Category: InternetCategory: Internet

Just in case you needed a reminder, your expertise doesn’t have to fit into a bite-sized clip, served up for mindless scrolling consumption.

Signal President Meredith Whittaker showed that on this BBC Global Women Instagram Reel, where she passed on the “quickfire questions” format. When interviewer Megha Mohan said she’d go home and question what she’s doing as a journalist, Whittaker offered this:

“Question why we are mediated by seven platforms, largely jurisdictioned in the U.S. that make us supplicate to a format that degrades the integrity of our expertise. Question that, babies.”

There are games to be played, and games to opt out of playing.

(link via Kottke)

This was inevitable: Meta charging for links in a Facebook posts and Instagram Reels.

As Future of Media reports, “without paying for a subscription, pages could come up against a maximum of two Facebook links per month.”

And it seems they’re going after the “link in comments” trick, too.

“The new restrictions being tested include links in comments. Users included in the test have reported that once they hit the limit, their URLs appear as plain, non-clickable text.”

The best time to have left Instagram and Facebook was five years ago. The second best time is now.

(via Pixel Envy)

Finding your people is about signals, it’s about risk, it’s about trying something without knowing how the finish product shows up.

Posting on social media will get you near instant feedback, like eating a cookie. In the moment it’s great, but not a great long term strategy.

So Jen Mayer | Makeist of Zinestack and I collaborated on this EXIT ≠ DELETE zine. The photos here the deluxe version, and you can grab a digital copy to print at home from Jen’s Five on Friday post here.

We met awhile ago on Substack, via Notes probably and some Escape Pod Zoom calls, and we started working together on this zine project in June of 2025.

So really, finding your people, and then sometimes doing things with your people, can take a minute. And “finding your people” never ends. Today’s people might not be next year’s people, because you’re always growing and changing, just like everyone else!

WHAT’S THIS HAVE TO DO WITH SOCIAL MEDIA ESCAPE CLUB?

“Deleting the app is the start,” as I mention in our EXIT ≠ DELETE zine. We’re leaving, but we’re entering into something else, which is why I stress the whole “find your people” thing. If you’re trying to get away from social media, it makes sense to hang around other people who think the same thing. The journey isn’t fast or clear, but it just makes sense to go along with others.

So while this week our Escape Pod Zoom call wasn’t “how to get 1000 new subscribers” or “get my Instagram followers to go paid on Substack,” well… we’re just a bunch of artsy, creative weirdos who like the adventure of breaking up with big tech, spending less time on socials, and oh yeah – doing stuff.

I don’t promise results. There’s no map. And I don’t have all the answers. But we get where we wanna go together, so if that sounds fun, come along for the ride.

From the Technically Good newsletter, on digital sovereignty.

“Reminder that “The Cloud” is “someone else’s computer,” and if that computer happens to be under the purveyance of someone who isn’t completely rational, that could be a problem. File under: Digital sovereignty. … especially since also, someone can, in fact, just turn off your cloud, leaving you without your data.

That link leads to “Over 170,000 Nonprofits Lost All Their Data. Is Microsoft to Blame?” over at Slate, and it’s tragic:

“The small nonprofits left behind are now visibly struggling. The childhood healthcare nonprofit operator I spoke to lost about 500 gigabytes of his firm’s data … The man who runs the disability services nonprofit wrote to me that it’ll take him and his mother “hundreds of hours” to fully re-create the instructional videos and documents that went poof.”

Leaving all your data to one company is a risk, no matter how big they are (Google Drive, Airtable), or how benevolent (like Proton). Local and off-site back ups are crucial, but unfortunately not everybody knows about these practices, or how to implement them (I’m doing two calls this week on breaking up with Google).

For one, download your email list often. You just never know when a service might shut down, or you get locked out!

Once you’ve got your cloud files on your own computer, back them up somewhere off-site (I use Backblaze, but pCloud and Jottacloud looks pretty good, too).

Off-site means your files are safe if your computer breaks, or your house burns down. Yes, these services are “someone else’s computer” still, which is why we seek the best solutions we can, rather than put our trust in the giant companies who grow too big to care.

Whenever I see people being hopeful about returning to the way things were, there’s always someone saying “we can never go back,” and I think that’s hilarious.

Like, are we really going to jump to yet another social media platform? Did we all jump to Mastodon, or one of the 19 different Instagram replacements? I keep having conversations with people who are done with signing up for new services, creating new accounts.

And sure, is this cognitive bias? YES. My job is talking to people who dislike social media, who want to get away, who seek a different path – heck yes, I am biased.

On the other hand, are you thumbs up with Musk / Zuckerberg / Mosseri? Are you ready to invest your time, effort and energy into the same old same old?

Are we content to keep following 3000 people? Reading 30 new articles every hour? Watching 5 hours of video per day, 13 seconds at a time?

Or are you ready to buy DVDs and CDs and magazines again? Talk to your neighbors? Seek community?

I know which direction I’m heading.