J20 minus 69 — prepare your social media accounts and archives

If there was any doubt left what role the big, corporate social media sites have in our democracy, then it surely was erased in the 2024 US presidential election. Billionaire-owned social media does not serve the people. It serves the wealthy and the powerful and they use our data, obtained through coercion, to enrich themselves and entrench themselves in power. The illusion that we are independently building our audiences is an appealing one. But make no mistake—they profit off your dependency and they can turn you off at any point. Today, in honor of the 69th day before Donald Trump's second inauguration and Elon Musk's favorite number, it's a great day to reflect on what to do with your social media accounts.

I've put together an alpha version of a Social Media Inventory and Intervention guide. This guide helps walk you through a structured way to review your online presence, to document and take inventory of what accounts you have, how important they are to you, and what you should do to make them more secure.

Guide: Social Media Inventory and Intervention

This is a reference guide for how to take inventory of your online social media accounts, how to evaluate their relevance in your life, and how you can take action on them. It’s not designed to be an exhaustive resource for how to manage each individual social media account (and

Left✊ to Our Own DevicesEmily Gorcenski

This guide walks you through a simplified risk management process that helps you quantify and rank the items that are most important to take care of, allowing you to focus your energy.

Over time, I hope to make this an interactive tool that helps provide you with more resources for handling your social media inventory.