141–150 of 281 posts
I would rephrase it to “quit ad-based social media”. The incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the business model and there is an intermediary between the user and information/community they want to participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-based, social media. Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier to entry. In life we do not let everyo…
Where does one advertise these days if not social media? Where does one learn about local goings-on outside of their _immediate_ circle of family/close friends/colleagues if not social media? With a small local business, social media gives an audience. If you're selling anything visually captivating, it performs well in these spaces. We sell cut flowers on the side, so… I don't ask these questions out of support of I…
I subscribed to my local NHPR newsletter that tells me local events. There is also local news, newspaper, or radio.
I don’t know who Cal is and I have no idea what Deep Work he’s done since he quit social media, but, best of luck to the lad.
It's very enlightening to fast from social media for an extended period of time (say about a month). If you return after that, you can almost feel the shift in your head. It's something I've experienced first hand.
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Unfortunately people love to complain about ads, but rarely actually get their wallets out when an alternative payment method is presented. Case in point: the frequent archive.org links to get around paywalls.
you mean archive.is?
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Bluesky was supposed to replace Twitter and turn it into a federated platform. Some details on its creation and exit from Twitter here: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/13/bluesky-is-building-the-...
But federation is no longer on the table?
Where does one advertise these days if not social media? Where does one learn about local goings-on outside of their _immediate_ circle of family/close friends/colleagues if not social media? With a small local business, social media gives an audience. If you're selling anything visually captivating, it performs well in these spaces. We sell cut flowers on the side, so… I don't ask these questions out of support of I…
> “I decided, after 15 years, to live in reality.” This is the crux of the matter. Social media isn’t real; it’s a type of video game for adults. The unreality fosters the growth of so many other things which are even less concerned with truth: fake news, engagement bait, daily outrages, chasing followers in a vain attempt to “build a personal brand.” The vacuousness of influencer culture has only accelerated these t…
I have a pet theory as to why social media causes many people to feel like it's draining them, and why I avoid news on social media like the plague ... I also tend to mute or silence people that share political content (regardless of partisan affiliation).
Social media, unless you are trying to build a business, is ultimately offering the service of entertainment.
Even if you use Twitter or Facebook as your news aggregator, unless you're engaged in some kind of productive and time-scoped research project, you're doing this on your leisure time.
That means that you just got done work, or you're on a break, or you finally got the kids to sleep or finished all of your household chores and you're now in a position where you can "enjoy" a bit of leisure time.
Which means that you approach social media PRE-drained. You're already tired and you're looking for cute cat memes when what should happen ... you get hit with a rage-bait headline, or one of those douche bags that vote differently from you just posted an opinion about a controversial topic that you have very strong feelings about.
We (on HN) all know that the algorithm is trying to promote what gets engagement, and anything that provokes a strong emotional reaction is likely to trigger engagement.
My thesis is that people turn to social media when they are already in an emotional state that is incredibly inappropriate for engaging with "serious" topics on a rational level.
So everyone just gets angrier and angrier at each other and you leave social media feeling even more exhausted than you were before you signed on looking for entertainment to spend your precious leisure time with.
And then you realize that you just wasted that short precious time that you needed to use for relaxation ... and if you don't do anything to rectify it then your stress levels just gradually creep up, your sleep starts to suffer, you might start to compensate with stress eating or consuming more alcohol or cannabis than is healthy and it just spirals.
Where does one advertise these days if not social media? Where does one learn about local goings-on outside of their _immediate_ circle of family/close friends/colleagues if not social media? With a small local business, social media gives an audience. If you're selling anything visually captivating, it performs well in these spaces. We sell cut flowers on the side, so… I don't ask these questions out of support of I…
He just uses his wife's account.
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We might be past peak "bulk" social media, where people would be public, more or less, with their posts/videos. Now everything is closing and many people have "group chats" as they realize that free-for-all chatting/posting doesn't work.
Private spaces where small groups collect may be social media by its definition, but it feels starkly different from something like posting on a facebook wall or making a public linkedin post where the audience largely consists of strangers.
Kind of, depending on the platform, if you squint your eyes at it?
I suppose it doesn't matter what it's actually called. I call it community in general.
Communities in this sense are the middle ground between your direct personal network (which is also the deepest form of relation), and social media as the widest (the shallowest form of relation) form of reach.