"home" is not a platform: planning for the meta mass exodus
is it ethical to stay? is it possible to leave?
As I type this, I’m on a flight back “home” to Los Angeles, having just visited “home” in Canada, wondering — as I glance at the maple leaf on my passport and the stars speckled on my Visa — why I bother to identify “home” as anything other than the body I walk around in.
Where we live, whether we choose it or not, will never wholly reflect who we are, what we believe, what we want.
The same goes for the platforms we build our brands around, the digital hubs of community we form, the online versions of “home” we stake claim on.
The news cycle has been so chronically horrific this month (which has felt like approximately seven years) it’s wild that just a week ago the internet was abuzz with the TikTok-ban-turned-Trump-saviourism, articles on articles documenting Zuck’s public induction to the MAGAsphere. As the entire American political landscape continues to endlessly freak us all the fuck out, so does it’s impact on social media — especially for the millions of creative entrepreneurs who’s livelihoods are now fuelled and funded by the Broligarchy.
Our participation on these platforms is so enwrapped with our purpose and profit that we’re grappling with either remaining in a space heavily influenced (if not entirely informed) by essentially, evil — or choosing not to participate at all, which will risk our careers as we know them.
Now interwoven with our primary revenue stream is a blatant lack of morality, causing us to question of how many of our own morals we’ll have to sacrifice, for the former.
I find myself wondering what it would feel like to be an employee of TikTok or Meta right now, faced with whether to resign on principle or to keep taking the paycheque. As business owners who make most of our income through Instagram, our choice isn’t so different.
Is it ethical to stay?
Is it possible to leave?
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I. THE DREAM DIED IN PUBLIX
Most of my fondest memories growing up in Canada involve fetishizing the USA.
My biological father was born in the States, and while my own American passport never materialized, the possibility of it kept me in chat rooms ‘til sunrise with strangers living in cities I’d never been to but had to be better than mine, kids who spent their weekends hanging off shopping carts in stores I’d only seen on TV, breezy drives to Dunkin’ Donuts that didn’t require a passport.
In middle school on a family trip to Fort Lauderdale, I saw paradise: summer year-round, star-spangled banners printed on objects I’d probably never need but immediately had to have, streets littered with tattoo shops offering to brand me permanently with heart-shaped stars and stripes. Had it not required parental consent, I would’ve hopped back on the plane with one, no question.
Last night over tea, my childhood best friend and I were giggling about how desperate I’d been to earn enough Neopoints to copy a paintbrush that would make my Neopet look like an American flag.
My greatest accomplishment in my first 15 years of life was finally turning my Shoyru red white and blue.
That triumph would only be outshone by getting to include “based in Los Angeles” in my business bio, decades later.
I’ve since let go of those rose-coloured glasses (left ‘em behind in a Florida Publix, somewhere) and I find myself at odds with the childish obsession I had with building a life here and the adult reality of what it means to do so.
This isn’t so different from the cultural fixation with social media, where we’ve all been striving for accolades that felt SO VERY IMPORTANT before the powers-that-be revealed how much they all fucking suck.
Virality. Followers. Blue Check. Brand Deals.
We put these platforms on a pedestal because of what we thought they could offer us, and now we’re starting to realize we could be standing for something we don’t believe in just by being here, at all.
II. DIVERSIFYING OUR DISILLUSIONMENT
Alongside last week’s short-lived TikTok ban came an uproar of online marketers hawking programs to help people diversify, reminding them to make sure their online eggs are in a few extra baskets, ads from experts to the tune of don’t you wish you had an email list right now?!?!?!
We also witnessed declarations of walking away from the Meta platforms all-together, or articles encouraging us to leave TikTok behind, despite it’s back-ness.
Clients have been asking me if they should give up on Instagram, trade Threads for Bluesky, pursue YouTube and Substack with more fervor, shift their focus, learn new skills.
My answer, always, is to do what feels right — and if they’re ready to GTFO now because they can’t stomach the direction it’s headed, I’ll support them in seeking safer and saner pastures, wherever that may be.
Here’s where I’ve landed, personally:
I don’t disagree with diversification, but I don’t think it’s time for a mass exodus, either.
Focusing all our efforts in the platforms that we know align with our values (which, like, may not even exist) doesn’t solve the problem, it just creates a parallel universe that lets us not look at it, so much.
I’m still in a place where I think I can make more change if I’m looking at it.
This Thread summed it up well:
I live by a rule not to panic (or over-plan, which is usually a sign that I’m actively panicking) until I have hard evidence. While we can speculate on the way these platforms might feel in a few months, the only evidence we have is what they feel like, today.
As long as we have the bandwidth to be there, and we’re seeing and connecting with likeminded people when we do, I’m not keen to suggest we voluntarily erase our voices in a space where — if it does go the direction people fear it will — they’re going to matter most.
I’m calling for mass disillusionment, instead.
From here on out, we have to weigh the cost of our participation against our quality of life, our mental health, our joy, every single time that we arrive to the online arena.
We have to pay attention to how our platforms are making us feel — how they’re making our communities feel — and examine our individual threshold within which it still feels worth it. (Your threshold may come tomorrow. Maybe it already has.)
We have to stay in relationship with the truth that our participation in these platforms, whether we put a dime into them or not, is filling the pockets of the people in charge.
We have to know that, even if we migrate to places that make us feel more safe and sane, we are still placing our power in the platform’s hands, and that will always mean the potential of putting it in the hands of the highest bidder.
We have to accept how political social media on the whole has become, and how implicated every single one of us is, in that.
We have to start creating community in more rooms but we have to carry the same awareness with us into all of them.
III. LEAVE BEFORE THE PARTY’S OVER
I’m trying really hard not to react prematurely to what these spaces could become, while also making sure there are a myriad of other places I’m growing and nurturing my community if they do become that.
Preparing an exit strategy, hoping not to have to use it, ready if I have to.
If it stops feeling fun, I’ll get the fuck out.
I recommend you do the same.
𐄂𐄂
IMAGE LINKS:
Yes No
Ceiling
Martini
Cherries
Shoes
Art Secret
Deal With
Attention
Chaos
Give a Fuck
ICYMI:
“We have to pay attention to how our platforms are making us feel — how they’re making our communities feel — and examine our individual threshold within which it still feels worth it. (Your threshold may come tomorrow. Maybe it already has.)” had me saying YES YES YES! For a long time I have wanted to leave Facebook as much as it provides community referrals but I find it just a place to bicker, complain, argue and direct conversation one way!
My conundrum - I reached my threshold a while ago but how do I leave! I’m ready to find my community outside of this…
THISS!!!! I was thinking to myself yesterday "I do not want to live in FEAR of leaving a social media platform". They have scared us into thinking our success will die if we leave. But baby. there are other ways to fly. xx