Social media is about exploiting gossip and social comparison to make money. It has been from the start a stupid habit with no redeeming qualities. However, after Zuck released Llamma and other AI models for free, i consider it a fair tax on stupidity that is helping to advance frontier technology
Quit Social Media (2016)
91–100 of 281 posts
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#92I 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 o…
Shouldn't lack of social media make people happier in theory? Because you sound to be quite resentful and angry.
Less resentfulness and more contempt or pity, as one would regard a methhead tweaking out in public; except here it's a wirehead getting off on social media.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#93Quit? Ban!
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amend according to your preferences, run it whenever something annoys you, throw it in a cron job, etc. .bash_aliases: alias blocksocials='(echo ""; echo "127.0.0.1 reddit.com"; echo "127.0.0.1 www.reddit.com") | sudo tee -a /etc/hosts > /dev/null' alias unblocksocials='sudo sed -i "/reddit.com/d" /etc/hosts'
Doesn't do much for phone usage, which is where I actually want to block things. The best solution I've found for that is NextDNS.
I use Kiwi Browser on Android, which is a Chrome-based browser with extension support. I have a userscript that gradually fades out and desaturates social media pages in 8 minutes. After 4-5 minutes, pages fade out so much that you are forced to stop scrolling and it's not enjoyable anymore.
The same can be done on Firefox, which supports installing Tampermonkey for managing userscripts.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#95Isn’t it on the decline yet? Facebook is for boomers. Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend time falling out on there. Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth. LinkedIn is a parody of itself. Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media. TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren’t really social media. It’s just time wasting junk. All in all, social…
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.
In today's world information overload is a bigger problem than lack of information. It follows that unactionable information is useless.
What is actionable about knowing about the assassination attempt 1-2 hours before others? Did you act differently based on this information? Did you benefit from this sufficiently to weigh up for the time spent on Twitter 20 times a day at the off-chance of catching a breaking newsstory before MSM would?
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#96(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…
Isn't Bluesky just a copy of Twitter from that era, anyway?
Not at all, not even close. They took the Twitter model and reinvented and reimagined it from 140 character posts to a timeline and brought us the 300 character posts to a timeline.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me no of course, but if you think about unintentionally your friends are from the same income group really (for the most part), if you are rich and go to private school, your friends are most likely rich, and usually hang around "fancy" places.
I was briefly a member of a church-related singles group. Their activities revolved around visiting a different church every Sunday. And also doing activities on weekends that involved a lot of car travel and significant admission fees, if only viewing a film at the mall cinema. I had a real commitment to my home parish at the time. I was involved in ministries weekly, where I could not simply flit about anywhere I w…
Well, Paul did say (paraphrasing), maybe it would be better if you did not marry...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Epistle_to_the_Corinthia...
Perhaps these Catholics are onto something. There's nothing wrong per se with individuals in a singles group or the group itself proper having no expectations of dating or marriage. It's probably not the norm, but I think it's actually somewhat better that way, especially for those who don't intend to date/marry. Community and fellowship in a church environment should not be withdrawn from those who choose to remain single or celibate. I think that historically many church groups have silently discouraged being single by ostracism or judgement, which is definitely not what Jesus would do, in my opinion.
I'm sure there is someone for you out there. All relationships are valid. Modern society has such intense focus on external sources of validation, such as a partner or spouse, but good friends are always in short supply. As the proverb says, a friend can be closer than a brother.
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#98I 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…
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…
This is precisely https://social.coop, of which I am part of, except for the "not being Mastodon" bit :)
Governance happens on Loomio, which is a forum tailored for community decision making, but the main platform that coop members get access to is a Mastodon instance for now. We are experimenting with Bonfire, which is more flexible and might end up providing a solid base for federated apps in general.
Let me know if you have any questions!
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#99I did, deleted Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (now X). And it helped me a lot to gain back my inner peace. My meditation was deeper, more profound, I genuinely gained back my inner peace. The constant bombardement with posts made to boost the ego of people is toxic for the consumer of these images / texts.
But then, in the context of the Gaza conflict, I realized that X is a very good source to follow intellectuals, thinkers, journalits whom I wouldn't read otherwise in Germany, where anyone is vilified who even wears a Kefiyeh. When you see how our western media frames, justifies, whitewashes a conflict caracterised as a genocide by many scholars, we need other platforms to hear those voices.
Now this sounds like the alt right that wants its platforms. But hear me out. There are intellectuals who show the headlines, the framing, and you cannot help but think that Noam Chomsky's book "Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media", written in 1988, is more relevant than ever.
X has the capacity to show different perspectives and can be invaluable. But it's also a curse exploited by many. Russia, China, Iran, but also our allies. See this for instance[1].
[1] "The Israelis Destabilizing Democracy and Disrupting Elections Worldwide - National Security & Cyber - Haaretz" // https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2022-1...
Re: Quit Social Media (2016)
#100Isn’t it on the decline yet? Facebook is for boomers. Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend time falling out on there. Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth. LinkedIn is a parody of itself. Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media. TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren’t really social media. It’s just time wasting junk. All in all, social…
Instagram is a must if you want to get any real benefit out of using dating apps in 2024. The only way to talk to anybody without paying is to look at the profile, get their instagram url, and talk over there. I'm an old millennial who basically only uses HN for social media, and unfortunately IG is a must have.
A dating app subscription is super cheap, like 40 bucks a month. I think it makes more sense to pay that then try and circumvent the system by messaging people through Instagram