I never used Facebook not Twitter or Instagram, but I was very active on Reddit.

The key to a successful migration, in my opinion, is being involved enough in alternatives that you stop caring about your old mainstream accounts, that doesn't happen in a day but it's an ongoing process.

What I'm doing (in practice), I created my account here when the protest started, I took the time off reddit to search for alternatives to the subs I was in and actively participate in them, after a while I stopped caring about reddit, so much that I unsubbed from everything and I don't even follow its news anymore.

I didn't ditch reddit completely yet because there are a couple of niche subs that are not easily replaceable, so I still check those every now and then, but compared to how active I was before, I basically not contributing anything anymore.

It's just a matter of time IMO before those niche subs will grow on the fediverse, I don't know how long it'll take but when it happens I'll be done with reddit forever.

Don't have a FB, Twitter, Instagram, etc. And I never contributed too much to reddit. Did more lurking, reading articles, and looking at pets than anything. So now I just do that here instead. Trying to comment a bit more, the atmosphere seems less toxic.

Reddit was the most difficult, and the only thing i really wanted to replace instead of delete. I'm happy with the fed and only really use Reddit now when looking for info. I only used Twitter for following my favorite bars, restaurants, and music venues to see what's going on and happy hour info, so that was pretty easy to wander away from. Funny thing about Instagram - I made an account years ago just to see what it was and recently deleted it. I use fake birthdays on random websites and apparently had done that on Instagram. When i deleted it, Facebook picked up that fake birthday and i spent several days getting birthday posts. I feel like i have to keep FB for family connections. I check it 2-3x/wk. It takes about one minute for me to be disgusted with the marketing. I've never tiktokked - I have friends that use it and I don't really get it. Sometimes they talk about getting news from there - I don't understand spending the time watching videos from random idiots about the news when you could just quickly skim an article from a reliable source.

My issues with Facebook come from constantly changing how the timeline works and it got to a point to ONLY seeing pages I had liked and ads and not even seeing posts from anyone on my friends list.

This is such a shame too. Facebook was genuinely a good service for those of us who only had real life friends and family in our friends list. It helped us stay in touch long distance and keep up with each other's lives. Now, despite the fact that I've never "liked" a single public account, group, or page, never subscribed to one, and actively block them, I can hardly see any of my friends and family posts. I'll see like one post from a friend and then it's 15 posts from random groups that I have no interest in, and don't want to see. You can't block enough of them to get your feed back either. For every one you block there are 1000 more just like it, waiting to take its place. Zuckerberg has taken what was a great product for friends and family and turned it into a junk yard that we have zero control over. There's a Facebook Purity plugin for Firefox that did allow you to regain control of your feed, but Facebook just broke it again recently. I don't even go there anymore. It's just a constant onslaught of ads and trash. What a fucking shame.

Basically use the fediverse less than reddit. My social media addiction is outrageous.

Mine is probably a major nerd/geek move, but it's basically been taking as many of the organizations I followed on corporate social media, finding their RSS feeds (if they had any), plugging those in to different RSS readers and then by & large unplugging. I hadn't really used corporate social media for the social part in forever, so it didn't make much sense to keep putting up with their changes aiming to maximize ad views & exposure as much as possible.

The part that I've been struggling with from here however is just how to reach folks anymore as I don't necessarily want to have to have like 4 or 5 different messaging apps to do so. Unfortunately SMS feels clunky for anything beyond basic texting & I would really like to have a chat app that displays messages on both my phone & PC so I can respond from either depending on what I'm doing.

However the most popular apps with that kind of functionality are either tied into Meta/Facebook (WhatsApp/Messenger), gaming themed (Discord), or kind of clunky for chatting (Snapchat), and they're all centralized & trying to find ways to shove ads at you or sell you something.

Never keep a long digital history is Internet 101. From Myspace to whatever abomination exists today, never keep a digital history on social media. Delete every six months or sooner.

Imagine those platforms being fancy versions of chain emails laden with viruses. Because that’s what they are. That’s what they evolved from.

They exist to farm your data and give you nothing.