'It's so liberating': The people quitting social media
bbc.com
bbc.com
Yes. I don't know if it wants us to see more ads or be more "engaged". I'm currently fascinated by generative art and find a lot of interesting posts about this on Twitter.
Yet Twitter keeps showing me posts about politics that upset me; I can't help but "liking" some of those, which feeds the feedback machine.
I never follow any political poster but liking is enough. I could certainly block or mute all of them but that feels wrong, esp. people I fundamentally agree with.
I'm not sure what to do. Not use Twitter seems the best solution.
You can also create an account on any mastodon server and follow users from genart.social, but it's more fun to be in the middle of it.
I suspect that clicking, or perhaps even pausing is enough. The only time I look at Twitter is when running my organization's Twitter account. I try to follow technical people and organizations, and am mostly looking for something of a pulse on what's going on in the Linux / FLOSS crowd on Twitter. Since I'm representing my project, not myself, I never click 'like' on anything political; and I'm pretty sure my predecessor in the role never did either.
And yet, here I am every day, wading through loads of political posts which mysteriously mostly align with my preferences.
Edited for clarity.
It seems quite strange to me how people clamor for push button blinders on what is actual life. You are not a horse to be led around by an app.
Who needs blinders when the feature could just work? Follow someone; see them. Don’t follow; don’t see.
There is no technological solution to this. It isn't bad software art. Sometimes life is disappointing.
Maybe I like Harry Potter and enjoy fan fiction of a certain flavor on twitter and follow the author only to discover she doesn't share my politics (via her tweets and retweets). That is not the fault of Twitter. Well, if I didn't find certain views held by JK Rowling's disagreeable everything would actually be working as it should and there would be no complaints.
You can't pick and choose only the things you like about the people you are interested in. Having those books in common doesn't guarantee fellow fans are agreeable - same thing would happen if I were to attend a book reading in the olden days before twitter and overhear people expressing views that upset me.
I can of course demand everybody at the venue accommodate me on everything since we all enjoy Harry Potter and I am very special but that might not fly. I could compartmentalize and stick to the the things we have in common. Or I could excuse myself.
Most people don't bother, they sign up and follow JK Rowlling or whatever and she tweets once a year or something so there's nothing to show you so it treats her as a subject not an individual. Bad UX and terminology for sure but most of the complaints are not about that.
Do you also get mad at reddit for whatever the hell the weirdos post in the default sub-reddits when you login?
I'm always surprised that people, especially on HN, complain so much about twitter's algorithms that are so easy to bypass. I use Twidere as a client, and my feed doesn't have any of twitter's algorithms - it's simply a reverse chronological feed. Even the website and twitter's official app have a button right on the feed page that allows you to switch to a reverse chronological feed
> In addition it's almost impossible to have a civilized discussion
Just don't use it for discussion then. I use it to read opinions of people all across the ideological spectrum and form my own. You don't need to engage if you don't want to! Also, it's very easy to mute/block accounts that you find are being abusive or uncivilized
It's an invaluable tool to gather peoples' opinions and what they really think.
To see the loons, I typically have to find a popular account and read replies, and the Tweetdeck URL even hides most of those (which is fine by me - makes me realising I'm wasting my life reading rubbish).
How? The value of the twitter's social network comes from the recommendations of the people I follow, not twitter's recommendation
> along with the need to manually block users because it has no effective moderation
I wouldn't want it any other way! I want to be in control of who I block - I don't want anyone else deciding that for me
> will have been written by users targeting the default algorithm
That doesn't matter, since I'm not using their algorithm anyway
It's an admission that the platform is broken. If you have to rely on workarounds to have an acceptable experience, you should probably just choose a different platform that doesn't have an adversarial relationship with its users.
>I wouldn't want it any other way! I want to be in control of who I block - I don't want anyone else deciding that for me
Individuals blocking each other does nothing to address problems with the community.
>That doesn't matter, since I'm not using their algorithm anyway
The content will be worse for targeting their algorithm regardless of how you access it.
Or, is it a tool to get the most knee-jerk reactions out of people as fast as possible? How much thought did actually go into that tweet?
It's depressing seeing friends fall down conspiracy theory rabbit holes, or publicly wallow in their racism.
It also kinda follows from your "public space" analogy, that the loudest people screaming the most obnoxious and entertaining insults, will dominate this space.
Extending your analogy a bit further, this "public space" is really more of a "public bathroom" wall, where people scribble hot takes, and others react to those with more hot takes of their own.
I'm happy for you that you shut down your account a while ago -- I haven't used mine in months, and should probably do the same right now.
My blood does boil even there, with the subtle editorializing tell us what to feel about what is essentially a neutral news item, but it's much easier to control than the online media.
This is like the Tim Ferriss approach: if some news is really that huge, you'll hear about it from a friend or coworker eventually. And if it's news like globalthermonuclear war, you won't benefit from hearing about it 5 minutes earlier anyway ;)
The article is on the BBC news site. As someone that's a bit older than the average on here, I can remember when the BBC news site was just that - news.
Now, it's changed subtly.
Some articles now have 'by John Smith', the author, underneath it, whereas some do not. Way back in the mists of time, almost all articles seemed to be anonymous.
The other change, and your point, is that select articles now have commentary or opinion by one of the BBC journalists, which it never previously had.
Still, if the BBC are paying big salaries for 'big' name journos they have to promote them.
At least the BBC hasn't gone down the route of "Boris ate cake. You won't believe what happened next!" style headlines.
I still wish they'd lay off the op-ed pieces.
During WW2, the AM radio informed the population, no doubt saving lives. Families would gather around the radio for BBC news, compelled by uncertainty and fear. The war finished, the years went by, radio became a TV. When I suggest maybe skipping the news, it's met with shock and something along the lines of "not watch the news? we need to be informed".
> Still, if the BBC are paying big salaries for 'big' name journos they have to promote them.
But maybe they could let the content speak for itself.
Unfortunately both sides of the political spectrum now mistrust the BBC's impartiality.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Sharp_(BBC_chairman) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_licensing_in_the_Un... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Kuenssberg#BBC_political...
But with things that you mentioned and recently Martine Croxall [1], I've pretty much switched to Reuters and Bloomberg quite some time ago without realising.
You only have to look at the BBC news site front page, versus their 'most read' section to see what the BBC editorial staff think we should be reading (relentless politics, doom and gloom) versus what people are actually reading (today, right now, Peter Kay's comeback! :) ).
Dear god yes. Give me the facts without trying to insert your politics there. Even the AP does this constantly. I'd pay gold for a news organization which prints something to the effect of:
>The current situation in XYZ in unknown. We have heard from partisan sources that A happened, we have heard from other partisan sources that B happened and the state department has told us C would happen. Please check back in three weeks for an update.
Report about the cost of housing driving people to homelessness? That's the "left-wing media".
Report about people grifting off of BLM protects? It's the "right wing corporate media".
And those stories can very well be in the same newspaper or news show.
My life was filled with unnecessary external inputs / noise (such as news) that often dictated the mood and output of my day. Example, waking, unconsciously unlocking my phone and scrolling news or socials. It was like gambling my day away but with no upside. These days I start with things I can control (make bed, tidy up) to build positive momentum to plow through the inevitable challenges of the day.
News was one of my worst... along with sugar :) Now I beat both (kinda).
One can't blame the news for being a mirror. Especially where I live (India), it is almost a joke to suggest (as so many here do) that the media should focus on "positive" stories - when doing so would be Goebbelsian.
The thing I am noticing now is that a larger part of civil society has moved to Facebook. I can't even find the opening hours or phone numbers of many restaurants, which means I just have to guess or not go at all. One company I quickly left had support through Facebook.
I hate it. And I think people are crazy to hand such a large chunk of society over to social media companies.
I'm in the UK. Is it a different experience where you are?
Or are you refusing to access the facebook website at all?
I believe that it was rolled out in the US in 2019, so it seems based on geography
I had the idea of having a local site for small towns where every business could have its own free page and post stuff that everyone could see for free. But, having dealt with a few local businesses and realizing they just don't want to make any effort at all, like I should do everything from providing imagery and content at no cost, I quickly released it was a non-starter. Facebook is actually the perfect solution for these kind of businesses after all.
An actually useful news source would be the one which periodically lists the important happenings in the local area and (optionally) a couple of sentences about them.
This is why I subscribe to a local news paper. It's much more interesting and more relevant to read about what is happening in and around my own town than what's going on in world politics or the other side of the world.
It's not a panacea by any means, but makes an almost mind-blowing difference from the "usual" addictive social platforms (FB, Twitter, YouTube, etc.).
It feels a bit like joining a café where everyone is human, and imperfect, rather than a shiny videolottery casino where the higher liked profiles keep winning.
Personally I'm glad that that the hyper-availability of information was something I experienced only after I became an adult, so I'm able to be more aware of how influential the firehouse of information and manipulation by algorithms can be.
Discord is also very similar to Telegram conceptually, but very different at the same time because of the role it fulfills. Different tools, with different properties, for different needs. Even phone calls can be considered social media! The key is using them responsibly.
I'd say to qualify as social media you need to make the experience about connecting people with each other or with groups, and finding people to connect with. Things like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter are all definitely social media.
A site that just posts news headlines that people comment on is not really social media IMHO.
Of course, as someone who never uses Twitter and yet has been here since 2013 I have a good feeling of what your answer is likely to be. But my deeper point is: people get out of Twitter the same that I (and maybe you) get out of HN. Different strokes for different folks.
Maybe use social media if you want to, but there is an inherit difference between these platforms. I had good discussions on HN but I couldn't name you any user, not even their handle. It isn't of particular interest most of the time. There are a few exceptions of course but those are far and few between.
A bus ride just isn't the same as a party, even if many people come together.
Facebook has been useful as a modern day telephone book.
I don't see them as competing against real conversations. They serve a very different function.
And if one particular person I follow gets too verbose, I mute them for 6 hours, a day, a week, or forever, until they calm down. I've even permanently muted acquaintances who it makes them happy to think I follow them as they go off the deep end.
If Twitter takes away the API that TweetBot uses, well, I think that'll be my exit, since I can't imagine having to put up with what I perceive everyone else is experiencing on Twitter.
Since then, I deleted all my social media accounts - LinkedIn (in some insanely magical way I'm still employed!) and twitter. Being the old fart I am, I had no other social media accounts.
Not taking any needless selfies, not posting crap, not waiting anxiously for likes or comments, not reading BS from people I don't know just because some algorithm decided that's a good content for me for reasons I have no control over.
Life is so much better.
Not for me, thank you very much.
Of course she is.
What did it for me was June 2016 (aah, Brexit), and two blokes from very different parts of my life— whom I both love for very different reasons— went to the most perverse ad hominem attacks on each other (they have never even met) on my profile. Such a weird hatred that I decided I did not want to be a part of that.
I quit most social media, not because it’s liberating, but because either a) the website became unusable (Facebook, I still use it for groups which are closer to how the timeline used to be) or b) It became boring (Twitter many years ago after I had been there since the start). Neither of those felt liberating, and especially in the Facebook case, I missed the interactions I had.
The endless treadmill of posts will always overpower you. Doomscrolling is an appropriate term for it. You always end up beaten. It's just too much for people, let alone your brain who has not caught up with the technology pace in terms of evolution.
I've slowly stopped using social media, though I'll never surrender my handles, that'd be leaving people to impersonate me.
I wish there was a way i could ban my IP or something else more permanent to really remove me from most social media platforms. As it is now, its too easy to create a new account or reactivate your old one.
I thought of something like a reverse robots.txt, a file residing in your device(s) that could tell servers you don't want to see news nor social features. Something like no-news.txt or even no-social.txt.
Their algorithms and UX are precisely designed to that purpose to favor ads placement.
Like all things, "social media" is good only with strict moderation and balance. The real problem is that people let their usage get out of hand.
I can understand the latter, but there's nothing noble about refusing to use social media at all.
If you consider them social media, that would imply telephone itself is a social media, which makes a definition of the word "social media" somewhat useless for distinguishing services such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and similar.
>You'd anyway likely need an app like WhatsApp or Telegram to keep track of everybody and everything - and those technically ARE considered social media right?...
WhatsApp, Telegram, etc. I'd class more as private communications, alongside email and written letters.
>I don't think absolutely 0 social media is feasible or even wise this day in age. How are you going to keep up with family, friends, and so on?...
On the rare occaasions I've looked at social media content --especially Twitter or Facebook, I'm gobsmacked by the way conversations between people reveal so much personal info about themselves. It's like a huge number of social media users have some kind of mental block whereby they think if they @friend some really personal stuff, only @friend will see it. When the reality is @friend, @enemy, @employer, @parents, @spouse, @anyone-who-happens-to-be-passing-by... etc. are now privvy to that personal info.
I wonder how many of these people are also concerned about buying a Chinese phone, in case it 'spies' on them. When they're broadcasting practically their entire personal life, for all the world to see.
I still login from time to time. I just do it via the website. It has become less of a compulsion, to the point that my partner sometimes has to prompt me to look at some photos or like some important life event from a friend. I'm ok with that.
The issue is systemic. Most people's idea of "social Media" today is the algorithm-fueled, privacy-invading, advertising funded model which divorces the users from the curation of good content.
We need social media platforms that are not owned by Big Tech, and we need to reject the notion that it is okay to data tracking and ads one exchange of a "free" service.
Yeah, god forbid you actually visit them, invite them over, and talk to them on the phone, or, text them...
>you'd anyway likely need an app like WhatsApp or Telegram to keep track of everybody and everything - and those technically ARE considered social media right?
No, technically they are considered chat apps...
And you wont need those either...
Think for a minute. You went on a vacation and want to show your families and relatives your photos. Are you going to send 20 photos to each of them via zip file?
If the need arises, you can send them a zip file, yes. Or upload them on Dropbox. Or share a link from Apple or Google Photos (both offer the option).
The few times we talk about politics, are calm and measured discussions even though we disagree on many policy issues.
A friend of mine does not even have a phone, i meet him regularly, he has a job in IT and does just fine.
The Family has a Group on Signal, then there are a bunch of other groups on WhatsApp for friends and work.
Chat apps differ from social media in that they don't spam you with other peoples crap.
And i don't need lists of "friends" which i never see on whatever social media site.
Who cares about people you never see in person?
I have a contact list and just call or write if i want something.
The contact list is synced via CardDav to my calendar so i don't forget birthdays which is about the only useful thing social media provides.
I understand the need to communicate with loved ones, but really, you don’t even need to “keep up” because living one’s own life and reaching for one’s own ambitions should be time-consuming and tiring enough. And then I’m not willing to listen to any perspective that justifies the need for content feeds in one’s life—no news feed is innocent and all news feeds are just utilities for ads. If you really want to know what’s up with someone who matters in your life, you can and you should just ask them directly.
I guess your point that “anything can be social media if you call it that” is… technically true linguistically, I have genuinely no idea what that has to do with people that choose not to use Facebook/Instagram/Twitter.
10 years ago, I had a Facebook account and the rule to have up to 50 contacts ("friends") that I was using 10 minutes per day. When that was no longer possible, I closed the account.
So... it's a psy-op. As stated.
Mounds upon mounds of personal data, recent photographs of the population, countless "private" conversations are all available easily and instantly if you just ask your mate up in SIGINT.
This is what social media is now. If you engage in warcrimes, your face and name will be known to the world for all times.
Sadly, I think many of us are still carrying a working model of social media as a "peoples' tool" from the Arab Spring. There are plenty of places in the world today where you can see that's been suppressed, recruited and inverted by those in power.
If we want technology to reduce evil in the world then we need to redouble our efforts.
Thankfully we're moving back to a more openly reputation-based system. I'm currently looking for a group of seven respected men that will swear oaths to my innocence if I'm accused of anything.
No doubt the irony will be I'll have to listen to endless "news" from friends who haven't spoken to me in real-life for 15 years, about how "Liberating it is". :)
You wouldnt understand ...
* A commercial advertising delivery mechanism
* A US government mass-surveillance honeypot
* A way for Jane Smith to follow what her acquaintances or family members are doing elsewhere in the world
* An outlet for venting frustrations about politics
etc. etc. And all that dopes not really contradict "big psy-op".
And now we're reading about her on BBC News. These people need to stop talking and actually get offline.
"There is a mate of mine who rejects all technology... You can read about it on his website"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y8m4l
19 July 2017 - 'I felt relieved' - What happens when you ditch social media
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-40654983
30 August 2016 - Picture perfect: How helpful is social media for our mental health?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-37218059
Social media regulation debate - and much much more.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cvw0z7ezezkt
Yeah probably all about Musk right.