The Human Signal #41 - De-Google, De-Meta, Then What?

This episode of The Human Signal examines how major platforms structure and limit how artists and audiences interact online. The discussion focuses on dependence on digital infrastructure, the difficulty of leaving it, and the ethical compromises creators face when deciding where to publish their work.Hello and welcome to The Human Signal with me, Laura Sheeran. Today I want to talk about something I’ve been noticing a lot lately: people using social media to promote mass evacuation from social media platforms.As some of you might know if you’ve listened to earlier episodes, this year I’m trying to de-Google and de-Meta my online life as much as possible. It’s a long and quite tedious process, and I’m probably about 30 percent of the way through.When you start untangling these platforms from your digital life, you realise just how many hooks there are. A lot of websites force you to sign up using Gmail, Facebook, or iCloud accounts. Sometimes you literally can’t sign up to use a service or access online tools without these overlords ‘letting you in’. This is a layer of entanglement which operates beneath the surface to our highly visible and concerning collective dependance and addiction to social media, but it is not half as noticeable until you start peeling back all the layers.What’s interesting is that I’m seeing more and more encouragement online for people to abandon social media. I actually think this is a good thing. I’ve been deleting Instagram from my phone and only reinstalling it when I need to post something. A lot of these platforms have really lost their way.I’ve also just downloaded all my Facebook data and I’m about to permanently delete my account, which I’m quite excited about. I’m even thinking of marking the moment with some kind of ritual ☺️Over the past week and a half I’ve also read a few different articles about leaving various platforms which seemed to gain a lot of traction. One was a Guardian piece encouraging people to abandon ChatGPT as part of a “Quit GPT” movement in the United States. Another Substack article highlighted how much of a drain Instagram can be on people’s time and attention. And then I read another piece questioning whether people should depend so heavily on Substack, because there are no boundaries in place on here to stop the platform profiting from paid articles and newsletters promoting dangerous agendas such as white supremacy and Nazi ideology.Reading that made me realise that no platform is really “safe.” It brings into focus how difficult it is to use the internet with integrity when you’re trying to make work or build an audience.The whole social media landscape feels deeply anti-social, and has done for some time. I think this really started kicking in when the various algorithms began prioritising shoving viral clips from random people into our faces, rather than posts shared by our actual friends or those we have genuine connections with and wanted to keep in touch with. By the time that happened though, our dependance had already grown so deep, and the shift was so gradual, that we find ourselves where we are today, disconnected from people and addicted to apps.The reality is that it’s not as simple as just going back to the way things were. When you try to move back toward more analogue ways of sharing work, you realise the world has moved on.So I’m mentioning this today because I feel like something is actually starting to shift. I would love to be able to describe this perceived shift as a mass exodus from platforms, but we can’t really all exit the internet. The internet itself isn’t going anywhere.What might be useful, though, is naming what this shift actually is. When something collective is happening but there’s no language for it yet, it’s harder for people to recognise and organise around it.Over the next few days I’m going to read through some of the articles I mentioned and share my thoughts on them. All of this ties into my own attempt this year to create a more ethical internet footprint for my work.This question feels particularly urgent right now because I’m about to release a series of albums that I’ve been working on for the past four years. That means making very clear decisions about where I do and don’t publish that work.A lot of the online places artists have relied on for the past fifteen years are starting to feel too ethically questionable, if they ever weren’t. In response, some people are choosing to be more selective about which platforms they publish on. In music for example, so far Bandcamp is the only large music streaming service that has taken a clear and direct anti-AI position, banning AI music from it’s platform entirely. For the moment I’ve been relying more on Substack and Patreon. I publish this podcast through Substack and distribute it via RSS to my Patreon subscribers and other searchable places like Apple Podcasts. That setup also means fewer platforms are ingesting the audio directly, which at least slightly reduces the risk of AI scraping.Of course, once something is published digitally you could argue it’s already out in the world of ones and zeros. But for now, Substack, Patreon, and Bandcamp feel like they preserve the integrity of the work a little better. But should I be posting on Substack when they allow the spread of Nazi propeganda elsewhere on their site?A question remains: if we start eliminating platform after platform, what’s actually left?People often say the most important thing is your mailing list, because that belongs to you and you can take it wherever you go. That’s true. But building a fully independent platform from scratch requires time, technical knowledge, and financial resources that many artists simply don’t have.So for now I’m sticking with the platforms that serve me best at the moment, which are Substack, Patreon and Bandcamp.I’d also genuinely love to hear if any of you know about alternative platforms worth exploring. I’m not even sure we should still call these things social media anymore. It’s time for us to find a new name.That’s all for now. Thanks for being here, and remember: Put humans first. Don’t feed the machine.LxIf you enjoyed this podcast please share it with a friend or consider leaving a review, it really helps me out. You can also support me and my work by becoming a paid member, it’s €5 per month on Substack and Patreon. And lastly, you can still find me on YouTube / Instagram as @the_persona_project__ & @laurasheeran_ie This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit laurasheeran.substack.com/subscribe