Goodbye Instagram


I marked my account as dormant and uninstalled the Instagram app on the 20th of Jan.

I’ve been thinking about removing myself from the service for ages. I am very weak to the infinite scrolling video format and knowing all the memes. It’s fun in the moment but a total waste of my time. The most reasonable justification to stay was that independent businesses use it a lot, I wanted to keep abreast of the goings on of the Stirchley high street.

The inciting incident for leaving was the Terms of Service update which has the line:

We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation, given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality

That’s a wild and deeply unpleasant thing to explicitly allow in your TOS. I wouldn’t want to go to a pub with that policy so why should I be spending so much time on an app with it? So adiós Insta.

11 days in and… I’m fine. I’m shocked how much I don’t miss it, my previous attempts to leave Twitter over the years felt very different. I’m still getting my social media hit from BlueSky with a curated feed of friends and wargamers and I think that’s enough for me. I removed the link from the blog today so I guess it’s GitHub official now.