I quit social media after the Snowden revelations.
I remember thinking it likely that many people would. My naivety knew few bounds at the time.
Quit Social Media (2016)
41–50 of 281 posts
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to pay for social software on a coop model (like a food coop, etc) — we would be "members" and, theoretically, we pay a small monthly fee that covers the costs of hosting and platform development. I've tried to think about what I would want that to look like — spoiler, something different than the model of "posting + reactions" that is so familiar from twitter+fb — but then when I think about the barrier…
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-...
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#43Programmers (cs students, "engineers") are one of the most pompous group of people who think their ability to #include gives them some special ability to speak about efficiency, physics, math (other than your run of the mill discrete or remedial linear algebra) or pretty much any other topic on the face of the Earth. Don't worry about your active Facebook account. People who make it a point to signal otherwise are ju…
Are these programmers in the room with us now?
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#44I quit social media, but the problem is that in the modern dating world a lot of people care whether you have an Instagram and that sort of thing. I truly hate social media, but I find myself considering remaking it just to improve my dating life. It's kind of a depressing situation, to be honest.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.
Unless it's regarding immediate local emergency that you might need to respond to, breaking news has zero value besides a brain tickle and something to talk about. If you feel you have any kind of mood or attention challenges, as many now do, you might want to double check if it's something you should be optimizing for.
Hard agree. Nearly nothing outside your real personal life is so important it can't be learnt about tomorrow, or next week.
There are exceptions; if you have a flight booked that day and didn't learn about the Crowdstrike thing till you got there, that'll be a problem, but it would've been a problem regardless of your immediate knowledge of it.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#46(2016) Especially important because most of his commentary focuses on the dominant social media paradigm of the time. Mastodon barely existed when this post went live, Mike Masnick was years from writing the paper that inspired Bluesky[0], and it would be strange if someone whose whole thing is getting away from social media kept up on new developments. This post is an interesting historical artifact, but shouldn't b…
What's changed, though, really? I quit[0] social media near the end of 2019, and it greatly improved my mental health and life. While I haven't tried some of the newer options, I've kept up with new developments in the space. Nothing about the "new" social media platforms makes them at all attractive for me to take a second look and join back up.
If anything, things are worse. It's even more "algorithmic" and engagement-focused, continuing to promote outrage culture. Platforms like TikTok have turned addictive endless scrolling into a science. I know a few people who spend a significant number of hours of their days on TikTok and Twitter (ahem, sorry, "X"), and it just kinda makes me sad. (And I probably spend more time than is healthy on HN.)
[0] I still have my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts, but I don't post to them anymore, and I'm signed out of them on all my devices (and I've deleted the mobile apps). I don't allow myself to ever sign in on mobile. Once every 6 months or so I'll sign into Facebook for some specific purpose (like looking up someone's contact information when it's for some reason not stored in any of my usual places). Out of curiosity I'll scroll down the feed, and it's just kinda crap. Stuff from people I don't actually follow, stuff from people I do follow but is kinda boring, and interestingly the feed is dominated by the same 15 or so people (even though I'd amassed a little over 1k "friends" before I quit). I limit myself to no more than five minutes, and I don't post, comment, or even like anything.
The last time I signed into Instagram (probably two or three years ago), the experience was awful. I remember when it was just a reverse-chronological feed of the people I follow (and only the people I follow). But now (well, 2-3 years ago) the majority of items in my feed are either ads or promoted/reshared posts from people I don't follow at all. Stuff from people I follow is maybe one out of every five or six items. And it's all out of order, so I'd see something that someone posted a week ago, followed by, 20 items later, something that they posted a couple days ago. It's a shame; 2012 Instagram was such a beautiful platform.
So while yes, this article is now 8 years old, I don't think anything has changed for the better. The fundamental problems are still there, and have only gotten worse.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#47I quit social media, but the problem is that in the modern dating world a lot of people care whether you have an Instagram and that sort of thing. I truly hate social media, but I find myself considering remaking it just to improve my dating life. It's kind of a depressing situation, to be honest.
Would that be an improvement, though? Do you really want a relationship with someone who cares if you have an active Instagram account? Feels like a great filter (heh) to weed out the chaff.
(If you're just casually dating around / looking for hookups, then sure, do what you think you need to do.)
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.
Honest question, why is breaking news important? How exactly does knowing unsubstantiated details about an event immediately male one’s life better?
This is what I always wonder. Any time I see a news story (even on MSM) marked as "BREAKING" or "EXCLUSIVE", I'm like... who cares? That just means you either a) rushed to publish without making sure you got your details right, or b) you paid someone to not shop their story around to other outlets (which is gross).
My life would not have been impacted in the least knowing about the Trump assassination attempt a few hours later (or even the next day), rather than minutes after it happened.
The MSM has enough problems these days with journalistic integrity and practices. I don't think the teeming mobs on Twitter are an improvement, though.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.
There is a marked difference between "Breaking new developments" and misinformation being spread to juice engagement. Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate information travels at light speed. It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.
> Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate information travels at light speed.
I agree, but I think a lot of people who use it view it that way.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#50I quit social media over 10 years ago, already having been a conscientious objector to Facebook and other platforms, much to the confusion of my classmates who didn't understand my idiosyncratic positions on digital privacy, attention span, banality, and brainrot.
It's gotten to the point where I view the narcissism of the modern 21st century social media user the same way I would view a crack addict smoking a pipe out in public, unable to pry their hands away from their glowing plastic rectangles, swiping incessantly in the hopes of getting just another dose of sweet dopamine with every refresh, or some artificial symbol of social validation in the form of more likes and upvotes.
Somehow even in the wake of the Snowden revelations people are still ambling off of cliffs for fear of being left behind by the herd of lemmings. I feel vindicated as the years go on with every news story or opinion piece I read about (dissatisfaction with) the growing encroachment of surveillance capitalism, ad-tech and social media into our personal lives, and all for what? Some shitty memes and "influencers" peddling their garbage through thinly veiled advertisements?
When I am exposed to mainstream social media content I can't believe people subject themselves to the digital equivalent of ass-to-mouth that is the brainrot of the algorithmically driven social media feed. If "you are what you eat" were analogized to an information diet, most social media users would be consuming informational shit and consequently producing the same 140-byte thoughts or reciting the same 5-second memes.
If the attention economy is indeed a real concept, there is a premium for the ability to hold your concentration on something for more than half an hour and produce thoughts whose complexity is more than just a few bytes.