Why I deleted my privacy Instagram
and a long overdue hello
Hi, Hannah on Privacy subscribers! I haven’t touched this substack in a lo-o-ong time. Honestly, I haven’t been sure what to do with my privacy content. Some of you have noticed that I deleted my Instagram. I have gotten some concerned messages that maybe someone has taken over my account. Nope, it’s still me…I just deleted everything and changed my profile picture to something generic.
Why? Well, it’s pretty simple, actually. When I started to create privacy related content, I wanted to do so on a medium that would be:
Easy for me to create
Easy for people to consume
Just so happens that Instagram is a perfect medium for that. I could create a graphic with some facts, a short reel that explained some privacy concept in plain English, and repost other people’s content easily. But, over time, despite being “easy”, I found myself uncomfortable with the amount of time I was spending creating content for Instagram. At the end of the day, they owned the content - not me. And having choosing to constantly take selfies, talk on video, and create reels was the complete opposite of what I had wanted. I was creating privacy content, but I was feeling the need to be more public than I wanted to be…all for what? At the end of the day, my Instagram content brought me $0. Yes, it created value for people, and I’d like to think that my little corner of Instagram at least helped people think before they blindly gave out tons of information online or posted photos of their kids. That alone is enough reward for me, but the effort I was expending felt outsized to the rewards.
I want to revisit my privacy advocacy mission and find a medium in which I can feel like I’m not sacrificing who I am for the sake of gaining an audience. What that is, I’m not sure yet. I am considering writing a book. In my head, I call it the “Privacy Playbook” with a sub-heading of “the practical guide to privacy in the digital age”. Will it come to fruition? I honestly have no idea.
I get an e-mail notification any time someone subscribes to this substack, and lately I’ve gotten a wave of subscribers - no idea why, this thing has been inactive for so long. But on some level I’m taking it as a nudge from the universe that my work is still necessary and valued.
That’s a whole lot of rambling - if you’re still here, thanks for reading. If you have any words of encouragement or wisdom, please leave them in the comments or send me an email.
Hannah
Your work is absolutely necessary and valued! Please post more. I'd love to hear more about privacy from both a personal and practitioner perspective.
Let me know if you want intros to any of the technical book acquisitions agents I know.
I've never dove into it, but do you "own" your posts on Substack? I'd automatically assume no since you're using someone else's platform. Only true way is to self host and post to your own site/blog. But wasn't sure if Substack had friendlier creator terms.
I've had similar thoughts with ownership, but I still have the content I make that can be reposted/repurposed somewhere else if IG isn't the platform to use.
IG is really good/convenient to reach people as it is simple and to the point, reaching just about anyone on the internet.