ljsinclair

The only surprise...

Published on

...is that I was caught unawares by a dumb design decision. Or perhaps it's a smart design decision if you want to monitor people's phone usage.

The background

I'm a writer.

  • I've been advised to get onto Social Media because publishers like to see you've got people following who might buy your books1
  • So I got the least (ha!) bad option I could find, one which may have a benefit in that I can meet up with friends/fellow travellers/writers, etc in a visual manner with photos and suchlike
  • I started with an android app where I added my (then) blog
  • I've deleted the app because, frankly, I don't need to share my every thought every minute of the day. Nor do I want constant fucking reminders that someone else has posted2

The problem

I've got a new blog. I want to change the blog address in my Instagram account.

Seems reasonable doesn't it? Login, open the settings, change the blog.

Raucous laughter follows

Not quite. Not at all.

These idiots have set up the system so the ONLY place you can change the blog URL is in the app.

instagram-wants-app-for-website.jpg

Editing your links is only available on mobile. Visit the Instagram app and edit your profile to change the websites in your bio.

What the utter finagling fuck?!

Should have known better

I left Facebook over six years ago, and they just haven't gotten better.

And why would they? They keep getting hit by scandal after scandal, and fined billions which barely scrape the unimaginable bucket of wealth they've accumulated.

The only way they'll be stopped is by being split up, reduced in size and fixing the laws that allow companies and people to accumulate such obscene wealth.

But that's never going to happen, is it?

  1. this is, of course, assuming the people following aren't actually bot-farms and criminals ↩

  2. And yes, I know you can change notifications in Android, BUT, the important part isn't just the insane lengths you have to go to so notifications actually WORK AS EXPECTED, and the convoluted ways the Android team have built their menu structures, burying different information and generally making it hard to do anything BUT the default settings they give you. But ALSO because Facebook and Meta (and to be honest, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and everyone else are obsessed with getting their grubby hands on that sweet, sweet bucket of Other People's Information to make money from it, sell to advertisers and train their Artificial Idiots (Ai) ↩

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