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Quit Social Media (2016)

calnewport.com

161–170 of 281 posts

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#161

I've completely quit social media except for LinkedIn, which I need for my work, and Reddit, which I selectively use for product recommendations and advice on my career and relationships. And also Twitter, through which I receive the latest research in my domain. And Instagram, which my girlfriend uses to send me memes and videos. Occasionally Facebook for event invitations. And this website. But other than that I've…

The pressure to quit is so large I keep quitting daily

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#162

I've completely quit social media except for LinkedIn, which I need for my work, and Reddit, which I selectively use for product recommendations and advice on my career and relationships. And also Twitter, through which I receive the latest research in my domain. And Instagram, which my girlfriend uses to send me memes and videos. Occasionally Facebook for event invitations. And this website. But other than that I've…

What makes Hacker News a social media website?

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#163
I would say he is write about LinkedIn, TikTok, Snap, Meta and its associated gram's, threads and face... BUT - HN has a different vibe, this is a community with sharing knowledge and information - on HN, I never doom scroll - there is genuine interaction and useful content. To some extent X provides useful updates from the main AI labs, so it is knowing how to use it and not be used by it.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#164
post #163

I would say he is write about LinkedIn, TikTok, Snap, Meta and its associated gram's, threads and face... BUT - HN has a different vibe, this is a community with sharing knowledge and information - on HN, I never doom scroll - there is genuine interaction and useful content. To some extent X provides useful updates from the main AI labs, so it is knowing how to use it and not be used by it.

It’s all the same. HN is just smaller, but before Reddit disabled 3rd party apps HN was even more focused and, IMO, a little less startup/growth hacking focused.

If HN ever gets big, you’ll see the same things.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#165
post #155

My almost post-social media life has been interesting. I ditched Twitter, came back to it briefly, then ditched it again when it was purchased because I found my mental health growing increasingly fragile with the constant outrage, the need to keep track of who the main character of the day was or risk the ire of your circle, and the increasing filtering of my timeline. I quit Facebook, other than keeping an account…

Where is this magic side of the Fediverse? What I saw: Rust lunatics, hardline Communists or straight up Nazis, the most extreme alphabet people or the most extreme red-pillers. And many of them have the overlapping topics of questionable *orn or even more questionable anime content. Every time I get a random post from a an a Fediverse instance and I dare check it's main feed to see what it's like, it's always (always!) a dumpster fire.

I don't like Twitter much but if I had to pick one or the other it would be a no-brainer.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#166

> “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…

Unfortunately, it can be worth it. Having a social media audience can be very valuable to entrepreneurs. Someone who lives online with a personal brand can replace tens of thousands of dollars in ad spend with a single tweet.

As someone who hasn't had a social media presence for most of my adult life, and happy about that, I'm now seeing the downsides. I don't have Ivy League connections like some of my peers. Social media may be the only way I could build a network like the one they cultivated in university.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#167

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…

Hackernews is such a social circle. Besides the incredible moderation done by @dang I think the artificial barriers to interacting with the community are what make this a successful forum. I seem to recall needing at least 5 submission karma before you can comment - and that means 5 votes from _other_ people.

Good luck with a contrarian post or comment here. They get flagged or downvoted to oblivion.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#168
post #165
post #155

My almost post-social media life has been interesting. I ditched Twitter, came back to it briefly, then ditched it again when it was purchased because I found my mental health growing increasingly fragile with the constant outrage, the need to keep track of who the main character of the day was or risk the ire of your circle, and the increasing filtering of my timeline. I quit Facebook, other than keeping an account…

Where is this magic side of the Fediverse? What I saw: Rust lunatics, hardline Communists or straight up Nazis, the most extreme alphabet people or the most extreme red-pillers. And many of them have the overlapping topics of questionable *orn or even more questionable anime content. Every time I get a random post from a an a Fediverse instance and I dare check it's main feed to see what it's like, it's always (alway…

Meanwhile, my feed is photographers, linux people (because of course), and a weird confluence of unobjectionable academics. I saw what you're describing in my brief visit to the Lemmy world, and I absolutely know that there are hostile and degenerate Mastodon instances, but most of the big instances have defederated with them, so I don't get sniped by any of the freaks.

Now, I do pretend the global list simply doesn't exist and focus on the local instance list and people I follow. I don't know of anyone who uses the global list. I also tend to follow hashtags rather than individuals. (I'm 100% sure that twitter would show at least as much garbage on their feed if they didn't filter, especially these days. This is not an argument for Twitter's style of filtering.)

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#169
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember the name of it, but over a decade ago I saw something like this - it was a single Linux server shared by (I think) hundreds of people. Really trying to do the multi-user paradigm. They advertised it as a private kind of social network, it was invite-only and I think you had to pay to help keep the server lights on. Hopefully by posting something incorrect, A Person On The Internet Who Knows Better wi…

Tilde.club nearly meets your definition.[1] It's at least 1 decade and 15 days old, but it appears it's open to join for anyone.[2] [1] https://tilde.club/ [2] https://medium.com/message/tilde-club-i-had-a-couple-drinks-...

The first link you put gives me a security warning so I didn't click through. But the medium article would suggest that this is the one!

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#170

I've completely quit social media except for LinkedIn, which I need for my work, and Reddit, which I selectively use for product recommendations and advice on my career and relationships. And also Twitter, through which I receive the latest research in my domain. And Instagram, which my girlfriend uses to send me memes and videos. Occasionally Facebook for event invitations. And this website. But other than that I've…

What makes Hacker News a social media website?

HN is exactly what social media is.

social media is a definition of sourced content, nit the quality of the latter

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