"I went on a weekend trip and didn't invite friend A, so I hope friend B keeps it a secret and doesn't tell anyone I was there" is the kind of social dynamic that people grow out of in high school. If you are having trouble with it as an adult then it isn't really Instagram's fault. People talk to each other and share stuff, and sometimes they talk about you, both online and offline. Just live your life without being so bothered about offending other people. They are adults as well, and care about it less than you think.
After being friends with public people, I got in the habit of asking people in pictures before I post, regardless of if they're on Instagram or not. And I NEVER post kid pictures. I find these rules should be obvious to most people. I'll even ask my wife first, who is always just about to post the same set of pictures I am. It's the decent thing to do.
This reminded me of the time ~10 years ago I was at an event featuring Richard Stallman, and he started by say that no one was allowed to post photos of him on FB. This was to a room of hundreds of people, mostly hackers. I thought, "damn, if there's an uphill battle somewhere, this guy will find it!"
i've thought the same thing about email. i run my own email server, so i'm one of a very few number of people whose email is opaque to gmail. on the other hand -- almost everyone i exchange email with uses gmail, so actually gmail has almost all my email anyway.
> Imagine a friend you were on a weekend trip with. This friend talks with another common friend. This common friend could have equally well been on that weekend trip because you like him or her but, due to circumstances, as is life, you did not invite him. You probably would feel uncomfortable with that first friend talking about that trip as if it was the most awesome trip ever, that everyone had non-stop fun and now everyone who was on that trip are best friends for life.
I feel like this is an issue one just has to grow up past. Walking on eggshells and deception so as not to hurt anyone's feelings is an annoying way to live. (I preach as a sinner). Related: https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/apr/01/fringe-frie...
As to Zuck's machine having your information, yeah I can imagine if they bothered, they could see that there's always a person or two in all the pictures that aren't associated with any of the faces of the accounts, it can also determine what the friend groups of this person are. Probably even determine their wealth by their clothes, accessories, vacation locations, house ("Oh 5 users are gathered in a particular geolocation that is none of their houses [which we know about because 95% of the time a phone returns to a particular geolocation at night], and we can see from the photos that that 'unregistered user' is with them", that must be this user's house. Oh he lives in this neighborhood, that has a median income of EUR xyz. A reverse lookup of addresses we have because online shops upload their customer data to our system determines that one of the people living in that address is named Wouter Janleys, and from the shopping data he likes, amongst other things, mid-range to expensive wines.".
I wonder if they can even advertise to you through your friends, hah, that'd be a feature improvement for a Facebook project manager. Start showing your friends wine ads a few weeks before your birthday (as well as "It's Wouter's birthday in a few weeks" and "Remember this photo?" which is a photo of the group with glasses of wine)...
Approaching zero of my friends are on Meta any more. Most have inactive accounts; a few have canceled outright. Those that are “active” are mostly limited to wishing each other happy birthday.
Afaic, Meta pretty much killed their platforms by pumping rage-bait clicks instead of social content.
A think this is partly why a lot of this activity moved into private group chats, where it's more naturally segregated by social circles. Most people around me are pretty active on social media but vast majority of that activity is not in the public profile.
This bothered me a lot in the past. I want to be in full control of any information that is on the Internet concerning myself. Some of the people I know will add an appeasing comment before taking a picture: "don't worry, I won't upload it anywhere!", but most people will just post it willy-nilly all the same.
By the way, during last Monday's blackout in Spain, I had a sense of this kind of burden being lifted from the atmosphere... the idea of nobody having the ability to record and publish anything anymore (for the duration of the blackout, at least), was quite interesting... relieving, even.
People who know me know that even though I'm very public (my handle and my email address are my name, for instance), I care about privacy, and therefore it's unacceptable to post abount me on corporate social media without asking permission, just as they also know to not name or tag me.
People who post without asking don't know me well enough to name or tag me, so I don't care.
If someone posted and named / tagged me without asking, I'd have a serious conversation with them about it.
We need to stop acting like others' ignorance gives them an excuse to do things we don't want. "But everyone does it" is bull, and we're doing people a disservice when we let things slide because of that.
Should it be allowed / legal to 'tag' people that are not part of a service?
I might agree that 'celebrities' and leaders of larger organizations are 'public figures' and thus if there's a reasonable public interest it should be allowed to tag them, probably with a publishing delay for security.
However individuals? Random citizens who aren't part of a platform and cannot manage their data? IMO the default should be deny data collection and do not profile.
One of my "its probably time to quit IG" moments prior to quitting 3 years involved being on a condo board.
A resident sent a petition asking for a variance from the bylaws, and part of the pitch was "well I saw XYZ on your IG so I thought you'd approve of this".
Uhh thanks, rejected.. blocked on IG, quit IG, bye.
I'm visiting Instagram lately only to see funny reels sent from my friends. My Instagram timeline is consisting of 90% influencers and life coaches, who is going to tell me my life sucks because I don't do what they have to tell me to do and 10% my friends.
I expect people to ask me before they publish documentation of where I've been and what I did on services like Instagram, and I usually decline the offer. Is this considered unreasonable elsewhere?
The social etiquette argument has been thrown away with the bath water. You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.
The term I like is Social Cooling, the subtle way in which people change their behavior because they are both present in person and online. Have you ever heard some use the term "unalive" in person? It's as if they are protecting themselves from an algorithm, as if the conversation will be posted online.
"I went on a weekend trip and didn't invite friend A, so I hope friend B keeps it a secret and doesn't tell anyone I was there" is the kind of social dynamic that people grow out of in high school. If you are having trouble with it as an adult then it isn't really Instagram's fault. People talk to each other and share stuff, and sometimes they talk about you, both online and offline. Just live your life without being so bothered about offending other people. They are adults as well, and care about it less than you think.
After being friends with public people, I got in the habit of asking people in pictures before I post, regardless of if they're on Instagram or not. And I NEVER post kid pictures. I find these rules should be obvious to most people. I'll even ask my wife first, who is always just about to post the same set of pictures I am. It's the decent thing to do.
This reminded me of the time ~10 years ago I was at an event featuring Richard Stallman, and he started by say that no one was allowed to post photos of him on FB. This was to a room of hundreds of people, mostly hackers. I thought, "damn, if there's an uphill battle somewhere, this guy will find it!"
It is perfectly valid and fine thing to say to someone, as an adult, that you don't want to be a part of their stories on social media.
If they don't respect that, you need a new set of friends.
i've thought the same thing about email. i run my own email server, so i'm one of a very few number of people whose email is opaque to gmail. on the other hand -- almost everyone i exchange email with uses gmail, so actually gmail has almost all my email anyway.
> Imagine a friend you were on a weekend trip with. This friend talks with another common friend. This common friend could have equally well been on that weekend trip because you like him or her but, due to circumstances, as is life, you did not invite him. You probably would feel uncomfortable with that first friend talking about that trip as if it was the most awesome trip ever, that everyone had non-stop fun and now everyone who was on that trip are best friends for life.
I feel like this is an issue one just has to grow up past. Walking on eggshells and deception so as not to hurt anyone's feelings is an annoying way to live. (I preach as a sinner). Related: https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/apr/01/fringe-frie...
As to Zuck's machine having your information, yeah I can imagine if they bothered, they could see that there's always a person or two in all the pictures that aren't associated with any of the faces of the accounts, it can also determine what the friend groups of this person are. Probably even determine their wealth by their clothes, accessories, vacation locations, house ("Oh 5 users are gathered in a particular geolocation that is none of their houses [which we know about because 95% of the time a phone returns to a particular geolocation at night], and we can see from the photos that that 'unregistered user' is with them", that must be this user's house. Oh he lives in this neighborhood, that has a median income of EUR xyz. A reverse lookup of addresses we have because online shops upload their customer data to our system determines that one of the people living in that address is named Wouter Janleys, and from the shopping data he likes, amongst other things, mid-range to expensive wines.".
I wonder if they can even advertise to you through your friends, hah, that'd be a feature improvement for a Facebook project manager. Start showing your friends wine ads a few weeks before your birthday (as well as "It's Wouter's birthday in a few weeks" and "Remember this photo?" which is a photo of the group with glasses of wine)...
Approaching zero of my friends are on Meta any more. Most have inactive accounts; a few have canceled outright. Those that are “active” are mostly limited to wishing each other happy birthday.
Afaic, Meta pretty much killed their platforms by pumping rage-bait clicks instead of social content.
A think this is partly why a lot of this activity moved into private group chats, where it's more naturally segregated by social circles. Most people around me are pretty active on social media but vast majority of that activity is not in the public profile.
meta and its social networks have been a disaster for the human race
This bothered me a lot in the past. I want to be in full control of any information that is on the Internet concerning myself. Some of the people I know will add an appeasing comment before taking a picture: "don't worry, I won't upload it anywhere!", but most people will just post it willy-nilly all the same.
By the way, during last Monday's blackout in Spain, I had a sense of this kind of burden being lifted from the atmosphere... the idea of nobody having the ability to record and publish anything anymore (for the duration of the blackout, at least), was quite interesting... relieving, even.
People who know me know that even though I'm very public (my handle and my email address are my name, for instance), I care about privacy, and therefore it's unacceptable to post abount me on corporate social media without asking permission, just as they also know to not name or tag me.
People who post without asking don't know me well enough to name or tag me, so I don't care.
If someone posted and named / tagged me without asking, I'd have a serious conversation with them about it.
We need to stop acting like others' ignorance gives them an excuse to do things we don't want. "But everyone does it" is bull, and we're doing people a disservice when we let things slide because of that.
Should it be allowed / legal to 'tag' people that are not part of a service?
I might agree that 'celebrities' and leaders of larger organizations are 'public figures' and thus if there's a reasonable public interest it should be allowed to tag them, probably with a publishing delay for security.
However individuals? Random citizens who aren't part of a platform and cannot manage their data? IMO the default should be deny data collection and do not profile.
A nothing post from a blog with a single post.
Its marketing and its boring.
One of my "its probably time to quit IG" moments prior to quitting 3 years involved being on a condo board.
A resident sent a petition asking for a variance from the bylaws, and part of the pitch was "well I saw XYZ on your IG so I thought you'd approve of this".
Uhh thanks, rejected.. blocked on IG, quit IG, bye.
This sounds like it should be an AITA post on reddit based on the comments in this thread.
I'm visiting Instagram lately only to see funny reels sent from my friends. My Instagram timeline is consisting of 90% influencers and life coaches, who is going to tell me my life sucks because I don't do what they have to tell me to do and 10% my friends.
Does anyone want to socialize but not have to socialize? I know I sure do / don't.
I expect people to ask me before they publish documentation of where I've been and what I did on services like Instagram, and I usually decline the offer. Is this considered unreasonable elsewhere?
He wants to hang out with friends, but he wants his friends to never speak of it with their other friends?
The social etiquette argument has been thrown away with the bath water. You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.
The term I like is Social Cooling, the subtle way in which people change their behavior because they are both present in person and online. Have you ever heard some use the term "unalive" in person? It's as if they are protecting themselves from an algorithm, as if the conversation will be posted online.