Why I’m Not Coming Back to Instagram

I grabbed my phone, something I had learned not to do habitually, and opened Instagram to post about the latest episode of my podcast. But of course, the app opened on my feed, and despite knowing how it's designed to grab my attention and keep me there, and how to avoid it, it did exactly what it was meant to do. It grabbed my attention, and before posting anything I swiped my finger across the screen, this time habitually, to scroll through the timeline. After a two-month break, two months of Instagram not being a thing in my life, I couldn't believe how bad the experience was. In one word: slop. A bombardment of images and videos I wasn't even sure were real, most with shouty text overlays. As I scrolled, it all became one mangled stream of optical noise. I guess that after two months my brain had unlearned how to distinguish separate posts in this visual river, and that allowed me to see it for what it is. An infinite brain-numbing feed designed for one thing: to hijack my attention away from anything useful or fun I could be doing, so it can show me ads. Sure enough, what caught my eye instantly in this noisy sludge were the banners: 'get offer', 'learn more' and, of course, 'shop now'. Shortly after, my scrolling was blocked by a pop-up: 'ad break'. That was enough to jolt me out of my stupor. I closed the app and ended up not posting anything. I wanted no part of it, and more importantly, I didn't want to be part of it.

A long time coming

I'm back with my podcast after a holiday break. The podcast's regular schedule resumed, including the newsletter and occasional blogs, but I decided that I'm not coming back to Instagram. This decision was a long time coming and it wasn't easy. I know a good few Instagram followers personally, either as guests on my podcast or as engaged listeners. There were a few good reasons nudging me towards making the decision and this most recent experience was the final straw.

I'm well aware that "I'm leaving _________" is a genre of posts and I've made fun of it before. The reason I decided to write this is to add my voice to a growing chorus trying to make people realise how destructive and dangerous social media addiction is. It also aligns well with the mission of my podcast. I cherish thoughtful conversations, deep thoughts and reasoning about complex environmental problems and issues. This is all that social media is averse to. It destroys people's ability to engage with this type of content.

The app that won't stay closed

But wait, there is more, and it's even worse. One of the things that I observed about the Instagram app is that it just refused to stay closed. As in, not running on the phone. Even if I went to application settings and tapped 'force stop', after 24 hours the app was running in the background again. I observed this behaviour in no other app. So I started to think, why is Meta so adamant that the app just has to keep on running on my phone, even when not in use? And that wasn't because of notifications either. I disabled them a long time ago. It was obvious to me that there were reasons for this and they were likely not benevolent.

Then it all became somewhat clearer in early June last year. Research by IMDEA Networks, Radboud University, KU Leuven revealed that Facebook and Instagram apps were opening hidden local ports and then using Meta's tracking 'pixels' technology to tie your browsing habits from unrelated websites to your Facebook or Instagram profiles. This method defeated incognito modes, VPNs and clearing cookies. Even Google said that this 'blatantly violated' their privacy principles. It is also hard to see how this would be legal under GDPR. Meta pulled this functionality within days of publication. You can read more about it here and here and listen here for a deep technical breakdown.

That wasn't Meta's first rodeo. Almost a decade earlier, Onavo, a VPN service owned by Facebook, was used to snoop on Snapchat users' and later Amazon and YouTube users' interactions. Onavo was advertised by Facebook as a privacy tool that users installed precisely to prevent what the tool was used to do to them. Again, you can read more here. This begs the question, why would you keep software on your phone from a company that has a track record not only of deception and borderline illegal spying on people but also of using the very app we are talking about here for these purposes?

Podcaster first

There is another question. Why am I posting on Instagram? I'm not an Instagram creator. I'm a podcaster first. An environmental commentator. People can't listen to my podcast on Instagram and short video snippets are not going to cut it. I focus on long-form, thoughtful conversations and so trying to condense any thought down to 180 seconds misses the point. Those who follow my podcast are already subscribed to it, on Apple, Spotify, YouTube or wherever they are getting their podcasts. Most are also subscribed to my newsletter. So, why would I waste time on producing and posting additional content to Instagram where it would likely drown in the noise? I know, not only from podcast industry research but, more importantly, from my own analysis, that the conversion is just not there. People in the midst of their scrolling frenzy will not suddenly stop to listen to an hour-long podcast.

All in all, if Instagram is your main way of hearing about new episodes, please also follow the podcast on whichever platform you use to listen to or watch it. However, by far the best way to stay in touch with me and my work is to subscribe to my newsletter. I do much more than the podcast and the newsletter keeps you up to date with all of it, straight to your inbox.

For now, I'm not deleting my Instagram account. It will join the pile of my now mothballed social media profiles alongside TikTok and Twitter.

Oh, and… don't forget to subscribe to my newsletter if you haven't already.