I'm off insta

 The other day, I logged into Instagram and received a message demanding that I prove my age (ie, over 13) by providing them with my date of birth (DOB). Now, I should start by saying that I'm always suspicious of any site asking for my DOB. None of the places I go on the web necessitate them knowing this. So when 'insta' started asking for, I was mighty sus. What I did, was give them my standard, "that's none of your business DOB". 1.1.2000. Apparently that wasn't good enough for insta, because they then sent me this message and stopped me from reaching my home page...

This was when I started to get angry. The 'appeal' they offered me involved putting my real DOB in, as well as uploading a picture of a formal piece of ID. Driver's licence, passport, etc. Now, if demanding your DOB wasn't bad enough, now they were asking for things that could easily have cyber crims stealing my identity.

Now you might be thinking, 'Why didn't just give them your DOB?' 

I wasn't just being bloody minded. Mark Zuckerberg now owns insta. What he wants to do is align all insta users with facebook users. The reason he wants to do this is because he wants to mine every user for as much of their personal data as possible. And DOB is at the very centre of that. It's a key piece of personal information. Information he then sells onto marketing companies, and political lobbiests. In a nut shell, the Suck, I mean, Zuck, wants to create a digital version of me that anticipates every move I make and every place I go. It's really stalking. And I won't have a part of it. It's the same reason I post almost nothing on fakebook these days.

Now you might say, 'But he wants to make sure only people older than 13 can access Instagram.'

Well maybe, but he already knows I'm over 13. My posts tell him I can drive, I'm married, I have kids and my age group. All things that demonstrate I'm way over 13. He could easily cross reference this with my wife and kids, some of whom are on insta. So the only reason he wants my DOB is to mine my data and sell it on. Which is kinda sad, because I'm the sort of user he should want to keep. 

These are some of the pics I posted. A variety of family friendly, interesting, witty (I think) pics of daily life without any hate speech, limitless selfies or as my kids call them, 'hot pics'. Ie. pictures in clothing that would have been considered porn only a few decades ago. Worse still, I know Instagram hosts such pictures of girls under 18. Stuff that would have to border on child porn. And then there's all porn advertisers and the sickos stealing such pics and sharing them. It's all there, and the Zuck has done nothing about that.

So, I'm off Zuck. I'm off insta. If I have to be honest with myself, it's probably a good thing. Insta was a time suck. And I was a sucker for the infinite scroll. So Zuck has probably done me a favour. I'll look at this as a gift from God. No more scrolling when I should be thinking or present with people.

I wonder what else I can leave behind? It's got me thinking.

#gone