silo-quits

From IndieWeb

silo quits are public statements by individuals announcing they have quit posting on or using various silos with no intention to return. Sometimes people take a temporary break, AKA "social media break" or soft quit.

Why

Why quit social media

There are numerous reasons to quit (or at least greatly reduce) use of social media silos, as fundamental as:

  • Personal mental health
  • Being deliberate with your time and attention
  • Withholding support from systems that amplify misinformation, divisiveness, violence

For more, see:

Why to quit specific sites:

Etc.

Why document silo quits

It is worth the time to publicly document quitting social media silos for many reasons:

  • Show it is possible
  • Set a good example
  • Make it clear you are not alone for quitting or wanting to quit
  • See individual perspectives on why they quit


Who

Want to be included in this growing list of people that have quit social media silos?

  • Sign-in and add yourself,
  • or drop by the chat and ask to be added, someone will be happy to help you out!


This page is for documenting:

  • Anyone in IndieWeb community — please only add yourself. If you see silo quit announcements by others in the community, please encourage them to add themselves if they like.
  • Public figures — When "very public" people like celebrities, political figures, other "notable" individuals (see Wikipedia) make a public announcement of leaving or deleting a social media profile, feel free to add them.
  • Anyone else who asks to be added and preferably makes a public silo-quit statement with permalink.


Please do not:

  • Please do not add people just because you see a silo-quit post on Twitter or elsewhere.
  • Please do not ask people outside the community if they want to be added. E.g. people on Twitter that are declaring they are quitting Facebook etc.

Instead:

  • If you choose to interact with someone publicly on Twitter, consider a positive invitation like:
    1. Congratulate them for quitting (acknowledgment is meaningful, being seen is meaningful)
    2. Let them know they’re not alone (solidarity is meaningful) and perhaps link to silo-quits in that context
    3. Only then invite them to join the IndieWeb for alternatives and a supportive community.
  • Then they can read the invitation to add themselves on the page itself, instead of feeling pressured by a public invitation (by a possible/likely stranger) on Twitter that could come off sounding like a burdensome demand.

Future silo quits

Silo quits announced far in advance, either based on a specific future date or a particular event that does not have a specific date associated with it yet.

Mark Frauenfelder (BoingBoing)

I'm joining the campaign to deactivate my Twitter account on August 17, 2018 #Deactiday (in protest against Twitter not banning Alex Jones).

Tom MacWright‏

Goodreads - 2017-12-07 https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/938928565126512640

next indieweb goal: quit goodreads

2017-12-07 https://twitter.com/tmcw/status/938945494499205120

since 2k13, it's been An Amazon Company, and kinda hides that fact in all its branding/about materials

Eddie Hinkle

[…] Goodreads is definitely a silo-quit goal for me in 2018.

Meredith L Patterson considering

Stack Overflow - 2016-02-08 https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/696656959706112000

Considering deleting my @StackOverflow account. Haven't wanted to login in years, and my answers are now being farmed for editing rep.

... and https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/696657390301790208

[...] Sanctimonious edit spam.

Kylie Jenner

Instagram - upon having a child. 2015-12-13 Kylie Jenner Plans to Leave Instagram Once She Has a Kid

Unclear silo quits

These are folks that declared an intent to quit a silo but no evidence can be found that they actually did. If you can confirm either way with a public post or other verifiable evidence, please note those links in their entry and move it to the date they actually quit the silo or at least the year if you can determine it.

Mike Elgan, Journalist

2018-12-12: Elgan announced on his own website that on July 4th, 2019 (traditionally celebrated as Independence Day in the United States) he would be quitting and deleting Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger. He wrote a long and succinct list of reasons why he's leaving. To replace it he will be using his own website, a newsletter, and a Google Photos idea which he calls Nicebook.

2020-06-07 Unclear if he actually quit Facebook.

  • His archives from that week do not mention Facebook. Presumably he would have followed through with a blog post announcing / celebrating that he had done so and encouraging others to do so too.

2020-07-18:

2024

This section is a stub. You can help the IndieWebCamp wiki by expanding it.


There has to be some, at least according to things people have said in chat!

The Guardian

Why the Guardian is no longer posting on X:

We wanted to let readers know that we will no longer post on any official Guardian editorial accounts on the social media site X (formerly Twitter). We think that the benefits of being on X are now outweighed by the negatives and that resources could be better used promoting our journalism elsewhere.

capjamesg

  • Stopped using Instagram (after returning after a break) and Mastodon in 2024. No longer uses social media.
    • I don't feel as stressed about all the things social media made me stressed about now.
    • I occasionally think about the discussions I am missing, but I now realise I much prefer chatting with people directly or in communities than social media.

Skeleton Claw

  • 2024-11-26 Skeleton Claw quit Twitter:

    Dear friends, I love you but it's time to go. Perhaps we'll meet again somewhere else.

Comic about yeast and quitting Twitter

2023

capjamesg

capjamesg: I deleted my Instagram account after realising I was spending more time scrolling than I would like.

Phil Schiller

Apple Fellow Phil Schiller quit Twitter https://9to5mac.com/2023/01/25/phil-schiller-now-on-mastodon/

gRegor Morrill

gRegor Morrill: I decided to stop posting on Twitter after new ownership decisions led to increased hate speech and allowed previously-banned accounts back. Plus he has boosted misinformation, COVID conspiracy theories, and used anti-trans language.

I had effectively stopped posting on my Facebook wall since 2020-06-04, though without an announcement. On 2023-01-02, I took the chance to also post an announcement (archived) on Facebook with details of how to follow me. I may still occasionally use some Facebook Groups, but I have no intention of posting publicly on my wall again.

Anthony Ciccarello

Anthony Ciccarello: I stopped posting on Twitter and Instagram a couple years ago but made it offical with a article on my blog.

NewNewsWire

2023-04-07 NewNewsWire quits Twitter: https://twitter.com/NetNewsWire/status/1644449449241092098

W3C

2023-12-06 W3C quits Twitter: "W3C has posted that we are no longer active on X/Twitter and have directed all our followers here to Mastodon. We are encouraging all W3C-related accounts to do the same."

2022

Laker Turner

2022-05-13 Laker Turner announced on her blog that she was leaving Twitter, citing mental health reasons.

Nick Simson

2022-05-01 Nick Simson quit Instagram and Goodreads and "ditched" Twitter (blog post), opting for the features and community in micro.blog instead.

2021

Leo Laporte

2021-01-12 Leo Laporte, a tech journalist and prominent podcaster, posted on his website that he's leaving Twitter Tweet to Toot: Why I'm moving off Twitter (syndicated copy on Twitter)

It’s just too toxic on Twitter. The continued trolling was hurting our team, our hosts, and our business, so we decided, as a team, to pack up and move out. I don’t know about you, but I always found Twitter mildly disturbing. I won’t miss it (any more than I miss Facebook).

2020

Jan-Lukas Else

2020-01-13 Twitter: I deleted my Twitter account

I finally deleted my Twitter account (or rather deactivated it, it will be deleted if I do not log in for another 30 days).

David Mead

2020-12-03 Twitter and Instagram: Leaving Twitter and Instagram

But why close them completely? Simple. I don't see what I liked ever coming back.

2019

@aphyr

2019-12-23 Aphyr announced in a Twitter thread why he was leaving Twitter (after being repeatedly banned and abused) to move to a self-hosted Mastodon account/instance.

Centre for Innovation, Leiden University

2019-03-29 Closing all Facebook groups, Whatsapp groups, and Instagram accounts:

The Centre for Innovation of Leiden University has always strongly supported social or collaborative learning in online learning: the interaction between learners facilitating learners, whether that is in discussion forums, peer review assignments or in our Facebook groups, contributes to a deeper understanding of subjects, and prepares learners to apply their knowledge.

However, the Centre for Innovation has a responsibility to our teachers, learners and volunteers, under GDPR and our own Privacy Policy. Based on this we conducted a review of different platforms that we made use of for collaborative, social learning and have decided to move away from those that do not allow us to meet our obligations and promises to those in our care.

Therefore we have decided to close all Facebook groups, Whatsapp groups and Instagram accounts currently under control of the Centre for Innovation, per the 29th of March 2019, and have adjusted our courses accordingly.

You can direct any questions or remarks in regards to this policy to MOOC@sea.leidenuniv.nl.

Kind Regards,

On behalf of Centre for Innovation, Leiden University,

Tanja de Bie, Community Manager

from email through Coursera about "Policy change in regards to Social Media use for social learning from Centre for Innovation, Leiden University"

Fluffy

2019-03-05 Fluffy announces they've quit Patreon with an explanation of the reasons why.

Dries Buytaert, Founder of Drupal

2019-02-04 Dries announced on his own website that he's leaving Facebook in favor of more open web and IndieWeb solutions.

I'm pulling the plug on Facebook because of their recent privacy violations — which got me thinking about what is next for the Open Web.

Ken Bauer

2019-01-31, Ken Bauer, associate professor in the Computing Science Department at the Tecnológico de Monterrey Guadalajara Campus, quit Facebook on a one month trial basis.

There are many reasons and much to do about the way Facebook (and other companies) are shaping the thoughts of our society. Sure I enjoy being able to stay in touch with others and for many (family and friends from school) this is the only contact that I really have with them. But we must think how we use these platforms and more importantly how they are using us.Paint it Facebook Black

Robert Habeck

Habeck, leader of the Green Party in Germany, announced deleting his Facebook and Twitter accounts on 07 Jan 2019, after falling victim to the Dec 2018 mass data hacks in Germany. In a blog post (archived) on his personal website, he mentions both the data hack and a personal tendency to loose focus and make unreflected statements as the reasons, while expressing his awareness that leaving social media may be a mistake as a politician.

On Twitter, the announcement (archived) triggered some immediate criticism for blaming social media for his own shortcomings; it was further questioned whether it is possible or appropriate for a politician to stay out of social media.

2018

Walt Mossberg

2018-12-17 Mr. Mossberg, a veteran technology journalist of The Wall Street Journal, The Verge and Recode, said on Monday he would be deactivating his Facebook account, along with the Facebook-owned Messenger and Instagram apps. — via New York Times
archive copy of Facebook post

  • "1/ Some personal news: I've decided to quit Facebook around the end of the year. I am doing this - after being on Facebook for nearly 12 years - because my own values and the policies and actions of Facebook have diverged to the point where I’m no longer comfortable there." @waltmossberg December 17, 2018
  • "2/ I am also quitting Facebook-owned Instagram and Messenger. I will remain on Twitter, and will continue to communicate via iMessage, email and SMS text with those who have my email address and/or phone number. Obviously, people who follow me here can also reach me via DM." @waltmossberg December 17, 2018

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, aka Instapundit

I deleted my Twitter account. It's a breeding ground for thoughtlessness and contempt. Twitter is poison to American political discourse. Can't we find a more worthy pastime? published as an op-ed in in USA Today on 2018-12-03.

Christina Farr

In an article dated 2018-12-01, Christina Farr, CNBC health-tech reporter, wrote "I quit Instagram and Facebook and it made me a lot happier — and that’s a big problem for social media companies". In it she discusses some health and happiness related issues to leaving social media.

Khurt Williams

Mathias Pfefferle

Adam Croom

I decided that I would deactivate my Twitter account for the holidays. The holidays turned quickly turned into six months and here I am. I still have access to the Twitter profiles I wish to follow as most profiles are public, and thus I make a conscience effort to check the streams of particular folks (mostly journalists and news publications) that I’m still interested in following. Unsurprisingly, removing myself from punching the Twitter icon and swimming in the often negative environment that the community perpetuates has been a net positive for my health. In a similar fashion, I don’t have Instagram installed on my phone anymore (my workaround here is I’ll occasionally install it and bulk upload a handful of files and then delete it). For Facebook, I actually inactivated that account in November as well, but surprisingly felt myself come back to it quicker for important information I would miss otherwise (my gym uses a private group for all communication). But, for the most part, my day is spent sans social media.

Sweden

On 2018-10-01 the @Sweden twitter account quit tweeting after 7 years and 356 ordinary residents of Sweden who acted as curators. The story was covered in The Guardian.

Rick Wysocki

2018-09-26 Announced on his own website that he had quit Facebook

J. Gregory McVerry

Deleted 2018-09-28. Rejoined 2018-12-01 to locate missing dog. Quit again 2018-12-02

I deactivated my facebook months ago and thought I would leave it for when I volunteer with political campaigns.After today's data breach I am done. Not only did they get 50-90 million facebook passwords they got the token to everything you use "log in with facebook" Also while I missed the town news and friends, I simply felt better not being on facebook. No arguing with people whose minds I do not change, not lost time.Instead I found other new networks that actually make the world a better place. 28-September-2018

Eddie Hinkle

Eddie quit Instapaper on Sept. 11, 2018

Leo Laporte

Yesterday I deactivated my Twitter account and kicked Tumblr to the curb. A couple of weeks ago I did the same with Instagram. A month or so before that I killed Facebook. And I survived. No, thrived! 29-August-2018

Ezra J. Spier

Susan Fowler

Matt Haughey

On 2018-08-08 Matt Haughey announced on his personal site "After 12 years, I’ve decided to hang it up on Twitter." He included some additional thoughts, motivation, and description of exporting his data. Archive version

Over the years I started to get increasingly frustrated with the decisions made by Twitter. Every six months or so something would happen that’d make me stop and ask why I still use the site and I kept thinking of all the new voices I’d read and enjoyed that I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. But the looming doubt over the future of the service eventually became too great.

Brent Simmons

On 2018-08-08 Brent announced he was leaving Twitter on his personal site. Brent has previously quit Twitter before.

My problem with Twitter remains the same: centralized social networking concentrates way too much power in one place. Twitter is awful in other ways, sure, not just for that reason. (The issues with Nazis and harassment and abuse. The way it treats third-party Twitter developers.) [...] Twitter is not the public square. It just wants you to think it is. The web itself is the public square.

50 Cent

2018-05-09 50 Cent announced that due to censorship he was quitting Instagram (where he had over 18 million followers). He made the quit posts on both Instagram and Twitter:

I’m leaving IG, I’m going back to Twitter. They take shit down off my page with out notifying me. #censorthesenuts"

  • Following his quit he began posting images of nothing but black to his Instagram account, presumably in protest.
  • Story on Business Insider

Chrissy Teigen

2018-03-24 Quit Snapchat announced on Twitter

I stopped using snap. The update, the constant complaints of people not being able to find me, plus the Rihanna poll...no bueno

SpaceX and Tesla

2018-03-23 Facebook page quits:

Multiple Facebook Quitters

Jonathan LaCour

2018-03-21 Facebook:

2018-01-13 Instagram

Cher

  • 2018-03-20 Singer/Actress Cher deleted her Facebook account
    • "OK …….JUST LEFT FACEBOOK🙌🏻"
    • 2018-03-20 "2day I did something VERY HARD 4 me.Facebook has helped me with my Charity, &there are amazing young Ppl there.I have a special friend (Lauren)who I Respect & Admire,but today I deleted my Facebook account. I Love My🇺🇸🙏🏻. I Believe....There are Things MORE”IMPORTANT”THAN💰💰"
    • 2018-03-20 "To be completely honest, I have not used Facebook in forever, but I kept it out of respect🙌🏻 For my friend,the help they’d Given me & help they were going to be give me when FREE THE WILD Was completely up on it feet.Strange...we are Ready Now😥"

Tea Leoni

  • 2018-03-20 Actress Tea Leoni quit Facebook saying "This week, I’m leaving Facebook. It’s the spreading of misinformation during and since the 2016 election, and the unauthorized sharing of personal information—just can’t be here under these circumstances. I hope Facebook finds a better path. For now, I’ll be on Twitter. xoxtéa"

Adam McKay

  • 2018-03-20 Director-writer Adam McKay quit Facebook.

Natalie Wolchover

Her reasons and advice about quitting:

In case it helps give others the strength, I deleted my Facebook account four days ago and my current rejoice-to-regret ratio is 100:1. Facebook has been an unfun wasteland for years. I deleted my 14-yr-old Facebook account. It’s nice to no longer live with the hypocrisy of giving my data to a company that I think does more harm than good, that’s irresponsible with said data, that’s so far up its own ass that it’s in over its head. All the photos though... (1/2) The hurdle to get over was the years of photos, mine and other people’s, that are stored there. FB let’s you download all your data, but if, like me, its just the photos you want: I used a Chrome extension called DownAlbum to quickly download entire FB albums. (2/2)

Leo Laporte

  • 2018-03-18 Technology journalist and IndieWeb proponent Leo Laporte announced he had deleted his Facebook account the night before on his online show This Week in Tech, episode 658 (see discussion of the Facebook story at ~26 minutes into the show). He had previously quit Facebook, but came back to it because it was a space he felt he needed to cover as a technology journalist. "This is not the first time I'll quit Facebook, but this is the last," he said.

Jack Monroe

2018-03-01 Jack Monroe quit Twitter account @BoostStrapCook: Very sad to write this, but it's for the best.

I'm coming off Twitter for the good of my mental health.

Jim Carrey

  • 2018-02-06 Actor Jim Carrey quit Facebook saying "I’m dumping my @facebook stock and deleting my page because @facebook profited from Russian interference in our elections and they’re still not doing enough to stop it. I encourage all other investors who care about our future to do the same. #unfriendfacebook"

rafaorr

~2018-02-05 @rafaorr quit Facebook per:

Vincent Ritter

Colin Walker

2018-01-08 Twitter,Facebook

  • https://colinwalker.blog/08-01-2018-2151/

    After a lot of dithering and coming up with reasons not to I have finally deactivated both my Twitter and Facebook accounts... Do I worry about someone taking my name in future when it can be recycled? No. This blog and my primary email accounts (.me.uk and .blog) are the canonical representation of me on the internet and I don't need anything else.


2017

Tim Morgan

2017-12-02 quit Twitter:

Nelson Minar

2017-11-09 quit Twitter except for two subsequent tweets citing additional sources for his reasons for quitting:

2017-11-09 Nelson Minar: That's it, I'm out. Rage quitting Twitter, at least for awhile. I don't want anything to do with a company that endorses Nazis.

Bio (as of 2018-01-09):

I've quit Twitter because of management and policy. Find me on Mastodon: https://lgbt.io/@nelson

Joël Franusic

2017-08-26 temporarily quit Twitter through 2017-12-31:

Mark Damon Hughes

2017-04-23 quit Twitter:

2017-04-23 Mark Damon Hughes: Mastodon: "For the last few weeks, I’ve been getting into Mastodon, and last week I closed my Twitter account." (archived)

Lindy West

2017-01-03 quit Twitter:

2017-01-03 Lindy West: I’ve left Twitter. It is unusable for anyone but trolls, robots and dictators

Ta-Nehisi Coates

2017-01-02 quit Twitter: 2017-01-02 Ta-Nehisi Coates: Ok. So I'm gonna take the year to try my hand at this fancy book writin' stuff. See y'all in '18. Take us out, Queen...

  • 2018-03-15 Toward the end of an The Atlantic Interview Podcast, Coates positively indicated he was done with Twitter and would NEVER be coming back to it.

Sherman Alexie, novelist

2017-01-01 quit Twitter:

2017-01-01 Sherman Alexie: Hey folks, I’m leaving Twitter because its negatives increasingly outweigh its positives. Thank you for the follows.


2016

Om Malik

2016-12-22 Instagram (possibly others? temporary ”Holiday from Social Internet”)

  • http://om.co/2016/12/22/holiday-from-social-internet/

    … I have decided to get off the Social Internet for the near foreseeable future.

    … Perhaps restricting myself to the blog is the right way to balance what’s important and what’s not. …

    Instead of Instagram (which Inhave [sic] shutdown for a few weeks including making it private), I will post photos in full size on my photo blog, Om.blog.

Marty McGuire

2016-12-15 Evernote

Colin Walker

2016-12-01 Twitter

  • https://colinwalker.blog/2016/12/29/life-without-twitter/

    But, with the way 2016 has been, and things going on in my life offline, I decided to step away. So, on December 1st I stopped tweeting, uninstalled the app from my phone and took the drastic step of deleting all 13K plus of my old tweets.

Kendall Jenner

2016-11-14 Instagram

Alan Levine

  • 2016-11-16 Facebook Sticking a Fork in Facebook (2nd Time)

    It was not even the still endless use of my flickr photos for Facebook catfishing accounts, which asking Facebook to address is futile, it is more the accepted inevitability of Facebook that grates at me too. Upin my last update waving goodbye, within an hour, one friend (the real kind, not the click kind) called me on the phone. It was actually my second deletion, I only had to revive it for a teaching project where student groups were in there.

  • 2010-05-16 FacebookObligatory Why I am ________ing Facebook

    First time was more about the stinginess of how Facebook sucks content in but never lets it out. And feeling hypocritical criticizing it while being inside

Brent Simmons

2016-11-09 Twitter - https://twitter.com/brentsimmons/status/796419971450425344

Lynn Cyrin

2016-08-16 LinkedIn

Ilya Grigorik

2016-07-28 Flickr

Tino Kremer

2016-07-18 Facebook, Twitter, Path, Google+, Flickr, Camarilla

  • I deleted all my socialmedia accounts. Keeping everything up to date was a huge time sink. It also affected my mood as I was getting annoyed by all the crap Facebook and others put in my face while I just want to see what's happening with my friends and family. I reverted to chat, email and RL visits. I'm much happier now. I never looked back.

Joe "begriffs" Nelson

2016-05-01 Twitter

  • Deleted my twitter account and went back to the original social network. Been off Twitter for months and rarely think about it anymore. Primarily using email to talk with people now and have found we have higher quality conversations.

Tim Burks

2016-05-28 app.net

Replacing it evidently with IndieWeb usage, next tweet in reply:

Various Milennials

2016-03-17 Twitter, Facebook

Julieanne Smolinski

2016-03-01 Twitter

  • Twitter Has Become a Park Filled With Bats and Perverts

    I’m quitting Twitter for a specific, practical reason: Because I keep getting bothered by assholes and perverts and Twitter doesn’t seem willing or able to do anything about it. I’m quitting Twitter the way you quit your favorite restaurant when it suffers an E. coli outbreak. I'm quitting Twitter for the simple fact that Twitter’s been bumming me out.

Stephen Fry

2016-02-15 Twitter

  • Too many people have peed in the pool

    It’s no big deal – as it shouldn’t be. But yes, for anyone interested I have indeed deactivated my twitter account. I’ve ‘left’ twitter before, of course: many people have time off from it whether they are in the public eye or not. Think of it as not much more than leaving a room. I like to believe I haven’t slammed the door, much less stalked off in a huff throwing my toys out of the pram as I go or however one should phrase it. It’s quite simple really: the room had started to smell. Really quite bad.

George DeMet

2016-01-01 George DeMet (founder & CEO Palantir) quit Facebook:


2015

Darren Mothersele

2015-11-10: Facebook

Previous challenges:

  • I have posted before about my decision to leave Facebook. In fact, that was almost exactly 2 years ago. I tried to leave. It didn't work. Six months later I returned.

    The main reason for my return was that Facebook had become the single place where my friends organised social events. I was locked in.

    Emphasis added.

whaity

2015-11-08: Instagram

Essena O'Neill

2015-11: Essena O'Neill quit Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr

Rob Fairhead

2015-11-01: Google Photos, Evernote

Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce

2015-09-30 Business Insider reports that Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has quit Facebook. Benioff explained why in a series of tweets including the quote "[It was] Just too much. Desiring peace through simplicity."

Joss Whedon

Twitter Joss Whedon Calls “Horsesh*t” On Reports He Left Twitter Because Of Militant Feminists

  • 2015-05-04:

    Whedon said, is that he chose to embrace his longstanding desire post–Age of Ultron to reclaim his personal life and creative spark — and that meant saying goodbye to Twitter.

    Whedon laid out a portrait of the constant noise of Twitter and his complicated relationship to it to explain what eventually led him to leave.

    “Twitter is an addictive little thing, and if it’s there, I gotta check it. When you keep doing something after it stops giving you pleasure, that’s kind of rock bottom for an addict. … I just had a little moment of clarity where I’m like, You know what, if I want to get stuff done, I need to not constantly hit this thing for a news item or a joke or some praise, and then be suddenly sad when there’s hate and then hate and then hate.”

Antonio Savorelli

Facebook The Friction of Quitting

  • 2015-03-31:

    A couple of months ago I decided to quit Facebook once and for all, and stop considering it an inevitability of my digital identity. Its business strategy had always creeped me out, even before the advent of frictionless sharing, which is something bad labeled as something good. Nothing I’ve done throughout the years has ever fully succeeded in toning down the sources of creepiness, from the so-called Facebook envy to the feeling I have that even the smartest of my friends become shallow, babbling dummies the moment they open Facebook—which makes me certain that I too, in their eyes, must appear the same way, even more than my offline self does.

Dan Gillmor

Facebook (except to stay "up to date on how it works") https://www.facebook.com/dangillmor/posts/1757944654431393

  • 2015-01-31:

    Please don't be insulted if I don't accept friend requests -- I'm using FB solely to make sure I'm up to date on how it works, and will be spending very little time here. So it's unlikely I'd catch up with you this way in any case.

    his last post on his Facebook profile.

Graydon Hoare

Twitter (and perhaps other "social media") https://twitter.com/graydon_pub/status/556131987564408832


2014

Geoff Nicholson

Facebook

  • 2014-12-12:

    A few people have recently asked me why I left facebook. Mostly, it was because I was compulsively checking it for no real reason. Yes, I miss out on the heartwarming stories that people post, and I miss out on hearing what my friends are doing in places far and near. But I also miss out on tracking cookies, being an outlet for advertising, and siloing my data in Facebook's vaults.

    Mostly, I've decided to implement the #indieweb. This is a set Principles which I think the web is missing out on. [...]

    [1]

Brad Colbow

Medium, Tumblr

Chuq Von Rospach

Facebook

  • 2014-06-29: Announced he is probably leaving Facebook in one week.
  • Facebook Steps In It

    My bottom line is that I keep looking for ways to spend less time on Facebook because I get very little value for the time spent there — I’d rather put that time into more productive things. Facebook just isn’t that interesting or useful, and I’m not thrilled with their tendency to set policies that ignore the needs and interests of their users in favor of things that benefit Facebook.

Brennan Novak

Facebook

  • 2014-06-06 Dear Facebook, Goodbye

    In honor of the one year anniversary of Edward Snowden's revelations and in effort to #ResetTheNet, I am leaving Facebook. I will first download all my pictures, updates, and private messages and then delete my account data.

Tyler Finck

Facebook, Instagram, Google+

  • 2014-05-06 Tyler Finck: Antisocial Networking

    Last weekend I deleted my Instagram account, my Facebook Page, and my Google+ profile. [...]

    Over the past year I’ve tweaked my website almost every month, editing code and experimenting live. I’ve also started to create content two or three times a month. This site has become the place that I’m ready to host almost everything I make. The one stop Tyler Finck shop, which sounds horrible but is the best summary of the journey that I didn’t even know I was on until very recently. [...]

    Note: I plan on keeping my Twitter account active because after six years of use I still love it. My Flickr stream will soon become private as a means of backup and my Tumblr panoramas will be rolled into tylerfinck.com. Vimeo/YouTube? I’m not entirely sure what to do with them (since I utilize those sites only to serve up content). My love/hate relationship with Dribbble continues, and I’m still experimenting with Soundcloud.

Doug McKown

Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, Tumblr:

  • 2014-04-16 Doug McKown: Why I’m Quitting Facebook

    I’ve already deleted my Pinterest, Google+, and Tumblr account, but still have too many accounts to manage: Facebook, two Instagram accounts, and three Twitter accounts. I’m closing both Instagram accounts and my Facebook account.

    I want to own and control my content.

    [Strong emphasis in original]

Neil Gaiman

Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter

Neil Gaiman is taking a ~6 month break from "social media", as announced in:

He is, however, still blogging on his own site:

Eat24

Facebook

  • 2014-03-31 Eat24 (company): A Breakup Letter to Facebook from Eat24:

    We’ll pack our things and be gone by 11:59pm on Monday night. Yes, you read that right. Eat24, the company that is always telling customers to Like our page, post on our wall, and ask us for coupons on Facebook… is deleting its Facebook. This is real.

Dadepo Aderemi

Facebook

  • 2014-03-21 Dadepo Aderemi: Getting Personal:

    I am avoiding Facebook by all means now. I still keep using twitter though, but majorly as a source of discovery for things around my area of professional interests, and once in a while, a place to engage in ephemerial and disjointed rants. If I have something on my mind I really feel the need to share or capture, I write a coherent post instead. No, sorry: fusilade of tweets is no longer for me.

Michael Garvin

GitHub

  • 2014-03-28 Michael Garvin (gar) started self-hosting project code Time for gitlab

    Of course, with github you still can own your data, git is a decentralized version control system so you have a complete copy of everything even on your local clone. The things github provides (that are also the data you do not control) are things like issues. Things that are the real ‘community’ part of your project. As my friend @baldwin said to me earlier today, “It’s interesting that github seems to have re-centralized git.”

Sebastiaan Andeweg

Facebook

  • 2014-09-09 Sebastiaan Andeweg left Facebook (deactivating), after downloading the data-package they provide. Not everything seems to be in there, and it's certainly not easily parsed, but it's enough to not reactivate when in search for a memory. I did leave partly to get more time and space in my head, partly because I just did not want to have the feeling of being analysed all day.


2013

Aaron Parecki

App.net

"I am no longer publishing content to my App.net account until I can syndicate my content to their service without writing a single line of code."

Kartik Prabhu

Blogger

  • Kartik Prabhu: Redux

Jamie Zawinski

Dropbox

Laurent Eschenauer

Google+:

Douglas Rushkoff

Facebook:


2012

  • ...


2011

Aaron Sorkin

2011-06-22 Both The Telegraph and The Guardian reported that The Social Network's [writer] Aaron Sorkin quits Facebook: Writer of Oscar-winning drama is no longer a friend to Mark Zuckerberg's creation due to 'opinions on social media'


2010

Jesse Eisenberg

2010-10-16 The Courier Mail reported that Jesse Eisenberg, the star of the film The Social Network who portrays Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg had joined Facebook for the film, but subsequently quit.

But his brief flirtation with the site left him "freaked out".

"I joined under a fake name and was sent a message from Facebook suggesting people I should befriend," Eisenberg explains.

"One of them was a girl my sister was friends with in high school. I don't know how they found her, no idea. I signed off right then."


2007

Leo Laporte

  • 2007-04-06 Leo Laporte leaves Twitter for Jaiku Laporte tweeted: “I’ve asked Ev to delete my Twitter account. I’m concerned about confusion with TWiT. I’m moving to Jaiku: account is ChiefTWiT. CU there!” followed by “I should never have trademarked TWiT. Curse you Ev. Couldn’t you have called this Odeoer or something?”
  • According to Scoble's post:

we’re having dinner with Lisa Stone and Chris Carfi and Chris says Leo is the “Twitter quitter.” The reason Leo’s leaving Twitter is significant is because Leo kicked off the Twitter hype by talking about Twitter on his show, TWiT (This Week in Tech) about two weeks before SXSW.


years ago


Purging Rather Than Quitting

  • 2017-07-14 I Flushed The Last 9 Years Of My Facebook Profile

    I flushed the the last 9 years of my Facebook profile over the last couple of days. Instead of deleting my account, I just cleaned up everything except what I have posted in 2017. In the future I will make it a yearly ritual to flush the previous year of my Facebook profile

  • 2018-10-12 Robin Derosa deletes all content at end of each month to maintain local connections

My plan going forward is to manually delete all engagements at the end of every month. I will also refrain from hosting much content on Facebook, and will instead add most things to my blog and then link to Facebook (go #IndieWeb!) Facebook Delete and Stay

Silo quits to File

So many have been quitting silos that many haven't been properly documented in the calendar timeline above. This section collects those that need to be filed above properly. (Roughly in order by date):

  • Digg in 2010 had a mass silo quit when users abandoned Digg V4 to go to competitor Reddit.

I’m quitting Instagram. Here’s why. […]

I’ve never managed to leave Facebook of my own accord. My year off Facebook was kind of my choice, but was really because Facebook temporarily banned me until I agreed to stop impersonating a Pokemon.

  • 2019-01-30 https://twitter.com/Emma_Marris/status/1090728196788477952
    • "I emailed Dr. Tilcsik and he says he closed
      his account because it was his New Year's resolution to delete all his social media accounts by the end of January 2019." @Emma_Marris January 30, 2019
  • Wiki Brainstorm: Consider moving specific silo quits to those silo pages (e.g. Facebook#Silo_Quits/Twitter#Silo_Quits) and leaving this page for general social media quits
    • Pro: More specific reasoning
    • Pro: Visible when looking at specific silo
    • Pro: Would improve this page
    • Con: Lots of work to clean up
    • Con: Some overlap with Criticism sections

Articles

General articles about silo-quits as well as how-tos:

See Also

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