"I went on a weekend trip and didn't invite friend A, so I hope friend B keeps it a secret and doesn't tell anyone I was there" is the kind of social dynamic that people grow out of in high school. If you are having trouble with it as an adult then it isn't really Instagram's fault. People talk to each other and share stuff, and sometimes they talk about you, both online and offline. Just live your life without being so bothered about offending other people. They are adults as well, and care about it less than you think.

There’s value in grace. For all sorts of reasons you might be right to do things that make other people feel bad. That’s no reason to rub their nose in it.

What’s the virtue in offending people when you could instead be kind?

I know one woman who is having a baby shower, and I know another woman who recently dealt with the loss of her child. It’s not “secrecy” to celebrate the baby shower and avoid bringing it up with the recently bereaved, it’s respect and good taste.

I feel like we used to call it discretion…

As someone whose wife has lost two pregnancies recently, please don’t assume this kind of thing.

I don’t want to be locked out of the joys of celebrating with friends due to misguided attempts to protect me. If going to a baby shower is going to be a problem, let me decide that.

I’m an adult, and I can use my words to say no for myself. For the record, our own experience hasn’t kept us from enjoying time with pregnant couples, children or babies.

On the other hand, if I found out that my friends were excluding me or my wife from social events, I would actually be upset at having my agency removed.

If the person suffering the loss has asked to not be included, that is different.

If a random guest came to me on my wedding day and said "I don't want you to post any photos of this event online because one of my friends just lost their spouse and I don't want them to see me at a wedding at this time", my response would (rightly) be - I'm sorry for their loss but that isn't going to stop me from celebrating my day in whatever way I see fit. Yes I obviously wouldn't go out of my way to call and tell the grieving person about how much fun I had, but people understand that life goes on, and the entire world doesn't have to be sanitized to meet individual people's preferences.

The people being offended could just act like an adult.

If you want to go out with friend A but don't want friend B to see it for whatever reason (maybe B has a feud with A), then that is a thing between B and A, but not you.

I think the whole point of the OP comment is to just go with it. If you don't flauntingly advertise it, it is not your fault.

But in a very social media centric world, even if you are just a participant in a picture can feel like "flaunting it" to 3rd parties.

As someone who doesn't use any social media, this whole thread sound exhausting to have to worry about. "I shouldn't post X because Y might be offended at Z..." Holy crap, I feel vindicated for my decision to entirely stay off of this drama machine.

> I feel like we used to call it discretion…

That's a stretch, considering previous generations forbid people from discussing all manner of life issues and events out of "discretion", which in my estimation has been a key factor in perpetuating shame and all of the horrifying things that come from societal shame.

Secrecy isn't grace or discretion when it comes to vacations or baby showers.

Not bringing up a sensitive topic when interacting with someone is discretion. Hiding a major life event because it might trigger one person is silly.

There's a phase in a big chunk of people's lives where the only thing on their social media is about having a baby. If you're traumatized by that it's up to you, not everyone else, to keep it away from yourself (e.g. stay off social media or start a new profile and only follow hyperpop jazz trombone and COBOL enthusiasts... or whatever).

Not wanting to share your life on social media is one thing, picking and choosing to keep things secret from person A or B because of some drama or another is childish.

Less 'keep it secret' and more 'don't make a big public deal out of private memories'.

Yes, a big difference between 'telling your friends' in an offline social setting and broadcasting it online.

is a group trip a private memory?

Depends. Are you a spoilt rotten rich kid? Thats the only place I've seen this dynamic play out.

I've tried to incorporate the notion that it's none of my business what other people think of me. I don't always get it right, but having that attitude has helped tremendously on reducing my cortisol levels.

This is a huge relief, but it does come at a cost. What other people think of you is one of the largest inputs to access to jobs, sexual partners, and likelihood you'll be referred or witnessed against for prosecution for some inane zoning/HOA ordinance or petty crime (whether you did it or not) because you're not on someone's good side, etc etc. So the high cortisol levels may be warranted from the Darwinist perspective.

Having a good thing happen or preventing bad things from happening sadly show up as high stakes butterfly effects of the perverted social ranking and opinion games.

If you look at this from the perspective of the judicial system, a huge part of the judicial process exists to compel you to be physically present and in-person at a court room.

On the other hand, social media is really the pinnacle of "the court of public opinion"; people feel more comfortable seeing what photos and social groups you appear in as evidence of "who you are". He/she appears in and therefore must be .

I don't think that's a fair reading of the post. They're not really complaining about particular friend dynamics where they're trying to keep information away from one friend while going out with another friend. The complaint is more about the society-wide change in norms brought about by social media. I don't think the author would complain about one close friend calling another close friend and sharing information about a trip the author was also on. The problem is that our modern norms (and tech) lead to everyone sharing everything with a large social network which includes many more people than an individual would normally be able to share stories with in person.

Sure, people talk to each other and share stuff. That doesn't magically make it ok for people to share stuff about you on a (public?) instagram account. There's a huge difference between those two dynamics.

It's fine to overshare as much of your life as you're comfortable with. But we should be more mindful of how we include others in this.

> If you are having trouble with [social dynamics] as an adult then it isn't really Instagram's fault.

Are you sure?

Good points! Totally agree that people care less than you think, and it’s very healthy to live your life without thinking you have to please everyone all the time. The nuance I tried to make, but I was perhaps not really clear, is that when people talk with each other, people have the chance to make sure a message comes across so that it does not offend a person. That chance for nuance is lost when people post on social media. Not that people do it deliberately, it’s just that social media is designed to be focused on the poster rather than on how that message makes certain people in the audience feel. And I do believe people are bothered not to offend someone, and that they are less likely to do so when you actually talk.

Not really. It hurts people's feelings to find out they weren't invited to something they thought they should have been. Protecting feelings and smoothing out awkward social dynamics are the the category of "very adult."

As a more general example, you wouldn't talk about a happy hour you were going to after work with people who weren't invited/aren't invited/you wouldn't invite. I believe every sitcom on the planet has at least one episode with this lesson in it.

It's both things. Being an adult means not being overly bothered if you weren't invited, and it's also very adult to prevent the situation where the uninvited friend doesn't find out, out of concern for their feelings. Both are simply approaching it from different ends.

I'm in my thirties now, and I have been on my own since I was homeless at sixteen. One thing I have learned about being an adult is it means that you have no obligation to seriously consider any other person's idea of what being an adult means.

We are in agreement

Either you invite them, or you own the decision not to. Pointless secrecy and "protecting feelings" doesn't benefit anyone.

> Either you invite them, or you own the decision not to.

Define "own the decision not to." Surely you don't mean that every time you are planning an event you must preemptively inform everyone who is not invited that they are not invited, because that's clearly ludicrous.

Or perhaps you did invite them, they just couldn't make it and you don't want to rub their nose in how good a time you all had when they may already be feeling disappointed about not being able to attend? Especially in the direct aftermath of the event?

It's called social etiquette and consideration. Sometimes it's misplaced; sometimes it's unneeded. But sometimes it is required.

Humans are not machines. Human interactions do not have many hard rules.

You're being downvoted for making the point a bit obtusely, but the general point is spot on. This culture of broadcast sharing with some imagined singlular hivemind is an opinionated policy, and certainly not the only way of socially interacting. Many people view different groups of friends as disparate communities and don't appreciate the social context collapse of them mixing. And even if everyone is friends, more people coming to an event doesn't always make for a better time.

The one-community broadcast-everything model has been embraced and encouraged by these surveillance-based businesses who don't want you to think too hard why they are also privy to all of your communications, and also want to drive the maximum number of interactions for "engagement" metrics. Non-corporate social media, "indie" web, and group chats are much more natural organic patterns of communication.

Lol, Meta apologists everywhere.

Rue the consequences of making working for Meta socially and career viable at leisure. Maybe in an El Salvador prison.

After being friends with public people, I got in the habit of asking people in pictures before I post, regardless of if they're on Instagram or not. And I NEVER post kid pictures. I find these rules should be obvious to most people. I'll even ask my wife first, who is always just about to post the same set of pictures I am. It's the decent thing to do.

How often do you get a no?

I take personal pride in how many of my friends have online avatars that are candid portraits that I took of them while we were out doing whatever, and I have had numerous people contact me and ask me to remove all of their photos. In the past sometimes it was "replace my name in the tags with a pseudonym" but now it's "remove them all." This all happened before AI took over, so you can imagine how relieved many of those people are in the age of deepfakes. Candid portraits are my favorite kind of photo to take, but sadly in the modern age, I've chosen to take down almost all of my portraits. I still have a self-hosted photo sharing software set up that I personally use to look through my collection and can share past memories with people, including lots of portraits I would have previously posted online, but I think most people and I have our guard up against AI crawlers. AI crawlers have made the web much more hostile than it was in the past.

Not the original commenter, but my friends are aware of my picture preferences (as in: get that camera out of my face). I always say "no", and most people I know are fine with that.

There are (or so I've been informed) some pictures of me on Facebook and Instagram. I don't have an account on either website so I can't see those pictures or even request to have them removed. Those were posted by the kind of older relatives who are impossible to educate on anything technology- (or consent-) related, and occasionally by friends-of-friends who snapped a pic while I was unawares.

Whenever I take a picture of anyone, I always ask first, and I never post them anywhere public. Feels like common decency to me, but there is obviously no such thing as universal common decency, so YMMV.

This reminded me of the time ~10 years ago I was at an event featuring Richard Stallman, and he started by say that no one was allowed to post photos of him on FB. This was to a room of hundreds of people, mostly hackers. I thought, "damn, if there's an uphill battle somewhere, this guy will find it!"

You allowed to have boundaries even if there's a few assholes who won't respect them

In this example RMS made a request to the audience. A boundary would be something like "if you post photos of me to Facebook, you won't be invited to my conferences" or "if you do X, I won't interact with you". Might be difficult to enforce, but that's on the person making the boundary.

That's the defining feature of a boundary: you don't actually tell people what to do. You just tell them what you'll do. "Don't talk to me like that" is an ask, "Talk to me like that again and I'll leave" is a boundary.

On the flip side: if I were to attend an event featuring Richard Stallman, I would rather it have a no-photos policy. I am interested in many of his ideas, but I have no desire to be associated with his ideas in their entirety or any public figure. Unfortunately, too many people believe that A implies B.

I also hate drama, and would much rather lead a quiet life as a person no one likes than an interesting life who some people dislike.

People will dislike you arbitrarily anyway. Can't get around that it seems in my experience, but maybe I'm bad at laying low

Knowing Richard Stallman he didn't ask for you not to upload them to Facebook but rather "Disgracebook", "FaceBurgler" or something like that.

In US, if that was a private event, his request is legally binding.

Unless they signed NDAs to get into the room with him, it's not. You're welcome to share the legal code, or a court case that proves me wrong though.

Unless you agreed to the terms before buying your ticket, no, it isn't legally binding.

RMS prefers his events to be open to the public

What if entering that room was free as in beer?

I may have been wrong in that RMS does not have that power, but the property owner does. Not sure if this is a universal rule or not.

I think the only legal recourse the property owner has is to kick you out.

How would this work in practice if it was litigated? Wouldn't you need proof that this was expressly communicated to the specific individual that violated and that they did so knowingly? Seems like it probably isn't enforceable...

In this case I think it might be, because if the event was recorded presumably so was the request to not share.

According to what law?

It is perfectly valid and fine thing to say to someone, as an adult, that you don't want to be a part of their stories on social media.

If they don't respect that, you need a new set of friends.

i've thought the same thing about email. i run my own email server, so i'm one of a very few number of people whose email is opaque to gmail. on the other hand -- almost everyone i exchange email with uses gmail, so actually gmail has almost all my email anyway.

The canonical blog post about that problem:

https://mako.cc/copyrighteous/google-has-most-of-my-email-be...

Interesting. I never thought about adjusting my message based on the email provider they use. Would be hard to do, someone could be using their own domain but the email goes through Gmail.

In many cases you could check their MX or SPF records. See what advice Google gives to use Gmail on your domain; then see if the domain followed that advice.

Did you have any problems with Gmail not trusting your server and moving your letters to spam?

I run mailman, which requires extra setup with ARC. In practice Gmail works pretty well. I've had more issues with smaller email providers like ... Umm Microsoft. Yahoo. Once someone working for 18F couldn't get my email on their .gov address.

I've been running a mail server for years. Never had any problem. I switched ip a year or two ago and didn't even warm up the new one. I do have DKIM and DMARC and that stuff though.

I'm sure you'll have some problems if you start serving newsletters right away, but as a personal mail server, you don't really need to do anything.

I even fucked up the config at one point for a week, and all the mail just patiently waited on the senders mail server for mine to be up again. I really love email.

Don't immediately start hosting your own email on a brand new domain especially if you're using a free or very low-cost VPS provider.

Pay a bit more for a better reputation provider. Use a domain you've owned for a while. Set up all SPF, DKIM, and DMARC properly.

Or just pay fastmail to do it for you.

I didn't have any issues with it. I ran the same server straightaway on a new domain maybe 7 years or so, maybe more. I recently changed hosts from AWS to somewhere else, so the IP changed, etc, and I did have one major e-mail provider ding me for a single outgoing e-mail after that, but it didn't happen twice and never any issues since then. I feel like if you follow all the DNS recommendations, it's not a problem anymore.

You're conflating a few different issues: the newness of a domain, and the quality and cost of of your VPS.

Some email providers don't like brand new domains, yes, but if a domain is brand new, nobody is going to immediately start using it for mission critical things. That's just common sense, although now I want to buy a domain to see how much of an issue this really is.

The cost and quality of a VPS means very little because if a VPS is on a network with a poor reputation, one can easily smarthost through a mail provider that has a good reputation.

Likewise, people can run servers at home, or they can colocate, or whatever, and don't have to run a VPS at all, although I think you're just generalizing and aren't suggesting that people can't use other servers.

Strong rec to use Fastmail; it's a fantastic, reliable, inexpensive service w/ excellent performance and UX.

I disagree. I followed luke smiths video on email hosting and adapted to miab and I was up and running. Checked the IP for problems beforehand. Have had to request a different IP once.

I bought into mailinabox like 3-4 years ago.

Zero issues since then. First time my emails got into spam but after unspamming, it worked.

Havent had issues. I use a cheap racknerd $12/year server so its way cheaper than proton or stuff and I have dozens of emails across family members.

Approaching zero of my friends are on Meta any more. Most have inactive accounts; a few have canceled outright. Those that are “active” are mostly limited to wishing each other happy birthday.

Afaic, Meta pretty much killed their platforms by pumping rage-bait clicks instead of social content.

No one is active on social media anymore like they were in college or high school. People just age out or get too busy for that kind of stuff. They might lurk but posts are pretty rare for most people who would have been posting 3 times a day 15 years ago. I'm not sure if the younger generation is actually active anymore or if they also just lurk now. Dead internet theory and all...

Exactly my experience as someone in the ostensible target demographic, late twenties to mid forties social circle. Granted I'm German with most friends/family in central/Eastern Europe so a bit less Instagram obsessed than the Anglosphere but so much has moved to Whatsapp (technically Meta I guess, but not really a public facing social network), Signal, Telegram.

And from what I see working with younger people out of uni, it's almost all private group chats, Discord, only real social platform seems to be TikTok. If there wasn't a date on the blog post I'd have guessed it was from 2017 or something, because the problem just feels obsolete now. Didn't Zuckerberg himself even say something to that effect?

> Imagine a friend you were on a weekend trip with. This friend talks with another common friend. This common friend could have equally well been on that weekend trip because you like him or her but, due to circumstances, as is life, you did not invite him. You probably would feel uncomfortable with that first friend talking about that trip as if it was the most awesome trip ever, that everyone had non-stop fun and now everyone who was on that trip are best friends for life.

I feel like this is an issue one just has to grow up past. Walking on eggshells and deception so as not to hurt anyone's feelings is an annoying way to live. (I preach as a sinner). Related: https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/apr/01/fringe-frie...

As to Zuck's machine having your information, yeah I can imagine if they bothered, they could see that there's always a person or two in all the pictures that aren't associated with any of the faces of the accounts, it can also determine what the friend groups of this person are. Probably even determine their wealth by their clothes, accessories, vacation locations, house ("Oh 5 users are gathered in a particular geolocation that is none of their houses [which we know about because 95% of the time a phone returns to a particular geolocation at night], and we can see from the photos that that 'unregistered user' is with them", that must be this user's house. Oh he lives in this neighborhood, that has a median income of EUR xyz. A reverse lookup of addresses we have because online shops upload their customer data to our system determines that one of the people living in that address is named Wouter Janleys, and from the shopping data he likes, amongst other things, mid-range to expensive wines.".

I wonder if they can even advertise to you through your friends, hah, that'd be a feature improvement for a Facebook project manager. Start showing your friends wine ads a few weeks before your birthday (as well as "It's Wouter's birthday in a few weeks" and "Remember this photo?" which is a photo of the group with glasses of wine)...

> I wonder if they can even advertise to you through your friends, hah,

Probably did so through shadow profiles

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_profile

A think this is partly why a lot of this activity moved into private group chats, where it's more naturally segregated by social circles. Most people around me are pretty active on social media but vast majority of that activity is not in the public profile.

This bothered me a lot in the past. I want to be in full control of any information that is on the Internet concerning myself. Some of the people I know will add an appeasing comment before taking a picture: "don't worry, I won't upload it anywhere!", but most people will just post it willy-nilly all the same.

By the way, during last Monday's blackout in Spain, I had a sense of this kind of burden being lifted from the atmosphere... the idea of nobody having the ability to record and publish anything anymore (for the duration of the blackout, at least), was quite interesting... relieving, even.

meta and its social networks have been a disaster for the human race

It's radicalizing as a twenty something who hasn't had social media in over a decade. Almost everything revolves around it or some friend Discord server. I hate it.

Don't worry by late 20s all that will quiet down in your friend group as people "adult" themselves into their boring 30 year old years. Tale as old as time.

People who know me know that even though I'm very public (my handle and my email address are my name, for instance), I care about privacy, and therefore it's unacceptable to post abount me on corporate social media without asking permission, just as they also know to not name or tag me.

People who post without asking don't know me well enough to name or tag me, so I don't care.

If someone posted and named / tagged me without asking, I'd have a serious conversation with them about it.

We need to stop acting like others' ignorance gives them an excuse to do things we don't want. "But everyone does it" is bull, and we're doing people a disservice when we let things slide because of that.

Should it be allowed / legal to 'tag' people that are not part of a service?

I might agree that 'celebrities' and leaders of larger organizations are 'public figures' and thus if there's a reasonable public interest it should be allowed to tag them, probably with a publishing delay for security.

However individuals? Random citizens who aren't part of a platform and cannot manage their data? IMO the default should be deny data collection and do not profile.

I don't think the problem raised in the article is limited to tagging. Friend A can recognize me in a picture from friend B regardless of whether I'm tagged there or not.

Then again, this is a pretty obscure problem, or more of a "problem".

Something that is scary is Clearview AI, etc. Then you don't need a person to recognize you, AI can do it. Add in Meta Rayban and it'll be harder and harder to maintain any shred of privacy.

Tagging will be redundant pretty soon with facial recognition...

What happens if you don't have an Instagram account, write to them and demand that they take down images of you, or provide you with all the images you appear in? Some level of this seems to be provided for by the GDPR and the EUs right to be forgotten.

This sounds like it should be an AITA post on reddit based on the comments in this thread.

A nothing post from a blog with a single post.

Its marketing and its boring.

I don’t understand, what kind of marketing do you think this is? I’m OP. I setup the blog a while ago but only for the first time I thought of something that was actually worth writing about. Something needs to be the first post! I’m sorry you found it boring.

One of my "its probably time to quit IG" moments prior to quitting 3 years involved being on a condo board.

A resident sent a petition asking for a variance from the bylaws, and part of the pitch was "well I saw XYZ on your IG so I thought you'd approve of this".

Uhh thanks, rejected.. blocked on IG, quit IG, bye.

I'm visiting Instagram lately only to see funny reels sent from my friends. My Instagram timeline is consisting of 90% influencers and life coaches, who is going to tell me my life sucks because I don't do what they have to tell me to do and 10% my friends.

Does anyone want to socialize but not have to socialize? I know I sure do / don't.

The social etiquette argument has been thrown away with the bath water. You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.

The term I like is Social Cooling, the subtle way in which people change their behavior because they are both present in person and online. Have you ever heard some use the term "unalive" in person? It's as if they are protecting themselves from an algorithm, as if the conversation will be posted online.

Have you had that experience, of being taken as a weirdo? We may move in very different circles, but when I ask to be left out of social media posts I’m always met with respect and understanding, at least to my face.

If anything, in recent years, I’m met with something closer to the respect people afford recovering addicts turning down drinks: “oh man, I wish I were off of it too, good for you.”

>You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.

You might call me a "weirdo", but this has absolutely not been my experience whatsoever. Friends, family and coworkers don't really give a shit that I don't participate in social media, and I haven't been treated any differently for it.

Edit: And hell, generally, what's life without a bit of weird? The homogeneity of everyone doing the same thing together all the time sounds boring as hell. Here's to the weirdos!

It just be a regional thing. I don't know a single person who uses Instagram.

Not even musicians, artists and the like? I have a lot of friends who use Instagram at least partly for their professional lives and hobbies.

You're describing marketing, which seems like 90% of posts on Instagram in 2025.

Sure, it's how I learn about most of the music and art-related events I go to. There's not really an equivalent platform to get that kind of info. It would have to be a mishmash of email newsletters and checking blogs, and even then some people only promote on Instagram because of it's market dominance.

I'm talking about people who use it on a personal basis. Yes my mum sends Instagram posts to market her embroidery company. I don't care about marketing posts.

Be the change you wanna see...

A lot of people thought non-drinkers were kinda weird a decade or so ago when drinking wine on morning TV was popular. Now half of the beer aisle is N/A offerings.

No one thinks it's weird. You'll likely have a harder time making friends, flirting or networking for your career, but it's absolutely not weird to not use social media these days.

> Have you ever heard some use the term "unalive" in person? It's as if they are protecting themselves from an algorithm, as if the conversation will be posted online.

Nobody is being socially pressured to avoid the word "dead/died/killed" in person, that's just an illustration of slang perpetuating.

> You are now the weirdo with something to hide when you are not on Instagram or Tiktok.

Definitely _not_ a universal feeling.