I think you're seeing a loud minority honestly. People who use mainstream socials still (yes, I do) don't tend to shout about it all the time.

I use discord and piefed and that's it. Discord is mainstream, but I'm just in a couple small servers talking with friends.

I just don't mesh well with most social media. Mastodon and Bluesky confuse me just as much as Twitter and Facebook did.

Decentralisation purist here.

I scrape reddit for things that can't be trusted to stay hosted there and put them on the Fediverse. But I don't actually use reddit.

Nope. Got off all of it in 2017 and I've never looked back

I keep trying to block reddit, but half of the good practical advice and troubleshooting help is trapped there.

If anybody has a giant directory of active messageboards, I'm all ears.

I don't, I quit Facebook almost a decade ago and then Reddit when they did the API bullshit. I do still end up on Reddit sometimes through search results but I nuked my account and will never create another one. I'm not exactly a purist about FOSS or decentralized platforms but corpo social media is dead to me.

YouTube and discord if you can call those social media and Tumblr if you can call that mainstream.

We asked in our instance census about use of lemmy-like platforms (reddit, hacker news) and most people said they still used them in some respect. Only 7 our of 49 who answered this question said they never use them, over half use them equally or more than Fediverse alternatives.

Personally I use Facebook messenger, well I normally use Beeper because I don't have facebook on my phone but I still use the platform to connect with people. And video call on my laptop from time to time.

Unless you count old Reddit as "mainstream", I never did.

Even if I have to deal with pissed-off people because I "still didn't join them on facebook".

I lurk on Reddit but no longer have an active account.

Nothing else

Quit using fb years back, maybe five? Have checked it twice to message people i've no other contacts for.

I've used reddit maybe a half dozen times since moving to fediverse during the 3rd party app exodus. Each time to find a specific niche thing, often to no avail.

So i'd say honestly no, but i never like social media much to begin with.

Only YouTube.

I was pretty addicted to Reddit for a while, but eventually I got banned for basically no reason and that was enough to get me to almost entirely stop checking it.

I still have a Facebook account, but I refuse to even look at my feed. I don't really want to know what most of my family is up to, however Marketplace, sadly, is better than Craigslist ever was.

Still have my old YouTube account, but I rarely look at it.

No Gram/Twitter/LinkedIn Permabanned from the mainstream link aggregator what feels like forever ago

Don't remember my Tumblr login

This is it for me.

I still have an Instagram account because that's where my friends / past friends are. I've backed up and removed all my posts, and even when I was "actively posting," I hardly used it. Now it's only for communicating with people with whom I have no other way of speaking.

I still use YouTube, and do, in fact, use YouTube Premium. I'm on a family account, and while there are decent clients that I situationally use, there is no real alternative for the platform itself due to the nature of user-generated content platforms.

I no longer use my Reddit account, but I do read threads when they come up in search engine results, and many times, I do specifically narrow my search to the Reddit domain. Too much information there to completely ignore.

My Discord account is still active, although I have successfully managed to get my best friend off of there, which was like 99.5% of my Discord usage. But unfortunately because the informational age of the internet is dying, many products and games choose to use Discord for official support, which means that information is no longer indexable and only exists in the neutron star that is Discord.

So when people ask if I use mainstream social media (I can count on one hand how many times this has been asked), my quick answer is just "YouTube."

youtube and discord but only because i cant live without those (youtube for youtubers and updates, discord for friends)

I have FB for marketplace a couple times a year, I don't install the app unless I'm buying something.

I watch a LOT of educational YouTube, and some tech news on there, using GrayJay.

Otherwise, this is it.

Used to have insta years ago.

I guess I technically have Marco Polo, but it's literally my immediate family only 🤷‍♂️ and that's more chat app than social media.

Edit: oh and discord for the couple of friends who use it. Plus I'm on a couple of servers for my hobbies, very specific, I hardly look at them unless I'm active in a given hobby at that moment.

Not at all

Insta: to watch furry femboy thirst reels YouTube: to watch stuff Snap: Nudes Reddit: See reactions to governmental policies. Also, I really love the askeconomics sub.

Yeah I deleted all my accounts. I only run a mastodon, Lemmy, and a rarely used Pixelfed account now

I have discord but I only use it to talk to a relative who doesn't like traditional texting and because some of the help guides for mods are solely on discord.

I had an Instagram and a Facebook years ago and deleted them. Recently I realized I was missing out on updates, information, and job postings related to both my job and my hobbies that are only posted on mainstream social media, so I made an Instagram that so far has zero posts, not even a profile picture, and I don't have it installed on my phone, only on a tablet that stays at home and doesn't have personal info stored on it. I'm still missing out on a lot that's only posted on Facebook but the amount of dread I have when I think about going back into that cesspool has so far kept me away.

I Just got my second Ban from Reddit in two weeks for mentioning Zionism in an inoccuous way.

Reddit has been captured.

I do not use mainstream social media. Haven't in years.

What is the "cutoff" for mainstream? How far do you stretch the definition of "social media"?

Just YouTube, but I only watch and don't comment or use it as social media.

• Youtube as it's really unmatched for anything video.
• Instagram (just stories) to catch up with what my friends are doing
• Facebook marketplace for 2nd hand stuff
• LinkedIn for work
• Reddit for very few niche communities that don't exist anywhere else on the web

Nope just fedi and tildeverse don't miss anything.

I only use Lemmy and YouTube. I miss Reddit sometimes because of the niche subreddits that are nonexistent here.

No but I barely used it in the first place.

wasnt using it before, thanks to fediverse i can use at least some.

the fediverse platforms i use are Lemmy, Mastodon, and PeerTube

i dont use any nonfree social media but am active on Discord (which is social media adjacent, being a chatroom platform)

i also watch Youtube videos (through Invidious) and occasionally browse Reddit meme communities but i dont have accounts on those

and i havent abandoned any mainstream platforms, i never used them, was never allowed to by parents (and never wanted to because i was properly educated about online privacy) (the reason i have discord is a dnd group)

i went down the libre software pipeline due to autism and my first pc running linux (my dad is a tech person), ive only ever had linux computers and a macbook (not counting mobile devices tho; i have an iphone and plan to replace it with a linux phone)

No.

Reddit I guess. I don't post there though.

Forums, reddit, and lemmy. That's it since 1995.

Maybe some slashdot and fark too, but that's basically the same as reddit

There is a group in Fecesbook about the war in Ukraine and the Russia. It is the most up-to-date and best-curated information source regarding the war, so I will follow that group until the war is finally over.

There's also a Finnish group for people travelling ecologically. I regularly browse questions people are posing there and if I'm the only one who knows a good answer, I write one. That group now has a sister community here on Forumverse, and any new content I want to write, I write in that comm instead of the Fecesbook group.

Otherwise I am outside all commercial social media. I do not have a google account, so I browse Youtube without login if I browse it. And typically using Tubular as my client program.

I have FB/IG, and to a lesser extent Reddit, exclusively to share Socialist and activist content, and keep up to date with what's going on. Most orgs still use FB/IG. 🤷‍♂️

I still enjoy reddit, while acknowledging how shitty it actually is (been a member since 2006 lol).

I've degoogled everything except Youtube. I don't really consider youtube social media since I'm not interacting with people.

I also have bluesky, mostly for lefty content. Honestly if all of it, including fediverse, went away tomorrow, I wouldn't care that much. I kind of hate everything about the internet these days...I much prefer meatspace socializing, even as an introvert.

I’m still on Discord and YouTube, but I’d prefer a world where we could move to various alternatives.

I don’t even hate social media sites run by profit motivated companies. It’s a question of how profit-motivated and unregulated they want to be. Ideally, it shouldn’t be so hard to move - so that users don’t become “locked in” to a poor system, and competitors can show off the space’s problems.

Mainstream social media is my mindless scroll mode, but when I’m actually serious about learning something , like figuring out the ins and outs of buying a used yacht , it’s straight to the niche forums. Nothing beats real people talking about their actual experiences, no algorithmic fluff.

Unfortunately yes. I use Wechat, for that it has been stupidly made a required app for people living in PR China. Worst of all there's ID verification, and they ban your account for alternative front-ends. I hate and absolutely despise it.

Other than that, not really. I have a TikTok account for a streak (sending someone a message every day with them replying to you, consequetively for many days). Its stupid and I have thought about deleting it, but the other side having the streak would be upset.

If this is mainstream then, yes.

• Xitter: App is installed but only for the @YearsProgress notification (which counts in percentage how far along we are in the year. Just a fun gimmick I could get from other apps but idc enough for to get active)
• Trakt: Replaced by locally hosted yamtrack (It's a forked version and way better than trakt)
• Discord (if that even counts): Only to message friends. I don't engage in public server discussions outside of rarely asking for troubleshooting help
• Instagram: Only because friends send memes. Not much else
• Pixiv: Very rarely
• WhatsApp: Mainly due to family and RL acquaintances
• Reddit: Only at work while waiting for a loading bar to finish. Also I can't always take/endure the high volume neutral-negative leaning posting of political threads of my lemmy-feed and I can't be bothered to login to my lemmy account. But I never engage in the reddit posts with voting and commenting.
• Youtube: Very much so. Just the normal vanilla youtube experience. (And yes, I use Premium because I use it so heavily. Also the creators I watch get compensated more per view and I can't be bothered to subscribe to every patreon)

Edit:
Honestly, the reddit api-exodus helped me get off entirely from both reddit and lemmy and to reduce my reliance on it during lunch break.

Being honest? Fuck no. Well, except for Facebook Marketplace. I try Craigslist first but all the good shit (and stupid people... holy fucking stupid people) are on Marketplace. Which means I technically have a FB account. I did venture down the feed a while back and the amount of AI slop had me noping out faster than a crab at a seagull convention. How anyone tolerates that shit is beyond me.

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i use discord on my ps5 only to chat with my pc gamer buddies, and reddit if that counts. otherwise i am on lemmy, or online forums over social medias(lowkey wish social media never changed from forums)

I guess I still use Bluesky?

Issue for me with social media is it feels like such an awful chore. I don't understand how people basically live on a platform.

I have to as a performer/artist, but I hate it. It's the bane of every artist

i use discord because of my friends. reddit occasionally but very rarely these days. hackernews a lot but it's not really 'mainstream platform'...

aside from that there's few forums in my local language that's still kinda thriving.

I use Discord, but only for a very few friends (and by very few I mean 2 and then 2 of my brothers ended up there too) mostly for comms in games, sometimes to chat.

We're considering options to leave, but as everything available has significant trade offs, it'll be a while.

But nothing else mainstream where you just post to the ether and friends/followers are just subscribed to it.

I use an app to browse reddit for images, but it can't log in or post comments.

But nothing else. I deleted Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram all around the time Elon bought Twitter.

Fediverse is really as close as I get to social media. I had some, and deleted them all years ago.

Except Discord, but I only use it like a common room in a dorm/apartment, not a connection to every other community in the world.

I use Mastodon/Lemmy as my primary social media accounts, but i still use Instagram and YouTube pretty consistently.

I want to be off corporate social media permanently, but most of my friends are still on Instagram and there really isn't a good replacement for YouTube. I have tried to encourage people to switch, but it hasn't taken yet.

No, only this.

I use Facebook to communicate with my family, since that's where our group chat is. I don't use my real name on there, but rather [MiddleName] [Grandmother'sMaidenName], and my profile pic is a cat. Sometimes I post pics of particularly good meals I made, so they come up in the "memories" feed and remind me to cook them again.

I follow a lot of chefs on Instagram, mainly for inspiration and to find new recipes.

That's the extent of my traditional social media use.

I barely use Facebook like once a week maybe for 10 mins, and sometimes I’ll click a Reddit link. Also check LinkedIn 1-2 times a month