I think he puts Twitter there because he doesn't use it. If you follow the right people it actually promotes intelligent discourse.
Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
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Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#12I can’t help but feel like history will look back at this time period and ask themselves: what the fuck were they thinking? A whole generation of smart engineers optimizing addiction.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#13I wonder what he thought made Google+ "less mindless" than the other platforms.
The article quotes: "If you cannot prove your identity, your crazy rant on some social-media platform shouldn't be visible", which I think G+ tried to do.
On mailing-lists, worst case there is "that guy", and you can filter them out. Maybe you'll meet at a conf eventually and work things out in person. On Twitter/Facebook, you have to spend a lot of time blocking people and trolls have full control of the platform.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#14Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…
Those forums exist and are more widely-used than ever. They're just mostly hosted on reddit now.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#15I think he puts Twitter there because he doesn't use it. If you follow the right people it actually promotes intelligent discourse.
Same with Instagram. I don't use it but I concede that it is useful to some people as a platform for promoting businesses.
FB on the other hand, deserves to die in a fire.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#16I feel like he's right, but there's much more to understand here. The broadcast of oversimplified messages through a human network that reacts strongly to those messages, and thus boosts the signal of those messages further, is something that bears careful consideration.
Some of this behavior could be mitigated. Remove likes and resharing. Ban the incentives (economic, internet points, attenuate diffusion with distance from *caster), etc. in other words, semi-anonymize the author, take away virality and remove the economics (likes, views, etc., which incentivize virality).
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#17I can’t help but feel like history will look back at this time period and ask themselves: what the fuck were they thinking? A whole generation of smart engineers optimizing addiction.
Smart engineers are optimizing addiction, burning fossil fuels, and many other social ills. But those pursuits make a lot of money, and absent regulation, the labor market will be attracted toward them.
The future you're talking about will have to be regulated much more (at, at least, differently) than the present. I doubt it could even be capitalist -- which, to be clear, I see as a good thing.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#18Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…
I really miss forums.
Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites.
A few of the communities I am interested in such as outdoors, adventure motorcycling have moved to google groups. It's frustrating as the content isn't publicly searchable so you can not discover it, it's also frustrating posts are displayed algorithmically so it may pop up in your feed, you navigate away to another page then are unable to find the post again.
Facebook has been great in it's trivial to create communities but it's terrible in the sense content is only surfaced based on some algorithmic value biased around display adds.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#19Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…
The Internet was ruined when the masses moved in. Let them have social media as their own little sandbox to play in and leave the rest of us alone. I don't use twitter, facebook, instagram, slack, discord, whatever-else-kids-use-these-days. I still use IRC and read newsgroups.
Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'
#20The problem is actually far deeper than just social media being mindless. The Internet as such has become a Big Bank, where anyone (and anywhere!) can put in time investment and withdraw money.
Well, you could argue that people work on the Internet. It's not a bad argument, but the problem is much deeper than this.
Every single major social network is now being used as a storefront where you can promote and advertise your personal brand and/or product. I follow a fair amount of people in Web Design and Web Dev, and over the years, many have completely annihilated any emotional connection with their audience and instead run their pages as an established brand.
Look at what happened to Quora, a site that had an incredibly promising start and I personally enjoyed writing hundreds of answers. I enjoyed it because it felt like my answers are being heard, valued, and acted upon.
These days, Quora is a hellhole, a dreadful dump of marketing garbage where people are ready to get their pitchforks whenever someone tries to one-up their "best answer".
Instagram? Holy crap! Instagram is an absolute marketing godsend. Though, some would argue it's not exactly the most appealing type of marketing. The history books of the future will be like the pornography magazines of today. If this trend continues, then this is certain.