Bye, Insta.

I just finally quit posting to Instagram, this is the text of my last post:

I’ll take the news that Insta’s parent evilcorp Meta has a new AI tool trained on „billions“ of Insta’s images as the final straw (it’s as good as any, really) to not post here anymore.

Sure, rich, white techbros will steal my art to get even richer with their AI bs no matter where I post it on the internet but at least I will not feed it to them „willingly“ anymore.

I did enjoy the conversations we had here from time to time, and it makes me sad thinking not having that anymore (the good olde lock-in network effect that these big platforms are all about) so I’m not taking this step lightly.

But Instagram is so contrary to everything I believe in that I just can’t justify being here to myself anymore. I strongly believe that this world (and I mean the world, not the internet) would be less awful if „social“ media driven by capitalism was less of a dysfunctional hellhole.

And Meta has a big part in it being as disgusting as it is (see Myanmar genocide, Cambridge Analytica, Trump, Brexit, mental health / eating disorders etc.).

Of course there’s no knowing if things were any better with smaller, self-run and -organized social media networks (like the Fediverse) or (encrypted!) state-run ones but the status quo is so obviously harmful (maybe not to you and me personally but to humanity as a whole) that I don’t want to take part in it anymore.

With that said, here’s where you can find me:

Mastodon, my main social network:
mastodon.art/@jfml

My portfolio:
jfml.eu

I’ll be updating my blog more regularly:
blog.jfml.eu

Maybe I’ll try an e-mail newsletter (again?)? Would anybody be interested in that?

If you have questions about Mastodon/Pixelfed/the fediverse I’d be happy to help!