I’m too old school to have ever fully embraced social media – my entry into online connection came long enough before it that I’ve always regarded it with a bit of suspicion. The return just isn’t great enough for the time and energy investment, although I do understand those who have found it a valuable way to interact online and I have used it in a limited capacity for a long time. So the idea of exiting it, or at least leaving the toxic proprietary world of those north American capitalist billionaires, is complicated. But I’m going to do it. I just can’t justify continuing to support them.

I closed my Twitter account after the platform was perverted into X, and I’ve never had a personal Facebook account, but my furry companion Zecica has been there since 2009. We’ve had some discussions lately around not only the recent announcement of the suspension of fact-checking, but all of the other negative aspects of social media in general and Facebook/Meta in particular – the sucking of time, the exploitation of content and attention, the reduction of the world into “likes” and “friends”, the bitchiness of it all. We’re told it connects us. We’re told we can reach audiences. We’re told we need a social media presence in order to be a serious artist or a valid person. We discover high school acquaintances who we haven’t thought about for decades and we get endorphin kicks when someone posts a kitten video or hearts our post about having the flu. And we consume huge amounts of energy and generate tonnes of e-waste and pump profits into the pockets of the billionaires.

It’s known as “social” media but it’s actually political. To stay there is a political statement, as it is to leave. And there are alternatives! We don’t need to keep feeding that machine, we can chose to put our time and energy into other more democratic, less capitalistic platforms. Here’s where you can find me now:

• Mastodon: @helen@systerserver.town – it’s decentralised, and the server that my account is on is the Syster Server, a feminist server operated by a collective that developed from the Eclectic Tech Carnival and Gender Changers networks. This site is a good resource for learning about Mastodon, the Fediverse, and how to join: https://fedi.tips/
• Bluesky: helenvarley.bsky.social – I don’t know how active I’ll be here, it’s mainly like the old Twitter and I was never very active on that. But I’m giving it a go!
• MeWe: helenvarley.78 – I have no idea if this will come to anything, at the moment it’s very quiet, but it’s more Facebook-like than Bluesky.
• Email: still my favourite way of connecting!
• Signal: ditch Meta’s Messenger and Whatsapp!

Looking forward to seeing you on some of these platforms!