A writer named Wynn-Williams has published a book called Careless People about her time at Facebook and Meta, and one reader has written an essay about why he quit nearly every major social platform after reading it. The essay is blunt and specific about why he no longer wants anything to do with the internet as it exists today.
“The internet was about connection, but the way I see it, it’s become a great way for bad actors to defraud vulnerable people. For racists to find other racists and amplify their unsavoury views. For paedophiles for groom children with anonymity. For governments to manipulate with ease. For companies to advertise with incredibly accurate and exploitative advertising campaigns.”
From Facebook to WhatsApp
The reader’s journey began with Facebook. He deleted his account in 2018, after noticing that it had become filled with posts from people he had grown distant from since school, college, and university. The account also contained news, groups, promoted adverts, and other content he found low-value.
“I can’t put my finger on the exact reason I binned it,” he wrote, “but I suspect it was because it had become increasingly filled with posts and content from people I’d grown distant from since school, college and university. As well as those people, it was filling with news, groups, promoted adverts and posts, and other general crap. I guess overall it felt low value and just another of those vast online troves of personal data waiting to be monetised.”
He kept Instagram and WhatsApp for a long time. He deleted both last year. His reasons for Instagram were similar to Facebook’s, but with the added weight of Meta’s misdeeds: Brexit, Trump, Myanmar, child suicides, the alt-right, hate speech, propaganda, fake news, and AI slop.
WhatsApp was the final Meta service to go. The reader figured he only maintained contact with a small circle of friends, most of whom he could reach by SMS or iMessage anyway.
What He Missed
The reader admits he worried about losing touch with friends and missing popular memes or news. He also feared he would not be able to keep others up to date with his personal life. None of that came to pass.
“All that’s happened is I spend far less time consuming low value content, and more time doing other things that interest me,” he wrote. “I also make a more conscious effort to meet regularly (in person) with my close friends; an admittedly smaller group of people, but a group that I think I have more rewarding friendships with.”
He has not missed any platforms. He is confident he has left them all behind.
The Internet’s Decline
The reader sees the internet as a place that once promised connection but now mostly serves bad actors. He quotes Wynn-Williams’s book, which described her idealism and enthusiasm for Facebook in her early years there. She believed the company was going to “do good.”
“But even a cursory glance at Facebook’s backstory shows how it was never borne out of these ethical or morally guided desires,” he writes, “it was a way to rate how attractive the classmates at Harvard were. Facebook is an empire of shit built upon a foundation of misogyny and judgemental behaviour.”
The reader argues that the founder was not a genius. He was a good coder who got into Harvard, acted like a dick, stumbled upon a half-decent idea, and benefited from dumb luck and privilege. That combination produced one of the most valuable companies in history.
This pattern repeats across Silicon Valley, he says. The “move fast and break things” mantra, the exploitative hyper-capitalist mentality — these have corrupted the internet, and now AI is following the same path.
Daily Hassles
The reader works in IT and feels stuck in the industry. He increasingly feels revulsion for everything it stands for. He struggles to see the value in the internet and in IT in general. Social networks, he argues, have become an evil for global societies, and the negative impacts have far outweighed any positives.
But he still needs the internet to function. He lists the daily services he tolerates:
| Service | Purpose |
|---|---|
| App | Pay for parking |
| Online account | Pay for a family swim at the local leisure centre |
| Online form | Book a slot at the local recycling centre |
| App | Check bank and credit card balances |
To use these services, he has to buy a £600 phone, pay a monthly contract and subscription to Apple, install an adblocker, manage endless authentication prompts and MFA codes, generate unique passwords for everything, and store them in a password manager. He charges his phone daily, applies a screen protector and a case, and runs a VPN to maintain privacy.
“It’s exhausting,” he writes, “and I’m just gobsmacked that within living memory none of this really existed. I’m a 90s child and I vividly remember being out of the house on days out without a smartphone or even a feature phone. How insane does this feel.”
The Cost of Connection
The reader’s story is a personal one, but it speaks to a broader tension. Many people have quit social media over the years, citing burnout, harassment, or simply the sense that the platforms no longer serve a useful purpose. The difference here is that he has gone further — he has left the entire infrastructure behind.
He describes what he gave up and what he gained.
The post raises a question that many people ask privately but rarely say aloud: is the internet worth it?
For the reader, the answer is clear from his own words. He spends far less time on low-value content and more time on things that interest him. He has smaller, closer friendships. He has peace of mind.
He calls the internet “something that I have to tolerate to do many things that functioned fine before.” That is a fair description of where he finds himself now.
The reader’s story is a reminder that quitting the internet is possible. It is also a warning that the cost of staying connected is higher than most people realize.
Source: strategictree.bearblog.dev