I’m mainly interested in Mastodon and Bluesky, but this same pattern applies elsewhere.
On Bluesky search for the names of people you know, or if you have an account on X there’s a tool called Sky Follower Bridge that you can use to help migrate your connections. You might create a starter pack of people you know, based on some community you’re a part of.
On Mastodon there are so many places to start, there’s a lot of work to do! For my part I plan to write documentation that can help make social.coop more accessible and gather information from coop members to discover if there are specific needs I can help resolve.
If leaving Meta sounds daunting to you, don’t stress about it. There‘s plenty of time and you don’t need to rush it. But for my part, I wish I’d started doing this ages ago!