Why there are no social media links anywhere on this site, and why there never will be.
People who read this forum regularly have probably picked up on the fact that there are no social media links here. No Twitter/X, no Facebook, no Instagram, no TikTok, no Reddit, nothing. If you go looking for me on any of those platforms, you will not find me. That is not an accident. I made a deliberate decision about 15 years ago and I have never once considered going back.
I want to explain why, because it connects directly to a lot of what I write about here.
The Short Version
I don’t trust the business model.
Every major social media platform is built on the same foundation: you are not the customer, you are the product. Your behavior, your attention, your opinions, your location, your relationships, your daily routines, all of it gets harvested, packaged and sold to advertisers. The platform is free because you are what they are selling.
I spent a career in IT security and infrastructure. I understand what data collection looks like at scale. When I looked at what these platforms were actually doing versus what they told users they were doing, I was done. That was not a close call.
What Made Me Walk Away
I was an early adopter, the same as I was with most technology. I had accounts. I used them. And then I started paying attention to what was actually happening under the surface.
The engagement mechanics are engineered. Every notification, every like, every auto-playing video, every recommended connection is the output of algorithms designed to keep you on the platform as long as possible. Longer session times equal more ad impressions. That is the entire game. The content you see is not chosen because it is good or true. It is chosen because it produces a reaction, and reactions equal engagement, and engagement equals revenue.
I do not want my attention managed by an algorithm that is being paid by someone else to point it somewhere.
The privacy situation made it worse. When Facebook was going through its various hearings and disclosures, what came out was not a surprise to anyone who had been paying attention. Data shared with third parties, shadow profiles built on people who never signed up, location tracking even when location was turned off. The data collection was not an accident or a side effect. It was the whole point.
I watched that and thought: I know enough about how this works to know I want no part of it.
The Attention Problem
There is something beyond the privacy issue that I think gets less attention than it deserves.
Social media is designed to make you reactive. Constant input, constant opinions, constant noise. You post something and then you are checking to see how people responded to it. You see something that makes you angry and you feel compelled to respond. The whole environment is engineered to keep you in that loop.
I have projects. I have a job. I build things. I write. I do not have time to be in that loop, and I did not want to develop the habit of needing to be in it.
Fifteen years out I can tell you that not having social media is one of the best decisions I ever made for my own focus. I work on things. I finish them. I am not waiting for a response count to tell me whether something I did was worthwhile.
What About LinkedIn?
This is the one that comes up when people notice the social media absence. I do technically have a LinkedIn account. Let me be specific about what that means.
I log in maybe a dozen times a year, if that. When I do, it is to reply to someone reaching out about work. I document my work history there the same way you would document it on a resume. I do not post. I do not scroll. I do not interact with the feed. I do not share opinions or comment on other people’s content.
LinkedIn for me is a digital resume that sometimes generates inbound work inquiries. That is the entire use case. The social side of it does not exist for me.
But How Do You Promote the Forum?
I don’t. Not through social media.
The forum gets found because the content is here and search engines index it. If something I write is useful, people find it. Word of mouth works. Direct links work. SEO works. None of that requires me to post on Instagram or fight the Twitter/X algorithm.
I built this place to be a real resource, not a social media engagement funnel. If you’re here reading this, something led you here on its own. That is exactly how I want it to work.
The Principles Post Explains the Rest
If you want the broader philosophical foundation behind how I operate, the Captain Dumbass Principles megathread covers it. Privacy, ownership, control over your own tools and data. Social media runs directly counter to all of it.
I am not telling you what to do with your accounts. But I want people who read this forum to understand where I am coming from and why you will never see a “follow us on social media” footer anywhere on this site.