The Case For Leaving Social Media: Starve the Data Monster
- Indivisible Sumner
- Jul 8
- 8 min read
Updated: Jul 10
As the need to escalate our strategies of resistance rises, I continuously circle back to one idea: a mass exodus from social media, and in particular META (Facebook and Instagram).
Not a slow falling off- a planned exit in large numbers all at once. It won't be easy, but the more I consider it, the more the pros outweigh the cons. Below is a clip of historian Timothy Snyder (Author of On Tyranny and On Freedom) speaking on how social media has been detrimental to our democracy.
Timothy Snyder on Social Media
Here is a link the whole talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2v0kiZ_gudc
Let's flesh this out together topic by topic. At the top of the heap is...data.
DATA
For those of us that use META products- Facebook and Instagram- they have so much information on us. From our birthdays, our schools, our spouses, our interests, what posts we like, what posts illicit the "angry emoji" from us, to what video rabbit holes we go down. They need that data for their algorithms and for advertising. For many of us, it's data that has now been collected for the better part of two decades.
We all saw Zuckerberg at the 2025 Inauguration, given a front row seat to the Inauguration he contributed $1 million to (BBC). And we all know that without disinformation campaigns that were allowed to run rampant on Facebook during past elections, Trump might not have ever taken office.
Some people have left META behind now. Many say they are leaving, but ultimately return. It's addictive. As long as most of our friends stay on- hitting that like button or posting that news article- it puts us in a powerful cycle of dopamine and doom-scrolling. Not only do we risk being outside of an online social circle, but we give up the online culture that is now our pop culture even when we are in-person. But we have to see it in a different light: it's not a social platform, it's a social crutch.
By continuing to share our real lives with our online lives, we are continuing to give up our power. The more human aspects of our selves that we voluntarily post online can then flesh out any missing parts from data that is being collected elsewhere. Every time we like, scroll, or post, we are feeding the Data Monster. I think starving the Data Monster is one of the biggest power levers we have in this moment. Data is a money making and information gathering machine- and we could pull the legs out from under it by making a sudden change in our interaction with technology.
And we can't talk about the Data issues we face without talking about the company Palantir. Software and data analytics giant Palantir has been working with U.S. federal agencies essentially since it's inception in the early 2000's. Their work has been far-reaching and varied. This includes work with the Obama-Biden administration, contagion tracking and vaccine allotment during Covid, and contracts with the FDA, the Navy, and the Marine Corps. In 2014, during the Obama administration, Palantir was given a $41 million contract by ICE for tracking data on legal and illegal immigrants. This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of Palantir's history.
In Spring of 2018, The Guardian and New York Times broke the story of how Cambridge Analytica had used Facebook users' data to compile voting profiles and influence the campaigns of both Brexit and Trump 2016 presidential bid. This included the linking of the Russian government to the Trump Campaign. Much of this reporting was done by Caroline Cadwalladwr of The Observer. Cadwalladwr was sued for libel for breaking the story and became the subject of an online abuse campaign. It gave her personal insight into how our data can be weaponized against us. I feature a talk by her below.
It was later uncovered that some Palantir employees had played a role in designing the psycho-social mapping that Cambridge Analytica utilized to help influence the Brexit and 2016 Presidential elections. Although it is maintained that no contracts were signed between the two companies, testimony and communications records reveal that Palantir and Cambridge Analytica worked collaboratively.
Since the beginning of Trump's second term, Palantir's involvement with federal agencies has ramped up. On May 30th, 2025 The New York Times reported :
"The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)"
-Trump taps Palantir to compile date on Americans By Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik, NYT, May 30th 2025
In the recently passed budget bill, an additional $700 million is allocated for ICE-adjacent information technology, which will likely flow to Palantir. It's also worth mentioning that Homeland Security Advisor, Stephen Miller, has a large financial stake in Palantir. The same Stephen Miller demanding the detainment of 3,000 people a day. At least 10 other Trump White House Staffers have or have had stock in Palantir according to former Palantir employee Gregory Barbaccia (POGO, 2025). Palantir is not the only player here by far, but is just one strong example of how the Tech Broligarchy is forming.
Caroline Cadwalladwr, the journalist I mentioned earlier, continues to sound the alarm about how important it is to notice and fight back against what she terms a "digital coup" and "techno-authoritarianism". I highly recommend you listen to her TED talks. This is her most recent:
In addition to broader conceptual picture-painting, she gives some very good tips about not accepting cookies during internet activity, not sharing your childrens' faces online, and avoiding giving out your real name to online entities. With the direction we are headed under the Trump administration, I believe taking ourselves off social media is another piece of the puzzle. I want to talk about why. And I want you to remember her phrase:
"Privacy is Power".
Organizing
Social media platforms are currently a necessary tool when it comes to politically organizing. However, they already come with a host of challenges. People are overall afraid to give their personal info out online. This is a trend we see when people sign up to attend rallies, etc. About 3 times more people show up to events than register online- partially due to fears about the their data being utilized or intercepted.
Social media is also a big information leak. Every action we take is essentially broadcast long before that action happens. It reduces efficacy and impact and allows for bad actors to plan and ramp up drama online. Social Media misinformation was rampant leading up to the June 14th No Kings protests.
As things continue to intensify under this administration, it is a possibility that we will need to be more discreet during planning phases. Not only for our safety, but for our actions to have greater impact. It would be much better to get those systems of offline communication and planning in practice before they are 100% necessary. We would have to rely heavily on in-person meetings, newsletters, and word of mouth.
I also want to add that as an organizer, my time on social media is likely finite. I feel I can have more impact and stay safer if I can keep a more private life. But I likely need you to join me in exiting platforms if we are going to continue to stay in the same community ecosystem. We need to figure out how to build new ways to stay in touch.
Information
With the proliferation of AI, the truth and fiction could continue to get harder and harder to separate. If social media is our main news and information source, we are startingly vulnerable to potential fiction. The easiest way to protect ourselves is to be much more diligent about the information we consume. We all should be supporting good journalism, and getting off social media would necessitate it.
If the majority of the resistance exited social media, it would create an information vacuum for those who fall prey to the right-wing media disinformation system. While this is a consideration, I don't think that is entirely different than what is already happening. We are all inside our own algorithm vacuums. The Left's presence on social media has not evened the balance of information for over a decade, and it's not going to any time soon. It's not our job to be keyboard warriors- it's our job to be truth warriors in our actual communities. In person. It's easy to paint a caricature of someone in our mind based on their Facebook posts. It's harder for that caricature to dominate when the actual human being is standing in front of you and they seem relatively sane.
Community
Social media can be a vital source of community for people. For all the good it can do in this realm, however, that sense of community is also part of our political problem. Online communities have carried away large groups of our citizens away on the dark waves of the "Manosphere", incel culture, white supremacy, and conspiracy theories. Evangelical churches have allowed MAGA to take root because it became a part of their communal identity.
We have to figure out how to build community and be there for people. If we don't, someone or something else will catch them as they fall into isolation. We have to be something like a church. Churches are not a safe or welcome option for community for all. We have to start thinking radically about what our social structure looks like and how we build something better. I think by leaving social media, we open a new door into the possibility of community.
Business
This will impact businesses. There is no getting around it. Many small businesses rely heavily on social media for marketing and sales. I have no doubt many small business thrive off social media. This particular topic is where the cons seems to consistently outweigh to pros when it comes to people leaving social media.
What I think we need here is imagination. Remember the time when the only way we could shop was in-person? We would make a day of it. It often involved friends or family members. We might build a relationship with the shop-owner. It was a much more conscious and intentional experience.
If we left social media with a plan to regularly and deliberately support small businesses, I'd like to imagine that it could even be a boon for them. As individuals, we could set a Saturday aside every other month to shop small local businesses. We could create events to help hold these businesses up.
There was life before the internet. There can be life with less internet.
Time and Attention
Social media is a giant time and attention garbage disposal. We sacrifice hours a day to our algorithms. Hours of time and attention that could be spent brainstorming, building, and fighting. At times it can feel like we are gaining information, and that must be useful. But really we are distracting ourselves from actually taking action. And we are drowning in the fire-hose stream of terrible news. We have to slow that stream down a little for our brains to even begin to process all that's happening and how we fight it.
In Closing
I want to hear your thoughts. I encourage you to comment on this post if you've made it this far.
It is a big leap to take, and will involve some sacrifice if we take it together. I don't think we are ready to leave online spaces tomorrow, but I think we need to start planning in that direction. We have to remember that sacrifice is an inherent part of social and political movements. We don't stand a chance unless we are willing sacrifice.
Consider the message it would send if someday in the not-so-distant future half of Facebook and Instagram users were suddenly gone. And consider the time you would reclaim for yourself and your family. It is time to start imagining that world.
-Mandy Cook
Sumner Indivisible
Additional resources can be found at https://www.rebeltechalliance.org/
Sources: (Dear librarians, please excuse my lack of a bibliography)
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