Pixelfed
I have been having some problems with Instagram.
It’s been recommending increasingly violent and unpleasant reels to me; car crashes, road rage, robberies, theft, ‘Karen’ videos (angry violent women, who are probably having crises or early onset dementia and need help and sympathy for fucks sake), and extremely violent retributional ‘justice’ (the kind where people actually die). It all seems very American: someone must win, someone must lose hard. I mark them as “not interested” and “this makes me uncomfortable (which is all it gives you when you really want to say “fuck off this is disgusting”) but it doesn’t stop, they just get worse.
Then, earlier this week it also started pushing adverts for illegal stuff. Class A and B drugs, counterfeit money, cloned cards, fake passports and driving licenses. I reported the ads, but Instagram said they didn’t go against their community standards. Like, wtf.
I blocked some of the accounts pushing it as well, and I noticed that their profiles were stuffed with bible verses. I wondered if this was a masking technique, or the drugs are an attempt to hook vulnerable people into their cult.
I could write a lot here about how christianity in particular is repulsive to me. It has always been used as a cover and justification for the kind of bigotry that destroyed my teenage years and nearly killed me. The church is the same kind of thing as the Tory party: there might be good people in it, but they don’t have “doing the right thing” as a priority, they value their social status higher.
And that leads in quite well to what happened next on Instagram.
No more ads for illegal stuff. Now it’s crucifix crucifix crucifix and bible verse after bible verse, on shorts, t-shirts, notebooks, key rings, baseball caps, everything. Gym shorts with some phrase from Isaiah on the leg, like that’s at all normal. And then quran stuff! Qibla finders, prayer mats, ‘modesty clothing’, jewellery with “god is great” in Arabic on it, on and on. Not one or two, but every single advert on Instagram was religious propaganda shit. The kind of crap worn and promoted by the people who want people like me dead. This whole thing was and is an act of violence against me by instagram algorithms. It has left me feeling sick and scared.
And you tell people about it. “Oh I don’t get that” or “have you tried reporting the ad?”
In other words, it’s your fault, you brought this on yourself rather than some AI crapbot high on MAGA propaganda hallucinating so hard it would make Ken Kesey look like a puritan.
So. I will be deleting my instagram account. I have imported most of my posts from there to Pixelfed and I will be using that in future.
Honestly I am so fucked off with this but maybe it’s the push I needed.