Opting Out

Instagram feels dystopian these days. It's the only reminder I have of highschool friends, but their posts are drowned by "suggested" content or ads, which I scroll past with obliging vigilancy. I loathe Meta, and the idea that my clicks are informing some user-profile known only to them. As a user, I feel totally disempowered. But I stay on Instagram because it's the only reliable collection of job postings, event announcements, and anarchist media.

The idea of "logging off" is gaining traction. 404 Media published the article "You Can't Post Your Way out of Fascism" by Janus Rose on February 5. The podcast Tech Won't Save Us, hosted by Paris Marx, had an episode "The Case for a Digital Detox" on May 29. Taylor Lorenz has a dissenting perspective in the episode "The Case Against Logging Off", for Power User, also on May 29.

These pieces are not perfectly comparable. When "the internet" is invoked, it tends to be a stand-in for the few social media empires. Meta, X, and TikTok monopolize the social media ecosystem, and by extension, our understanding of what the internet is, sidelining forums, blogs, and archives from our conversations. The internet is assumed to mean social media, and social media is assumed to mean centralized social media. Alternatives aren't considered in earnest by any of these pieces.

The potential for negative effects social media use - and sometimes, "phone use" more broadly - on our wellbeing is the main point of conversation between Paris Marx and his guest in "The Case for a Digital Detox". It can be difficult to disentangle societal issues given new form on social media (for example, pro-anorexia culture or bullying), a reactive panic around new technology, and the specific toxicity of social media giants.

"The case for a digital detox" tells the story of tech reporter and author of "She's the Beast", Casey Johnson. Johnson used Instagram in the early 2010s, and remembers it with nostalgia - she felt there was more authenticity and variety in people's expression than you see now. As time passed, Johnson's experience on social media lost its joy. Existing in the fitness niche of Instagram,she felt pressured to look, act, and think a certain way. Now she's found a new relationship to excercise and she shares this with others - online. Perhaps accidentally, the career trajectory shows that not all internet use is the same. Some can be oppressive, like comparing bodies on Instagram, while others, like maintaining a blog, can be emancipatory. The conclusions she arrives at - especially about a deadening effect of phone use - isn't logically cohesive.

The presumption that rewarding experiences can only be found offline flattens a broad range of experiences. Lorenz and her guest, Aidan Walker, writer of "How to Do Things With Memes", consider fear of social media, especially for youth, to be a moral panic, the descendant of moral panics about TV watching or comic books.

Even more contentious than questions of user well-being are questions of ethical user behaviour. As we navigate this landscape, what collective responsibilities do we have? We can justify mainstream social media use if it's a driving force for social progress. To do this, we'd have to prove we can overcome barriers like pushing ads, partial removal or suspension of accounts, and an algorithm that rewards some content and punishes others. Much of the debate can be boiled down to: what power do users have over these platforms?

Historically, Lorenz points out, the internet has served as a political jumping off board. There was the #MeToo Movement, and BLM, for example. But honestly, when I think of those movements, I think of court cases and of mass protests. It's hard to say what would have happened in some counterfactual world without Twitter and Instagram. And I can't help but doubt the effectiveness of internet activism. The black squares for George Floyd raised awareness - the protests that occupied neighborhoods and upended lives changed our paradigm around racism.

Of course it's easy to look back at a movement, to ascribe successes to the strategies we like and failure to the ones we don't. The younger generation of activists will never be able to "do it right" because they are doing things differently. But I am at least hesitant to endorse the utility of the internet in these battles.

Walker justifies his presence on social media by using it to counter the far-right, or, fighting with the trolls. The idea of creating a Truth Social account reveals the pitfalls with this strategy. There is some convincing that can be done, but there is also a certain density of progressiveness required. Paradoxically, you could operate on a platform you trust and debate fascists from there, but why would that platform allow fascists in the first place?

At the end of Marx's episode he brings up a larger question: how does our social media use change the way we interact with the world? Our perceptions and relationships affect our well-being and our influence on others.

Marx would probably argue that wading through 'AI slop' and sponsored material worsens our interactions with the offline world. Perhaps the need to shorten content for time restrictions, or to embed it into a probably-problematic trend for virality, has knock-on effects on our ability to form longer chains of reasoning.

At the end of the day though, these pop-psychology theories distract from power analysis that is needed about social media giants. Musk is becoming facist and this is manifested through X. We need to start seeing X more like Trump's Truth Social, and our use of it as an active choice.

Right now social media giants are filling a need. Unlike Marx and Johnson, who are comfortable with their community and offline relations, and who have decided for themselves how to advocate for progress, this is not a reasonable ask for people in different situations. My mum taught herself about autism and transness through Instagram reels. She wanted to hear first-hand from people my age. She allowed, and even enjoyed, Instagram touring her through a variety of creators. I think of the importance of 'big internet companies' for discovering queers in rural or intolerant places.

Johnson recalled Instagram's shift to video as decidedly unpopular, but since users weren't able to fight back, they adapted. Even as I pay attention to tech politics, I stay on an increasingly exhausting and even immoral platform. Why do we stay? I think loneliness is a powerful driver. Even Johnson's story ends with her staying connected, but in a different way. Walker flails to find micro-rebellions that users can enact rather than leaving - "algospeak", the co-opting of branding-related words to trick the algorithm, saving a post to increase its traction. These strategies might get a message across, but they are not a sufficient way to fight against X, Meta, and Tiktok.

When Walker identifies moderation as a skill, or name-drops Cory Doctorow, or speaks of fiefdoms, he seems to be getting to defederated social media. But the episode speaks around the topic. 'Defederated' is never said, only 'decentralized', and the absence of virality is seen as a loss.

If we are to reclaim power as users, it's by leaving to better platforms - not because texting is melting our brains, or because we need to touch grass, but because we can expect a freer, more accepting internet. We just need to be creative about our visions of the future.