Watching your team score a winning goal in the last minute of a match is great. But try leaving Facebook, Instagram, X, Whatsapp, and Amazon all in one day. That's what I did recently. That feels really good.
Actually, I became inactive on most of these platforms a while ago and switched over to Mastodon (an alternative to X and Facebook) and Pixelfed (an alternative to Instagram). I put a note on my old big tech accounts saying I'd left, indicating why, and giving people redirects to myself on the alternatives I'd moved to.
But after these big corporations' capitulation to Trump and the increasingly open fascism of X and others I decided to delete or deactivate my accounts completely. On Facebook and Instagram I posted again why and where I had gone before doing so. I said I was sad to lose these links with friends and family and urged them to join me at the alternatives. So far, a few out of hundreds have done so.
I thought the most difficult to leave would be WhatsApp. For a while, I had intended to leave but was put off by the prospect of losing the active family and friends groups I belonged to. In the end, I just couldn't stomach it anymore and decided to go despite this. I tentatively, and not very hopefully, asked members of my groups if they would consider joining Signal and reconstituting the groups there. Within hours they'd all joined Signal (an independent, non-profit, privacy-based alternative to WhatsApp) and moved the groups!
The Evils of Big Tech
So why should you leave these big tech platforms? Well, mass surveillance and support for fascism, for a start. Let's break it down a bit.
Here is what Meta, who own Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp get up to: genocide instigation; large scale detailed surveillance, privacy invasion and selling of our personal data; nonconsensual behaviour modification experiments; censorship of alternative views; facilitation of far right fascists and their hate speech - in fact active promotion of these; disinformation; enabling of human trafficking; collusion with dictators; facilitation of teen and child abuse, transphobia and homophobia; abuse of employees; facilitation of crime; ecological destruction; and attempts at monopolisation or oligopoly. If you think I've lost it and am exaggerating wildly see the well documented charting of these things:
How about Google (Alphabet)? I've also stopped using quite a few of their products. Tax avoidance and evasion; manipulation of search results and censorship; mass detailed surveillance of our activity and violations of privacy; collaboration with state spying; ecological destruction; attempts at monopolisation or oligopoly; misinformation and propaganda; and abuse of employees. If you don't believe me look here.
And X? Misinformation; facilitation and even active promotion of fascism, fascists, and hate speech; transphobia; and censorship of tech alternatives and critics.
When we stay on these, we're staying on platforms that promote fascism, mass privacy violations, misinformation and censorship, and more. Individually leaving them is unlikely to have an impact alone, but collectively it can. Impact aside, how is it morally right to be involved in platforms that do all these things?
Alternatives: the Fediverse
There are alternatives which are collectively called the 'Fediverse' and include Mastodon and Pixelfed. Take Mastodon as an example; this is not one thing but a collection of many servers (or 'instances'), where you join one and the servers all connect with each other (the one I belong to is a co-op, where all the members have a vote in decisions). You can communicate with and follow people on any of the servers (apart from some that get blocked by others for breaking ethical standards, for instance on racism or fascism). Hence it's a decentralised federated network - a Fediverse. Mastodon (like Pixelfed and other parts of the Fediverse) is non-capitalist and non-profit, run for the people who use it, rather than for money for a corporation. Mastodon is operated mostly by volunteers. There's no algorithm where a corporation determines what posts you see. You just see posts by people or themes (the latter in the form of hashtags) that you decide to follow. There's no tracking of you or acquiring of your personal data and so no personalised targeted ads - in fact no ads at all. There are no targeted posts, videos, or reels aimed at dragging you in and engrossing you. It's funded by donations (eg from users), not venture capital. Because it's a network of many interacting servers, not one single entity, it can't be taken over by a big capitalist corporation. It remains independent. All this applies also to Pixelfed.
Many people see platforms like X as more about announcements and adversarialism compared to Mastodon which feels more like it is about conversations and community, sharing more than shouting. Of course, these entities are determined by the people who make them up, so these distinctions are not hard and fast. It goes without saying that it doesn't always go well on Mastodon. But this is how it mostly feels to many (like me) who have moved from X to Mastodon.
Why Stay with Big Tech?
So why don't people leave the evil big tech companies and platforms like Facebook, Instagram, X, etc?
I can understand those who have personal needs and stay because their networks are there and they are necessary for them. And I can understand organised anti-fascism staying on platforms to fight the fascism there.
But in the case of individuals who say they must stay otherwise they'd be leaving it to the fascists; how many anti-fascist individuals have fascist followers who they may influence? Whoever won an argument with a fascist on social media?
For self-promotion, social interaction, work interactions, how can it be justified to stay on such platforms when you can leave and move to alternatives that don't practice the evils listed above? You can keep up with your friends and networks in other ways and get some over to the alternatives. And on those alternatives you can find new friends and networks.
The way I gradually extricated myself was staying on the big tech places passively for a long time while I built my participation in alternatives. I didn't plan to do it this way. But this is how it unfolded. For a more planned approach Michael Seemann discusses how to move a community over to an alternative platform. He focuses on 'repotting' your networks from X to alternatives but his suggestions could apply to other platforms.
Why do Leftists Choose the Capitalist Alternative over the Left One?
Alternatives to X and Facebook include Mastodon, the non-capitalist, decentralised, federated alternative I've mentioned and BlueSky, a corporate capitalist option. After exploring ways to go beyond X, you'd expect critical and left people to choose Mastodon rather then BlueSky. Aidan Raymond gives succinct reasons why and I've outlined above the more ethical principles on which Mastodon operates.
But, exasperatingly to me, many who are against corporate capitalism switch to another corporate capitalist alternative like BlueSky rather than non-capitalist, decentralised, federated alternatives like Mastodon and Pixelfed that more closely match their values. (Some join both BlueSky and Mastodon which is a different thing altogether).
This is the same as with other areas, for instance finance where many on the left use banks with very dubious investments when there are easy ethical alternatives available. If you want a better society the key thing is politically organising for that, not your lifestyle choices. But if you think some institutions are morally bad why would you use them when you don't have to? And the alternatives are experiments in how an alternative society can work.
Why do opponents of corporate capitalism and supporters of non-capitalist, decentralised, federation choose to join capitalist corporate social media and reject non-capitalist, decentralised, federated alternatives? It would be understandable if BlueSky was more in line with their values but it isn't. Many such people agree with non-capitalist, decentralised, federation yet reject it in the form of Mastodon. They are against centralised corporate capitalism but choose to go there instead, in the form of BlueSky.
Some left people may just not think about what sort of thing BlueSky is, and how it's funded, just dive into it because they like a slicker (capitalist) social media over the Fediverse. This contradicts their espousal of critical analysis and their left politics. But maybe it's all just smoother and easier for them.
There are left academic people who argue for decentralised federation as a way of organising society but when they encounter it with Mastodon say it's all too complicated and difficult. But decentralised federation is complicated and difficult, that's in the nature of it (although I think the complications of Mastodon are not that bad). These leftists should know that better than others. There is a disjuncture between their beliefs about desirable social organisation and their unwillingness to participate in it in practice. I know Mastodon has problems, but so does anything, and its developers and maintainers, often part-time volunteers, do gradually work through them as best as they can.
Sometimes left shunners of the Fediverse are ones who aren't active in political organising. They may go on demos and picket lines, but not having been involved in the nitty gritty of organising and activism they're out of touch with how conflictual and difficult this is. They blame the complications and difficulties on the platform (like Mastodon), rather than being aware it's part of the cut and thrust and messiness of getting your hands dirty and working in and for alternatives generally.
For some there's a perceived high entry bar, for, instance in choosing an instance (the specific server or group on Mastodon that you join). But Mastodon have responded to this by suggesting people join the main instance mastodon.social and then move later if they find another server they prefer. I found, for me at least, that Facebook and Twitter had a steep learning curve when I joined, not just in the technical functional aspects of using them, but also the culture and etiquette, and finding out in what kind of mode I felt comfortable participating or not. It's easy to forget that these sorts of things are a common issue on entry to platforms.
Or there are misconceptions about problematic instances. Mastodon isn't one thing but a collection of parts. That's in the nature of decentralised federation. So there will be instances that are less appealing than others. That's what happens when you decentralise. Problematic ones are usually blocked (or 'defederated') by the others. Maybe some misunderstand the Fediverse and how it works, but if you're a believer in decentralised federation this really shouldn't be a big challenge to comprehend.
Some report hostility on Mastodon, eg from the old guard to newbies. There are some patronising, superior types on Mastodon, usually men. This is partly because of a high proportion of techy people on there who like to lecture about this (I hope I haven't become one of them) and also because the Fediverse has higher ethical standards and so attracts people who can be clumsily moralistic (I hope I haven't become one of them - there are many who handle the ethics well). But, aside from that, I just feel this will happen. The Fediverse is populated by people; and people sometimes behave badly. I saw much more awful stuff on X. Of course, this is not a reason for not tackling the problems on Mastodon, which are real and many do try to.
There's racism on Mastodon. It's totally understandable if People of Colour decide to leave because of this. But there is also a high and wide commitment to anti-racism, and racism is found all through society. It's something to be tackled.
Do people not join Mastodon because the content isn't of interest? I initially joined years ago before the great Twitter migration of 2022 when I went back again. There wasn't a lot going on the first time I was there and I left. But now if you're left-wing and interested in politics it's an amazing place to be. Of course, it may take time to find the right people and themes (hashtags) to follow. But if you're interested in society and politics and the world we live in, and concerned about it, you'll find fascinating discussion.
One person commenting about this issue in reply to a post of mine said he was interested in sport but didn't get much reaction to his posts on this topic on Mastodon. So, in some areas there may well be not enough on their topic for some people. That's understandable. But this will probably grow as numbers grow.
Are leftists reluctant to join because of a lower critical mass of people? There is a lower mass than on BlueSky. But Mastodon is still very substantial and full of fascinating members with fascinating thoughts. Some may find that their friends or colleagues are not on Mastodon or not active there. I've found this, but it can change if you bring those friends and colleagues with you (see Seemann's article mentioned above). For me, this absence (partial not full) has, in part, been compensated for by many new amazing and interesting people I've discovered. And the lack of personal contacts is also partly compensated for by the distinctive and valuable politics of the organisation of Mastodon, and this surely makes it worth it. You can also keep up personal contacts outside alternative social media. When I said I was leaving Facebook there were phone number exchanges and promises to keep in touch.
This isn't the first time I've felt a contradiction between what leftists say in theory and what they do in practice. I saw someone on Mastodon recently frustrated by a left organisation who had sent him an email about their activities. At the bottom were their social media links. They were to X, Facebook, and Instagram. His response in his post about it: 'Come on, try harder'.
Back to the Alternatives
Maybe I shouldn't talk. I was a participant on these platforms a while back. And I can't count how many times each day I fail to live up to my ethical principles.
But, what are alternatives to Meta and Google? Here are just some personal suggestions (modified from those in another post of mine a while back). Others will have their own recommendations.
Alternatives to Meta, ie Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, and to X:
Mastodon is an alternative to X and Facebook.
Pixelfed is an alternative to Instagram. Like Mastodon it's a non-profit, decentralised, federated network, in this case based on the uploading and viewing of pictures.
Signal is an alternative to WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. An independent non-profit with high standards of privacy.
Alternatives to Google:
There are alternative search engines that don't log your searches: eg Startpage and DuckDuckgo, and many others.
I've posted before about ethical email alternatives to Google's gmail which so many use. I've found Runbox and Disroot are great alternatives but there are others discussed in my posts on this.
Notesnook or Joplin are alternatives to Google's Keep Notes. Standard Notes are sometimes recommended as an alternative, but they've been acquired by Proton who have endorsed Donald Trump's policies. Strangely, Proton's ownership of Standard Notes is not made very prominent by either company. As with other alternatives, things like Joplin can appear daunting at first, but if you look closely they're more simple than they seem initially. As with most others on this list, these are privacy-oriented apps.
F-droid is an alternative or supplement app store to Google Play. It's focused on free and open source software.
Newpipe is an alternative and more privacy-based way into Google's YouTube, or there's Peertube, an alternative.
Most email providers have alternatives to Google Calendar.
Filen or Mega provide privacy-focused cloud backups; alternatives to Google Drive.
OpenStreetMap is an alternative to Google Maps. You can access it via apps like Organic Maps or Magic Earth. These don't keep data about you and have come on in leaps and bounds in recent times. They do many things that Google Maps doesn't.
Ente is an alternative to Google Photos.
If you want to break away more thoroughly you can switch from Android entirely to an alternative operating system like Calyx.
Beyond Social Media Altogether:
Some people are averse to social media altogether and prefer blogging as a means of online writing and communicating. There are some good platforms you can use for blogging. One is Mataroa (that this post is on and has a good philosophy and set of values), Bear, that Mataroa is based on, or Write.as - these are alternative blogging platforms to the big corporate ones like Wordpress and fascist-supporting Substack.
Brandon has written a useful post on blog platforms for beginners. There are some blogrolls where you can find interesting bloggers to follow.
Some other Internet Alternatives that Resist Surveillance:
VPNs protect your privacy when browsing. IVPN is good (combined with Hagezi's tracking blocklist which you can easily add from within IVPN) and Mullvad is another (where you can also additionally block tracking by big tech). These reroute your internet use from your ISP who can record and retain a record of all the sites you visit. Your internet use goes instead through the VPN servers where it's not logged.
Web browsers: Firefox with the uBlock Origin extension added or the Mullvad browser block surveillance of your activity on the web by big tech companies.
Some guides to alternatives to Meta, X, and Google:
Switching software, ethical, privacy-based alternatives.
Privacy Guides, focused on privacy alternatives.
Ethical Net, I don't agree with all the recommendations here but it's generally useful.
The Privacy Dad, on privacy-based alternatives.
Feditips, a guide to using Mastodon and the wider Fediverse like Pixelfed etc.
Related post: Alternative Email