Goodbye Social Media

Is it good or is it bad? It's a mix between the two. Such potential good, such beneficial messages can be shared, you can learn and connect like never before.   You can keep up to date with so many friends and family, even those overseas... But there's a dark side.  

After my brother suggested I should watch 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix - it has many former social media employees and programmers discussing how it works, I've realised I need to say goodbye to social media for the most part. Watch the documentary, weight it up and see what conclusion you come to.

For me, after so many years hooked, now my only conclusion from watching this documentary is I have to do something drastic. It's not enough to just use it a little, or to post some good content while avoiding getting sucked in to the constant scrolling... it's not an innocent tool, it wants to control you and it will always try to suck you back in.  So for me it's better to cut it off.

"And if your hand—even your stronger hand—causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." - Matthew 5:30

There were many reasons and issues presented, but the biggest one for me is that normally people program computers, but now with social media, there's a super computer pointed directly at your brain, learning everything about you, measuring exactly how long you look at each post, remembering everything you ever clicked on, and it is programming you, to get you to spend as much time as possible, selling off little chunks of your valuable time for a few cents, getting you to watch as many ads as possible.

I counted the number of ads I was seeing for every post - Instagram 4 posts, 1 advertisement, 5 posts, 1 advertisement.   18% of the posts I was seeing were ads.   For my housemate it was even more - around 28% of the posts were ads. They will just keep dialling it up, it's only going to get worse - more ads, more content going into your brains without you even realising that you've been sold.

Facebook was even worse - one quarter of posts being ads, and 17% being 'suggested' posts. Only 57% of what I was seeing was content I had actually asked facebook to see. And of that probably 2/3rds I didn't want to see anyway!

In 'The Social Dilemma' they say it's simultaneously utopia and dystopia... it's a dilemma, so many goods, but so many bads. The easy thing to do is to go with the flow and keep going wherever it takes you, but for me, weighing up the goods and the bads and seeing that it's going to keep going further in the direction it is - keep getting better and better at controlling our actions, it's time to wake up, time to unplug, time to take back control !

"we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." - 2 Cor 10:5

How can we have every thought captive when we are giving a portion of it away to this super computer that indiscriminately dishes out content to us, not acting for our good but doing whatever it knows will make the most money?

My Action plan to leave social media

1. Delete Facebook app from my phone, deactivate account while leaving facebook messenger active.
(Ideally everyone would use a different app like Telegram to message each other, but so many communicate on FB messenger that it's hard to leave, and at this stage it's not causing any significant harm) 

2. Recreate facebook with a slightly different name, no profile picture, don't have any friends, for purposes of using Facebook marketplace only. This is a powerful tool for selling and buying second-hand locally that at this stage I don't want to give up.

3. Unfollow nearly everyone on Instagram... except for family, a few close friends, and anyone who consistently posts content I particularly benefit from (these posts will be accessed a different way, without using the instagram app)

4. Delete Instagram app

5. Start a blog to share photos and ideas and garden progress - on blogger / blogspot.com (free and no ads) as opposed to Wordpress which the free version will put ads on your page unless you pay or self host it on your domain).

6. Never make a post to social media again. Even good posts feed the machine that is facebook.

7. Make an account with "Feedly" (free for up to 100 sites) use this to access friends blogs and a few other helpful resources (like Tim Challies blog) . This program can either be used as is on the web or phone app, or connected to another app to bring that and Instagram together in step 8:

8. Use app on phone - "Feedster" to connect to both my Feedly account and Instagram account. Pay $4 once off to purchase premium to eliminate all the ads.
Now everything is in one place, there are no ads, no one manipulating me to keep scrolling forever or measuring how long I look at each post.  There is now not hundreds of posts that I didn't need to see, just a carefully curated list of content. It brings in only what I want while leaving all the ads behind.  

9. Youtube - turn off autoplay, and consciously play videos only from 'subscriptions' not the 'home' tab that will dish out an endless supply of videos. 

This is all a bit involved, but I have regained control !!!  Swimming with the flow of the river is easiest, but I can now see the river wasn't flowing to a good destination.