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Reasons to Quit Social Media

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Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#241

Post by filmgirlcw »

3grdlurker wrote: post #232
filmgirlcw wrote: post #224

I would take this more seriously if this person wasn’t hocking a $150 a year book summary service and a twice-monthly newsletter. I’m not shading the hustle, you do you, but it just feels weird to advocate cutting out social media in your life, yet actively asking people to pay you with their attention and money to hear your thoughts and feelings. His first theoretical reason for using social media, for validation, s…

Technically what you’re doing is ad hominem—invalidating the arguments of the post by attacking what the author does for a living. It’s not even necessary that someone who makes (possibly extra ) money publishing insights is out for validation—there really are just people who are willing to pay for insights and he’s simply fulfilling a demand. Anything else beyond seeing what he does as simply business is pure specul…

I disagree. It’s not an ad hominem because I’m not attacking what he does for money, as a side hustle or otherwise, or him as a person. I hope he is successful.

What I am doing is pointing out the hypocrisy in an argument that puts all social media usage into two buckets (with zero nuance), with one of them being about validation, in a post and in a platform where the author is seeking validation himself. The critique is squarely at the argument, not the person.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#243

Post by brezelgoring »

3grdlurker wrote: post #232
filmgirlcw wrote: post #224

I would take this more seriously if this person wasn’t hocking a $150 a year book summary service and a twice-monthly newsletter. I’m not shading the hustle, you do you, but it just feels weird to advocate cutting out social media in your life, yet actively asking people to pay you with their attention and money to hear your thoughts and feelings. His first theoretical reason for using social media, for validation, s…

Technically what you’re doing is ad hominem—invalidating the arguments of the post by attacking what the author does for a living. It’s not even necessary that someone who makes (possibly extra ) money publishing insights is out for validation—there really are just people who are willing to pay for insights and he’s simply fulfilling a demand. Anything else beyond seeing what he does as simply business is pure specul…

I think he was pointing to a possible conflict of interest between the author and the message, being an ad hominem attack focuses strictly on the author, here there's more in the picture being evaluated.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#244

Post by dredmorbius »

An interesting list, though I feel it omits the elephant in the room:

In becoming the largest single media platform ever, operating at fantastic scope, speed, and with the ability to selectively filter and focus attention, today's social media platform monopolies have also become the heart of epistemic warfare.

This isn't simply a room with a few friends, it is a substantial fraction of everyone (2--3 billion-with-a-B monthly average users) on the same place at more or less the same time. The Facebook logo is among the most reproduced and seen icons anywhere, rivaling the Cross, the Crescent, the Dollar, and the Yuan.

As my friend Wooze pointed out a few years ago:

Our present epistemic systems are undergoing kind of the same shock that the online community underwent when transitioning from BBSs and Usenet to the commercial web to social media.

We were used to a very high content-to-BS ratio because it took a certain amount of intelligence and intense domain-interest for people to be there in the first place -- and we've now transitioned to a situation where many people are there more or less accidentally and (the worst part), because of a high percentage of the population being present, there is now substantial power to be had by influencing the discussions that take place.

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5wg0hp/when_ep...

This is far more the case than any lunchroom, cafe, street corner, agora, or meeting hall.

Assembled audiences have value, and that value is in manipulating them. Usually not in their own interest. And usually by multiple different third parties, each with its own motives.

That resulting dissonance is itself mind-warping in is effects. It also has profoundly dislocating and disruptive effects, in the worst possible way, on entire nations and cultures.

A related question is "What makes an information regime oppressive vs. liberalising?"

https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/6b32jo/what_ma...

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#245

Post by kumarvvr »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #224

I would take this more seriously if this person wasn’t hocking a $150 a year book summary service and a twice-monthly newsletter. I’m not shading the hustle, you do you, but it just feels weird to advocate cutting out social media in your life, yet actively asking people to pay you with their attention and money to hear your thoughts and feelings. His first theoretical reason for using social media, for validation, s…

>Like, why write this blog at all if you aren’t after the validation?

Social Media, especially large ones like FB / TW / IG / SC etc are mass aggregators.

A blog is a publishing platform. Like an article in a web page or a news article.

There is a lot of difference. You can't build echo chambers around blogs. (You can, if you try hard enough, but you can also do that in the real life) Social Media makes is buttery smooth to slide into well walled echo chambers.

Personally, I also think they have fueled the rise of crass materialism and wealth worship to an absurd degree. Having a streaming channel is a legitimate career these days, which just blows my mind. Of course, not all streamers, but many budding ones seem to think that behaving crazy on a channel will make them millionaires and bring them a lot of females to mess with. I can't even imagine what sort of warping this does to a young impressionable mind. There was a time when education and character were seen as must achieve goals, to have a stable life and family. We are raising a generation of poorly motivated, warped world view children, who are supposed to take charge in a decade or so.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#246

Post by enos_feedler »

elijaht wrote: post #225
gilbetron wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook already has all that with groups. I think the issue is something more fundamental with humans.

More optimistically- Facebook groups are great. They are the only reason I still look at Facebook and truly bring value to me

Yes and Facebook Marketplace is great for me selling things. And I know for others its actually Facebook dating (surprisingly). Facebook is here to stay by filling out all these "jobs to be done" in our lives. Every one of these jobs is backed by a moat that is very hard to compete with, and it's all the same: reach and scale.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#247

Post by pcf »

bserge wrote: post #173
EasyTiger_ wrote: post #160

Firmly believe what’s ruined social media is special interest groups and the rest parading as people like you and me. My evidence for this is the overnight take-over of r/politics in 2016 and the subsequent introduction of extremely divisive talking points which eventually transformed it into the glorified hate-site it is today. YES I’m bitter, Reddit before then got me through some tough times.

Well, judging by the extremely racist and most often dumb as hell /r/Europe, the racist and self-hating r/ukpolitics and the racist, smug and self-important r/germany, it's people who ruined social media. And the Internet, for that matter. Let in too many idiots and everything turns into Idiocracy.

I just scrolled down 24 hours of /r/Europe, and I didn't see anything "racist", and certainly not "extremely racist". Nor did I see anything "dumb as hell".

So when you say that "it's people who ruined social media", maybe it's divisive people like yourself – calling others "too many idiots"?

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#248

Post by Zak »

torben-friis wrote: post #218
peakaboo wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your wording "allows" is exactly what people dont like about these tech companies. They are not real authorities on the Internet. If they left, the internet would improve a thousand times.

They aren't keeping the rest of the internet from being used, though. If you like forums, you can use them regardless of whether reddit exists or not. Same applies for blogs and facebook, IRC and messaging apps, etc. If forums are better than reddit/discord, why are so many communities there? If blogs are better than twitter, why did the majority choose twitter?

> They aren't keeping the rest of the internet from being used

This is a half-truth. One uses a forum to interact with others, and if most of the users have moved to a Facebook group, the forum doesn't have the same utility it did before.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#249

Post by amatecha »

Semaphor wrote: post #126

I never had to quit social media. They quit me. I loved Facebook and Twitter when they were new, I connected to people that were way outside my normal group of friends and stayed in contact with people I knew who moved away, sometimes passively by reading their posts, sometimes actively. But both platforms started actively working against that kind of usage. Eventually I just had to stop as they became unusable, not…

This 100%. I strongly embraced both platforms early on, but their nature has changed in so many ways, and the balance of benefit to me vs. benefit to the vendor has tilted way too far towards benefiting the vendor.

At this point I've blocked all FB-related domains for my computers (Pi-hole) and use other methods to keep in touch with family and friends.

The same thing is happening with Twitter. Every time I view the web interface (or official mobile app), I'm disgusted by how exploitative and user-hostile its current iteration is. Luckily I normally use a 3rd-party mobile client which retains some of the aspects that made the platform appealing (permanently-linear timeline, no ads). The disparity is night and day. Unfortunately I'm "forced" to use the official clients from time to time as the 3rd party one is no longer being updated and lacks some features (for example some videos simply don't play). Still, at least it keeps the service mostly-usable. Regardless, I'm using Mastodon more and more as it's what Twitter "was" and can never be again.

Re: Reasons to Quit Social Media

#250

Post by [deleted] »

filmgirlcw wrote: post #224

I would take this more seriously if this person wasn’t hocking a $150 a year book summary service and a twice-monthly newsletter. I’m not shading the hustle, you do you, but it just feels weird to advocate cutting out social media in your life, yet actively asking people to pay you with their attention and money to hear your thoughts and feelings. His first theoretical reason for using social media, for validation, s…

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