I’ve been trying to meet new friends and new people to hang out with so have been going to a lot of social events.
I noticed that everyone seems to ask for my instagram account and when I say I don’t have one that connection kind of dies, and it feels too personal to ask for someone number when I just met them.
I don’t want to create an instagram because of the privacy invasions of meta but I also don’t want to feel left out when trying to make new connections. Anyone have any advice?
Anyone have any advice?
Yes: recognize what you’re trying to accomplish and change your actions.
Privacy requires shutting people out of your life. Meeting new people requires letting people into your life.
If people expect that the first “gate” into your life is your social media then meet that expectation. Have a social media presence. Post shit that you want people to see on it.
If you’re afraid of letting the companies that operate social media see your life, examine why. It may be that you’re perfectly fine with the trade off of a limited hang out in exchange for looking normal. Most people are.
It doesn’t have to be instagram. You could have a snapchat or a tiktok or whatever.
This is, IMO, the biggest problem with FB and IG. They’ve replaced personal connections. I know someone women who say they won’t date anyone without an IG account.
and it feels too personal to ask for someone number when I just met them
Someone’s number is literally just a series of digits. Social Media has their fuckin’ life’s story. I’d say it’s far less personal.
An IG account isn’t a phone number or email, and I think it’s weird that young people treat it like it is.
Just say you don’t do social media, and if they can’t respect that, it’s a quick test as to if they’re your people or not.
It can also be a good conversation starter. Some people genuinely don’t know or care about the social media corporations spying on us. You can have some interesting conversations with them.
That is a good point, when I say I don’t have any social media more than half the time people respect it, almost like I’m saying I’m X years sober from alcohol.
But I still feel like I’m tempted to make an account to avoid this additional social friction. Maybe I won’t use it for anything except getting people’s contact info in these situations. I’m not sure I’m a bit torn.
yeah i feel you. I’m in a band, so instagram is basically a necessity for promotion and communication. getting the word out about shows, other bands will message me for gigs etc
just try to use it a little as possible, and try to lock it down as much as possible in the os. you can do alot in the android app settings.
basically treat it as you would having a conversation near a security camera.
Back when Craigslist had personals ads I answered one saying that I had 10 laptop computers and no facebook account, and I actually got a couple of dates that way. Not everyone wants corporate media.
I’ve been chatting (non romantically) with someone I met on another forum, who is about the same way. No facebook or reddit or anything, not even Lemmy, just a few niche forums.
Are you meeting people 15 years ago?? We’ve known everything mark zuckerberg touches is trying to kill you for money for a long time.
Not helpful.
Unfortunately I have also found it to be a huge impediment to making friends with other millennials who aren’t techie. I sort of left a crowd that was always on xmpp and signal and found myself rather ostracized. Things are changing slowly and most of them are now on Signal and with the usernames it’s easier to exchange contact without relying on phone numbers that feel like a bigger commitment. But unfortunately passed explaining why you won’t support Meta, and why alternatives like Signal are good there isn’t much to do.
I would just make an IG account if it’s being a large obstacle, you probably don’t have to install the app as you can do most things through the web browser.
Privacy is subjective. Use it but dont use it for things you don’t want Facebook to know about. Don’t use it on your phone. Don’t use it on a computer with things you care about. Keep it in a container tab in your browser but don’t keep it open all the time.
It’s kind of a pain but you can definitely be mindful and only give meta crumbs where others are giving them truckloads of data.
Sadly there is a lot of good content on Instagram
It sucks, but just ask for numbers or emails
Man I’m glad I got done with the “I want to meet new people” part of my life before social platforms became inevitable. As far as I know nowadays it’s either friends or privacy. Can’t have both
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Sadly there is a lot of good content on Instagram
yes but fortunately its a fucking nightmare from a usability standpoint.
Yeah true.
Sorry deleted duplicate comment.
If it’s such an obstacle for social life, I’d just give in and make an account. Given the alternative is “exchanging phone numbers” (with the intent to text or call, presumably) I’d say Instagram is no worse privacy-wise - both offer absolutely no privacy protection. If a phone number is required to register (I don’t know if it is), I’d get a bootleg sim specifically for it. I would treat all communications on any proprietary platform (even 1-on-1) as though they are happening in public (Twitter-style). Avoid using apps if at all possible as they have more access to your device. If that’s not possible, at least do not give those apps any permissions, however hard they are trying to eek them out of you. Do not use it for anything but chatting with your acquaintances - merely looking at your feed, even without any explicit interactions like opening a post, gives Meta a lot of data about you.
If the connection moves on from “acquaintance” to “friendship”, perhaps try pushing them towards a better platform - I recommend Matrix as it is federated (unlike Signal), and has pretty nice clients/UX nowadays (unlike Tox and XMPP), and is e2e-encrypted (unlike almost everything else).
Call me crazy but i use Messenger since it is e2ee now and doesn’t require giving out my pn.
i use Messenger since it is e2ee now
There’s no way to know that since it’s not open source.
Even if we did, we DO know that only message content is encrypted, metadata is still fair game, which is what Meta is after anyway.
