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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

#121

Post by bjoli »

badcppdev wrote: post #40
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…

Just as an experiment I tried to access the facebook pages for the local restaurants. I could easily see the opening hours and phone number even though I wasn't logged in. I'm in the UK. Is it a different experience where you are? Or are you refusing to access the facebook website at all?

This changed in the last year in Sweden. Suddenly I was asked to log in.

I believe that it was rolled out in the US in 2019, so it seems based on geography

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

#122

Post by yellow_lead »

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.

Good effects?

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

#123

Post by coldtea »

nabaraz wrote: post #112
coldtea wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Your families, relatives, and friends don't want to see your vacation photos. In fact, they absolutely, completely, hate it.

If the need arises, you can send them a zip file, yes. Or upload them on Dropbox. Or share a link from Apple or Google Photos (both offer the option).

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

#124

Post by xkbarkar »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #120
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.

not sure why you are downvoted. These platforms are social media. I font feel criticizing or mentioning reddit breaks the HN rules.

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

#125

Post by x55j33 »

DrBazza wrote: post #41
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. The article is on the BBC news site. As someone that's a bit older than the average on here, I can remember when the BBC news site was just that - news. Now, it's changed subtly. Some articles now have 'by John Smith', the author, un…

Not sure if you're from the UK but if you're not then you should be aware that the BBC has become a lot more politicised as the government appointed a major donor as the director in 2021 [1] and have previously threatened the company, for example by changing the license fee to starve them of funding[2]. In addition, the BBC's political editor Laura Kuenssberg is not without controversy and accusations of pro-government bias[3].

Unfortunately both sides of the political spectrum now mistrust the BBC's impartiality.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharp_(BBC_chairman) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Kuenssberg#BBC_political...

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

#126

Post by eddy_chan »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #120
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.

I just had to quit Reddit this weekend. Deleted the app off my phone, edited my hosts file on my computer to send it to 127.0.0.1 along with a whole bunch of mass media sites. I noticed this year that I was scrolling and scrolling and scrolling hours away on reddit and then it hit me, this is a tiny minority of the world having an outsized influence on my thoughts and opinions both in a positive and negative manner but more often than not negative and getting worse over time. The most outraged, the biggest whiners would get the most upvotes so all you see is outrage and rants and I thought to myself, is that really how the general public is? Is this really my experience of it?...then I thought no it's not, it's an algorithm that's feeding off my fear to instil more fear in me in a never ending loop. Delete...

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

#127

Post by bjoli »

dazc wrote: post #71
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 i…

Well, people using it for spreading information means people being excluded from receiving that info.

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

#128

Post by YurgenJurgensen »

msravi wrote: post #118
YurgenJurgensen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wr…

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

It's an admission that the platform is broken. If you have to rely on workarounds to have an acceptable experience, you should probably just choose a different platform that doesn't have an adversarial relationship with its users.

>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

Individuals blocking each other does nothing to address problems with the community.

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

The content will be worse for targeting their algorithm regardless of how you access it.

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

#129

Post by birracerveza »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #120
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.

It is. It's just different forms of them. HN comment section can be considered a social media, Reddit definitely is a social network. If you are broad with the term, anything with a community can be considered social media. What I quit are the "passive" social media that market themselves as such, with the social part being their primary function and attraction.

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

#130

Post by Eddy_Viscosity2 »

I'm not on twitter, but I still view the 'best' tweets on various sites that gather them together. This works for me, I can read the newsworthy or particularly funny ones without all the bla-bla ones to dilute them. It's not real-time, but that's fine.
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