tiktok

• tiktok is more addictive than any other social media, it's just endless scrolling and full hours can pass without you even noticing, and afterwards you feel horrible and don't even remember what you've seen
• it absolutely ruins everyone's attention span
• it keeps showing you stuff you're not interested in because it assumes that you like everything you watch for more than a few seconds; this means there is no way to be critical about content (aka watching it and commenting criticism)
• the "i'm not interested in this" does not work well enough
• it ruins people's (especially young girls' and women's) self-confidence because it perpetuates unrealistic body standards, romanticizes plastic surgery, and keeps finding new completely-normal things of a human body to suddenly hate
• i don't want to support short-form video content, both because of the attention span problem and because i just think the content is worse if you need to squeeze it into just a few seconds/minutes. i don't even think most short-form video content of my favorite creators are very interesting!

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twitter

• it's a cesspool of hate
• it's a popularity contest
• funny tweets that get a lot of attention are immediately followed by ads by the same user
• cancel-culture is so insanely prevalent, and it's actually scary how it teaches young people to think that people are irredeemable and even making a small mistake means that they are terrible
• elon musk is dumb as hell, i don't want to support him, and the changes he made to twitter were the final straw

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instagram (note: i still use instagram, but solely for occasionally posting on my own private account, and seeing what a few select (~25) people i follow are up to)

• instagram reels are just a horrible format, and that it's just tiktoks obviously doesn't make it better
• additionally, instagram pushes reels towards the users way too hard, so much so that users who want their content to be seen (e.g. artists) need to create reels or they have no chance at all
• the algorithm knows your interests, but will show you posts that are negative about those interests
• the "i'm not interested in this" does not work well enough
• the comments on any post are just the worst, and there's no way to dislike comments
• having a public instagram account means that the thought "i need to post something cool/interesting so that i appear cool/interesting to people who might see my profile" is on your mind all the time, and that's not a good way to live. if only those who you truly like and trust can see your posts (aka when you have a private account) this thought vanishes entirely.

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facebook

• i don't think i need to say much here, i've never been a big fan of facebook but now it just adds absolutely no value to my life
• i follow exactly 0 pages on facebook and my friends don't write posts, so my dashboard is 100% sponsored/suggested content, which is mostly clickbait-y articles shaming celebrities, and boomer humor

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reddit (note: i think most small communities on reddit are fine, but as a whole - especially the big subreddits (with rare exceptions) and everything on r/all - it's horrible)

• transphobia is everywhere
• fatphobia is everywhere
• hate against younger people / current teens is everywhere
• "fake news" are everywhere (people read the title of posts and move on, even though the title often does not give all necessary context, or the title even contains straight-up untruths)
• everyone lies in general, because there is absolute anonymity and no reason at all to back anything up. crazy personal stories are interesting and get voted up, so why wouldn't everyone make stuff up all the time?
• many (popular) subreddits are just ragebait (e.g. r/aita), and i don't think that's a good way to spend your time
• super-specific subreddits usually get the wrong posts voted up because people just see it on their dashboard. (most obvious example: r/unpopularopinion : obviously, only popular opinions get a lot of upvotes)
• like tiktok, reddit is very addictive, but once you manage to peel yourself off the screen you just feel terrible and like it added nothing to your life
• 'karma' (upvote points) are just a horrible feature. it adds reason for people to repost, to steal other people's content, and to lie
• less important, but still: the new layout is terrible. i'm not one of those people that hates every change, but the usability just got much worse.

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i still use tumblr and pinterest. why?

tumblr doesn't have a forced algorithm. it has a "for you" page, but it's in a separate tab that can just be ignored. also, since many people have stopped using tumblr it's a pretty chill place. it's very political though, and there are a lot of pornbots.

pinterest doesn't really have a community, so i wouldn't even necessarily call it a social media site. it's a silent appreciation for things. still, it has its problems (e.g. tiktoks are everywhere, credits are nowhere).