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So where are we all supposed to go now?

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Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#71

I still enjoy twitter, I find its death greatly exaggerated.

Every time I bother to check out twitter, or mindlessly follow a link there, it's just more of the same toddler-level political trolling. It's like an endless loop of bitching and whining and attacking, just with slightly different topics day to day.

There's no way that this isn't due to what you're reading. Almost everybody who does serious politics is on twitter, so if you can't find serious political conversation or though there, you can't find it in actual politics.

If Congresspeople are trolling, the problem isn't twitter.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#72
post #32

The decline of social network monopolies will also see a decline in mass political influence in the form of international content farms pumping out propaganda, and grassroots organisations trying to save us from burning down the planet. It feels like the balance of political discourse and its capacity for abuse wobbles and wavers over time, but ultimately they cancel each other out. I'm looking forward to a world bey…

I wouldn't hold out too much hope. The most egregious propaganda has long since shifted to non-clearweb channels like Telegram and Whatsapp groups.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#73
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you consider yourself a teacher, its no big deal. Socrates might have been talking to adults, but students were watching.

I try not to compare myself to Socrates, or delude myself into thinking that most social media is about teaching.

As someone who spent some time on IRC as a teen surrounded by people in their 20s and 30s. It actually is.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time I bother to check out twitter, or mindlessly follow a link there, it's just more of the same toddler-level political trolling. It's like an endless loop of bitching and whining and attacking, just with slightly different topics day to day.

There's no way that this isn't due to what you're reading. Almost everybody who does serious politics is on twitter, so if you can't find serious political conversation or though there, you can't find it in actual politics. If Congresspeople are trolling, the problem isn't twitter.

The problem is precisely Twitter. It's not a dumb pipe, it amplifies messages of politicians, yet doesn't establish the rules of decorum they'd be bound by at work. Those rules exist for a reason.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did people actually used to believe places like Reddit or Twitter were "healthy good places" to spend your time? If you never curated your reddit experience, I could see how you might have this attitude. I won't deny that /r/popular and /r/all are rage inducing dumpster fires. But if you create an account and join subreddits, just going to https://www.reddit.com/ takes you to a selection just from those subreddits…

I have curated my experience. Including tiny subs dedicated to niches. I still don't see it as a healthy good place to spend my time. What's worse, is the platform encourages these subs to spread, become unmaintainable to the core moderation group, and eventually becomes yet another dumpster fire. Everyone always loves to believe their sub won't change. Why are we bothering wasting resources on reddit, when what we a…

> Why are we bothering wasting resources on reddit, when what we actually want is a maintained wiki page?

People don't want a dry wiki page. People want to discuss and share their experiences, hence the popularity of Reddit and Discord.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#77
post #63
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that as > The Free shit they make for us must be trivial to use and for free and i wont give them any money to develop it to solve the problem. I'd rather get exploited by megacorps for free and complain that they treat me like cattle hope they like to grass they get fed

How does poor UX and difficulty of use have anything to do with free vs paid? That's an entirely orthogonal problem. I, personally, am in the camp of people willing to pay for non-shit services that let me avoid ads and other annoyances coming from something being "free". And I vote with my wallet too, which is why I pay for YT Premium and never have to think about the whole ad debacle with YT. Because yeah, "free" t…

Because Good UX cost development time that has to be paid by someone. Nothing can compete with the lock-in and network effect these megacorps have. We have four choices to deal with that:

* Close your eyes, cry about bad UX and continue to be treated like literal cattle by them.

* Push for legislation that forces these services to be paid only thus making competition on the grounds of how they treat their users possible again

* Collectively decide to use and finance free, federated, semi-selfhosted open alternatives (see crying about bad UX on that front)

* Stop using them at all

And even youtube premium is just paying to be a cattle. Youtube has enormous lock-in power already and I can't even count the amount of fuckups, anti-consumer features and violations of their users and "partners" they have commited.

I am done regarding the petty complaints of the cattle users that don't want to understand, can't be bothered to consider the effects they have.

Re: So where are we all supposed to go now?

#79

The article is supposed to be about the "downfall of social networks" but somehow manages to ignore the fact that Facebook, Instagram and Tik Tok are all still thriving with no end in sight. It's basically trying to say that because Reddit is struggling with profitability and Twitter is struggling with being bought by a petty jackass, social networks are in precipitous decline? But I barely think of Reddit or Twitter…

> I use [Reddit] as a resource for niche topics This is honestly the best way to use Reddit. I feel a lot of the hate is from people that haven't found subreddits useful/relevant to their needs, or are just plain ignorant. And look, I understand there's not enough time in the world to try out everything, but when people like you and I tell them that they can be useful tools, it'd behoove people to take a look before…

I agree fully. This is how I used Reddit, but with the caveat that it was fairly well exclusively with third party apps. There’s a functional argument to this conversation in my view.

My workflow was essentially one of the following:

1. Read through my topic-specific subs; 2. Append “site:reddit.com” to Google searches to make Google return results that weren’t a waste of my time. Reddit links opened in my client(s).

Unfortunately for me, the official app and the new site are both absolute garbage. Wasted space, poor user experience, more ads than content, harassment to use the app, and they’re both just so _slow_ to perform basic operations. None of that has to be that way. Good design isn’t antithetical to ad revenue. I’d argue it’s the opposite.

I don’t really have an enjoyable way to engage with Reddit anymore, and that’s my biggest “pedestrian” gripe. Though I do take exception to Steve Huffman and Tim Rathschmidt’s absolutely asinine handling of the API changes outwardly. But since I have no enjoyable way to enjoy Reddit, my ideological disagreements are effectively immaterial.

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