Like most other people in the world photographers’ lives have been transformed by social media. It’s how many of us meet, socialise, share our work and market ourselves. But there is growing dissatisfaction with the main platforms and the way they behave, and people are leaving them in droves.
I was never a fan of Twitter or Elon Musk so I take particular delight in watching the slow, drawn-out death of X, but I’m more disappointed by what has happened to Meta’s platforms, Facebook and Instagram, which I had always regarded as the most photographer friendly. Facebook is home to hundreds of special interest communities. There are groups for every niche within photography.
The trouble is that it’s getting increasingly difficult to see any of their posts, or those from your actual friends, among the ads and spam. Every time I log on (which is less frequent than it used to be since I deleted the Facebook app from all my mobile devices) I see another goodbye message from one of my friends. Some groups are finding alternative platforms.
The upped sticks and moved their entire operations to Discord, leaving only a redirection message on Facebook. One of the main reasons was that members just weren’t seeing their posts among the ads. (Of course, Facebook won’t even show a group’s posts to most of its members unless they pay for the privilege).
I recently lodged a complaint with Facebook about being served those fake news stories where Martin Lewis is allegedly recomme.