The Definition of Doing the Same Thing Over Again and Expecting Different Results?
I was on Threads earlier today and I saw this post:
It reminded me of a friend of mine, who two years ago had his Instagram account deleted unexpectedly. Similar to the person above, my friend was given no grounds to contest the deletion or appeal the process. It was his photography business account, and he had put all his eggs in the Instagram basket. His contacts and connections all filtered through this one Instagram account. And then out of the blue, it was gone. Even now, two years later, he's still yet to rebuild that account to the same status it was before, and he lost many professional contacts which ended up hurting his business.
Despite being burned by Instagram/Facebook, my friend, like this popular fandom website that posted the message above, both quickly jumped right back in bed with Meta. They will both continue to trust someone else with their data and their content, and hope that they aren't on the receiving end of another random deletion.
Why?
I mean, I get that social media is the current best place for user engagement and advertising, but why get burned by a company and then immediately go right back to them? Is it out of desperation or feeling like they have nowhere else to go? Is it written off as just the price of doing business? I guess, what I really want to know is, why is this acceptable and why aren't folks more concerned with controlling their own content and having a place that doesn't get wiped out after an erroneous complaint or an undefined policy violation?
It doesn't make much sense to me, but to each their own. I guess it’s easier to make a Facebook account than to create a website. It's easier to get followers on Instagram than it is to point folks to your website or even your Pixelfed. I guess, it's just the way the internet is these days.