Sacrifice Your Meme Group Chat To The Movement!
On moving to "decentralized" platforms.
Stop using Google products!
Delete your Twitter!
Delete your TikTok!
Delete your Facebook!
Delete your Instagram!
Force your friends to stop using Instagram!
Fuck the Instagram meme group chat you have with your friends!
Sacrifice your meme group chat to the Movement!
Force your friends to move to Discord!
No, not Discord, it’s too easy to harass someone there!
Join Bluesky, it’s decentralized!
No, not Bluesky, it’s too much like Twitter!
Get a Proton email, it’s open source!
No, not Proton, the CEO said something nice about Trump!
Join Substack, reclaim your attention!
No, not Substack, they platform Nazis!
Build community!
Build community!
Build community!
No, not like that!
I’ve recently started the long, long process of divesting from the platforms that have been profiting off our doomscrolling, making deals with the military industrial complex, bending the knee to Trump, and generally destroying democracy and the environment. Google is a monstrous company. I ditched Amazon Prime, as useful as it was given my disability. I no longer pay for any streaming services (Netflix, et al) and have started collecting CDs and DVDs to host on my home media server. And yes, Substack’s content moderation policies are…quite lax (don’t worry, by being here or being a paid member of my newsletter, you’re not sending money to Nazis, you’re just existing on the same platform as them!)
I’ve used Cyd to delete every single one of my tweets (and likes, bookmarks, etc.) from Twitter/X. I have manually deleted almost every single one of my TikTok videos. I deleted Messenger from my phone and only use Facebook in-browser once in a blue moon. I have moved all files from Google Drive to my own personal hard drives (aside from ongoing collaborative projects that are still using Docs, et al). I’m considering self-hosting my personal website via my home media server, and transitioning this newsletter to over there (you will be notified if/when that happens, and also, please fill out this poll that I just sent out so you can let me know if you’d be willing to pay for my newsletter if I dropped the price a bit more!) I’m even considering using Linux instead of Windows for the first time in my life, that’s how privacy-obsessed I’ve become lately.
And fuck, is it expensive. And time-consuming. Can we just be honest about that?
My feed has been littered with the messages above, implying that we must divest from these awful companies. I understand, agree with, and am actively complying with this growing social imperative to de-Google, de-Meta, de-Amazon our lives. Hit them where it hurts! What upsets me is seeing communities built over years fracturing and scattering to the winds. What also upsets me is seeing all this moral grandstanding about how important this all is and that we have to do it right now and very quickly.
These corporations have embedded themselves into our everyday lives, in many ways bad but also in some ways that are useful, even for the hardcore lefties among us. Facebook Marketplace, as well as Buy Nothing groups and Queer Exchanges, are genuinely the most accessible forms of mutual aid in my area. Instagram is where I promote my business (this newsletter and my personal brand), making it harder for me to divest from than your average Joe. More importantly, Instagram is where many of my community members actually are and so it’s a convenient way to share both crucial political action items and fun memes. And yes, I know Spotify is evil too, but oh my god I need one normal thing in all of this. (I tried using TIDAL for a bit because it pays artists more and used to have DJing integration, but now the latter costs extra and I missed the collaborative playlists I can make with my friends; my compromise has been to start buying physical media to support the artists I enjoy the most.)
Platforms are made of people. If nobody else you know is on these new, open-source, better-for-society platforms, there is no point in being on them. Convincing your friends to join a new platform is arduous because all of them need all of their friends to join too, so on and so forth, lest we all be forced to use sometimes Signal, sometimes Messenger, sometimes regular texting, sometimes Discord until we’re managing notifications on 10 different apps.
That’s another problem: a lack of direction. As implied in my poem above, we haven’t collectively decided Where To Go. Bluesky or Mastodon? Pixelfed or Snapchat? And are we staying on TikTok after all? Like with the exodus from Twitter and the XHS refugees from earlier this year, mass groups of people leaving social media sites at best ends up with them ending right back where they started, at worst leaves communities fractured and thus not the same as before, and usually ends up with people fleeing to the social media site that most resembles what they’re used to.
If you’re really concerned about the dominance of social media corporations and its implications for democracy, you probably want to support decentralized social media. But getting the general public on board with this new way of navigating the Internet has been challenging. Take Mastodon for example: it’s fully decentralized, making it “better” than Bluesky, yet Bluesky is now considered the de facto Twitter alternative while Mastodon’s user base hasn’t grown nearly as much. Why? I believe it’s because it doesn’t explain itself well to new/prospective users. You have to “join a server”? What does that mean? Can I still see people’s posts if they’re not on the server I choose? Can I change my server later if I want to? What’s the server everyone else is on? Wait, nobody else is even here? Eh, I’ll go to Bluesky. Bluesky is an interesting case, because it’s decentralized in some ways but not in others. It compromises some of its decentralized nature for the sake of familiarity. We seem to have decided that decentralized social media is the preferred way forward. As long as it’s a lot like the centralized media we already know.
So, what are we to do? Now more than ever, we need to stay connected with one another so we can stay politically active and informed. Our current means of staying connected are rife with censorship and are profitable to the ruling class, and the alternative—decentralizing, self-hosting content—seems to be a path toward fracturing, living our lives as tech-hoarding hermits, and generally having way less fun. The only thing we can say for sure is that, whatever you’re doing online, it’s probably being watched. Be smart, use your best judgement, turn off all those AI features on your new iPhone, and for goodness sake, use Signal!
Currently Reading
A Reddit forum devoted to giving people tangible action items.
Some great writing on the futility of posting during fascism. Relatedly, the contentification of Trump policy, how ICE raids are “made for TV”, and a cogsci letter on how online political outrage does not affect real-world change. The Right’s ability to thrive in this age of the Internet is all we need to see if we’re deciding how to behave on the Internet from now on.
On fighting back against anti-trans federal actions.
Watch History
This video of a Roller Coaster Tycoon map synchronized to “Defying Gravity” from Wicked is the best thing I’ve seen all year so far. Definitely something AI would never think to do, and that’s beautiful.
A compilation and analysis of some influencer’s confessions on what they thought would be their last day on TikTok. The decision to tank their credibility will always baffle me!
A deep dive on Season 2 of Squid Game, particular the motivation for its creation, and what it means about the media landscape.
Bops, Vibes, & Jams
The new Lucy Dacus video featuring many hot mascs is giving me life 🌈
I’ve been watching Kendrick’s Halftime show on repeat to cope with the reality, and you can too!
And now, your weekly Koko.
That’s all for now! See you next week with more sweet, sweet content. Don’t forget to fill out that poll!
In solidarity,
-Anna