Looking to get people talking about privacy, more so around social media platforms, and the behemoth that is Meta.
Over on another forum they mention WhatsApp and a recurring charge to make ads generic and not using your personal information to target you.
This makes me wonder, what options from WhatsApp and the usual social media platforms (Instagram, Facebook, Threads, all being Meta) have folks moved to?
I’ve seen signal and telegram, signal looks decent enough, free, and privacy looks top of their importance list.
What about social media - BlueSky, Mastadon, any others folks would recommend out of the big circle?
Being a millennial, we got roped in from 2008 and haven’t broken out of it yet.
I can’t seem to find an alt, though I’m sure there was one at some point
One of the difficulties with changing to other platforms is friends and family, not yourself. Rather than “switch” to other platforms, I decided to remove as much social media as possible and I’ve felt better for it.
I’ve deleted my Instagram account last year, so never had Threads. Removed as much as possible from my Facebook profile, but my account still exists (essentially a AI generated cartoon image of me, and ZERO posts). Same with Twitter/X. Most of my friends and family use WhatsApp so until interoperability exists with things like Signal, I can’t switch.
I think the only one I would want to keep is Instagram.
Facebook it’s rare to use, messenger is mostly just family, WhatsApp is the main culprit but folks will just contact me alternatively if they’re not able to get me there.
I don’t use any social media, but for messaging I use Signal. I don’t have WhatsApp installed and I haven’t since circa 2016-2017.
I’m also a millennial and I was around when Freeserve launched, AOL, MSN, QQ etc. MySpace wasn’t my thing but I had ‘Faceparty’. I then used Facebook for years before I finally switched on to what they’re doing with data and how poorly children are growing up thrown into social media.
Stay away from ‘Google’, get rid of Gmail/Outlook/Live etc and maximise your privacy - no logs VPNs that protect DNS leaks etc, browsers that prevent tracking and so on.
I still remember the ‘Agony Aunt’ (Grim Rita) and the roastings . Those were the days.
Facebook are terrible. I remember deleting my account many years prior to making a subject access request for account data. What I received back shocked me. All of my deleted private messages were still there. Many, many years later. A very dangerous organisation, so best of luck in your quest to find a more privacy-focussed social media one. There must be some out there, not that I would trust them and I’m not that way inclined any longer.
With the fall of Twitter, I mainly use Mastodon (on the mastodon.org.uk server/instance - I use the Tusky client on Android) with a little bit of Bluesky for more “newsy/celebrity” type stuff (Threads seems to be just influencers tbh). Instagram is minimal usage. I want to move people I contact away from Meta’s Whatsapp to Signal or Deltachat. I haven’t found an alternative to Facebook though, but I only logged in there three times in the past 6 years.
I’ve turned those off too . I started off with 2 contacts on Signal. I’ve now got 44 who I regularly speak to (including 7 groups) and also some occasional / acquaintances. In fairness, I think they all (bar one) have WhatsApp in addition. You won’t catch me anywhere near a Meta product lol.
Spending my day deleting every single comment, post and Like from my Facebook and next Instagram is such a tedious task.
Logged in via laptop as it has a select all option but only loads so many at a time so I’ve a battery placed on the “end” key to keep going down. Facebook should make this easier.
Yeah I came off all media once and then missed out on friends posting and tagging me in pictures. I’m on fb and Instagram. But do have the relentless ads and if I google something it’s automatically advertised on meta platforms which is annoying. I’m tempted to even delete WhatsApp but friends rely on group chats lol
