In an ever-evolving digital landscape, I am thrilled to immerse myself in the liberating experience of using decentralized platforms like Mastodon, Lemmy, and Pixelfed. Freed from the constraints of centralized social media, I have embarked on a transformative journey. Recognizing the excessive time once consumed by my phone—nearly ten hours a day—I have successfully halved this to around five hours daily, allowing for a healthier balance, with a slight indulgence during weekends.

My commitment to this shift is further evidenced by my conscious decision over the past two years to bid farewell to major platforms such as Twitter and Tumblr. More recently, I have cut ties with Instagram, Facebook, BlueSky, Reddit, and even Snapchat.

In an effort to further champion these alternative platforms and their communities, I am proud to contribute by donating to Mastodon. This initiative not only represents a personal commitment but also an investment in the growth and resilience of decentralized social networks, encouraging more people to explore the boundless opportunities they offer.

Had a Facebook account I completely ignored (set it up for my first girlfriend and we exclusively used Yahoo Messenger) then turned into a music dump, then deleted. I honestly never saw the point of Facebook, not with apps like WhatsApp or even standard SMS evolving as they have, even back then (talking about the 2010s).

Had an Instagram account for about 3 months - surprisingly decent source of grotesque/morbid art! Again, saw no point in this, and Reddit felt superior in all ways.

Mainlined Reddit for a good couple of years, mostly during the Pandemic. By the time I got into it, one could feel its bulk, so to speak. Sure 99.7% of Reddit were the users, but even so, it felt as though subreddit quirks and in-jokes had ossiffied into tennets by that point. Loved it, but it felt constraining here and there.

Switched to Lemmy a couple of months after deleting my Reddit account when shit went down, and it’s all I’ve been using and plan on using. Unless one counts news aggregators as social platforms.

I love this scroungy, spit-and-duct tape feel of the fediverse, to be very honest. Feels like the days when we used to group chat on local network sharing apps, like it’s just the neighbourhood kids around. And it seems to not be dissipating even with the huge increase in users, which is a good sign. Plus the obvious lack of curation other than baseline moderation and/or personal grudges is always nice!

It is for me, I use an account on Lemmy.ml for general browsing (and correcting misconceptions about Marxism, if I’m being honest), and a Hexbear.net account I pretty much only browse locally if I just want to relax and not have to worry about getting into an argument.

Yes. For over a year, from Reddit. Although I like Bluesky more than I expected. Also Discuit is awesome.

Similar situation. I quickly glance between Lemmy and Mastodon and only use old.reddit when I’m on my PC (just realised I hadn’t really used it since I’ve been making an effort to engage with the manga communities on lemmy) . All my friends and favourite artists seem to use Instagram so I only use it out of necessity for messaging and quick inspirations (I tried using Cara but I found the app somewhat slow and disliked that it wasn’t federated, so I could see it having a very low lifespan. I saw it as a poor move for artists to move to it solely on the promise of being “anti-AI” without any redundancies that a de-federated option would have)

Same for me. Mostly using Lemmy and Mastodon since they’re filling two different roles. I also reluctantly still use Instagram since all my friends are on it.

Some people seem to see it as a negative that Mastodon with its linear feed doesn’t get them nearly as addicted as corporate social media but for me that’s a huge plus.

Lemmy is the only one I’ll log onto and the only one I have as an app.

Sometimes though, I’ll miss a super specific community from the place spez ruined, and scroll through it in DuckDuckGo browser.

Anything that has an intransparent, engagement driving, ad laden algorithm that determines what you do and don’t see is thoroughly unappealing to me. At least now that I’m a little more tech savvy and anti-corporate.

I guess I do technically have a Facebook account still because I don’t remember the password of either that account or the associated email address. I used that for local flea market and food sharing groups up until maybe 6 years ago.

yeah i basically only use lemmy and watch youtube videos, or i pirate media, play games with friends, or do stupid stuff with my computer that i shouldnt be allowed to do

Lemmy and Mastodon

I have deleted my accounts on Reddit, Twittet and Facebook.

lemmy is my first and only social account (unless you consider software forums or gitlab lol) Matrix too but not using that in a social media way, only as a direct messenger.

Started on lemmy today after reddit perma banned my 14 year old account for breaking the first rule of reddit. I may have told some to kill themselves. I’m definitely in the wrong but I don’t care I’m taking the ban personally and never using it again.

Yeah, pretty much. This and Discord really. Signal for P2P messaging.

I went full Lemmy for a while but have to admit I’m reading reddit again, but without their dumb app. Just the web browser.

Looking through a few subreddits, see what’s new for five minutes. I don’t post anymore, don’t have an account.

Lemmy is my main social media account. I also switched from Reddit when Spez killed third party apps, and I won’t go back. I use Sync for Lemmy on my phone and tablet. I paid for the lifetime Ultra account, because that’s how much of a “fuck you” I wanted to give Spez. I’ll gladly pay the $100 for an alternative ad-free app than use Reddit’s free app.

I also use Imgur, although it’s been suffering from enshittification ever since Sarah and the team sold it. I can’t even save a post without getting a pop-up asking to subscribe to the user or follow similar content tags. Or downvote without being asked if I want to block the user or related tags. Just let me do the thing and move on! Stop trying to customize my experience! I’m still able to block their ads, thanks to my VPN service, but they built a dedicated ad space at the bottom of the app that I can’t make go away. So a section of the bottom of my Imgur screen is unusable black space. I miss being able to use my full screen to browse images.

I still have Facebook, but only because everyone I know from my childhood until now is there and it’s my main way of staying in touch with people. If I dump Facebook, I’ll have practically no one left in my life, except for my sister, wife, and maybe two friends. If I need social engagement concerning something going on in my life, I’ll post it there. But I don’t use it much.

I have LinkedIn and spent years keeping my profile up to date and super detailed, expecting to need some good references and a solid history of experience and accomplishments. But then I retired at 38 years old and found out I don’t need to work anymore, so it’s just been collecting dust for the last 2 years now. I still get the occasional request to connect from someone offering to help me find a job (I’m a veteran), but I don’t need their assistance. I’m quite happy being retired young.

I have a Discord server I built for my closest friends to stay in touch, but only 2 people regularly interact on it. I subscribed to maybe 30+ other random servers, but I mute pretty much all of them so I’m not inundated with Discord notifications all the time.

I have Twitch, but mostly used it to stream the games I’m playing when I’m bored. I’m happy if I get 1 or 2 views. I do it just for the fun of it, not to build a following or anything.

I have NextDoor, but there are thousands of people in my town who use it regularly, so it’s hard to stay in touch with my “neighbors.” I mostly ignore it unless I’m trying to find suggestions for something local.

I made a Bluesky account last year; got an invite from a friend before it opened up to everyone. But I hardly ever used Twitter in the past. I always felt like it was pointless unless you were a celebrity with tons of followers. So I’m having trouble thinking of ways to use Bluesky now.

I have Instagram, but only because Facebook merged my account with Instagram when they bought it. I’ve never used it, not even to browse others’ content there.

I made a Snapchat account in high school, but never used it. That was over 20 years ago. Back then, Snapchat was just used to share selfies, and I didn’t like taking selfies so I had no use for it. Is Snapchat still a thing?

I had a MySpace account when I was a teenager, but I guess the site got sold sometime in the past decade or two. I kinda forgot about it, and the last time I went to check it out, it was a totally different site and didn’t recognize my login anymore.

I made an account on Pixelfed last year to share pictures, but I don’t really have anything to share right now. I only remembered I had the account because I just now found their app in my phone.

I use Patreon, mostly just to follow a few people I know and support them.

I worked as an IT guy in the military, and we were explicitly banned from using TikTok when it became popular, because it was a Chinese spyware program and they didn’t want it stealing data on US military members. When you installed it, we found that it embedded itself in your phone in a way that was extremely difficult to fully remove, then granted itself full access to your phone and started trickling your data to Chinese servers. It was a massive security vulnerability, which is why President Biden pushed to block TikTok from the US. But the app was so popular, he got a lot of pushback and it never got blocked. It’s still wildly popular, but I’ll never touch that program.