Why I chose to Deactivate Threads

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This morning I woke up to people insulting me for not being an Apple fan boy on Threads. Before that I was trolled for several other reasons and the consequence is that I have now deactivated my Threads account.

For me the web is a place where, if you agree, or if you want to offer support, but if you disagree, or don’t respect a view, you say so in a seperate thread, without trolling people. On threads if I post something positive I will get dozens of likes but very few comments. If I write something people don’t agree with, they will troll, without any context.

Since 2003 I have owned an iBook, three mac book pros, two mac book airs, an iphone 3g, 4, 4s, SE, 8+ and SE second generation. In other words I have bought quite a few products over the years and have used Mac Pros and iMacs in a professional context.

When I say that I don’t want to buy Apple products because they are a trillion dollar company and their products are expensive, that is not envy or jealousy. It is personal opinion, based on using computers since I was five or so years old. I have watched as computers have gone from desktop beige boxes that we could add parts to, to laptops where we could swap ram, batteries and more. I liked the Macbook Pro in 2012 and bought a 3000 CHF high spec machine at the time. I liked the Macbook air form factor too.

What I didn’t like is that RAM was no longer user swappable. Neither were batteries. I also hated that they went from a plethora of ports to just four USB-c ports, because then I needed an adaptor to connect everything. That’s when I lost interest in Apple.

I also lost interest in Apple because it went from being a reliable alternative to Windows, at a premium that was a different thought (Think Different-) but now, in the age of web browsing and mobile apps whether we use Windows, Linux or MacOS the result is often the same, except that we pay a premium for Apple, despite Apple having a trillion dollar valuation.

That they have success doesn’t bother me in the least, but that my definition of computers is no longer met, and that their price is so much higher than alternatives does grate me. For less than 100 CHF I had a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8 gigs of ram and a good cooling system being as usable as a 2016 Macbook Pro.

In the last two weeks I was excited for the new iPhone SE that will come out in 2025, until I read that it would be fifty to one hundred dollars more and larger. I am also interested in the Mac Mini desktop computer.

In theory Threads is a wonderful social network, except that it’s driven by algorithms and algorithms tend to lead towards a culture of bullying, rather than friendship. In a healthy social environment people would aks questions and try to understand someone’s perspective instead of trolling, and insulting people.

What gets to me when I am trolled on Threads, the Fediverse and formerly Twitter is that it’s not one or two posts in an hour. It’s several posts over 24 or more hours. The trolling lingers when we have already moved on. If it wasn’t for that it would be annoying, but no more.

Many years ago during a Seesmeetup in Paris one person who lived in a more remote part of France said that she didn’t like Social Media because it was too chronophage, too much of a waste of time. Between the amount of posts we have to read, to find a conversation, and the constant trolling I do feel that Threads, and social media is a waste of time these days.

As I write this part of me wants to reactivate my account but then I ask "Why, it will just be trolling?".Like at least one or two people in this Verge article I think I’m done with social media too.

Social media isn’t as fun or rewarding as it used to be. I find myself gravitating back to Facebook. It has become the least worst.