divesting attention#

• 03 March 2025

this post will be updated as i progress

as a follow up to my post on small software tools, i have continued thinking about my attention and where i want to spend it.

it feels like a time of crumbling. a period of turbulent change. maybe a chance to rethink our whole relationship to technology, to each other.

writing helps me think, and public writing makes me more accountable, so i wanted to create a post of future plans to divest from platforms that no longer serve me. this can be for a number of reasons:

• being on a platform is a net negative to my personal well being
• the founders/owners of a company show no sense of morals or value for anything other than generating profit
• the company is entirely VC-backed: this is hard to avoid, but more and more i am convinced that the investor model under capitalism invetiably leads to enshittification as explained in the below quote:

"Once a platform hits a critical mass of users, everything changes. The Tipping Point: Growth at All Costs The moment a social media platform reaches mainstream adoption, the stakes shift. No longer just a cool tool for early adopters, the platform has become a full-fledged business. Investors start demanding returns. Advertisers see a goldmine of attention. And the pressure builds—not just to grow, but to dominate." - Who Owns Substack?

here are the platforms i am actively using, and the alternatives that i want to migrate to instead:

Substack -> Ghost#

for reasons listed in the above article. this switch will be the most tedious, as i have to deal with migrating over subscribers from Data Curious, but i believe in the end it will be worth it.

Bandcamp -> Subvert#

i joined subvert as soon as they launched as a founding co-op member. i am enthusiastic about the co-op model and hope to discover more digital co-ops.

instagram -> ???#

i don't have a good answer for this yet, but am hoping to find one. i have used instagram mainly for musical purposes, as a way to share what i'm working on and promote shows. most of my musical friends rely on instagram for booking: when a band comes through town, they usuall get in touch on instagram.

in the meantime i have deleted the app from all mobile devices, and can only check in via laptop, which adds enough friction that i only do it a few times per week.

x -> bluesky?#

i have a bluesky account, but honestly i'm not thrilled about it. i appreciate that it is de-centralized (on AT Protocol) but i don't love the discourse as the new "lefty" social platform. not because i necessarliy disagree with the takes, but because i don't feel i need another hot-take, quote-tweet doom thread in my life. and it feels like leaving one bubble for another.

"It was once novel features, like Facebook’s photo tagging or Twitter’s quote tweets, that drew users to social media sites. Now, it’s frequently ideological alignment that seduces users. People are decamping to platforms that they believe match their norms and values — and, in an increasingly polarized America, there is a chasm between the two sides." - Great Social Media Diaspora

Google -> ???#

google has dominated so much of online life that this one feels a tad overwhelming. but i would love to migrate eventually to a privacy-focused, ad-free alternative to google products (email, cloud storage, etc)

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