It’s now been six weeks since I started writing those Buy European bulletins. And now, with Meta’s frankly infantile reaction to the fine issued by the European Commission over their breaching of the Digital Markets Act, the time has come to tackle their services directly. Today, we’re learning how to leave Meta, how to leave Facebook, how to leave Instagram, and ultimately, how to leave a toxic relationship that, for many, has brought nothing but misery and decay.
Facebook has always been evil. Buying its rivals and renaming itself Meta only increased the spread of its evil.
Using their poison hurts your mental health. Allowing Facebook access to your personal life exposes you and your loved ones to their manipulation. The sooner everyone walks away, the better.
None of these Apps have been problematic to leave. It’s WhatsApp I can’t get away from.
The only thing I can do is to continue trying to convince the roughly 20 people I actually care about to switch. So far no one cares enough.
Fuck. All of them with a Twitter account fled that platform when Musk made the Nazi salute. So I’m counting on the Lizard Robot to do the same.
It’s FB Messenger for me. If I could move some people over to Signal I’d be golden, but alas. In many ways I’d prefer to just leave all the Messenger group chats behind and move on, but too many people I care about don’t care to get away.
Instead of Facebook use Friendica!
Instead of Instagram use Pixelfed!
Instead of Marketplace use Flohmarkt!
Instead of WhatsApp use Matrix!
Instead of Rapid use JOSM!
Thank you for that list. A link would have helped me to find the things I don’t know yet, such as Flohmarkt -i assume you mean this https://codeberg.org/flohmarkt/flohmarkt ?
Yup, that’s the source code of Flohmarkt! There’s also a lemmy community for it at [email protected]
The problem as usual is that you’re tied by the other people in the place, i cannot leave whatsapp as not only my family but pretty much everybody i know uses it as their main communications platform, no one actually gives a shit about the software or platform but all remain because they cannot leave behind other people.
Same issue with FB/IG, people stay because their whole social contacts stay. If something happened that made everybody leave at the same time there would be no issues, OR if the walls of the walled gardens were torn down so that people could freely leave without losing contact.
About the only realistic way to abandon these platforms is to leave and just accept losing contact with people, which is a gamble that doesn’t always pay, most of the time you just end up isolating yourself from others.
But do consider setting up an account on alternative platforms and posting more on there, then people will gradually move.
If no-one else in your group starts, then it could be you making the shift for all of them
It just takes time for people to notice the greener pastures.
As Signal went from 0.5m active users in 2019 to 70m in 2025.
I would really like to shift to pixelfed but the transfer option (to import all your instagram posts) has been inoperable for a while now. I hope they get it fixed soon.
If I had to guess I would assume Meta breaks that one as often as it can deliberately.
