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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

#111

Post by flakeoil »

hYqnLX wrote: post #82

The problem of current round-the-clock media is the inevitable lack of actually meaningful events to present. Real meaningful events are rare and cannot solely drive the for-profit ad-driven legacy media and social media. As a result, we see unnecessary "news" like: this public figure said something stupid, discussion on the implications of that, interviewing solely to instigate the interviewee to say something edgy…

> An actually useful news source would be the one which periodically lists the important happenings in the local area

This is why I subscribe to a local news paper. It's much more interesting and more relevant to read about what is happening in and around my own town than what's going on in world politics or the other side of the world.

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

#112

Post by nabaraz »

coldtea wrote: post #60
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…

> How are you going to keep up with family, friends, and so on? Yeah, god forbid you actually visit them, invite them over, and talk to them on the phone, or, text them... > you'd anyway likely need an app like WhatsApp or Telegram to keep track of everybody and everything - and those technically ARE considered social media right? No, technically they are considered chat apps... And you wont need those either...

> Yeah, god forbid you actually visit them, invite them over, and talk to them on the phone, or, text them...

Think for a minute. You went on a vacation and want to show your families and relatives your photos. Are you going to send 20 photos to each of them via zip file?

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

#113

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

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…

Even if you're using a different client (which is already a strike against Twitter as a social network, along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation) the content you're reading will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm.

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

#114

Post by birracerveza »

barbs wrote: post #86
birracerveza wrote: post #69

I don't have Facebook. I don't have Twitter. I don't even have Instagram, or TikTok. I stay away from all kinds of social media, aside from Telegram to chat with my friends, and it's been this way for the last 10 or so years... and boy do I get confirmation that I made a very good choice very, very often.

Do Telegram and other chat apps count as social media? In my mind they are separate but I could be wrong?

Kind of. The difference is that with Telegram you are mostly required to actively participate in your network, directly sending messages/media to a specific person/group (YMMV obviously), whereas with "traditional" social media you put your contents out there, which, depending on the algorithm, may or may not be seen by your followers or the platform's userbase, with a much more passive engagement model where users can consume content without ever putting some out themselves, thus much more vulnerable to algorithm-driven user engagement exploits.

Discord is also very similar to Telegram conceptually, but very different at the same time because of the role it fulfills. Different tools, with different properties, for different needs. Even phone calls can be considered social media! The key is using them responsibly.

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

#115

Post by msravi »

mola wrote: post #85
msravi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

But then you only get opinions of those ppl that engage in the sort of "discussions" OP talks about. You really aren't exposed to real ppl opinions, only the opinions of the most crazy and or manipulative.

Actually I've seen that if you're following accounts that get on average a few hundreds-low thousands of RTs/likes (vs 10s of thousands of RTs/likes), the discussions are pretty good. They're also easy to quickly scan and follow and are most likely real opinions of real people.

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

#116

Post by Lapsa »

yotamoron wrote: post #96
Lapsa wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For me LinkedIn just became another kind of FB, with people writing stupid posts, trying to present themselves as smart and successful and beautiful and PC and blah blah blah. Not for me, thank you very much.

https://www.shlinkedin.com/generator

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

#117

Post by teekert »

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…

"It's an invaluable tool to gather peoples' opinions and what they really think."

Or, is it a tool to get the most knee-jerk reactions out of people as fast as possible? How much thought did actually go into that tweet?

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

#118

Post by msravi »

YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #113
msravi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Even if you're using a different client (which is already a strike against Twitter as a social network, along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation) the content you're reading will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm.

> which is already a strike against Twitter as a social network

How? The value of the twitter's social network comes from the recommendations of the people I follow, not twitter's recommendation

> along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation

I wouldn't want it any other way! I want to be in control of who I block - I don't want anyone else deciding that for me

> will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm

That doesn't matter, since I'm not using their algorithm anyway

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

#119

Post by msravi »

teekert wrote: post #117
msravi wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"It's an invaluable tool to gather peoples' opinions and what they really think." Or, is it a tool to get the most knee-jerk reactions out of people as fast as possible? How much thought did actually go into that tweet?

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33503943

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

#120

Post by dzhiurgis »

birracerveza wrote: post #69

I don't have Facebook. I don't have Twitter. I don't even have Instagram, or TikTok. I stay away from all kinds of social media, aside from Telegram to chat with my friends, and it's been this way for the last 10 or so years... and boy do I get confirmation that I made a very good choice very, very often.

How is hacker news and likes of reddit or even slashdot not a social media. In some ways reddit is much worse (echo chamber) than twitter.
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