The apps that Americans search to “delete” the most
vpnoverview.com
vpnoverview.com
Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality (similar to colors not existing in reality).
Having access to a extra mirrors at first creates a sense of control. You know your mom and dad won't give you a "non-distorted" reflection so the reflection from strangers is worth more. Colleagues or friends saying "you're smart!" means a lot more from them.
When each mirror is carefully placed, the "whole" of we we are and would like to be can be understood more deeply just like 7 blind men working together understand the elephant more deeply.
However when the mirrors are mass produced and cheap and you have no control over their place in your life, then the identity becomes overwhelmed by expectation. Just like super high resolution makes your pores look larger, the mirror array makes every aspect of your life feel like shit even if from a rational analysis "extra information should never be a danger"
Wow. I have problems with Instragram, but I've never tried to sum it up into a single statement and while this is rather specific and may not include all the problems I _feel_ are there, it really does bring home the main issue, for me. A little snark in there about democratizing, as some people will always put a positive spin on such things, which I feel is totally appropriate here.
Just... The comment could have stopped right there and been as or more impactful (for me). Thanks. :)
Let's try this:
"Instagram makes pandemic the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous."
I remember that for a few months before my partner broke up with me, their IG feed was full of reels, posts, 'comedy', 'psychology tips', about people complaining about their partners. And also lots of Insta influencers posts giving relationship tips or encouraging people to break up for diverse reasons.
While I'm aware my relationship wasn't perfect, the standards promoted by those aesthetic Insta influencers were really impossible to obtain in real life. Unless of course your life consisted only of perfectly curated Insta moments.
My $0.02: We are taught not to aim for perfection at work[0], that should apply to relationships too.
[0] https://hbr.org/tip/2020/02/dont-let-perfect-be-the-enemy-of...
>It is also known as the marriage problem, the sultan's dowry problem, the fussy suitor problem, the googol game, and the best choice problem.
The internet and the options it gives, I believes leads people to think they have far more relationship options then they actually have, and the options they think they have are not as good as they believe. A lot of people put a lot of work in selling a perfect image online, but those rarely hold up in reality for any amount of time.
Of course this doesn't mean we should stay in bad relationships either. Our society doesn't really teach us how to have good relationships, especially in a capitalistic fashion (hey, just spend more money and everything will be ok), and quite a lot of us had really poor examples from our parents generation on how to treat other people.
I've learned more recently that healthy relationships aren't empirically so. Instead, there's "signs" of a healthy relationship; determining the health of your relationship must be a two way conversation. It requires assessment, honesty, and participation by both parties as a qualifier as well as the ability to listen without your ego involved. That's not to say all of those aren't challenging things to do in their own right just to say that the health of a relationship will be explored differently by different sets of people.
"manifest what you want from the world" and "think positive thoughts and everything will be ok"
Is actually kind of true when you think about all the algorithms that run social media. If you only ever search for cats and scroll past anything political, the algorithms will learn what you like and feed you more cats.
So, if you're searching up relationship advice, and spending time on those things, that's what you get back from 'the borg'.
You do have control over what social media shows you, it's just that you need to work against your basest desires in order to get there.
But here we are with google, facebrick et al saying "come on, just try a little culture war" because its lucrative for them, no matter how many times you say no thank you.
It's really sick but yeah, obviously lucrative and Larry, Seregey & Mark clearly need the money.
Otherwise, fully and wholeheartedly agree that it's now a global issue and is indeed real. Welcome to the "global community" we were always told was going to be such an advancement for society.
In the 4 months I dabbled with Instagram, I was shocked by how toxic and outright false the pop psychology memes were. They were stereotypical, frequently backwards, and deliberately misapplied. And all of that is before the cluster-B LARPing.
"Your partner won't give you access to their financial accounts? That's domestic violence, and he probably has Narcissistic Personality Disorder too! What's his is yours, so just use his credit card to book plane tickets without asking and remember that him yelling at you about it is verbal abuse, so get out while you still can before he starts beating you! And remember abuse thrives in secrecy-- so make sure you tell everybody how he was so aggressive that you were in constant fear for your life!"
Sorry you were on the receiving end of [whatever your case is]. Not even the strongest of relationships can withstand reinforcement of sentiments as corrosive as Instagram, where you're a useless piece of shit if you can't/won't support your partner's ambitions of joining the jet set.
You lost your partner to a cult. They're called "followers" for a reason. It starts with separating victims from their loved ones...
Yeah, I would have trusted my current-wife then-girlfriend with my phone passcode pretty early on, no big deal. She didn't feel the need to know it, but casually telling it to her so she could do something with it is probably a thing that happened.
But it started to veer completely weird after that, about abandoning all his friends and stuff. It turned into a giant WTF for me.
Yeah, this is exactly what I'm talking about. It's long-game triangulation, which is little more than domestic violence perpetrated by the other partner. But men are supposed to feel ashamed of themselves if they're not willing to just blindly go along with it.
The irony is, they call this sort of victim the "ideal" guy, while simultaneously deriding him as a "simp" to the rest of their cliques. It's loathesome. I pity anybody involved in the dating game these days.
No.
Domestic violence is domestic violence.
“Long game triangulation” is manipulative behaviour. It is not domestic violence.
Domestic violence is having your mother beat your skull with one of those maglite baton torches the police use.
Saying things that aren’t violence are violence is exactly the kind of awful behaviour others in this thread are complaining about.
If we have a verbal confrontation one of us has hurt feelings. If it turns violent, there is actual violence. Words have meanings.
You can care about other types of abuse. You should care about other types of abuse.
But claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.
This is massively wrong at best and evil at worst.
Yes. Here's the meaning of "domestic violence" according to some authoritative sources:
- - -
https://www.un.org/en/coronavirus/what-is-domestic-abuse
> Domestic abuse, also called "domestic violence" [...]. Abuse is physical, sexual, emotional, economic or psychological actions or threats of actions that influence another person.
- - -
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-ag...
> Intimate partner violence refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours
- - -
https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence
> Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship
- - -
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence
> It can assume multiple forms, including physical, verbal, emotional, economic, religious, reproductive, or sexual abuse.
Meanwhile, here the Oxford English Dictionary:
violence, n.
1. a. The exercise of physical force so as to inflict injury on, or cause damage to, persons or property; action or conduct characterized by this; treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.
(separately: Wikipedia is not a source at all, let alone an authoritative one)
Again, since you didn't address this: claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence.
> treatment or usage tending to cause bodily injury or forcibly interfering with personal freedom.
Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.
Forcibly. If there's no force there's no violence.
Psychologically abusing someone does not involve the use of force.
> Domestic violence comprises more than just battery by someone who happens to be a family member.
Agreed, thankfully nobody defined in the conversation defined domestic violence this way.
Again: domestic violence most include violence, i.e. the use of force.
Why are people trying to hard to redefine words?
I get where you're coming from but enough men figured out that when wife-beating became illegal, they could continue to torment their wives and exes through passive-aggressive, explicitly nonviolent acts enough that the laws were expanded and the definition changed.
The redefinition happened at least 20 years ago and has since propagated across multiple disciplines (law enforcement and psychology inclusive). Even publishing revenge porn falls under domestic violence statutes now.
Yes, it no longer meets the strictly-literal definition of violence. It is what it is. Rather than arguing it here, consider adapting to the times or taking your grievance to the Department of Justice (https://www.justice.gov/ovw/domestic-violence):
> Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any relationship that is used by one partner to gain or maintain power and control over another intimate partner. Domestic violence can be physical, sexual, emotional, economic, psychological, or technological actions or threats of actions or other patterns of coercive behavior that influence another person within an intimate partner relationship. This includes any behaviors that intimidate, manipulate, humiliate, isolate, frighten, terrorize, coerce, threaten, blame, hurt, injure, or wound someone.
Claiming things that aren’t violent are violent steals resources - not just awareness but potentially money, police time and medical attention from victims of domestic violence
I’m not responsible for all of humanity: you should want a clear definition and separation of violent and non violent abuse so why don’t you handle this yourself rather than asking me?
“get with the times” is ridiculous. vague legislation is bad whether it’s new or old. Likewise a lot of progress has obviously been bad much like other progress has been good.
I’m actually not really interested in your replies any more, since you’re not actually responding.
> “get with the times” is ridiculous
It's not. Language changes all the time for better or worse, and trying to change it back is just not possible. You're wasting your time if you're trying to make your definition the correct one instead of the one that's widely accepted, even if your definition made more sense (I don't have an opinion on that).
Language is a reflection of society, and whether you want it or not, society has decided that physical domestic violence and non-physical domestic violence are the same thing, which we call domestic violence. You can fight words or fight for a cause, your choice.
Why can't you just use the term "domestic abuse" and stop supporting the misuse of well defined words?
Do you think that if you and others use the term "domestic violence" to include non-physical abuse that it just magically changes the existing definition? Why would you even want to support that when there's clearly another term that's both in general use and clearly fits what you're attempting to refer to, by definition?
What is the point here?
What seems to help is when an idolized version of relationship is suddenly broken into pieces and you discover your model was actually completely miserable and whatever you expected became trivial relative to that.
Ironically, the thought never even occurred to me to respond with "Why can't you be more of a <insert stereotypical sought after characterization here>?"
Oh well, we haven't been together for a long time. :)
Point being, it's not just instagram or even social media at large. They've just made the situation worse. This is deep rooted in most of society and isn't going to end any time soon. Just need to find people that are strong enough to not fall victim to this (even if they don't bring it up, like our partners did).
May be true for extroverts, but as an introvert I don't give a cent about what random people think about me (which also explains why I do not use Instagram in the first place).
But you did post about it.
It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the first place?
That seems rather reductive given the topic here.
I don't own an EV auto, or any auto for that matter. By your logic, I shouldn't engage in discussions about EV vs. ICE or anything to do with transportation. Is that correct?
A fair point. However, that's not what GGP[1] said. They said:
> Who people think we are is who we are
May be true for extroverts, but as an introvert I don't give a cent about
what random people think about me (which also explains why I do not use
Instagram in the first place).
However there is a certain kind of dissonance between deciding to publicly
state "I don't care what you think" that sort of implies that they do care
actually.
It seems to me that people who truly do not care would just not engage in the
first place?
It seems reasonable to comment on the perceived "quest for likes" in a discussion about such things, even if you don't use those platforms and/or don't care what others think.
I don't agree with GGP's point about being an introvert, as I'm an extrovert and I don't give a rat's ass about such things either. Nor do I use Instagram or other (mainstream) social media.
Despite my (potentially) poor analogy, GP seems to be implying that if you state that you don't care about something, then you actually do care. Which, as I said, seems pretty reductive. And is also a poor use of logic.
Please feel free to disagree and/or down-vote me, as I (at least as far as this, and most topics goes) don't really care what others think.
Rather, I'm interested in discussion that sparks interesting exchanges. GP's shallow dismissal of GGP doesn't do that. In fact, it may well stifle discussion. And more's the pity.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35074290
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35072080
Edit: fixed formatting and prose. Clarified my response.
Like, I don't care if you think my clothes are shit, and I don't keep up with the latest javascript flavor of the day. At the same time I don't want, at least the general public around me, thinking I'm some creepy hermit murderer so they don't rise up with torches and pitchforks either.
Edit: I find that most people who scream “I don’t care what you think” generally mean “I’m not influenced by what you think”. Which is an important difference, and helps explain getting red in the face about someone else’s opinion about which one don’t care.
Notice how the top level example didn't start with randos, but family members and close associates.
There are many introverts who manage their social time specifically because they care about the impressions they make on others and find it effortful to manage them; and many extroverts who do the opposite specifically because they don’t think at all about such impressions.
I strongly disagree, and don't think your example supports your conclusions.
Colors are arbitrary and subjective constructs and dont exist in reality. Following your example, identity does not exist. It is not in the reflection either.
The "problem" is that people place more importance on the subjective identity seen by the observer, and less on the equally subjective identity they see them selves.
Just because each are subjective does not mean that they are equally fulfilling, productive, or healthy.
Living a life you find beautiful has objective advantages over living a life someone else thinks is beautiful. Satisfying your arbitrary needs is ultimately more fulfilling than satisfying someone else's arbitrary needs.
It should be no surprise that people who don't live a life they like end up dissatisfied with their life...
Instagram is by far the least horrible of social media platforms.
It doesn't drag you into comments wars or allows you to repost things easily.
It doesn't focus on comments as much as other platforms, but they are just as terrible in my experience.
> allow you to repost things easily
And yet a good chunk of the content is straight from TikTok right now. Or a screen capture of tumblr blog and includes a Tweet of a video from TikTok.
Go right back to being depressed again as soon as she got access to Instagram.
Repeat every three or so months until she moved out. After wasting a couple years of her life she finally got off social media all together and is doing much better.
Her much younger sister is 13 wants social media. It’s a hard no. She complained to her older sister. Older sister was extremely firm on saying to stay off it.
We'll see if he holds out...
It's extremely hard as a parent.
Younger adolescent girls are extremely vulnerable. But this stuff is very hard to lock down and manage. There are no good tools for managing it. The parental controls apps are leaky and crappy. Schools issue (and require!) devices, so even if you can lock your kids device, there's always alternate paths. And as a parent you are easily sidelined and ignored when you try to talk about it and bring up concerns.
Worst problems have been Tumblr and Pinterest, BTW, not Instagram. Both are full of eating disorder and self-harm content. Instagram is at least somewhat moderated. (Reddit and Twitter are also really bad, though less used by teens that I have seen.)
you have control to not use this application. It's not like you're forced to use it. You can also go there casually to see your friends pictures without thinking too much about it.
I'm not sure that this is clearly established.
Scissors can be bad if abused too. Not sure why we're playing this game...
Capitalism turns everything into a commodity. Including ourselves. From a very early age we are taught that it's important to sell ourselves; to survive and thrive. For most people this is just a background nag, mostly ignored, or poorly executed. For some it becomes a primary drive. The internet only accelerates it.
Mediums like Twitter are just as involved; showcasing one's quips for the world. It doesn't have to be a photo or video like Instagram or TikTok.
And as others may be pointing out, Instagram isn't even the worst of it.
Anyways as a parent of teens, it's very distressing.
This is just Goodhart's Law at a personal level. We stop being authentic to chase likes. We inherently turn the measure into a target. We have hundreds of "friends" of FB and we interact with a dozen or less regularly.
It's about being seen and popular. The same crap adolescents have dealt with for decades, but now... automated.
1. start with regular people posting regular stuff - it was great fun
2. the professional users are the most active and polished
3. regular people stop posting because their content isn't polished enough and they resent comparisons of their life to others'
4. regulars follow less (to preserve their sanity) and post less
5. to maintain growth, the platform pushes more and more suggestions (people you don't want to follow, ads you don't want to see, reel encouragement you don't want to do)
Final stage is a platform that has deterred you from participating and constantly assaults you with things that you don't want to see. I used to really enjoy using Twitter and Instagram. I haven't touched Twitter in a couple of months and I usually resent using Instagram (but it's key in my industry).
>Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media
Covers this effect pretty well.
Silly thing is, I think Instagram would be just fine if they didn't suggest things constantly. Every time, I select to see it less often, but it's inevitably back the following day. Let each person choose what they want their Instagram to be, whether it's following friends or being a creator or treating it like a magazine and looking at reels.
That's not as valuable to advertisers though. With recommendations and algorithmic sorting, the platform gets to mold what's important, and that influence makes it easy to sell off to the highest bidder.
I find a lot of value in following my friends---and my friends only. It's why we've all generally migrated off traditional social media and into private group chats. There's no algorithm mediating our interactions, and no one is going to try to sell our attention to outside parties.
They're pushing away valuable eyeballs by trying to wring cash out of everyone.
Astute. I have concluded there are social mental illnesses, and celebrity is absolutely a generator of one of those.
> Instagram democratizes the mental illness that used to only affect child stars and the hollywood famous.
There was a young woman highlighted by a popular youtuber for her odd behaviour in a gym recently. She was filming herself exercizing for views and dollars. The rough moment was when everyday gym guys walked past her. She felt pressured enough by their presence to accuse them of being creeps and mocked them on her video feed while complaining at the guys in person. The guys were doing normal gym chores ignoring her.
A young adult has gotten so far into the mental space of her social media job that she is hypersensitive to any attention, or the implication of attention, in real life.
Splitting a person's psyche into cyberspace and real life when your livelihood is on the line, is a real skill. Training healthy habits into full time workers could possibly help.
You're posting on hn about a YouTuber who filmed an Instagrammer... We're all doomed!
It also democratizes the clout, power and protection that the hollywood famous have. Without social media harvey weinstein would not be in jail. A "relative nobody" wouldn't have been able to "out shout" and expose a media mogul like weinstein.
As with everything, there are positive and negative aspects.
Bo Burnham, from Make Happy
That assumes a level of honesty that is missing from social media. On Instagram people explicitly pretend to be someone they are not. The reflection they show is beauty and affluence but the reality is Photoshop and prestige car rental.
When my daughter started playing Hogwarth's legacy, she instantly created a charcter that looked as much as possible like her. Instagram is not that different.
Anecdotally, I know many people in both the very similar and very different camps, and a few who are very similar except for some small thing.
There is no such illness. Like, literally none of them. (And in child stars case, massive amount of their issues can be explained by pervasive abusive situations and exploitation they found themselves in. Which is something that happens to poor unknown kids too.)
Imagine sitting at a shitty job, going to the bathroom, and browsing instagram... hey look, here's Alice eating at a fancy restaurant.. here's Bob on a beach... here's Cecilia at a party... here's Doug moutain climbing... and you're stuck at a shitty job.
Instagram doesn't show eg. Bob working for months to save up for a trip to a shitty seaside location, hotel with bedbugs, overpriced cocktails and a sewage flowing into the sea just out of the visible part in the photo... but you don't see any of the bad stuff, just other people having fun, and you having to deal with all the bad stuff. Add all the filters, and all other people are pretty, have nice skin, look skinny.. and you look like shit after 7 hours on the job and one more to go.
I mean, a generation or two ago, it would be a literal vacation slide show you might be "treated to" when visiting a friend. Obviously they never showed slides of Bob at the GM assembly plant.
With social media you do not have that context, you just see the perfect parts.
Identity is by definition what and who you _are_ and this is _prior_ to thought -- it is a matter of being, not thinking. It is to some extent determined in time; our character is determined by our choices, and choices actualize potentials, or thwart them. The very fact that someone can have a distorted view implies a distinction between the opinion and the real.
You seem to be getting at this in the paragraph that follows. That is, what people _observe_ and know about you is information that can help you learn about yourself. That information can be distorted (through incompetence or malice) and should be therefore be verified before it is accepted.
So your general point has merit. Instagram, for example, feeds approval and validation seeking behavior. What does Instagram reward? Appearance and instant gratification. There is no verification, no contextualization. People not only develop a strong need for approval, but fickle, superficial approval. It's like Goodhart's law. The shallow image of identity, not the real identity, becomes what matters and what people invest all their energy into, and through their investment, reduce themselves to that image and accept it as who they are. People have always done this. Keeping up with the Jones', saving face. We all know people who are slaves to their reputations, to what others think of them, anxiously guarding their appearance from the slightest perceived threat. Social anxiety is largely this. But social media exaggerates and magnifies this flaw, one that young people are more prone to.
A virtuous man is concerned about his character; how he appears is a consequence or the effect of his virtue and who he is, not a deceptive mask that requires maintenance to conceal the filth and vice lurking underneath. And by his virtue, he suffers little from slander and welcomes truthful criticism. The Image Man is destroyed by anything unflattering because, true or not, it involves a negation of the image which he identifies with his very being.
> (similar to colors not existing in reality).
A digression, but this claim bothers me. Colors do exist in reality. Your claim rests on an unjustified Cartesian metaphysics in which color as we mean it is redefined as a surface reflectance property and what we commonly call color is involved in scurried away into the mind or "consciousness". (Materialism can't even pull that trick as the Cartesian mind has been eliminated from the picture.)
> A digression, but this claim bothers me.
From a pure physical point of view, light exist of an infinite number of wavelengths. A mix of light of different wavelengths thus form an infinite-dimensional color space.
Our eyes only has thress sensors to detect the difference, roughly corresponding to Red Green and Blue, so as the light hits our brain, we receive a 3-dimensional color space. The brain collapses this further into a single qualia, that is very remote in structure to the physical light.
By comparison, our ability to comprehend shapes of objects is much more closely related to the objects' acutal shape.
>> Who people think we are is who we are because identity is a reflection, not an actual thing in reality
> Identity is by definition what and who you _are_ and this is _prior_ to thought -- it is a matter of being, not thinking.
This is not the definition most commonly used, at least not in the physical sense. What we _are_, all of us, is very complicated. Far too complicated for our brains to relate to. Instead we're telling ourselves highly simplified stories about ourselves, where we "identify with" or "identify as" one or more characters (or personas) in these stories. This is not unlike when we watch a movie or read a book, and start to feel that we are one of the lead characters there.
And just like the color "brown" doesn't have a single essential identity (it corresponds to a relatively large are of the RGB space, and an even larger area of the full physical color space), our mental model of who we are, is extremely simplified compared to our physical selves.
Why do they need so much external affirmation?
Why have some people become so extremely insecure?
Question from a blind man. I know we are supposed to be so stupid that an elephant confuses us... So I have to ask simple questions, because otherwise I will likely not understand the answer, given how stupid we are.
> We looked into the top 30 most popular apps people most want to delete in the United States by delving into regional search volumes for “delete” and “deactivate” apps/accounts by each state.
They’re not going off of actual app deletion or account deactivation data… they’re going off of how often people search for how to do it?
Here’s the thing - if I want to ‘delete Facebook’ then I’ll do it - there’s no searching involved, I go to my home screen, long-press the ‘f’ icon and then choose the ‘trash’ option. My decision to delete Facebook is not captured in their data.
What they’re measuring is stats on people too technologically illiterate to manage the apps installed on their own device, right? That’s a significant skew on the conclusions they’re drawing isn’t it?
I think for some people, it is. If I want to "delete Facebook" then I want to delete my account and every data associated with it. This is often not a straight forward process because sometimes the delete account option is buried in settings, you have to contact support, fill out a form, etc. Hence a quick search will guide you through the deletion process.
Instagram had a similar problem when I deleted it a year or so later: you couldn't delete your account from the app. You had to log in via a browser, navigate the very dated UI through to advanced settings, and request a deletion there. A lot of folks don't even know their Instagram password -- I think they just used SMS codes originally -- so it was surprisingly hard to get a password associated with my account so I could even log in via a browser!
stop to think about how many people in the world are not techy smart people and might need a reminder/refresher from time to time on how to delete an app. or maybe possibly, "delete an app" can mean something more like actually deleting their content from the platform and then deleting their account? but hey, they're technology illiterate anyways so who cares, right?
Edit: to remove the dang disapproved snark
Deleting an app is deleting an app. Deleting your account with a company is something different. You could keep the app installed on your phone, but delete your account.
Honestly this isn't a very good article and seems to just be blogspam.
Can you even assume intent here? Maybe they are trying to delete the app for some other reason, like trying to save storage space or fix a bug.
Which OEMs do that? I haven't seen that from HTC, Motorola or Google.
Not being snarky here. I'd like to know who actually does so. Allowing me to avoid them in the future[0].
[0] I'd note that LineageOS[1] doesn't do that either. I highly recommend it!
Samsung for one.
Since the article's own title is misleading, I've edited it to make it clear that they measured searches for "delete".
Yes, its called a proxy. It's not perfect, but it's very likely has a strong correlation and low standard deviation from the truth.
> What they’re measuring is stats on people too technologically illiterate to manage the apps installed on their own device, right? That’s a significant skew on the conclusions they’re drawing isn’t it?
It's enough of a population to demonstrate probability.
But you haven't deleted your Facebook account. You've removed the app from your phone.
If your goal was to delete your Facebook account you've failed.
Each company has a different way to actually achieve (or come as close as they allow you) removing your account from their service. It's completely reasonable that (even technologically literate people) would need to search for how to accomplish that goal for service X, since the services tend to be intentionally somewhat hidden.
Note the search term in the article isn't "Delete Instragram *app*", it was "Delete Instagram Account". Those are different things.
I use Instagram for my hobby/business (coin & paper money collecting & dealing). I have mercilessly curated my feed to be ONLY people who post content purely related to the numismatic world. No real-life friends, no travel posts from random semi-friends, no selfies, none of that garbage. If someone starts posting it, I unfollow them.
And for the ads -- I click on ads related to cat toys and pet food, just to let the algorithm know to feed me more of it.
SO: My instagram feed is 100% hobby-related posts & cats. I think I may be victorious (for the time being....).
PS: Stay AWAY from the "Explore" tab. That is an endless dopamine well of misery.
I have a 6 figure instagram id and have never opened the explore tab.
But I also stopped using instagram when I realized the ads are more interesting than the people in my feed. Maybe early instagram folk just aren’t the target market anymore.
Sometimes I miss my quirky candid real life photography app.
edit: to clarify for the downvoters — professionally interesting people (influencers) bore me and my friends highlight reels … are kinda boring too because they all end up looking the same since they’re all trying to promote an idealized version of their lives instead of just being themselves. The ads were great, but I don’t need an app for ads. So like the commenter above, I curated heavily – by never checking the app.
I miss the same too. BeReal is has the closest experience for candid photography. Unfortunately is not that widely used in my group
It's desperate behaviour from Meta.
Then Facebook decided to throw that all out the window and now I have a wall of pure garbage. Just random low quality memes and content.
I actually preferred that, as until recently there were no ads in the posts you saw (top level of course).
I made a point to not like or comment on anything, and seemed a decent diversion for a few minutes.
It's basically a hopeless problem.
Enjoy your victory while it lasts, I guess.
I actually found some coin videos through my explore page
Eventually they'll figure out how to keep you from doing that.
The problem became:
1. Ads, the ads are bad because they're well targeted and mostly for things which are unnecessary or scams/knockoffs. I found myself buying things I didn't need from dubious brands.
2. Thots. Maybe because I'm a male between 25-50 or something, but even though I subscribe to 0 people on Instagram that qualify as thots, my feed started getting filled with women using Instagram to advertise their OF/services. Usually these seem cross-recommended as related to comedy shorts, cosplay/gaming, or cars, but aren't really any of those things.
3. Notifications. Instagram generates unnecessary notifications which ends up driving you back into the app, especially if you are like me and require there to be no number badges on any apps on your phone to eliminate FOMO anxiety.
The net effect was that I talked with my wife and deleted the app. It was the only social media app I've attempted to use in the last 3 years, and it lasted about 30 days before I felt it was necessary to delete it once again. I had used Instagram from 2015-2017, but had deleted it in 2017 previously. It's gotten much worse, and even in 2017 I felt it was unhealthy.
The thing is, I'm pretty sure Instagram is "better" (in the sense of less bad) than TikTok and many other apps that are more popular.
These days I don't check TikTok every day or I hit the normie soft cap after 5 minutes. My friends rely on me to be the "TikTok" guy since none of them have it installed for various reasons, so I "save them up" by waiting to view my fyp for longer periods of time.
Users judge these apps based on different criteria and at different stages of use. On Instagram I found someone I wanted to follow but had to be approved to follow their content, I immediately uninstalled the app.
I get tons of excellent content on TikTok about tech, science, programming because I've "shaped" my algorithm well. I find people judge these platforms, as I have with instagram, before they have cultivated their best possible platform experience.
TikTok skews younger on average; Instagram skews more egocentric. You can mostly avoid both negatives but it won't be your first experience on these platforms.
So IMHO no not yet, but it will get there eventually.
THANK YOU FOR POSTING THIS. I have consistently resisted ever following, or even looking at the profiles of obvious IG thots and yet recently, because my IG account only follows a handful of others and runs out of content quickly, IG has been FILLING my feed with IG models. Not just one, not just a few, like a healthy amount of scrolling is required to get beyond them to other types of sponsored content.
I cannot for the life of me figure it out. I'm sure something I did or revealed has tagged me as "likely to find this content captivating" but I don't and I wish I could flag it as such. My best guess is that because I follow some "BRO" accounts (qualified captain, i70 things, etc) and happen to fall in gender/age pairing where that kind of content is a reliable draw, they'll keep trying.
I mostly maintain my account to follow hobbies and local businesses, but I'm about to shitcan it for the second or third time.
The algorithm has now decided to just show me cute animal stuff for several months, which is fine by me. It's all low-effort and mostly dumb, but it's better than unsolicited butts popping up everywhere when I just want to see what my friends are up to.
Now if I could just fix the scenario where somehow it decides I really like garbage pay-to-play mobile games and shows me _nothing_ but ads for them for days on end.
Lords Mobile
My wife used to use instagram just to look at cat videos and wedding dresses. She wasnt into cars or gym workouts or whiskey or whatever. She's also surprisingly female. Her suggested posts and ads were always just girls with onlyfans accounts. I thinks it's just a matter of what most of the platform offers at this point.
A lot of engineers in SV (and in this forum) think they know better than the users. They think they are so much better than everyone else that they feel a allowing the user to tell them they don't like something is just extra noise that doesn't provide useful information.
User: "Fuck off."
Dev: "No."
User: "Also, I have some feedb--
Dev: "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLL NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWWW"
User: "What--"
Dev: /dev/null
I hate it too, don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of a nice pair of Tatas, but I don’t need them in my face all day. You have to actively steer your feed away from it by gaming the algorithm harder. If a Thot shows up in your feed, swipe away instantly. Don’t even stop for a second. Then when something comes in that isn’t a thot but engages you, smash that like button so hard the algorithm thinks you’ve got the shakes.
That's the most common issue with MetaZuck - advertisements are riddled with fraud.
Outside of Facebook Local marketplace, they are utterly horrendous.
You can disable badges (in iOS) in notifications separately from the others (that is, allow notifications but not badges).
I found that out because, like you, I require that there is no counter.
I make it a rule to never click on an ad no matter what. On the rare occasion I see any ad at all, if I do see something I think I want, I'll search for it later on my own. That let's me look at reviews, compare other similar items, and it means I'm buying from reputable sources only. Block every ad you can, never click or interact with any ad you can't block (or just haven't blocked yet).
Searching and purchasing the item later can and (often but not always) is fed back to the system so it knows you purchased something you got an ad for.
We cannot avoid being influenced by advertising, and sometimes ads are even useful. It's just a shame that the ad industry has become so corrupt and obsessed with surveillance that the smartest thing is to avoid ads entirely whenever possible.
Now the techies are concerned with the mental health crisis.
All of those things likely don't matter, what matters is $250k/yr puts you in the top 5% of earners in the United States of America and the top 0.01% of earners globally. That's a major motivation to do whatever is necessary to earn. Upton Sinclair said it correctly nearly a hundred years ago: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Race, Gender, Age, Sexuality not relevant.
Maybe stop trying to make everything about identity politics, especially in a conversation where there's actually important political issues at hand that impact everyone globally?
- Cigarette companies giving people lung cancer.
- Alcohol companies giving people lifelong addictions and liver disease.
- Food companies happily providing high calorie, high fat food to contribute to the obesity epidemic.
- Tech workers inventing hyper-addictive apps, websites, social networks and video games.
- Media companies producing endless mindless content that we won't remember or care about in our dying days.
Everybody just destroying one another (and the planet) for that sweet dollar dollar bill.
I could probably reduce that to 10 and still catch up on anything from friends and family. But the extra 5 minutes is just enough time to enjoy some interesting content from the hobby-influencers I follow, yet not enough time to get sucked into the click-bait stuff.
Before setting limits I was probably at 30-60 Insta-minutes per day. Now I spend that extra time commenting on HN, which I would like to think is a more productive endeavor.
iOS: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208982#:~:text=Go%20to%20S....
Android: https://support.google.com/android/answer/9346420?hl=en#zipp...
Instagram seems to have leveled off, but I personally don't find the Instagram annoyances nearly as dire as the TikToks posted to Youtube Stories.
Those seem the most annoying, and especially fake.. with all the amateur comedians, clickbait-y vid behaviors and voiceover triggers, and fake couple dynamics.
Instagram seems almost normal in comparison.
I follow ~1500 Japanese cat accounts, ~50 personal friends (who mostly post food/travel/etc.), and ~100 "influencer" and "brand" accounts for companies I like, and ~10 meme accounts.
I mostly post random photos during travel, ranging from food photographs to cats to landscapes to sometimes things from conferences, mostly going for "visually interesting.
Locked to friends-only, and just remove people if they're slightly annoying even if I know them IRL.
The only thing I dislike about my use of IG is the lack of "easy to download photo from someone else's IG", but that's a product decision. I keep wanting to set up an actual self-hosted photo gallery but never get around to it, and the iphone cameraroll to IG workflow is so easy.
Is there a HN poll of a range of apps and how many is using each (and maybe a daily/weekly time usage of each)?
Some data to review below (*may be biased):
Most Popular Apps 2022 (Global)
TikTok 672
Instagram 548
Facebook 449
WhatsApp 424
CapCut 357
Snapchat 330
Telegram 310
Subway Surfers 304
Stumble Guys 254
Spotify 238
https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/most-downloaded-apps/
https://www.businessofapps.com/data/most-popular-apps/
https://www.zucisystems.com/blog/15-most-popular-apps-to-dow...
As a personal anecdote, the people I know who cut back on Twitter did so long before Musk due to general social media burnout.
I don't have an active twitter account, so one of the things I like from post-Musk Twitter is that it no longer requires me to login for reading tweets or for searching.
And the dumb shit Elon posts and all the times he kicks himself in the balls are way funnier than before he acquired 'em.
Overall, I'm happier with the site since he took over, personally. But then I'm rooting for its demise, preferably with as much drama and humor along the way as possible, so of course I like it.
I've never used LinkedIn for anything other than to respond to recruiters and look up people's backgrounds.
We’ll eventually come up with ways to resist this, but it’ll be hard. We can’t, if we live in the expensive cities where the jobs are, return to the real physical world, because that place was bought by the rich when we weren’t looking and now they own it.
I have to confess. I' think I'll be a bit happier when everything I see doesn't have a Facebook icon and link next to it.
These companies are just selling attention crack disguised as "creativity".
In my experience it does a pretty good job of figuring this out. Especially compared to YouTube which seems to mostly show me videos from channels I've been watching frequently, and not necessarily similar types of content.
I interviewed at WhatsApp post acquisition, but it seemed pretty obvious that the Facebook PMs and leadership that they installed post acquisition had neither the will nor ability to actually develop a strategy and make clear decisions in the absence of data and metrics.
Mark doesn't care of course, because you can't expand an ad network into a product hardened against surveillance. They tried for a while by investing in Messenger as a potential WeChat-like platform, but it was the wrong horse to bet on when WhatsApp already won internationally and iMessage/iPhone was the platform of choice among US teens.
Meta is the new Yahoo. One huge blue/purple legacy app they will continue to milk as it slowly fades, and then just a trail of death and decay in a long list of acquired products. Thank god Signal has come around and is being invested in.
Truly a bizarre experience.
After I tweeted about it I discovered there's an underground economy of people claiming to be able to restore your account.
In those years you could notice Facebook became a wasteland, the Cambridge analytica scandal surfaced and got so stressed just by opening the app - I deleted my account in 2018. But for my surprise, people around here seems to be quite happy with Facebook (which here in Latin America seems to refuse to die!), Instagram, twitter, Snapchat and now tik tok accounts - how do they handle all of that?
I haven't used social media in a while, but when I did they fulfilled these separate functions:
Facebook - Keeping up to data with family (or anyone over the age of 40). Communicating with Social groups/organizing events. Messaging friends and family with Messenger.
Instagram - Maintaining a photo diary of my life. Sharing what I'm doing currently with friends. Following celebrities. Messaging.
Twitter - Following celebrities, but textually rather than with video stories. Keeping up to date on current events and trends.
Snapchat - To be honest, Instagram stole SnapChats cake completely for me when they made Stories. Younger generations use it more from my experience. Used it largely for messaging without a paper trail.
TikTok - Entertainment and following social trends. It's like YouTube, but with a better recommendation algorithm and shorter form videos.
And that was around the time Facebook's original audience had their parents joining Facebook, making it less of a safe/cool place to screw around with your friends. Instagram had less appeal to parents because of all those limitations, so young people migrated there. Eventually the parents got on Instagram too, and they moved to Snapchat, which has so far done a pretty good job at being indecipherable to older generations, and focuses on making everything private, only sending stuff to people directly or whitelisted groups of people who can see your stories. Not to mention, everything having an expiration date means people won't be able to scroll back and see cringey/embarrassing posts you made a few years ago.
If you're willing to share, I'm curious on what issues you're having with Spotify. Do you feel you're filling the silence too much with it, or something else?
I'm tired of Spotify too, in part because I don't see an endgame where I shut the family plan off. My family uses it a lot.
The default feed I get is at most two posts from people I follow, and then only ads and weird shit.
There's a minor mitigating factor: if you tap on Instagram logo, it will show a drop down letting you switch to a chronological timeline from accounts you follow. You have to force-refresh it though because by default it refreshes perhaps once an hour.
I am not terribly active on it though.
But let me say that it's total horse shit that most of my notifications aren't related to my posts, or posts I've interacted with.
I also used the shopping tab (never bought anything there though) because its recommendations were great for finding specific things with the aesthetic I was looking for. I wish it was still in the app.
Wish I could delete but then I might lose contact with friends.
Instagram: Your account will be deleted in 30 days.
Me: ...
Me: Login on day 29
Instagram: Welcome back.
The list of apps that people most "want to delete" is highly correlated with apps with the list of apps with the most MAUs.
The right thing to look at here is the percentage of users who want to delete the app. Otherwise this table is just telling us that Instagram has more users than other apps—e.g., 1% of 1 billion > 1% of 1 million—which I suspect most people already know.
So far it's gone well! Occasionally I use the Facebook Container Firefox plugin to check the web app for messages from my mom.
I signed up for Meta Verified on Facebook, hoping that their paid support feature would help me. They said that since it’s a technical issue, I have to report the problem through the app. I explained that my app stops functioning after I’ve logged in, and they said there’s nothing else they could do for me.
If anyone knows of a way I can get my account removed without needing to log in, please let me know.
I’ve unfortunately also tried VPN, as well as logging in on other people’s phones in different locations (including overseas).
I wish I didn’t have to move to Europe just to delete a social media account.
Don't know if it's the same on iPhone (having never owned one) but I reckon they are no better as I have to install 'Notunes' on my laptop just to disable Apple music popping up when I connect bluetooth (and now way to uninstall Apple apps either).
What a horrible ecosystem this is with these companies nowadays.
Also, it might be with something with how hard it is to uninstall the app in a specific platform. For example - I actually didn’t have a “delete” button for the Facebook app on my previous phone. This might popularize the search term significantly.
But this is a very good thing to know and to be concerned about.
I get forced Reels into the stream which are just creepy and sleazy, in no way personalized beyond narcissistic women making spectacles of themselves, targeted to me evidently since i'm male, since i loathe that.
Maybe loitering looking at them like "wtf?" is enough to perpetuate them?
This interaction pattern isn't possible in the app, and users are forced to view the most captivating post in their feed upon opening.
I suspect my IP address was suspicious to the algorithm, but it's a mobile app on a mobile network so I'm not sure why it's so strict.
Make sure you flat out reject and ban anything you don't like (either use the ... or long press and say "I don't like this").
Make sure you turn off feed suggestions (they are the ones with the x in the top right) That'll stop Instagram injecting targeted, and stuff some poor IC has been forced to cram into your feed to suit some metric. Then you'll have a feed that shows you updates from people you follow, then when you get to the end suggested posts.
The explore tab has a different persona to who you follow. So you can be obsessivly following knit crafters in your feed, but your explore tab could be filled with something entirely orthogonal. You will get inclusions from explore into your main feed suggestions, but you can reject them by either scrolling over them quickly (not that effective) or long press -> I don't like.
multiple accounts for different interests is also a good idea.
...Until a bunch of them get suspended without recourse because having more than one account as an individual violates their ToS. Don't ask me how I'd know...
Instagram has also never had the network effects that require you have/maintain it so I’m not sure what these people are complaining about?
I feel like normalizing the search volume according to number of users would yield much more useful results.
I was expecting more surprising results like bloat or stock apps.
There is a reason why Meta has spent millions on psychologists studying on ways to hook in users and increase screen time, scrolling and getting more people addicted to Instagram; hence the billions of users having difficulty deleting the app.
Even if they do, they end up re-installing it and logging back in again to scroll up for the entire day about what they missed, then the addiction cycle continues.
Or: Instagram is the most-used app.
If we all just kept these counter-explanations in mind we wouldn't have anywhere near as much pointless controversy in headlines.
Now it’s all ads and nonorganic posts. People only really use stories anymore. A few of My friends are influencers and they’ve all given up on IG and moved to TikTok.
What does this mean?
Also, users don't know how to delete apps off of their phones and have to search.
- Twitter post-Musk: most of the interesting people i followed moved to Mastodon and stopped posting interesting content on Twitter. Plus App and Site went slower, same old trolls and Musk now is the center of attentions. No removed, since i go there once in a while to read what the Crypto community has to speculate.
- Facebook: I refuse to use, i have absolute no interest to see content from "friends" in that form. I used FB groups a while ago but the read format was horrible. I only keep the account because its the only way to keep somekind of contact to old co-workers.
- Whatsapp: I do use, for some friends. I like it. I miss general content infomation, therefore i use more Mastodon or Instagram.
- Tiktok: The recommendation engine is brilliant. Its like an addition, but i barely use it due to Privacy reasons. Also i have no interest to post any content on Tiktok.
- Signal: I use to contact my family. Apple Messages as well.
- Reddit: I go to some subreddits to keep me informed about some hobbies, but i take the information and comments with a huge grain of salt. My experience tells me Reddit cannot be used for serious exchange of information.
- Instagram: I use it for some hobbies, I was able to find interesting content but the Experience itself Meta wants to provide to the users is bad. Ads everything, useless suggestions often show and lack of identity. What does Meta want to do with Instagram ? Does it have an identity right now ? Does it want to be Tiktok, the old photos based Instagram, Facebook replacement or what else ? Also i hate the fact its difficult to access external links and the comments system.
- Youtube: its ok, it is what it always is. The amount of Ads its annoying, maybe I need to pay premium at some point in time.
- Linkedin: Its horrible in everyway. I have an account to check some old colleagues.
- Discord: I don't like the concept, its difficult to keep track of information and its too chaotic. I use it to keep up with some friends for Gaming. Its also fun to interact with Bots.
- Pinterest: my wife loves it, but i never found a use for it.
- Mastodon: is the only Social Network i can safely say i have been having a very good experience. The Apps are great, most of the interesting users from Twitter are now on Mastodon, descentralized, Privacy friendly, no Ads, no Algorithm to sell you ads.
Bonus:
- HN: I like it, moderation works great! Lots of interesting content! :)
So yeah, social media in 2023 its not a good experience. It seems everybody wants to exploit something out of their users and fight for their time. In addition they are breaking search engines because the average user posts content on social networks instead of open websites which could be seached from Search Engines.