621–630 of 687 posts
If you look at the recent Facebook news in concert - "turning up the heat" on employees, Oculus price increase, and copying TikTok as quickly as possible - it seems like Facebook is in real trouble. This is the flailing of a drowning man.
Or Google without... or like Google.
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It’s not that profound. Humans have become addicted to sharing every moment of their lives through social media, and then watching what other people have shared. Most people no longer have time to themselves since they feel like if they don’t share what they are doing they aren’t doing anything. And if they aren’t doing anything they have to keep up with others (FOMO). Meta will only disappear when someone else creat…
> People have become addicted to sharing every moment of their lives through social media So, pretty much "option 3". A social shift. > Meta will only disappear when someone else creates an even more engaging and therefore malignant platform. I agree that there has been a profound change in "western" culture, and about a third of all the world are in this space (a staggering three billion people!). But I disagree tha…
It's actually a lot more work to imagine a better society, because that requires actual ideas for what could be different and how we might get there. Saying, "things will be the same but worse" is a lot easier than saying, "things could be different and better, and here's how". (Full disclosure: I'm stealing this idea from Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit, which I'm currently reading and thoroughly enjoying.)
Notwithstanding its potential to become (or current reality as) a propaganda tool of the Chinese government, based on my very limited experience with it, TikTok actually feels both healthier and stupider (in a vapid entertainment sense) than Facebook and Twitter. I have yet to be outraged by anything I've encountered on TikTok, whereas if I so much as glance at a tweet on Twitter on its web interface, while not logged in, I'm almost guaranteed to be presented with other tweets from people who infuriate or disgust me. Discord also feels healthier than either of those platforms, it's really just a much better version of IRC. As such, perhaps we are already seeing a more healthy ecosystem emerge.
But setting aside the platform side of things, this discussion [1] on the Ezra Klein show calls the current disruptive era "transitory" in the same way that the dawn of other communication media were disruptive and transitory. Eventually, people adjust. Perhaps we are on our way to becoming immune to attention hijacking, outrage politics and FOMO. Speaking for myself, I've certainly become far better at resisting the pull of those phenomena.
1: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/26/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...
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I'd say it's long-term thinking. McD's is a franchise, and paying commercial rents at the levels they're at now is not economically viable in a lot of cities, especially if your walk-in traffic is mostly delivery service workers. They'd probably make more money if they moved spaces into a ghost kitchen and cut out walk-in traffic entirely.
Where I live, there is tons of empty retail space because of Amazon, eBay, etc. I would assume that would push commercial rents down, but I evidently don’t understand that market at all.
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I can't even remember when I deleted my FB account, but my experience matches yours exactly: less but better. It _is_ a bit of a pain to juggle the matrix of options, but the bulk go through iMessages, Keybase Chat, Twitter, and good ol' mail.
I am way past that point. I used to use Slack personally but I like Slack about as much as FB, so I now primarily have reverted to my own personal blog, where I make posts with video etc and take comments, and post those posts on FB, Twitter and other social media. It's like I have gone back to what works. My closest family and friends have a login to that blog where we share posts that are private. All our YouTube v…
How can you verify that? This would be against the GDPR and other data protection laws in other countries.
It’s crazy to think the social media era may finally be ending. There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Everything is about feeding you content you didn’t ask for but may be targeted enough to catch your attention. And for what? To show you some ads here and there? To collect data that can be used to… sell more ads and products?…
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. IMO it’s pointless to “passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing”. We should either actively keep up (thus actually maintain the relationship), or let it go~
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How do people without guns inside a government building control anything exactly?
By the force of their numbers occupying the seat of government and forcing the elected representatives and the chain of government (VP, Speaker, President of Senate) to be isolated. No one knew whether or not the rioters were armed or not. Therefore, the assumption had to be that they were, or that there were those that were hidden in the crowd. Until they were cleared from the Capitol buildings, they controlled the…
Ever heard of secret services? Even the FBI has admitted they had undercover agents among the participants.
> they controlled the electoral process and disabled the counting of the electoral college votes
So what? It would never have lasted more than a day until security or the army took over. There was no risk at all of a coup d'etat or something.
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How do people without guns inside a government building control anything exactly?
By force. The same way they broke down the locked doors and windows and overwhelmed the police.
I know it sounds dumb but its hard to say we haven't moved closer to what only ~10 years ago we considered a "playful exaggeration" on the worst of humans and social media. In WallE, everyone is floating around in chairs having their content spoon-fed to them with a generous amount of ads mixed in. If you've ever scrolled or seen someone scroll, its kinda close. Just mindlessly moving their thumb up and down, taking…
Sometimes you see someone standing perfectly still on the sidewalk, locked into their phone, people passing them on both sides. After a while they sorta snap out of it, look around to reorient themselves, and continue walking. I've watched people stay in this locked state for hilariously long times. I call them lost souls. We've all been there in one way or another but seeing someone in that trance, from the outside,…
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> one day they will simply slink away in the middle of the night leaving several thousand mine workers unemployed and holding the bag. When that day comes, the moment Facebook and Meta are declared dead I will go out, order the most expensive bottle of champagne, and celebrate all night. Future generations of an advanced technological society will look back in horror and disbelief that a small cadre of privateers wer…
The problem is not Facebook or Meta. The problem is the disgusting business model of targeted advertising coupled with algorithmic curation of content to increase ad impressions. Facebook happens (happened?) to play that game perfectly but it's not limited to them by any means and another player will just take its place if Meta dies. I'll keep my bottle of champagne for the day targeted advertising is regulated away,…
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WhatsApp isn't dead, but it isn't really monetisable. We'll see how Telegram Premium goes - personally i have it, but i doubt many people are willing to pay for a chat app with tons of free alternatives.
I'm happy to pay for chat, just not for Telegram. I'd absolutely pay for Signal.