I do most of my computing, including social media, on my MacBook Pro rather than on my iPhone or iPad. I have no interest in mobile-only social networks, and that's why I've been avoiding Threads by Meta (née Facebook). This week, however, Threads introduced a web client, so I decided to sign up today and take a look. Unfortunately, Threads is tied to Instagram and doesn't have independent accounts.
I've never used Instagram and don't have an account, but I decided to bite the bullet and sign up, for the purpose of using Threads. When I signed up, however, my Instagram account was immediately suspended, before I even had the chance to use it.
According to Instagram, "Your account, or activity on it, doesn't follow our Community Guidelines on account integrity and authentic identity." I don't know how that can possibly be true, because I haven't done anything yet except sign up. And believe it or not, my real name is in fact Jeff Johnson. That's not a pseudonym.
Frustrated, I started the appeal process, which started with entering my email address (again) and entering an emailed confirmation code (again). That's when Instagram hit me with the coup de grâce.
They wanted my phone number. That's probably why they suspended me in the first place, just to get my phone number. I've seen this little trick before on Twitter. They suspend your account for no good reason and hold it hostage in order to extract your phone number, because these advertising-driven social networks exist to collect and sell your data. If you're not the customer, you're the product.
I guess I forgot the advice I wrote back then, two years ago:
I would urge everyone to reconsider your reliance on Twitter, and reinvest in decentralized options such as blogs, RSS, and email. Collectively, we need to protect ourselves from the unchecked, undemocratic, Orwellian power of the big tech companies, before it's too late. If it's not already too late.
I won't be giving Instagram my phone number. Therefore, I won't be using Instagram or Threads. They can go to hell. If you want to follow me on social media, you can find me on the decentralized Mastodon.
In more than one way, the users of Threads lose from my non-participation. Of course I won't be posting on Threads, but perhaps more important, as a prolific developer of Safari extensions, I won't be writing one for Threads. There will be no "Tweaks for Threads". As a Twitter user, I created the much beloved extension Tweaks for Twitter, which vastly improved the twitter.com user interface. Sadly, I decided to retire Tweaks for Twitter after Elon Musk decided to retire Twitter itself in favor of "X", the so-called "everything app". You can call me an EX-Twitter developer and user. Where I go, the extensions go (see Homecoming for Mastodon), and there are no browser extensions in hell.