101–110 of 500 posts
I’m hoping we look back at the social media era with some embarrassment at the amount of time we confused typing in a text box with meaningful communication.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Twitter account has 140K+ followers and impersonators keep making copies that they use for cryptocurrency scams. So that's why I'm personally a little sensitive to deleting it, even if I've mostly committed to leaving that hellhole.
What does keeping the account actually do to prevent scamming? They’re going to scam regardless.
Removing your account completely from Twitter makes it immediately available for anyone else to take, and for larger accounts you can bet theres a whole host of automated monitoring going on, ready to nab it and use it for easy profit.
Keeping the account doesn't have to mean you're 'giving away' any info. Hell delete it and instantly recrate it if thats the worry.
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I’m pretty sure GP is saying if you already had an account and you delete it, it’s trivially easy for someone to register with your old handle and impersonate you Of course people can always impersonate you but the goal here is to prevent them from impersonating you with a social handle people knew you had.
If I recall correctly, the handle you deleted stays inactive and is unavailable to new registrants. This is present on Google at least, I assume it's the same elsewhere.
The right-turns on FB and Twitter make for big openings in the space. It strikes me as quite an opportunity to eat FB's lunch, just as BlueSky has been eating Twitter's lunch.
I argue that the whole thing was a net mistake and any "openings" should not be filled. The lunch has spoiled, don't eat it.
https://risingstars.js.org/2024/en#section-framework
so... it depends.
I don't think deleting social media accounts is a good idea. Used appropriately, social media can be very useful and open doors that would otherwise not be available. The problem is when you are just looping[1], absentmindedly opening and closing news and social media sites for hours. This can eat a lot of time, and is generally pretty draining. I've been adding separate user accounts based on what tasks I'm doing, a…
But it's not like all my social media is gone. I'm still obviously here on HN. I have a tildes account for more general news. I have two discord for personal and semi-anonymous servers. And for future connections I semi-regret missing in the Twitter age, I have a Bluesky ready.
I'm simply being more mindful of what sites I use and and what communities I join to prevent the issues that arose with Reddit, Facebook, and Tumblr.
Covering your eyes does not stop the oncoming train.
Then you realize you're not bound to the tracks and it's probably best to simply let the trainwreck happen rather than add one more fatality to it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If I recall correctly, the handle you deleted stays inactive and is unavailable to new registrants. This is present on Google at least, I assume it's the same elsewhere.
Not the case on Twitter. It becomes instantly available to anyone who wants it.
This advice to quit social media is always a hit on HN. When I was 10 years younger I read the same thing on HN, was thoroughly convinced and quit social media. I even followed the advice of trying to stay in touch by email. Sure. Turns out that a lot of people I knew posted huge life updates that I completely missed out on. I asked them why they didn’t tell me and they were confused. They said the posted it on socia…