Over the years, I’ve quietly walked away from several popular platforms—because those platforms slowly crossed a line. A line where user choice started being replaced by coercion, and convenience turned into control. Three incidents in particular—Instagram, Google Photos, and Microsoft Clipchamp—cemented my belief that local ownership beats cloud promises every single time. 1. Instagram: When the Platform Dictates the Art Back in 2016, Instagram only supported square photos. As someone who enjoyed landscape photography, this felt absurd. Instead of respecting the original aspect ratio, the platform forced creators to crop or compromise their work just to fit its feed. I didn’t try to adapt my photography to Instagram’s limitations. I simply stopped caring about the platform. I moved to Flickr, where photos were treated as photos—not thumbnails for attention farming. Instagram eventually deleted my account due to long inactivity, and honestly, I didn’t even notice. That’s how litt...
Nitish Kumar Diwakar
A personal blog exploring ideas across technology, society, history, mythology, and the modern world.