For a long time, LinkedIn was the only platform I actively used. I had a YouTube channel, but I had stopped posting. I had a TikTok account, but only to watch others. Recently, I decided to share a few songs I created at home, with the help of my husband. That decision led me to reopen Facebook and Instagram as well. And then something unexpected happened. I didn’t just start posting again; I ran straight into the reality of what these platforms have become. And the conclusion I reached is simple: social media is not being disrupted from the outside. It is slowly dismantling itself from within.
Let’s talk about today, not history…
Even though I know the history of this platform, because I took a very long break, I still have not fully understood what is going on. I used to have a Facebook page that was as active as my LinkedIn, and after a long break, I came back with excitement. But I was faced with a page that felt like a desert. No one likes anyone’s posts, no one even hears anyone anymore. You share something, and your number of likes does not go beyond ten people. Putting my heartbreak and disappointment aside, when I went to the homepage where the feed is supposed to be active, I understood the situation. On the homepage, nothing from the people you follow is being shown, neither their photos nor their videos. Here is the terrible truth. It is as terrible as a snake eating its own tail. People are not even logging into Facebook anymore. I sent messages to a few people and received one or two replies. These are people I am very close to. People are not even checking their messages. The reason is this. Facebook is asking for money to make your posts visible. If you do not pay, you do not appear in the homepage feed. Even when you just want to see other people’s posts, you still cannot see the people you follow on your homepage. You only see promoted content, and most of it comes from pages you do not even follow. Let’s say you follow around one thousand people. I can say that I follow seven thousand people on TikTok, so you can understand how small this number actually is. There is a page, but which one was it? What was its name? If it does not appear in your feed, how are you supposed to see it? If those thousand pages you follow are not in your feed, what are you going to see? I will tell you. You will be faced with unrelated videos from pages you do not follow, all of them promoted by paying for visibility. To sum it up, since no one can see each other’s posts on the homepage anymore, Facebook has turned into a desert that is doomed to disappear.
It has turned into an attraction park for the entertainment industry. Many celebrities are having fun among themselves, waiting for your distant likes. I have never had the goal of being part of that world, nor have I made any effort for it. I am not someone who likes to share private life details or what I eat and drink. Still, even if I want to share my songs and interact with people like me who share drawings, photography, and music, this logic of high follower count and low following count has put people in a vice. I am someone who follows back those who follow me. But societies have been put into such a vise that if the number of people you follow is high, you are seen as ordinary. Being ordinary does not upset me; the problem is not being followed because you appear ordinary. And when it comes to DMs. Are all the people who send messages in DMs really perverts? Are those perverts so much more numerous than normal people that no one even checks their DMs? I wrote to a few old friends from my music writing days, saying I wanted to gift them a song, and I sent it. No one replied. Because they do not even check their DMs. And finally, the influencers. Honestly, I do not follow any of them, but their exaggerated follower counts and the way the most meaningless and low-quality videos are adored gave me a strong feeling of media manipulation. Let us see how long Instagram can survive as just a playground for celebrities. Because real people have already started to feel like strangers to the platform.
YOUTUBE
A platform that does not operate with the logic of social media, but rather like an endless television that pulls us from one story to another. Since I know how much you enjoy my animal videos, I wanted to share them on YouTube as well. The page I opened with great excitement was shut down the next day for violating YouTube rules. I was devastated, because it wasn’t just YouTube that was gone; my Google account was also at risk. Thankfully, YouTube customer service allowed me to file a claim, so I sat down and wrote a short, polite email. “I only share entertaining animal videos. How could I possibly have violated platform policies?” It turned out that someone had acted out of hostility. I learned that I had enemies that very day. But when YouTube restored my page, they also informed me that they had taken down the account of the person who made the false report. That was a smart move! For that reason, my emotional connection with YouTube has never been broken.
LinkedIn has always been my preferred platform, my favorite platform. The place where my most respectful connections are, and where I never feel afraid to share. To be honest, those who know me are aware of what I went through in the early years. At a time when cancel culture was just starting to grow, and people were openly throwing sharp, hurtful remarks at each other, I had become afraid to post on LinkedIn. That’s why I started a kind of movement asking, “Why can’t we delete comments on this platform?” and it ended in victory. My voice was heard by LinkedIn’s CEO at the time, and the issue even made the news.
But now, I feel the frustration of not being able to make our voices heard anymore. In the past, even for the smallest issue, we could speak directly with customer support. That is no longer the case. Worse, like Facebook, they now suggest that we pay to promote our content. To be honest, for years, I have been one of the people who kept LinkedIn alive, contributing to the flow of its main feed without asking for anything in return. I didn’t just post, I personally thanked every single person who commented.
About two years ago, I noticed something alarming: LinkedIn was reducing my follower count. It was shocking to watch. The numbers were dropping in chunks. You refresh 100,000 becomes 99,000. You refresh again, and it keeps going down… all the way to 88,000. And it’s still dropping. It doesn’t go up, it goes down. And yes, this is LinkedIn doing it. How do I know? Because people email me asking, “Why did you remove me from your connections?”
I didn’t.
And as if that wasn’t enough, when I don’t promote my post, something as simple as a cat video, they bury my content. I don’t appear on the main feed. And when, by chance, I do, people tell me, “Where have you been? We haven’t seen you in a long time.”
My answer is simple: “Ask LinkedIn. They’re the ones burying me alive.”
In short, I still have an emotional connection with LinkedIn, and it won’t be easy to break. But I wish they would listen and stop discouraging people like me, and thousands of others, who have been trying to keep this platform alive.
X, ALSO KNOWN AS TWITTER
When it first launched, it was a very entertaining platform. When people asked me, “What’s your Twitter account? Let me follow you,” it was the platform that made me say, “I don’t have one because I’m not good at writing short sentences.” Over time, the platform changed. What used to make me laugh out loud, the place where my laughter would echo as I read, turned into a very political platform. They are right, too! Because it is actually one of the very few platforms where we can talk about what is happening. But I am afraid to join. Because today, in Europe and the UK, the number of people who have been imprisoned just for liking something on X is far from insignificant. Moreover, for a post, a comment, or even a like, people receive harsher prison sentences, especially in the UK and Germany, than those given for sexual crimes. That is why, since my tongue is sharp, I choose to stay away from politics.
TIKTOK
Yesss, I saved this one for last, like dessert. But what I’m about to say is quite frustrating. I have been someone who followed TikTok from the outside for years. It was one of the platforms where I found entertaining videos. But recently, I also started sharing my own songs. However, a problem appeared! For example, you come to my video and suddenly press on my shared video. Do you know what this is? By doing this, you make it possible to label the music I worked on for days, staying up all night, as AI-generated! The warning that my songs are made by AI can be claimed by someone from the outside simply by long-pressing my profile, and TikTok publishes it. You’ve struggled all night to fit lyrics to the song, had to change the melody in tears because the words didn’t match the music, who cares? Some guy comes along, presses that button, and bammmm! AI warning! I prepare these songs using software; I don’t have an orchestra. The initial interpretation of the song belongs to me, but since I don’t record in a studio environment, the noise of passing buses, the clatter of the tram, and the noise from the supermarket below force me to polish it with AI. Then I go to TikTok—and it’s a dead end. There is no one to talk to. There is not a single authority where I can write a message saying, “Hey, these songs belong to me, AI only made the final touch.” Do you know what the only thing you can find is? An AI secretary. You write your problem, and it is programmed to say, “I didn’t understand. Can you write it again?”!!!! Supposedly, TikTok does not allow such things. Hey TikTok, you allow someone to label my content as AI just by long-pressing my video, but why don’t you allow me to defend myself? Moreover, what kind of harm can a song cause? What kind of fraud is this? Even in the 1990s, music was prepared digitally as a base. I am doing the same MIDI application. I use autotune like other musicians. How does this make me a fraud? What harm does this behavior of mine cause to anyone, hey TIKTOK?
Anyway, as you can see, social media platforms are like this for now. There are other platforms as well, but I didn’t want to take up more of your time by making this too long. If you have anything to add, please share it with me. I’m also curious about your thoughts on this.
Victoria Toumit