Why I ditched my 1/4 million followers on Instagram and why you should too!

in #photography4 years ago

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I spent the last decade using Instagram to share my creativity through photos and captions. Until I realized something that a lot of times only those engulfed in the app can understand. I went from impacting thousands of lives by sharing inspiring content, to being suppressed by their algorithms and censorship. A lot of my time was spent building an organic audience through active engagement and participation. Just to find out that 100% of my audience was to be controlled by them.

It was when I realized Mark Zuckerberg was profiting so immensely that I understood why this is happening. After all, how could one person be worth $70+ Billion and many of us not even bat an eye? And even worse, continue to spend our time on Facebook and Instagram profiting only one individual. What would you do if you were to be given $6 Million dollars? (Pause and think about this for a moment)

And what would you say if I were to tell you that he has enough wealth to have earned over $6 Million for every single day of his life? He could do what you just thought of over 12,000 times and still have plenty of money left over.

This money has to come from somewhere and the majority of it is through advertisements paid for by the brands and corporations that run our sad economy. I worked on large projects with companies such as Samsung and Adidas, just to find that my voice was slowly becoming lost in exchange for profit. My creativity being controlled for monetary gain of the machine world. Let’s just say that IG doesn’t like when you start sharing and promoting freedom of thought.

Life experiences sometimes take going through rough patches that don’t always make sense as they are unfolding. All I know is that what I have gone through has led me here to Steem and I look forward to joining the community. I love to connect with others who have a positive outlook towards how we can make the world a better place. Please feel free to share any Steem accounts that you believe portray this. I’m looking for others to follow, collaborate with, and gain inspiration with as well!

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Cool to have you here. We have some great photographers here, but the rewards are by no means guaranteed. It is still a fairly small community, but you have to work to get noticed by the big accounts. Have fun with it and see where it takes you.

Will you be looking to add Steem to the social sites listed on your site? If you know anyone who needs an account I can create them.

Thank you for your interest in my work! As well as for resteeming my post. Hope you’re having an amazing day!

I will certainly have to add Steem to the social sites on my website. Looking forward to telling everyone I know about Steem as well!!

If even 10% of your Instagram followers came to Steem it could double the active users and shift the rewards distribution. The are opportunities to make a difference and build something amazing. Enjoy.

I’ll definitely be sending messages to some of the highly active artists I mutually engage with through IG to explain the value of switching platforms. I think I’ll get quite a few who are interested as well as talented with their work to try Steem!

What is your discord? I have some people that are looking to join Steem already 😁

I'm steevc#3022. Can also DM me as steevc on Twitter. Off to bed soon, but I can check on them in the morning. I need to know the user name they want. I have over thirty account tokens right now, but I know other people who can do this too. You get this ability when you have enough Steem Power.

Hi dear @subtlescopes, welcome to a different social world here on Steem.
Happy to have such a talent with us. I look forward to your work and you next posts

If you ever "accidentally" picture a beer or a bar or even people who have fun around the topic of beer - join us at the Steem #BeerSaturday challenge here on the blockchain, where we as well have some prizes. ;-)

Welcome to Steem. I wish you'd known to use the #introduceyourself tag for more visibility.

About IG. Not only is it annoying as a creator, its incredibly frustrating as a consumer too. All the accounts I FOLLOWED for their great content suddenly stopped showing up chronologically (argh!), and some times their posts never showed at all. In stead I started seeing more McDonalds and some random twerking bimbos.

Hello!

I've never personally been to Instagram, but I know firsthand how the big social media companies operate.

Welcome to Steem! I'm happy to meet another photographer father of 2, like myself.

Have a !beer, and may your stay be awesome! 😊

What we think, we become

I read that exact quote (but in Finnish) in a magazine cover today. Cool. Made me think.

Nice to meet you as well and grateful to have now met several people such as yourself to relate to here on Steem.

That is something I’ve said to myself on the regular after seeing it nearly 7 years ago. Really opens the perspective!

Well fuck all that mainstream shit anyway and buy some Bitcoin and some cheap Steem!
Welcome to one of the first experiments of trying to get a decensored social media platform happening on blockchain 😀

100% with you on that, never going back to mainstream! Now I just need to understand more as to how Bitcoin and crypto even works 🤣

Haha be more concentrated on working to turn paper money into satoshis 😀 If your totally new to it all feel free to discod me for help,its all quite easy but bewildering at first 😀

What is your Discord?

Good question, i think its movingman#1084 will check

edit #0184 😀

Which was first, Gab, Minds, or Steemit? Well, I guess Steemit launched as an actual blockchain. Gab begun as a normal website. Minds was probably built on Ethereum.

But did you tell them to find you on Steemit?

Slowly but surely! Haha I find that it will be more effective if I reach out individually to the mutual friends and have conversations about Steem that way. Although I will be coming up with some posts to try and get people to switch over as we’ll.

Ow yes you have come to the right place!

Have you considered using Appics as an app that is very instagram similar and it working on this exact steem blockchain?

A warm welcome from the Swiss mountains!

Thanks for mentioning that! I had no clue about Appics, but it looks like a great insta alternative for sure

You've been visited by @minismallholding from Homesteaders Co-op.

Welcome to Steem. I’ve featured your post and given you a shout out in the Homesteaders – Living Naturally newsletter.


Homesteaders Co-op

A community marketplace of ethical, handmade and sustainable products available for STEEM, SBD (and USD): https://homesteaderscoop.com

follow: @homesteaderscoop

So glad you are here! Hope you love Steem as much as I do!

So well written and a great first post, Welcome to Steemit

Thank you Jay!! Happy to have come across this community. Looking forward to sharing my work with all of you. Hope you’re having a great day!

Beena busy but a good day, and I am sure you will get settled in and enjoy your time on here

Well written! I loved it and welcome to the community!
It's so true that IG has censored everything to the point where I feel like they watch every second of your live story posted. I mean there is really no privacy once you post anything online, but still. I've had one incident in which I felt as they kept an eye on every single post where I assume the workers won't even have time to sleep or perhaps its the machine doing all the filtering and censoring.

Thank you so much! It’s nice being able to jump on a platform like this and within just minutes of sharing being able to have met someone such as yourself with similar views and experiences. Glad to have met and I looking forward to seeing more of your content. With people like us continuing to support each other on Steem we can make a larger impact by encouraging others to do the same. Let’s separate from these large corporations that are monopolizing on our time spent for them.

Very nice post... Especially for the 1st one... Welldone mate. Total upvote from me.. Keep the good content rolling

Welcome! This place can be bananas but not in an affect you for all your worth kind of way. It's a lot of fun and I hope you enjoy!

Love that seagull pic!

Ps, you should maybe reprise some of this into an #introduceyourself post. You will hopefully be noticed by a few more souls to begin with!

Very interesting to get used to but the more I mess with it the better it gets! Specially getting to meet all these like minded individuals looking for positive change and gain of knowledge. I’m so happy you enjoyed my creative work/photography when you say reprise into #introduceyourself are you meaning to repost with that as the main tag? Thank you for sharing with me!

Yes indeed. A person's first post is often with that tag as people browser that very tag looking for newcomers to welcome. If you were going to do an introduce yourself post I world rejig it slightly so that people didn't assume you were just double posting. You could even just put a disclaimer at the top or something stating that you didn't do an introduce yourself post and that this is it.

Or you could just plough on, I suspect your will do well if you are used to the organic connecting sort of grind :0) I shall follow you anyway to keep up!

Well I’ll have to give some thought as to how I can provide a deeper insight as to what draws me to Steem and introduce myself in my next post 😁

I look forward to seeing more of what you have to share as well!

Sounds like you are on it! :O)

Welcome in and make yourself a home

Thank you!! Hope all is well!!

welcome to Steemit @subtlescopes, you have come to a great community of like minded folk here. There are so many of us who are not just talking about change but who are living it. There are also a lot of great photographers on here too. if you post your photos please use the creativecoin tag. Also keep a look out for posts that are created by the Ecotrain and tribesteemup community and for all things natural medicine keep an eye on the naturalmedicine page. There are so much more so enjoy having a look around and I look forward to connecting with you again on here xxx

Thank you so much for the welcome! It’s amazing the responses that I’m seeing which are way more in depth when it comes to actual thought being evoked. Far greater positive engagement and I love it! I’m happy you shared the natural medicine page as my girlfriend is currently getting a 4 year degree at a naturopathic medicine school to help strengthen our family and our lives! Mind blowing the information she comes back with. So stoked for the connections I’ll be making on here and it’s so nice to meet you.

Hi subtlescopes,
Welcome to #steemusa! Please find below your footer banner made by @bearone for use in your future posts.

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Welcome to the community! ;]
@tipu curate

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So happy to be here! Thank you for the support ✌️

Warmly welcome on Steem! Great photos. A talented storyteller who uses photography as a medium is just what we need. Looking forward to your next post!

Thanks for such positive feedback! I’m happy you enjoy my photos and content. Really looking forward to sharing more with you all!

As an artist, I have tried severally to gain recognition in my IG but to no avail only to realized that to gain ground there, one will virtually have to pay for ads you get noticed. I'm not that active there as I share, enjoy and spend more of my time here.

You are highly welcome to the wonderful community.

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Very interesting perspectives, and ones which aren’t totally alien here.
You’ll quickly find a communitynof like minded people I’m sure.

I’m curious, what sort of work did you do with Adidas etc? Was it branded content type stuff?

Really looking forward to my time on here with people who seem to truly care about their surroundings. It was mainly advertisements and ‘influencer’ related work where after a while I came to realize it was only for the audience and not nearly in relation to my quality of work or meaning behind it. Here are a few links to some posts that were shared by me with these brands:

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I look back at experiences such as these, and although I am disappointed that I sold out to some of these large brands for momentary success, I’m happy to have learned from them in order to gain a higher sense of understanding for how this world works.

Ah I see. It’s a shame they weren’t such fulfilling experiences. I guess that’s fairly common with sponsored work.

The first two endorsement links are really quite subtle, and seem more relaxed, but the Beats one with the hashtag does come across more forced.

Yeah I hope you enjoy Steem.
It’s got a lot of evolving to do but the potential of this place is incredible.

I make videos for a living for bands and brands, and occasionally I shoot stuff for steem - and the audience is always so appreciative.

As a fellow Instagramer that had their following obliterated by the algos I feel for you. I went from a ton of engagement to almost nothing. I’ve had people reach out to say they want my content but aren’t seeing it until they add notifications...

Exactly the same here! And it seems to only be getting worse.. let’s kick Steem into full gear and get some new active users joining the community!

Some really great points, well-written and presented - One of the best, and well-thought out first posts I've seen. Welcome and all the best!

Very happy to here and the support is much appreciated!! Have a great night ✌️

You're welcome and you too. Have a good weekend also.

I don't think I can add much more than everyone else already has, so I'll just say welcome and I hope you continue to enjoy your time on here. Like any social media, there can be dramas and fallouts here, but find your communities and it mostly passes you by.

Good to know! I’ve found a few communities but can’t wait to explore more. Really appreciate the comment and support 👊

Glad you are here. Don’t get to hung up about it. The chances he ends up in jail someday are not exactly small and the chances you end up recovering a large following and finding more rewarding ways to interact are also high. You got this!

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Well said! These thoughts have also been on my mind for several years, and it's exciting to finally see alternatives to the big tech giants' monopoly of free speech, thought, and human interaction. Welcome to Steem! I am new here as well and look forward to seeing more awesome content from you.

I loved IG back in the pre Facebook days. Now i'm just inundated with business accounts following me in the hope I'll follow them and click on their ads. It's all about business and consumerism and makes me gag. Much prefer here. Rewards not guaranteed BUT that's not what it's really, really about here. Enjoy!

Cheers!
!BEER

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Hey @subtlescopes, here is a little bit of BEER from @cryptobrewmaster for you. Enjoy it!

A big welcome, hope to see more of you soon.

Great to see a new face on steemit, welcome friend :0)

Glad you found your way here! Always great fun to enjoy the work of a good photographer, too.

You list a lot of reasons why I slowed down my 'standard' social media usage, too; it's discouraging to work hard to make someone else really rich. I still use them, but primarily for flippant purposes; good work is put in a location where I can retain a sense of ownership, so to speak.

Glad to have you here!

Welcome to Steem! I ditched my YouTube channel when I got into Steem. I had a much smaller audience (15k at the time) but I had enough with them. Glad to see you found Steem. Cheers!

Great choice, welcome to Steem :) We have an amazing photography community here, you will love it here :)

Welcome to Steem Blockchain, @subtlescopes!
Thank you for sharing your experience with Instagram.

Happy you joined Steem! Welcome😃

being suppressed by their algorithms and censorship. A lot of my time was spent building an organic audience through active engagement and participation. Just to find out that 100% of my audience was to be controlled by them.

I'm glad you came here for that reason. And now you have a place that if you one day amass that number of followers again NO ONE and NO COMPANY can take away those connections. And there are several interfaces to steem which means we all work hard to appeal to our audiences to provide them with the tools they want. For example algorithm freedom of choice... like the choice to view chronologically.

Such a great feeling and reassurance when it comes to Steem. Exactly what I’ve been looking for and together we can bring much more positive attention to this platform. I also love how the experience can be tailored to each person by providing so many outlets to connect to Steem. I’m finding so many communities all of which are extremely supportive!

That's a great introduction post! Welcome to the platform! I've never used instagram a lot, and lately I've been using it even less. I don't think I even posted anything there on my profile this year, except for occasionally posting something on my story to let some friends know if I'm somewhere.

Welcome to Steemit! Hope you have a wonderful time here! Upvoted and Followed!

Glad to have you on board :)

Hmm, I was on instagram from the very first day and I remember that time. It was so fun and interesting - I got a bunch of friends and acquaintances from different countries. Simple photos, but with meaning, were very successful - we just corresponded with each other under the photo, laughed and gave advice - made appointments if someone was traveling to a certain city) But then everything changed - the pursuit of likes began, the dishonest cheats started, and so on. Then Instagram plunged into commerce and lost all meaning for me. A bunch of top photos of a beautiful life, a bunch of photo models and so on ... I started to feel sick from the instagram and I began to feel that my life was flawed compared to others. I left the instagram a couple of years ago and I have no desire to see what happens there. I came here and I hope that together we will build something better and fair in relation to everyone!