Cleanse

Day Ten: Leave Social Media

A cloud of social media icons
Get these systems out of your life--for good! (Credit: PNGall.com)

Table of Contents

A social, not just technical, toolkit

There are a lot of posts out the on the internet that will teach you how to disable, delete, or otherwise blow away a social media account you don't want to use anymore.  But I'm not here to give you the blow by blow technical tools-- I'm giving you the sociotechnical tools.

Because these systems have hijacked our friendships, our social relationships, our professional networks. And they've hijacked our attention and addictive centers of our brains. Without a plan you risk going into a spiral or going back.

As if that weren't enough, these systems have learned off of what we've done on them and will continue to learn from and exploit your data after you're gone. We have to clean up after yourself before you leave.

All that is to say that getting off social media isn't just "delete and you're done." You need to extracate yourself effectively and take what you can with you. Just like when we left Google, we thought about how to reclaim your data and your relationships, and cover the functions of its various services with other tools, we need to do something similar here as well.

Why Leave? Why Now?

Any number of pundits will tell you why you should get off social media. Surely you have your own concerns by now but if not let me spell it out a few compelling reasons for you:

  1. The entire purpose of their websites is to keep you distracted while they steal your data and sell access to your eyeballs to advertisers.
  2. Their algorithms are designed to increase "engagement" --i.e. time on site, more clicks, more eyeballs, more likes. To do this they have hacked human psychology to produce outrage-enhanging additiction machines. 
  3. They can't moderate, they're flooded with misinformation, and because of preferential algorithms you only live in a political and social bubble, increasing the gaps and divides between us.
  4. You feel connected to your friends but you only hang out together in someone else's living room, who records everything you say.
  5. They're really, really bad for your mental health. 
  6. They're increasingly run by tech titans who control what can and cannot be said and allow the vilest stuff possible hold sway--and the more time you spend scrolling through this putrid pile the richer they become.

I could go on but I'm cutting into valuable time you could spend leaving these truly toxic sites. So let's get started.

Plan Overview

This is a Six Step plan. Today we cover steps 1-3. Tomorrow we cover 4-6.

Step one is, you will look at your Data Roadmap and identify which systems you can give the boot to. Which are you absolutely ready to pull the plug? Those systems we will erase all your user data and delete entirely. If you feel it's too risky to delete entirely for some reason (someone may impersonate you online, for instance), you will "squat" on your username, but your account and history will be empty.

Also part of step one: are there crucial parts of your life you need to use one social media system for? If so, you can Render to Caesar and keep a system active, but you will only show that system that one part of your life. You don't need to give them your whole social graph. If you like Instagram influencers, keep them, but only them. Whittle it down to just the stuff you most enjoy or really need. Bonus points if this is just one thing. 

Whittling and deleting, though, require you to go through and find what you need to take with you before you torch the rest. And here is an important distinction. After all, you may think, I need to be on Facebook because it's the only place that Roger is on and we are such good friends and I love seeing pictures he posts of his birdwatching adventures!

That is not a reason to stay on Facebook. You can still be friends with Roger without Facebook (and Betty, and Aaliya, and Indira, and Marco, and...). You can subscribe to his photos as an RSS feed. You can write him letters, emails, send him a Signal message. You can transfer that entire relationship off the platform.

That's step two, and is a big part of what we will do in these next few days. Identifying what you want to take with you means identifying what is keeping you on the site, and imagining how you can replicate that elsewhere, or if you can transfer those relationships and social ties to another locale.

Then comes step three: delete with impunity, because you've already transitioned those relationships off their toxic infrastructure. As we go throgh and delete you will identify anyone whose contact information in some way you want to take with you. And now that you have contacts and Signal set up, that's easy to do. (Bonus points for moving to a new system with some friends too.)

These are the first three steps we'll tackle today. We'll take on the next steps (and more of the deleting) tomorrow.

Step One: Make Your Plan

Go back to your Data Roadmap. Which social media systems do you use -- and what do you use them for, primarily? Remember how we talked about Render to Caesar, Balkanization, or total departure?  So, What did you decide? Keep TikTok, delete Facebook? Remove Twitter, keep Instagram but just for influencers?

There may be parts of your life that you need to use social media for: you coordinate rescues at an animal shelter that has a Facebook page, you are a freelancer and need LinkedIn for your next gig, you're on Twitter because -- no scratch that, no one needs to be on Twitter anymore. I don't care how many followers you have.

We covered these possible choices last week on Day Three. With social media you get only two choices: LOSE the account entirely (preferred), Render To Caesar (and I mean hardcore, like, keep it for one thing only). For every other aspect of social media you will MIGRATE those relationships onto one of your secure accounts, or somewhere that you have sovereignty and control over your data, your relationships, and your interactions.

For now, your data roadmap is your guide. Make a clear list of which systems you're on, what you use them for, how you're going to transition those activities, and if there are any where you'll Render to Caesar and if so, what for.

For instance, when I got off Facebook in 2015, I decided to delete that account but I realized I had a lot of professional colleagues there, including people at NASA I work with and study. I needed a way to stay in the loop. I decided to keep Twitter active but only for NASA contacts. I deleted all my friends and my account on Facebook; then I whittled Twitter accounts down to just my NASA folks.

Make this extremely small. By whittle I mean, get really, really selective. Just for one thing, maximum two. If there's only one thing that Instagram gets to know know about you, what is it?

Step Two: Removing Ties and Identifying Keepers

Log into the first social media account of your choice. Navigate to your friends list. You will now systematically delete your "friends." 

I say this in quotes because you aren't losing any friendships here. You are only deleting connecting ties in the platform that link your data to theirs and tighten the filter bubble ever more closely around you. And don't worry, they won't be upset (they'll be proud and maybe even follow your lead).

So let's rephrase that. You will systematically remove your social "ties" from the platform's grip. By systematically I mean you will do the following, and rapidly:

  1. Ask yourself, do I still need this tie at all? If no, (hey that's my sister's neighbor's aunt's cousin I met at a party once time sixteen years ago and haven't spoken to since) then DELETE. In my experience you should go through in bulk relatively quickly -- don't think too much about it. Select all and do a quick skim to see who you don't really want to leave, unselect those ones, then Delete and move on to the next page of ties.
  2. If you truly need the tie or are still invested in the relationship in some way, then ask yourself: how can I best own this tie and take it off the platform? Click on their profile and copy down all the info you think you'll need: birthday, phone number, email, whatever. Put this into your new Contacts list that you are now hosting elsewhere. Send them a nice message saying you're getting off this system but you hope to stay in touch. Then delete and don't look back.
  3. Ask yourself: is this tie or relationship on your Render to Caesar list? Probably not: that list, if it exists, should be very, very limited. Like, just your birdwatching crew. But if so, and you're keeping the site active for just this set of ties, make sure that's all that's left in your friends list.

This sounds like a lot but you can actually do this in an evening or two. Open up your friends list, select all, skim it, unselect people who stand out, then delete. Then go into the ones who stand out, take the information you need with you, then delete.

I had thousands of friends when I left the Zuckerverse, as I'd been on the system for ten years. I deleted it all and I have only ever been happier since.

Step Three: Delete or Freeze the Account

Before you do anything else, remove the app from your phone. It's the biggest gateway to these systems and a constant reminder, with notifications etc. Get rid of it.

You have a few options for actually deleting your account, but before you blow the account away or sit on it for years and let it lie fallow, you need to take your data with you.

These systems will make deleting your account hard for you. They may lay the guilt on. They will trip you up with dark patterns. They'll try their best to entice you to come back --"Aunt Wilma will miss you!" and so on. It's dirty. You need to ignore that and stay strong. We all have your back.

They will also make it take forever to get your data. They don't want you to walk away with it, it's valuable to them! They'll make you wait for a downloadable archive. They'll make you agree to a 14-day waiting period before you can delete. Etc etc etc.

All this means you will not get to delete your account TODAY. Don't be disappointed. This is a process. You are starting the process and in the interim you will wean yourself off and away from these toxic sites, so you don't need to look at them. Plus by Day 21 of the cleanse you should be out of the system for long enough to delete.

Most systems have a way to download your data from the site. But note that this will take time to extract. Sometimes they make you wait two weeks or so to get your data back from them. Then you have to log back in and download your data.  Yep, it's meant to mess with your head.

Regardless, follow these instructions and get the archive process going. You will log back in later in these coming two weeks to download and save the files on your external drive:

While they're building the archive, see how much of your own data you can delete from the site. Your own traces, likes, clicks, photos, comments, etc. This takes a long time and it's tedious but if you can do it you will have tremendous peace of mind.

When I left Twitter, I got online every evening for a week and systematically unliked every post, deleted every comment. It took me a week to do it and it sucked. But I wasn't going to leave my stuff behind at Elon's place for him to do whatever he wants with it (hot tip: it's, build AI).

Also it's kind of a cathartic way to say goodbye to a system. I found some tweets I liked, I screencapped or saved things, and it was far more productive than doom scrolling.

Anyway your mileage may vary here but if you can clear the place before you leave, all the better.

If you are deleting your account, wait until you have your data cleared and as much downloaded as you can. You'll then follow these instructions to delete your account (I'll repost these on Day 21):

If you're not deleting your account but letting it lie fallow or Rendering to Caesar, consider the following options:

  • Change your login email address to a mask.
  • Change your password to a random autofilled string of alphanumeric characters, save it somewhere hard to get to, and make it really obnoxious for yourself to log in.
  • Deactivate the account. Some places will just store your data and let you log back in when you're ready.

Steps Four through Six

Just do one system today. We will repeat this process tomorrow for another social system of your choice. Soon you'll have it under your belt and with your roadmap as a guide, you'll have a to-do list laid out in front of you.

Tomorrow we will also add to the list of three steps with more to disentangle the social parts of your life from Social Media -- or, what we should properly call Anti-Social Media. 

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