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Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

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Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#23

I can’t help but feel like history will look back at this time period and ask themselves: what the fuck were they thinking? A whole generation of smart engineers optimizing addiction.

Money. People can rationalize a lot given enough money. (see also: workers in the tobacco/casino/opoid industry). The average compensation at the Silicon Valley giants seems roughly 3 to 4 times that of the average American (and I guestimate about twice as high if you control for education level).

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#27
post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

> that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites

i find myself having to explicitly add "forum" or "forums" to my google search to find things that might be in a forum, despite them being the most relevant to certain searches.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#28

I wonder what he thought made Google+ "less mindless" than the other platforms.

I think it was because of the type of people who were early adopters. Essentially, he thought it would produce a better class of discussion.

EDIT: from his interview: 'I tried G+ for a while, because the people on it weren't the mindless usual stuff, but it obviously never went anywhere'

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#29
post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

This is one of the most obvious things that really were lost in the advent of the big social media sites. Those weird little forums that have their own communities, with the sites having their own little eccentricities.

With how everything is just in one platform, it becomes impersonal as well. I heard about mastodon which feels like it sort of is taking this 'little communities' concept again, but I really wish forums would have a comeback.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#30
post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

The internet of the past was not useful for family/friend communications. I don't want the world to see pictures of my kids (even though nobody cares it still isn't a good idea), but I do want my parents to see them. Social media solves this problem. The interesting things you list were too public and so didn't.

Don't get me wrong, I do miss the forums of the past, but there is also some good in what we have today.

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