As I get older I actually enjoy social media more. Keeping touch with friends who have moved away and having spontaneous interactions with people I like but don’t get to see very often is easier than ever.

My social media experience doesn’t really match the weirdness that gets described in alarmist articles or the compulsive, addictive patterns that some users describe. I haven’t found it difficult at all to shape my feeds to display what I want while hiding what I don’t want to see. I suspect if I just randomly followed people and never gave the platform any positive or negative signals (likes or hiding posts) then I’d have a less enjoyable experience. If I had addictive tendencies and had uncontrollable urges to scroll forever I’d also have a bad experience.

But that’s not my experience. I log in occasionally, enjoy updates from my friends and their families, share some photos from my family, and have some quick conversations with people I like to talk to.

And honestly it’s great. I guess that’s my contrarian tech opinion. Social media is fine and even great when used appropriately. If it’s not for you, just don’t use it. I will note that HN is absolutely a form of social media, though, so it could be that your preferred social media experience is just a different format than what others enjoy.

Personally, I'm not tired of reddit, and I have been using it for more than 10 years now. I'm not really sure if reddit really is a social media. I know I can't use facebook/instagram/twitter/etc. Although it's true that it's up to users to filter all the toxic places of reddit.

I still believe it's possible to improve social media, reduce toxicity, avoid outsides influencers, not make it about money, etc. It's hard work, but that's why the internet is not always a cesspool.

I've been off social media for years now. The content became too manipulated by algorithms that it became useless to me.

For me instant messaging services have filled the gap of keeping in touch with friends. And no algorithms means I know exactly who gets my message when.

The benefit of IM services are also that users are more aware who they're sending stuff to. No more dumping every time you have dinner into the black hole that is social media. They don't do this because they are more aware they'd dumping that crap on real people and who don't like to see (too much of) this kind of stuff.

All in all it's like social media but better and more direct. And all the distracting stuff like "Likes" and number of "Friends" are not represented. These were becoming a goal of their own wayyy too much.

The only worry I have is... How long will it take Facebook and the like to screw IM up too by trying to build 'engagement'? Facebook itself was pretty good too when it still put people in touch without trying to further its own goals. And the age of 'buying marketshare' is kinda over, the market is quite established now. Meaning the 'extracting profit' phase will soon begin. Of course there's still good options on the market but it'll be hard to convince people to use them, just like it was hard to get people off Facebook until they made themselves impossible.

It hasn't gotten better. I have now stopped visiting some of my favourite restaurants because I can't read their opening hours or menu because I don't have a Facebook account. I don't know when Facebook started doing that, but one day they closed their business pages and excluded me from a lot of information that used to be public.

I welcome better social media.