A few days ago I made the decision to delete my LinkedIn profile - I had close to 13,000 followers, and had been actively using the profile on a near daily basis. So, this was quite a drastic decision, at least on paper. I figured it might make an interesting topic to talk about...
Why did I delete LinkedIn?
I did it for many, many reasons. One of them is that LinkedIn is Microsoft, so it is a part of the Big Tech machine. As someone who is part of a No To Big Tech movement, I figured this was an action I can stand behind.
We give far too much of our time (and data) to Big Tech. They are huge harvesting machines, selling all kinds of information about us, and this has been described as a form of digital colonialism, the extraction of personal data to be commodified at a massive scale.
LinkedIn (being part of Microsoft) were complicit in Israel's genocide of Palestine, supported by the United States, and large parts of Europe.
I also did it because I am sick of the amount of bullshit I see on a daily basis!!! Most of the absolute rubbish comes from people in the Sustainability sector or those who claim to care about fighting climate change, ending food poverty, and whatever else people pretend to care about these days.
I will save the specifics for another day, but I could no longer turn a blind eye to not only the rubbish that was being posted, but also to the reactions of others! People were lapping it up, instead of calling it out... and so, for the most part, it felt like I was going mad by remaining on this platform.
Why use a platform which ultimately gives all my data to Big Tech, and also which by my act of engagement and daily use, earns them money, through all the crappy adverts I see on my feed?
For me, choosing to go to their website on a daily basis (sometimes, several times a day) and posting or engaging, was a conscious decision. Which means, I can also chose not to do that. And because I don't like the idea of all the data I was feeding Big Tech, I figured why not just delete it instead?
But why leave - when you could "stay and fight the good fight"?
When I posted that I was leaving (the day before I left) one comment was along the lines of "why leave, arguably now your voice is needed more than ever" etc etc.
I felt this as a bit of a backhanded compliment - nice that someone wanted me to stay, but also, no; I reject this role that I have been given, to do the work that very few other people (especially white male Europeans) seem capable of doing! Why does it have to be put upon me, even if admittedly I took it upon myself to go down this route?
This kind of feedback I feel is common from people who very rarely engage with me at all - they seem happy to me to stick my neck out and catch all the flak, but they aren't willing to get involved. Too much risk perhaps, they are happy in the comfortable position they have made for themselves.
But this also leads me onto a very important point. I am leaving because of my privilege. Only a person with a particular amount of privilege can do what I have done (well at least, do it, and get away with it, and only time will tell about that).
And I don't know if I will get away with it yet. Sometimes I have relied on my extensive network for help finding work (this happened at the end of last year, and people very kindly helped to amplify my plea to find some new SEO projects) but I have now cut those strings. I will have to rely upon myself to find work when required.
For me this is the underlying reason why more people haven't left Big Tech platforms, especially LinkedIn - a fear of it coming back to haunt them - which is another reason why I feel capitalism is the underlying structural issue that needs to be dismantled if we are serious about having a liveable planet and a properly functioning society.
Another huge problem I should mention (which is triggered by a chat with fellow marketer Lorna Westwood who is a lovely person and great at what she does!) - is that there is so much emotional cognitive burden, when it comes to shifting off Big Tech platforms.
It's not that people don't know platforms like LinkedIn are bad... it's just that, the thought of having to migrate, and rebuild elsewhere, just feels so tiring. People can't even engage with such problems when they are focused on finding work, caring for children or loved ones, dealing with whatever else they have to deal with personally... and so it again becomes the old carbon footprint issue - that people feel obliged to tackle Big Tech (etc) at the individual level.
This is wrong! And this is not good advice! If you continue to use Big Tech platforms, this doesn't mean you don't care, or are a bad person!!! It just means you lack the headspace, technical understanding, the support, the financial comfort... whatever else you might add in here.
This is something I wanted to emphasise: I don't care if people continue to use LinkedIn and such platforms, because it is not right to take this on in an individualistic way (paradoxically, despite what I have done here!) so please don't see myself as morally superior by my decision. I would argue it was not a sensible move, by someone who has a young family to support, and is the sole bread winner. But it was a move I still wanted to attempt.
But Matt... aren't you just isolating yourself by leaving platforms like this?
I think about this topic a lot, not just with my views towards Big Tech, but around life in general.
Most of my beliefs aren't in the mainstream. There will be plenty of pushback about some of them. And so the more you retreat from what are deemed the "norm" and in particular, the popular areas of the web, and find the platforms that align with your own values, don't you just end up stuck in this nice, safe echo-chamber that you have created for yourself? Surrounded by lots of people who feel and think the same way as you do?... and how is that healthy?
This is a slight concern of mine, and I'm awaiting to find out what the answer is. I think perhaps it is not answerable in such a binary way, in terms of being right vs wrong.
In my head I have an image of myself, sat on an island, all alone. The island has a label above it - it reads: The Land of the Morally Right (or the Morally Superior).
I am happy here because of the decisions I have made (I believe that I am right!) but - as you can imagine - I am largely on my own. The rest of society is continuing as normal, thousands of miles away, oblivious to what myself and perhaps a few others are up to on this nice little island.
I tried to create an image to help show what was in my head...
And so - is that the right thing to have done? How can I have a positive impact on society, through this self-imposed process of annexing myself from the rest of the (digital) world?
But also again - why do I have to feel the need to have this positive impact on society? Why can't I be like (apparently) the rest of society, focused on job promotions, nice holidays abroad, a nice new car... etc etc? For me, none of that stuff appeals to me at all (the opposite in fact!) but it is something I also ponder often - why do I care so much? Do others feel as strongly as me, and they just suppress it somehow? Or... are they just not conscious of what is going on around them?
I actually think here, my framing is that we need to build the bridge between this "island" and the rest of society. Maybe this bridge is the Fediverse? Maybe the act to be done now is to communicate the ideas of the Fediverse, and the decentralised web which isn't controlled by the elite via Big Tech, to slowly help to rebuild the internet in a way that is fairer for the whole of our society, not just the lucky few.
I think of this very much as a Socialist Internet - powered by and controlled by the people, for the people.
A final point on power structures in decentralised networks
Something I was uncomfortable about on LinkedIn (and which impacts all social networks as far as I can tell) is this idea around follower count, which is very much linked (albeit subconsciously) to power.
I was never really comfortable about this metric, because it is very arbitrary, and becomes a bit of a popularity content. In my case I think it grew because I committed to using the platform, posting most week days. Again this is based a lot upon my own privilege, that I could find the time to do this. I enjoy writing, and I liked having an outlet for my thoughts.
But recently it felt like I was too reliant on this following count, in some sense... it's not that I was obsessed with growth (I will never be into growth, despite being an SEO consultant, and especially as a vocal proponent of Degrowth!) but generally, I don't like the way that these metrics become a kind of digital replacement for success, money, or power.
I believe everyone is equal and so whatever they say or share, shouldn't have any kind of priority against that of what others may say. And I fear that with a large following, you are able to become an almost oppressive force, and I struggle with how that may take form even on a decentralised platform like Mastodon (where I currently reside!).
Anyway... if you can get off Big Tech like LinkedIn, you should give it a try. But if you can't that's ok too! You should still explore the Fediverse - and especially, have a try using Mastodon.
