I recently read this piece by Josh Kramer that got me thinking again about an age-old question: should we all just delete our accounts from Instagram, Twitter/X, Facebook, TikTok, etc.?
Kramer's piece points out that even Discord "is moving closer to offering stock and becoming a publicly-traded company." I was also disappointed to learn recently that BlueSky is headed in a similar direction, following a $100 million funding injection from "Bain Capital Crypto."
Ugh!
Perhaps I was overly optimistic about BlueSky. I mean, it is basically a rewrite ActivityPub, with a few superficial changes. Perhaps if BlueSky really believed in the spirit of protocols, they would work to improve the existing protocol. I am still on the app, but, my hope is dwindling.
In fact, I am still on pretty much all the apps. My defensible justification is mostly related to identity protection. That is, if I deleted my Twitter/X profile, for example, it would open the door for impersonators.
But that security justification often becomes more of a rationalization. When I lose an hour or two in one of these apps, I wonder, "why do I even have this app again?" "How is this helping me reach my goals in any way?" And then I think through deletion, and remember that I want to maintain an "active" account.
As I argue in my book, the "social" components of these "social media" apps have become so dilluted as to make "social media" a misnomer. The apps do not help me connect with people. And if I made a more thorough attempt to answer "why do I even have this app?", I think it would end in someone else's intentions (not my own values or goals).
So my question has become, how do I "quit" without deleting all my profiles and such? I have done plenty of unfollowing, scrubbing, and data exports across varous services. I have what I need from them. If I deleted these profiles, the main thing I would lose is the ability to represent myself on these platforms.
In short, "digital sovereignty" must mean more than just getting off these apps and doing something different. To me, the identity control, and the option to post and represent myself in some (shallow) way, is worth it. So I will not be deleting my accounts any time soon.
That being said, I am trying to build some new habits - I hear it's one of the best ways to kill bad habits! Namely, I am publishing the "text" portion of this website as an RSS feed.
Yeehaw!
Nothing groundbreaking here. Plenty of people have advocated for returning to RSS feeds, and the format dates back to 1999.
What makes sense to me is that I can "post" to an audience that actually wants to read what I have written, however small that audience may be. And I don't have to rely on a massive, for-profit multibillion dollar corporation to make it happen. I mean, my current setup relies on GitHub pages, but the code is all mine and I can move it somewhere else if I want.
Anyway, all this to say: welcome to my RSS feed.