An Announcement I Never Expected to Make
After eight years of running Angell Designs, I’ve made a decision I never really imagined I would have to make.
I’m closing Angell Designs’ Facebook and Instagram pages, and I will no longer be offering social media management as a core service.
Well… that’s certainly one way to finish 2026.
For anyone who knows me or has followed Angell Designs over the years, you’ll know that social media has played a significant role in my business. It has been a place to share my work, connect with other creatives, celebrate client projects, educate business owners, and build relationships with people who made Angell Designs what it is today.
It’s also been a service I’ve offered to clients for years now, helping businesses establish consistent online presences through content creation, visual design, strategy, and ongoing account management.
So… this isn’t a small decision (understandably so!!)
I’m effectively walking away from platforms I’ve invested years of time and energy into, alongside an entire service offering that has contributed to the growth of my business.
But here’s the thing…
This decision didn’t begin with Angell Designs. It began with me, Sam.
Earlier this year, I made the decision to delete my personal social media accounts. At the time, I was simply tired of the platforms themselves: the increasingly invasive feeling of digital tracking, the constantly changing (and never helpful) algorithms, the questionable practices surrounding user data, and the general direction social media seemed to be heading.
And, quite frankly, I’d developed a fairly substantial hatred towards the whole experience.
Meta, in particular, had become a company I no longer felt comfortable supporting.
What started as essentially a personal boundary has now become something much bigger. As I’ve continued to reflect on my relationship with social media, particularly in light of Meta’s approach to artificial intelligence (AI), I’ve had to ask myself whether continuing to participate in these platforms professionally aligns with the values I promote through Angell Designs.
The answer, increasingly, has been no.
This is not simply a reaction to changing algorithms, declining engagement or the frustration of spending hours creating content that disappears into the digital void.
It’s about something much more fundamental.
I believe in authentic, human-centred creativity.
I am no longer comfortable building my business around platforms whose practices conflict so significantly with those values.
That deserves a proper explanation.
My Personal Misalignment
Earlier in 2026, I reached a point where I realised social media just wasn’t adding enough value to my own personal life to justify the frustration I felt towards it.
It wasn’t necessarily one particular update or announcement.
It was years of watching these platforms evolve into something I increasingly disliked.
I was tired of the tracking and algorithms. Tired of how much influence these companies seemed to have over what people saw, what information reached them, and how they interacted with one another. I was tired of feeling like every interaction was being observed, measured, analysed, and then turned into another opportunity to keep me “engaged.”
And I was especially tired of Meta.
Over time, I’d developed an increasingly negative view of the company’s approach to privacy, data collection, platform governance, and transparency (or lack thereof). There was something deeply uncomfortable about continuing to share personal experiences on platforms whose business practices I no longer trusted.
It felt like social media had shifted away from being somewhere people connected and towards being a system designed to constantly compete for their attention.
The algorithm seemed to matter more than the conversation.
Engagement mattered more than connection.
Visibility mattered more than substance.
The more I thought about it, the less interested I became in participating.
I don’t want to spend my personal life trying to satisfy an algorithm. I don’t want to feel pressured to document experiences merely because they’re considered “worth sharing.” And I certainly don’t want the value of my relationships, interests, or creative expression measured by how successfully a platform can turn them into engagement.
So…
I deleted my personal social media accounts.
Then, something interesting happened.
I didn’t actually miss any of them.
Of course, there were aspects of social media I enjoyed. There were communities, conversations, creative inspirations, and people I genuinely appreciated connecting with. Plus… there are other avenues I can take to get these connections.
But I do not miss the constant noise. I don’t miss the pressure to keep up. I don’t especially miss opening an application and being fed an endless stream of content selected by a system I didn’t understand or particularly trust.
More importantly though, I started thinking about what I wanted my relationship with the internet to look like moving forward.
I still love the internet as a place for creativity, research, education, storytelling, and connection.
I just no longer believe that social media needs to be the centre of that experience.
Personal Values Meet Professional Decisions
For a while, most of this year actually, I separated my personal decision from my professional responsibilities. Afterall, running a business is different from managing your personal life.
I could dislike social media personally while continuing to use it professionally, couldn’t I?
I could choose not to participate myself while still helping clients participate.
For a time, that was the distinction I made.
But… the more I considered it, the harder that separation became.
Because Angell Designs isn’t disconnected from who I am.
It’s a business built around my creative philosophy, my lived experience, my professional expertise, and my values.
I regularly encourage clients to build brands that reflect who they are rather than simply following trends or doing something because everyone else is doing it too.
I talk about authenticity, accessibility, transparency, ethical design, and the importance of creating genuine connections between businesses and the people they serve.
At some point, I had to confront the contradiction I’d created for myself.
How could I keep encouraging people to make values-led business decisions while ignoring my own values whenever they became commercially inconvenient?
That question stayed with me.
Then… well, then the concerns surrounding AI made the answer considerably clearer.
Meta’s Approach to AI
The primary reason behind my decision to close Angell Designs’ social media accounts is Meta’s approach to using publicly available content from Facebook and Instagram (including links) to train generative AI models.
This concern definitely didn’t appear overnight for me.
Meta has been developing generative AI technologies for several years, and the company’s growing integration of AI across its platforms has made me increasingly uncomfortable with the relationship between creative work, digital platforms, and consent.
In its explanation of how Meta develops and trains generative AI technologies, the company acknowledged using publicly shared content from Facebook and Instagram, including photographs and text, as part of its training model.
That explanation was posted in 2023…
In a 2026 update, everything changed.
“You authorize us (or any entity acting on our behalf) to use automated software (such as web scrapers, bots, robots, spiders, crawlers, and user agents) to create test credentials to access, index, cache, analyze, collect, retrieve, or crawl the domains, web pages, or URLS (and any content available through them) that are associated with your products or services, or that are made available through your or users’ use of Meta Company Products and services, and to periodically pull updates from such domains, web pages, or URLs.”
And that’s where my concerns became especially significant as a creative and small business owner.
Every piece of design work I produce represents more than an arrangement of pixels.
There’s research behind it.
There are conversations, ideas, failed concepts, revisions, decisions, mistakes, experimentation, and years of experience informing the outcome.
There’s a client whose business, identity, and story have influenced the design.
And... And there’s a designer behind it.
A human being.
Someone who has spent years developing their skills, exploring their creative identity, learning from their experiences, and building something meaningful.
I find it deeply uncomfortable that creative work shared publicly for the purpose of promoting a business or communicating a message may also become material used to train generative AI systems.
I didn’t spend years learning to design so that my work could be stolen for a dataset used to generate competing (and shit) creative outputs.
I shared my work because I wanted people to see what I created.
There’s an enormous difference between making something publicly available and actively wanting it to contribute to generative AI development.
The Problem with Consent
One of my biggest concerns is the extent to which creators can meaningfully control how their work is used.
In September 2024, ABC News reported that Meta had been using public photographs, posts, and other content from Australian adult users to train AI models. The reporting also highlighted differences between the rights available to users in Australia and those in certain other jurisdictions, particularly regarding opportunities to object to the use of public content for AI training.
That raises questions about consent, transparency, and the relationship between platform participation and personal control over creative work.
The Arts Law Centre of Australia has also examined the implications of Meta’s AI training practices for artists and creators, including the limitations of trying to remove material after it has already been used.
Of course, publishing creative work online doesn’t automatically mean surrendering copyright ownership. But copyright, licencing, consent, and AI training are all separate issues.
That distinction is precisely why the situation with Meta’s changing policy concerns me.
I want to know how my work is being used.
I want meaningful choices about whether I participate.
I want those decision to be made through informed consent, not buried within a complicated relationship between platform policies, privacy settings, and terms of service.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner has also emphasised that publicly accessible personal information isn’t automatically available for unrestricted use in generative AI development.
These are complex legal and ethical questions, and I’m not suggesting that every use of publicly accessible material is necessarily unlawful.
But something doesn’t have to be definitively unlawful for me to disagree with it ethically. Also, something doesn’t have to be prohibited for me to decide I don’t want to participate.
If I fundamentally disagree with how a platform may use my creative work, why would I continue voluntarily providing it with more?
Eventually, I realised I already knew my answer.
My Opposition to Generative AI
I want to make one thing clear.
My decision isn’t based on the belief that technology should never evolve or that designers should reject digital tools.
I run a business.
Technology is an enormous part of my work. I use digital software, design systems, research tools, and technological advancements every day.
I’m certainly not sitting in a candlelit room drawing logos onto parchment with a feather quill.
Although, admittedly, there are definitely days when that sounds rather peaceful.
I do, however, believe there is a meaningful difference between technology that supports human creativity and technology that attempts to automate creative outputs using patterns learned from enormous collections of existing work.
My objections to generative AI are both ethical and personal.
I have concerns about creative ownership, informed consent, the treatment of artists and writers, environmental impacts, labour displacement, and the increasing expectation that creative work should be produced faster, cheaper, and with less human involvement. (and definitely more!)
There’s something deeply unsettling about the possibility of years of creative labour becoming training material for systems that may subsequently be used to reduce demand for that same labour.
As someone who has spent much of their life developing creative skills, that’s difficult to reconcile.
Social Media Management Offering
This is where the decision becomes particularly relevant to Angell Designs.
Because deleting my personal social media accounts was one thing.
Closing my business pages and discontinuing a service I’ve offered for years is something else entirely.
Social media management has been a significant part of my work.
I’ve helped clients develop content strategies, create visually consistent posts, communicate important information, build relationships with their audiences, and maintain professional online spaces.
I’m certainly proud of that work.
I don’t regret the projects I’ve undertaken or the businesses I’ve helped.
But… I can no longer ignore how uncomfortable I feel about continuing to promote and manage platforms whose direction I fundamentally disagree with.
I’ve spent years encouraging clients to build businesses that reflect their values. I believe in demonstrating the practices I recommend. I believe a service should be something I can genuinely stand behind.
So, I had to ask myself another uncomfortable question:
If I’m no longer willing to participate in these platforms personally, and I disagree with their practices professionally, how can I continue encouraging clients to invest in them through a service I provide?
I couldn’t find an answer that felt honest.
Of course, this decision has financial implications.
It means discontinuing a service that contributes to the business. It means changing established processes. It means having difficult conversations with clients. It means reassessing what Angell Designs looks like moving forward.
I don’t believe generating income is a sufficient reason to continue offering something that no longer aligns with my values.
Integrity is easy to talk about when it costs you nothing.
It’s considerably harder when it asks you to walk away from something you’ve spent years building.
What This Means for Angell Designs
So, what actually changes?
First and foremost, Angell Designs is not closing.
I’m not stepping away from graphic design, branding, website design, writing, or the other creative work I love.
In many ways, this decision is about returning to the aspects of the business I find most meaningful.
Angell Designs has changed significantly since I founded it in 2018.
What began as a small creative business has grown into a practice focused on accessible, human-centred branding and design, particularly for health and wellness business, disability-sector organisations, and NDIS providers.
Over time, I’ve become increasingly interested in the relationship between design, accessibility, and how people experience the organisations they interact with.
I want the next chapter of Angell Designs to reflect that focus more clearly.
Let’s Create Something Meaningful
Good design is about more than looking the part. It’s about creating thoughtful, accessible, and authentic experiences that connect with the people who matter most to your business. At Angell Designs, we combine strategy, creativity, accessibility, and a human-centred approach to help health, wellness, and NDIS providers turn their ideas into something meaningful.
Book a Discovery Call: Have a project in mind or unsure where to begin? Let’s have a conversation about your business, your goals, and how I can help bring your vision to life.
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References
Claburn, T. (2026, October 16). Meta grants itself right to scrape content from business customers for model training. The Register. https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/10/16/meta-grants-itself-right-to-scrape-content-from-business-customers-for-model-training/5303658
Clark, M. (2023, September 27). Privacy matters: Meta’s generative AI features. Meta. https://about.fb.com/news/2023/09/privacy-matters-metas-generative-ai-features/
Commonwealth of Australia. (2024, October 21). Guidance on privacy and developing and training generative AI models. OAIC. https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/privacy-guidance-for-organisations-and-government-agencies/guidance-on-privacy-and-developing-and-training-generative-ai-models
Evans, J. (2024, September 10). Facebook admits to scraping every Australian adult user’s public photos and posts to train AI, with no opt-out option. ABC News. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/facebook-scraping-photos-data-no-opt-out/104336170
Phipps, E. (2024, June 25). Meta AI: The use of Facebook and Instagram content to train generative AI. Arts Law Centre of Australia. https://www.artslaw.com.au/meta-ai-training/
