I recently watched the film Mountainhead, directed by Succession’s Jesse Armstrong. The plot follows a group of billionaire friends modelled overtly on today’s tech execs: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman etc. In the disturbingly apt film, the tech moguls enjoy a sheltered Utah retreat, whilst the world descends into chaos at the hands of one of their AI deepfake tools.
Despite the film being a bit of a letdown from the great Armstrong, it was a haunting reminder that the owners of social media empires don’t give a flying fuck about their users, one of the discussions in the film follows:
“Do you believe in other people?”
“ I think one needs to.”
“Yeah, but do you?”
“Eight billion people as real as us? Well obviously, not.”
The film also acts as a reminder that social media is a playground for these men; it was though the fallout between Sam Altman and Elon Musk that a foetal, incomplete and dangerous version of Chat GPT was released much too early.
Instagram in comparison to Musk’s X seems tame, Musk’s recent introduction of his terrifying chatbot Grok which is nudifying women and children, creating non-consensual imagery (which at the touch of a button can come in spicy mode). In comparison Instagram feels like a safe space, but it is becoming by the day noticeably worse, with much more AI generated slop taking over my reels and main feed. Tech critic Cory Doctorow has coined the term ‘enshitification’ to describe the process of locking users into a platform, making it hard for them to leave and then making the whole platform much worse for users and businesses.
This new year one of my steadfast resolutions was to delete Instagram. There are so many other interesting apps and platforms that don’t invite you to lose four hours of your life in a scroll session debunking the exact process of Kris Jenner’s new face reconstruction: Substack, Pinterest, Letterboxd. But it’s difficult, I do miss Instagram, I don’t know enough in advance when the parties are, I missed a friend’s group birthday card, I don’t know when society socials are. I think Instagram is one of the last social medias clinging on but it’s not going overboard by itself, we must move offline for it to be over, even online influencers like Emma Chamberlain are saying that being offline is the cool cultural conversation of the moment.
This week the House of Lords will vote as to whether an under-16 social media ban will be implemented in the UK, setting a wider national tone for young people. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri wrote in a recent statement that policy changes around social media and growing AI within the platform will mean that “Instagram is going to have to change in a number of ways and fast”. Whether this means it is over or not only time will tell but in my opinion a slow move offline is the only way to save my sanity.
Image by Paul Hanaoka on Unsplash