log.

It's close to end of June, and these days, my Instagram is likely to disappear. All along with all the stories, comments, connections, and of course images I left there ever since joining in 2012, as well as with all of the memories linked to these, all the places seen, the music listened, the thoughts penned down while they were around. There are some thoughts I intended to post there but never did, also because Instagram is probably the most rude platform when it comes to post length and the inability to link to external content directly, and as I experienced people not really noticing my last post earlier this year, I acknowledged it probably doesn't matter. So I'll leave this here, to not have written this in vain.

"It's not you, Instagram, it's me. I've been sneaking around this decision for quite a while. There's more than one rational reason, from an ethical, social, political perspective, to avoid and leave behind platforms like Meta altogether sooner than later. At the very end: It doesn't feel good to be here anymore. In Instagrams early days, my timeline mainly consisted of amateur-grade snapshots from all over the world, when I watched people shooting burning candles, broken windowpanes and then and now their breakfast, too, and throw these shots here, for whichever reasons. It always felt good to be in a niche of content somehow put here by like-minded people on the same level.

A lot happened ever since. My timeline in 2025 has dramatically changed. A lot of people that mattered back then have disappeared, this to me gets obvious browsing my contact list for some of the profiles and names that made this place interesting in my early days of being around. A lot of pictures that were important ever since don't show up here anymore or are lost in an ever-present noise: Reels, expensive high quality shots done with expensive cameras, stunning pictures from stunning distant places of the world (which in turns are increasingly overrun by people wanting to take exactly this one picture at exactly this one place). Left and right of it, there are big producers, big public and privately owned media outlets, "proms" of all sorts, and all of a sudden all of this space is increasingly and by force reclaimed by those who already used to have enough influence, name and reach outside of this format. All of this probably is okay in this way or the other. It's not necessarily bad, and I'm not judging here. I'm not entitled to make any judgement on the dynamics of this networks and how other people use it. But it's not for me anymore. I don't feel well here anymore. I don't feel well anymore thinking to provide Facebook or Meta or any other part of this platform structure with more information on myself than I already do by browsing the public web. I don't feel well anymore thinking about how much "somehow-public" life happens out here in a few huge platforms made to solely serve the purposes and goals of their owners. I don't have to be here anymore, so I'm leaving. If you want to stay in touch, there are some links and ends in my profile, there are enough accessible channels left even outside the experimental scope (Bluesky, Tumblr, ...). If not, thanks for a good time out here, and thanks for the years."

I grew up on a small village, mostly devoid of like-minded souls around me, and at some point moved to a city where this changed. On the 'net, despite my dislike for the corporate side of it, places such as Instagram, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook used to be the equivalents of cities where you could easily run into a network of people dealing with whichever small a niche your current interest or passion used to be. Contrary, networks such as Mastodon, the Fediverse, Diaspora*, most of the IndieWeb feel more like villages: Friendly places, slower, more cozy, maybe even more "human". But also, like these real-world villages, smaller, less heterogenous, less diverse when it comes to a wide range of topics, communities and conversations, interconnected just by old, slow roads through dim outback. Much fewer people. Much fewer topics. Much further to walk to meet someone to discuss your particular interest with. Hardly likely to run into that person randomly once in a while... Following WhatsApp, Facebook, X and Threads, parting ways with Instagram was my last connection to this proprietary, walled-garden world, and it felt to be the most difficult decision both because this communication all along with images used to be my primary means of exchange and participation in the global flow for too long and because there used to be just a bunch of interesting contacts that are essentially lost now, because of me consciously moving to outside the wall. This is a decision that feels right in most ways because of escaping those who own the world inside the walls, the power and worldview they stand for, the things they do every other year. But at the same time, it's about explicitely withdrawing from communities of (former) relevance. It's about withdrawing from human interactions, making oneself more difficult to reach also for people who might want to do that but have no clue how or where, lacking time and other resources to be spent on that. And that's what makes it more challenging on an emotional level. That's what makes it feel like a selfish decision, a decision done from a privileged perspective of actually being able to do it and knowing why to do it - and this way forcing others into a situation that is either about losing contact or needing them to adapt to me and my needs and move on along, too. That feels profoundly bad. This is what I hate having to do, this is what I hope people don't have to go for all too often - making what feels like an ethical decision even with it being a decision against contacts and community. And I still hope for a more ethical, more human network to be here one day, inviting everyone to join, barreer as low as possible, while at the same time preventing the same situation, or situations just as bad and difficult to handle, from happening again. We're definitely not there yet. (My pixelfed got lost earlier in 2025, after only seven years of being there and without even a chance of backing up my data. That's even worse, arguably.)