My life after quitting social media • Hacker News Board

Re: My life after quitting social media

#131

Post by jcun4128 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

dv35z wrote: post #127

karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case".

My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#132

Post by jcun4128 » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

There was a time I used to have fun just building things for myself (rc planes) then it transitioned to this thing where I had to share it (forums). Eventually I would share just concepts/drawings/ideas and not the real thing. I now try to finish something before I even mention it.

There's also a flood of people's ideas/works/projects (Hackaday). I guess having personal goals is nice to pursue/not compare against.

As they say talk is easy

I used to be active on FB and unfortunately I started to post like crazy/cringe things on there, thankfully I became self aware/cleaned up my public trail. Now I avoid it. One main reason is I have over a hundred friend requests of random people (indirect family/acquaintances from 20 yrs ago) trying to get to know me/ask me for money (people from a third world country).

I'm not completely against social media, I use Reddit to look at certain subreddits related to technology, check the news sometimes, and then for brain-dead time, look at meme sites. I have had to stop myself a few times just due to how much time... that's the thing it's captivating/paralyzing the few seconds of media constantly changing (scrolling memes). But on the days when my brain doesn't function anymore, this low effort content is nice to pass the time till I fall asleep/ready to function again.

I want to get back into the groove again, isolate myself, pursue something with time. There's also that sense of being a producer vs. being an audience like the person making the videos on YT vs. the people commenting.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#133

Post by DavidPeiffer » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

legrande wrote: post #99

I quit social media for a year and nothing magical happened to me. I think it's because I never really had a problem with it, since all my feeds were heavily curated and I didn't scroll through mountains of noise. The content I consume is always high quality, because I made social media work for me. I avoid Instagram since it's too visual and full of posers. Twitter is more real and authentic. Facebook is mostly for…

I'm at almost a week since looking at Facebook. Like you, I curated the content pretty well, but also wanted to avoid it being an echo chamber, so I don't think I unfriended more than 5 people in a decade because I disagree with them politically. Those were only because they were constantly posting inflammatory memes, always picking fights, and full of negativity. I don't need that in my life or in my feed.

A few weeks back, Facebook changed their algorithm significantly for me. Suddenly I'm getting tons of pages you may like, random comments from friends on pages that are completely useless (stuff like "What street did you grow up on?", "Only 17% of people can remember their kindergarten teachers name. What was yours?", "What do you think about this Manhattan loft?"), etc. No matter how many times I marked I want to see less content like this, it kept feeding me that crap. I don't want reactionary stuff force fed to me.

I'm sure I've missed a couple life events among friends I'd find value in seeing, but I haven't missed it enough to login.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#134

Post by manuel_w » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:37 PM UTC

jcun4128 wrote: post #131

dv35z wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case". My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.

That would be very interesting.

Some other data researcher has dipped into this a bit:

SpiegelMining – Reverse Engineering von Spiegel-Online (33c3): * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YpwsdRKt8Q * English version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYviBstTUwo

Re: My life after quitting social media

#135

Post by dv35z » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:39 PM UTC

ourguile wrote: post #130

dv35z wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

I've found myself browsing the current events page every morning and I think I would prefer your method much more. As emerging stories are verified and context is added, I've found I'm revisiting the same pages over and over. I'm going to set up a calendar event right now. Thanks!

When there is breaking news, and there are not sufficient details yet, one option is to get the Wiki URL of the news event, and add that URL to your calendar’s recurring “Read the news” event’s description field. As a result, in several weeks you will have a backlog of news articles to read, and you will be confident that you’re tracking the article and that it will have more value over time. As you mentioned, if there are evergreen topics you want to keep track of, you could include those links in the calendar invite - easy to tab-open & catch up.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#136

Post by jlpom » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:41 PM UTC

dv35z wrote: post #127

karaterobot wrote: post #107

I quit Facebook and Twitter around 2008, and the biggest downside in all that time was finding out about my niece's birth days later than everyone else in the family, because it was only announced on Facebook. Not a huge issue in the scheme of things. The biggest upside is that I'm completely disengaged with a lot of things people are angry about, because they aren't on my radar at all. In practice, I don't find that…

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

I also does this. The main problem IMO is info duplication: sames infos are duplicated on different websites/sources & sometimes inside sources (eg Twitter) and some is missing on individual one. I’m thinking of an aggregator that would group info (preferably free of rights) per individual news and summarise it.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#137

Post by heavyset_go » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:44 PM UTC

legrande wrote: post #118

satellites wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point, but just to be the devil's advocate, I will point out that most social networks are starting to implement features where they fill your feed with content you never signed up for. They'll call it something like "suggested" posts. Granted, I think Instagram is the one I've noticed it on the most, and you said you don't use that. But I could see that feature catching on to the point that feeds are…

> social networks are starting to implement features where they fill your feed with content you never signed up for. They'll call it something like "suggested" posts Well Twitter has lists which I make full use of. I created a few private lists that I browse at my leisure, with different topics, like 'Tech', 'Design', 'Politics', 'Thought Leaders', 'Memes', 'Current Events' etc

At least for me, Twitter sneaks in sponsored content into my feeds and the profiles of the people I follow.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#138

Post by dv35z » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 7:46 PM UTC

jcun4128 wrote: post #131

dv35z wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to be aware of current events is to create a recurring calendar invite for yourself (e.g. Sunday mornings) with a link to the Wikipedia current events page ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Current_events ). Tab-open 20+ Wiki pages of interest, and immerse for an timebox (1-2hr). The outcome is having a greater mental map of the news, without all the deliberate emotional provocation of mass media headl…

low effort post: I've been thinking about a (real time) 3D point-cloud (news articles) NLP-summation visualization of the news, seeing it skew towards certain directions like war or something as the "absolute worst case". My data source would be for example Reddit's API for worldnews/news top rated.

This sounds interesting. Seeing a map, the dots of interest - you could even have “related wikipedia pages which reference this data point, and which have a sudden influx of view/edit activity”.

As a result, a user could explore a map, and could see the most relevant wiki pages (or even extracted insights) on the sidebar. Date range slider could explore the past (eg previous wars in Afghanistan, and which articles are most relevant), and zoom to the future (many Wiki pages reference dates & plans - it would be interesting to zoom to 10 years from now, and see planned initiatives, construction projects, trade agreements, and so on)

A true spatial news explorer.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#139

Post by throwawawawy » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 8:08 PM UTC

ceronman wrote: post #93

I don't use Facebook or Instagram. But I use Twitter, YouTube, Reddit and Hacker News. I used to think that this is not that bad, after all, I'm consuming actually good content, not silly stuff like in those other networks. But then I was shocked to see how much time I'm actually spending on these networks. This is easy to see in the "Digital Wellbeing" section of modern phones. It was hours, several each day. I was…

This resonates with me as I am consuming content on these four social media platforms as well with the same thinking. It's always interesting to get to know some ingenious engineering detail about constructing bridges from Youtube, or a first-hand opinion from some analyst on some niche on Twitter or like in this case a discussion about drawbacks of a certain digital lifestyle.

However I also always wondered whether one of these is better than others, and how I would curate it in a better way. Is actively commenting on HN better than passively watching engineering videos? What about active engagement on YT, and passively reading on HN? Most stuff will be forgotten in a couple of days/weeks anyway as you said, but some will stick or add up to your overall knowledge/behaviour and similar to sifting mud for eventual nuggets of gold this is what keeps me doing it.

I just recently read something about using your consumption time for productive work (not necessarily job-work, but hobby-work) and I'm thinking about more stuff I could create to overcome the consumption trap. Ironically however I probably read it on HN as well.

Re: My life after quitting social media

#140

Post by roamerz » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

I did quit Facebook for about 6 months. What made me login after that period of inactivity was to find information on a local forest fire that was threatening my house. It was and is the best source of up to date information for that.