---
title: "Instagram: get rid of all posts"
url: https://perrotta.dev/2025/02/instagram-get-rid-of-all-posts/
last_updated: 2026-02-08
---


Following the footsteps of enacting 2025 as a year of [Tech Independence]({{< ref
"2024-12-31-independence" >}}), I got rid of _all_ my Instagram posts[^1].

There were some 250+ posts spawning 10+ years.

## Why?

In no particular order:

- new acquaintances don't need to know about my whole timeline / history / past,
  whether it's employment, locations I lived in, locations I travelled to,
  activities, hobbies, etc

- reduce dependence on Big Tech™ (even further)

- effectively eliminate my attachment to the platform. No data, no regrets

- [Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right
  Now](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/37830765-ten-arguments-for-deleting-your-social-media-accounts-right-now)
  by Jaron Lanier. I read this book 5 years ago (2020) and it always stayed in my head.
  I wrote the following review on Goodreads at the time:

  > Decent read for this century overall, but the book is quite repetitive. The
  > author repeats the BUMMER acronym a lot, it's quite annoying. But his
  > arguments are relevant and decent to some extent. One thing that misses the
  > point is that the author treats social media as a blackbox, you're either in
  > or out. There's no middle ground. There are some gray zone use cases that
  > are useful and aren't necessarily manipulative. Marketplace and
  > community-based Discussion Groups are two of them. Still, if you consume
  > personalized newsfeeds or stories on a daily basis then
you should definitely read it.

I don't believe you need to be that much radical or strict to the point of
completely getting rid of them, nonetheless it's not particularly difficult to
achieve a healthy balance either. Personally, I deactivate my account for weeks
or months at a time ephemerally, and this tends to work well for me.

- focus more on the present. I don't need to keep looking back at my social
  media posts if there are no posts to look back to in the first place. This
  fosters a healthy feedback loop wherein incentives to live in the present are
  continuously rewarded

- privacy!

- more incentive to direct resources towards platforms I care more about
  (e.g. this blog!) – opportunity cost

- intentionally eliminate most of the friction I had to share my private account
  with new acquaintances

As a side effect, I added a link to my profile at the footer of this site.

[^1]: Not 100% correct as I left only one post, which doubles down as (i)
    nostalgia / melancholy for the good ol' times and (ii) verification /
    creditworthiness i.e. makes my account appear more authentic as it has at
    least one post from a long time ago; otherwise it could appear that I
    created it very recently.