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'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

bbc.com

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Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#71

Post by dazc »

bjoli wrote: post #29

I stopped using facebook and Twitter about 10 years ago. I can't say I noticed any difference back then. The thing I am noticing now is that a larger part of civil society has moved to Facebook. I can't even find the opening hours or phone numbers of many restaurants, which means I just have to guess or not go at all. One company I quickly left had support through Facebook. I hate it. And I think people are crazy to…

The default public interface for many small businesses these days seems to be facebook for the simple reason that it is free to have your page on there. They don't get much else though unless they are willing to be interacting with the local community 24/7 or paying £30 for their random posts to be shown to another 12 people, etc.

I had the idea of having a local site for small towns where every business could have its own free page and post stuff that everyone could see for free. But, having dealt with a few local businesses and realizing they just don't want to make any effort at all, like I should do everything from providing imagery and content at no cost, I quickly released it was a non-starter. Facebook is actually the perfect solution for these kind of businesses after all.

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#72

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

fullstackchris wrote: post #22

I disagree with this general sentiment. I don't think absolutely 0 social media is feasible or even wise this day in age. How are you going to keep up with family, friends, and so on? (In my case, family and friends span multiple states, countries, and continents!) You would at the very least need a phone - ok, that's maybe not "social media" in the sense this article talks about, but it's still tech at the end of th…

There’s a problem with the definition of “social media”—we no longer differentiate between messaging apps and what we used to just call “social network sites”, which are generally understood to be content feeds that are optimised for infinite consumption. I think that people would generally agree that messaging apps are not as harmful as the latter, but it’s usually the latter that most people are trying to avoid.

I understand the need to communicate with loved ones, but really, you don’t even need to “keep up” because living one’s own life and reaching for one’s own ambitions should be time-consuming and tiring enough. And then I’m not willing to listen to any perspective that justifies the need for content feeds in one’s life—no news feed is innocent and all news feeds are just utilities for ads. If you really want to know what’s up with someone who matters in your life, you can and you should just ask them directly.

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#73

Post by rrwo »

thrown_22 wrote: post #47
sn41 wrote: post #12

I felt even better when I quit news media as well. Now I read the print newspapers, just to see whether there is any change in legislation that I need to know about. My blood does boil even there, with the subtle editorializing tell us what to feel about what is essentially a neutral news item, but it's much easier to control than the online media.

>My blood does boil even there, with the subtle editorializing tell us what to feel about what is essentially a neutral news item, but it's much easier to control than the online media. Dear god yes. Give me the facts without trying to insert your politics there. Even the AP does this constantly. I'd pay gold for a news organization which prints something to the effect of: >The current situation in XYZ in unknown. We…

It's gotten to the point where simply reporting information that is unpleasant for one group of people is treated as biased and political.

Report about the cost of housing driving people to homelessness? That's the "left-wing media".

Report about people grifting off of BLM protects? It's the "right wing corporate media".

And those stories can very well be in the same newspaper or news show.

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#74

Post by te_chris »

msravi wrote: post #58
te_chris wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the “x who you followed liked this” that did me in. Turns out a lot of the smart people I followed followed complete tools. Twitter gave me no options to ignore, so I just deleted instead.

There is a "block" and a "mute" function.

So force the user to block and mute users they never followed in the first place? No.

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#75

Post by Lapsa »

yotamoron wrote: post #65

7 years ago I deleted my FB account. The mental relief was immediate. Since then, I deleted all my social media accounts - LinkedIn (in some insanely magical way I'm still employed!) and twitter. Being the old fart I am, I had no other social media accounts. Not taking any needless selfies, not posting crap, not waiting anxiously for likes or comments, not reading BS from people I don't know just because some algorit…

I kept LinkedIn account alive. enjoying those spam letters telling me how much xx new contacts I got. might even log in and take a look who's that if/when I'll look for a new job

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#76

Post by [deleted] »

te_chris wrote: post #45
ThePhysicist wrote: post #21

I effectively shut down my Twitter account a while ago, best thing I did for my mental health in the past year. There are interesting people on Twitter but the algorithm just works like a slot machine that tries to keep you on the site no matter the cost, it's not optimized to serve you but to make you view more ads. In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion, it often feels more like two peopl…

It’s the “x who you followed liked this” that did me in. Turns out a lot of the smart people I followed followed complete tools. Twitter gave me no options to ignore, so I just deleted instead.

[deleted]

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#77

Post by ebjaas_2022 »

Sakos wrote: post #15

I used TikTok for about a month earlier this year out of curiosity. I feel like it still has significant effects on my emotional and psychological state months later. I can't imagine what it does to a person to use anything like it daily for years.

How did it affect you?

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#78

Post by Lapsa »

thrown_22 wrote: post #42

I feel like I should try and get back my account which got banned for covid misinformation - who could have seen that the vaccines wouldn't be 99% effective?

I got post restricted on Facebook for quoting Futurama's Bender Rodriguez: "kill all humans"

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#79

Post by WA »

msravi wrote: post #53
ThePhysicist wrote: post #21

I effectively shut down my Twitter account a while ago, best thing I did for my mental health in the past year. There are interesting people on Twitter but the algorithm just works like a slot machine that tries to keep you on the site no matter the cost, it's not optimized to serve you but to make you view more ads. In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion, it often feels more like two peopl…

> but the algorithm just works like a slot machine I'm always surprised that people, especially on HN, complain so much about twitter's algorithms that are so easy to bypass. I use Twidere as a client, and my feed doesn't have any of twitter's algorithms - it's simply a reverse chronological feed. Even the website and twitter's official app have a button right on the feed page that allows you to switch to a reverse c…

Or just use lists. Create list, add people you want to follow. Bam, done. Reverse chronological order with zero ads.

Re: 'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media

#80

Post by AdrianB1 »

cunidev wrote: post #44

In my experience, I feel like Mastodon is a way healthier social media platform than most. No (intrusive) trends, no "likes of friends", no randomized timeline, but just other people posting pictures of their oscilloscopes, cats, plants and hobbies, or starting healthy discussions about things. It's not a panacea by any means, but makes an almost mind-blowing difference from the "usual" addictive social platforms (FB…

You are describing an experience closed to the old forums of early 2000. I am still an active member of such a forum, we are less than 50 active people that interact for almost 20 years, we meet face to face quite rarely because we live now in several different countries (we were all in one initially) and overall is a nice atmosphere of spending a bit of time with old friends, just async and without the commute time to the same bar.
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