People you know in real life.

I mostly left the platform over a bunch of little things that pushed me away (Explore feed going from friends of friends—things I'd care about—to ads and meme pages full of hot takes that would not get off no matter how much I put "Not Interested"; Shopping tab instead of Notifications; Reels existing in general, etc.) but I still have the account.

It has some nice pictures of me and my friends that time ate the original copies of because I was like 10 and not perfectly diligent about making backups, and that I have not gotten around to saving the Instagram copy of yet. (Now that I say this I probably should!) There are some people I talk to over Instagram Direct Message because I do not have contact information for them otherwise and I like them enough to maintain the relationship but we're not close enough for me to feel okay requesting a phone number. And finally, I have all those saved posts and tutorials that I never got around to and that I swear I'll get around to someday.

When I check back in to talk to some of those people I see other people I know in real life posting pictures from their personal life. You could argue they are advertising an image of themselves, how great they have it, etc. but some people are just posting their life—including the not-so-pretty struggles like that they just got diagnosed with cancer. And this is how I find out that some acquaintances had some major life event happen—and although we're not close enough that I was invited I do hope that little "congratulations!!" comment I leave on their engagement picture makes them feel a little more seen, remembered, and appreciated—I know it would make me feel that way.

I get the narrative is Instagram Bad, and I completely get why—I heavily decreased my usage of it for a reason—but that does not mean all the people left on there are also bad or Fake and Bad Overly Image-Obsessed Human Beings Making Your, Yes Your Self-Esteem Worse. I do wonder if Instagram would have acquired all these things I dislike if Meta did not buy it.

I realize I am essentially network effect-ed into it, even if I touch it maybe for five minutes a week.

Lemmy is not very private either but there are no corporations trying to sell my data, and I appreciate that. I spend much more time here than I do on Instagram. On the other hand, Instagram lets me bar off pictures taken in my neighborhood, pictures of me, pictures with some tiny detail that some weird stalker could use to figure out my location somehow, from anyone I don't manually approve as a follower—so it feels much safer to post andioop's personal life stuff there than it is to post on the Fediverse. I've been intending to look more into ActivityPub but as far as I know almost nothing (including Direct Messages) is private here. Maybe I should look into some kind of more private social network app actually meant for peoples' personal life (I also recognize Lemmy's purpose is not that) and try to pull my circle there?