Leaving Las Metas

Is the act of removing myself from Meta’s walled hellscape — deleting Facebook and Instagram — a kind of digital suicide?

What will happen when I no longer appearing in my friends’ feed? Will I cease to exist for them?

That feels like the stakes. But it must be done.

I’m not the first to do this and I’m not claiming any special status. In social networking theory, there’s an idea that switching costs are high. But in this case, switching isn’t really even possible. There isn’t another place where all these lovely, funny, amazing individuals are gathered. There just isn’t.

I’m on Mastodon. And Bluesky. But most of my friends and acquaintances aren’t. Not that it’s all bad. I’m finding new funny, amazing and interesting people to connect with there. But they aren’t the friends I’ve made over a lifetime.

Facebook has made me feel like I’m connected to them, but am I really?

The Nostalia Machine

Even when it was working, before the platform became increasingly enshittified, as Cory Doctorow has so eloquently puts it, the thing was a monster. Facebook was and is an instant nostalgia machine. The algorithm used up our human emotions – the real love and care we have for the people in our lives – and commodified those feelings. I’m not even going to get into the very real harms the platform has done to our discourse and politics generally – that’s another polemic. But I want to focus in on what this beast does to us as humans.  

It gives us the illusion of being connected, when really, we’re not. It feeds on the memories of our friends and our lives together. Hell, it even has a regular feature that dredges memories up from your feed to remind you of them. Algorithmic nostalgia.

Staying Connected Has Always Been a Challenge

Back in the days before social media – the internet even – I teased my friend Leslie for sending out mimeographed newsletters about her life. It seemed an ersatz connection, I said.

But it was SO MUCH BETTER than what we do on Facebook. Leslie had to write the newsletter. She had to put it together and make copies. She put little personalized notes on it. I was a complete asshole for not seeing it as the act of love that it was. Would I have preferred a personal note? Or a phone call? Absolutely. But it was still connection from a human being I cared about.

Sorry Leslie!

Facebook on the other hand doesn’t even really do that, especially as it has become enshittified. When I log on now, I don’t get to see the posts of my friends. I get curated garbage that FB’s algorithm felt would keep me on the site longer, so they can serve me up ads. If I want to check on my friends, I pretty much have to go to their feeds directly. Even then the algorithm is stingy.

Weird, right? I mean, the point of the site is to see our friends’ lives. The upside of the switching cost is the network effect. If I can’t network with my pals on the site, there is less reason to stay. Maybe it’s not digital suicide, if Meta has already hidden my posts.

I’m already dead.

Filthy Mammon Fun

My last reason for leaving is both personal and a feature of this moment. Those of us living in Canada are dealing with betrayal of the US government. I know that many of my American friends don’t agree with their president and the cowardly party that supports him, but Canadians have finally realized we have to be more self-reliant. Buy Canadian where we can, and give the large corporations supporting the orange villain a little less.

Lest you accuse me of hypocrisy, I know this is symbolic. There are so many ways these corporations control us and in which we are complicit. Maybe someday I’ll give up my gmail account. (I’ve already started using another search engine.) I use both Apple and Microsoft products. I even used Midjourney to create the image above, so can I even complain that Meta stole one of my novels and several short stories to train their AI?

And Amazon. As an indie author, it will really hurt to leave. That corporation has many problems, but it gives us indies the best deal we’re getting anywhere in terms of royalties. (Seventy percent, if you keep your ebooks under $10.) Of course, I know that at any time they can take that away, so I’m always on the lookout for solutions.

Feel free to leave them in the comments. Remember comments? And you can always follow me on the aforementioned Mastodon or Bluesky. Even better, just send me an email: markarayner (at) gmail.com. If you want more regular correspondence, I’d suggest my email list, plus …