01
Addiction by design
Platforms are optimized to keep us scrolling, reacting, refreshing, and returning.
A collective exit from addictive social media
The Great Logout
Social media promised connection. It delivered addiction, outrage, comparison, and surveillance. We are building tools, resources, and a public campaign to help people leave the feed together.
Manifesto
Leave visibly. Leave together.
This is not a project against technology. It is a project against addiction by design. The goal is not isolation. The goal is to reclaim attention, connection, and public life.
We are not leaving because we hate the internet.
We are leaving because our attention is not their property.
We refuse platforms that profit from addiction, outrage, loneliness, and manipulation.
We do not help people disappear. We help them leave visibly — so every exit becomes a signal.
Why this matters
The feed is not neutral.
The problem is not weak willpower. The problem is infrastructure built to capture behavior, shape attention, and turn social life into measurable engagement.
02
Outrage as infrastructure
Conflict, comparison, and fear are not accidental side effects. They are profitable patterns.
03
Connection turned into extraction
Our friendships, creativity, grief, joy, and politics have become assets inside someone else’s machine.
What we are building
An exit infrastructure.
The Great Logout starts with a public campaign and a safe prototype. Not a hack. Not a scam. Not an account takeover. A voluntary, transparent, collective way to leave.
The Pledge
A public commitment page for people who want to leave addictive social media and show that they are not alone.
The Final Post Generator
A simple tool that helps people write clear, personal final posts about why they are leaving and where friends can reach them instead.
The 7-Day Exit Sequence
A guided process to prepare the exit: save contacts, inform friends, choose alternatives, reduce friction, and make the decision visible.
The Resource Hub
Templates, guides, alternative communication channels, reading lists, and practical support for people, parents, schools, and organizations.
The Safe Prototype
An early demo flow that shows how a visible exit could work without password manipulation, hidden automation, or irreversible lockout.
Safety & ethics
Radical, not reckless.
A digital exit tool must protect people first. The project is designed around consent, reversibility, clarity, and public accountability.
What this project will do
- Help people leave visibly and voluntarily.
- Make the exit hard enough to matter, but never coercive.
- Offer warnings, checkpoints, and recovery options.
- Build public pressure through collective action.
What this project will not do
- No hidden account access.
- No irreversible lockout without recovery.
- No manipulation of users into leaving.
- No selling attention back to another platform.
Roadmap
From signal to movement.
The first goal is not to promise a finished product. The first goal is to show a credible path: strong message, safe prototype, early supporters, then crowdfunding.
Manifesto & landing page
Define the message, publish the campaign, and make the project visible.
Prototype
Build the pledge page, final post generator, and 7-day exit sequence.
Supporters
Contact journalists, researchers, educators, parents, activists, and digital wellbeing voices.
Crowdfunding
Raise funds for development, resources, outreach, workshops, and public campaigning.
Support the project
Help build the exit infrastructure.
The Great Logout is currently an early-stage independent project. Support helps us build the first prototype, publish resources, and create a public campaign around leaving addictive social media.
- €5 — Supporter of the movement
- €15 — Name on the supporter page
- €30 — Early prototype access
- €50 — Exit kit with templates, guides, and final post examples
- €100+ — Supporter circle and community calls
/pledge/draft
I joined The Great Logout.
I am leaving addictive social media because my attention, relationships, and time should not be owned by platforms built for extraction.
I am not disappearing. I am choosing different ways to connect.
About
Independent, open, accountable.
The Great Logout was initiated by Daniel Netzl, an Austrian AI student and data scientist concerned with the social, political, and psychological harms of addictive platform design.
The project is meant to become larger than one person: a public-interest campaign with supporters, researchers, designers, developers, educators, parents, and people who want out.
We are not affiliated with Instagram, TikTok, Meta, X, or any social media platform.