Everyone calls X a "dumpster fire" etc, but when I go on there I see see great tech conversations. Database people having fun and chatting about projects. Lots of hackers. A much larger network than bluesky.
I finally see on my timeline art and music I like. Not to mention the interesting technology-related discussions.
It’s not all sunshine but things are clearly better with a wider range of opinions being present on my timeline and more variety in content. I just wish I could better filter foreign (esp. USA & UK) political content out of my feed.
Outside of bullying, which I do think is a real risk for kids, I don't feel like the time I spend on social media is unhealthy at all. Granted I'm mostly YouTube, zero percent IG or Facebook. I'm really grateful for what Google bought/built.
Excuse me now as I need to go watch a short that explains the difference between Australian and British accents. Very important, goodbye!
I also am a big fan of YouTube for exactly this reason, but you need to be careful.
There's all kinds of great educational content on there.
But, for anything "political" or controversial, YouTube can get toxic very quickly. I believe this is going to be true for most social media as long as engagement is the KPI. It directly incentivizes echo chambers, ragebait, and all kinds of terrible discourse.
This is a good point. Social media isn’t unhealthy if you don’t use it
It's generally a positive experience for me. It's not the network but what people follow there.
The media activist classes were absolutely genuinely offended by it; here are two mainstream pieces from July 28th, five days after the ad campaign launched:
The Washington Post discussing how the ad's tagline reminded them of "the DHS Instagram account, which posted a subtly racist painting a few weeks ago and an explicitly racist painting last week":
https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/2025/07/28/sydney-sween...
An MSNBC opinion piece, by an MSNBC producer: "Sydney Sweeney's ad shows an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness":
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/sydney-sweeney-a...
"The advertisement, the choice of Sweeney as the sole face in it and the internet’s reaction reflect an unbridled cultural shift toward whiteness, conservatism and capitalist exploitation. Sweeney is both a symptom and a participant."
I find it so odd when billion dollar corporations publish pieces like that... like, can't you first look in the mirror? this weird alliance between economic liberalism and that neo marxist intersectionality is so... hypocritical...
It is a common tactic to create a new controversy to take attention away from a much more important topic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring
The whole Sydney Sweeney Jeans Advert "controversy" felt like it was AstroTurf-ed.
Less than a few weeks ago. Trump was getting a huge amount of pressure about the lack of transparency with the Jeffrey Epstein investigation. All of that seems to have been forgotten now (or that is at least is my impression).
Well, it turns out that some people are actually outraged by a jeans ads... the problem is that these social networks tend to amplify these sort of divise issues for engagement purposes.
My problem with Twitter/X was that, for instance I was following somebody in 2010's who talked about Javascript and Node, only to end up with that person constantly ranting about partisan issues that had nothing to do with it (especially after Trump election), but at the time, Twitter provided no way to limit feeds to center of interests. That made me quit the platform and I imagine it's getting way wore now...
Of course, if you see everyone following you for topic X but that nobody wants to hear your opinion about anything else, I can imagine that making it feel like people are just using you as a tool, and that decreasing incentive to participate in the whole thing. But it'd be interesting to try at scale.
How could that design choice go past basic UI/UX checks is still beyond me after all these years, it made that website horrible to browse.
Most of the interesting people in my circles have left and the ones that stayed are so disconnected that there is no real community any more.
The end this on a higher note. Would you be willing to share some people to follow that make being on X worthwhile for you.
But I'm sure there are still some bubbles of decent content. It was definitely no longer worth being on there for me though.
Similarly for Twitter. It was an independent company run by people who had, as far as I heard, fine intentions. Like making money and being a good platform can go together, though iirc they weren't great at the former. Then Elon came along and tore down the ethics standards. Idk, I just don't need to be part of that when people have been developing perfectly good alternatives in the meantime. It took a few years but by now I'm not actually sure who's still on Twitter but not (at least also) on Mastodon that I'd like to talk to, but I'm sure there'll be some people if I look for them. I just don't know that it's worth it
I also don't like that it's now a closed website; not really part of the web, idk why they bother having URLs still if you can't view them without signing up first. Not really a great medium for posting/announcing things anymore either
Of course, if you're happy to stay put with your friends, I'm sure you'll be just fine as well without needing to experience too much of what goes on outside of that community. You could use WeChat or anything else for that purpose as well
The only thing I keep recommending to people is to always have at least 2 options: WhatsApp and another messenger. GitHub and some git mirror. Twitter and another microblogger. Then people can choose, communities can move gradually without disruption, you're harder to deplatform, service disruptions aren't as big a deal, and the platforms have to actually compete to be one's choice of where you go first to post and read things
If there were a store that secretly sold Nazi propoganda out the back if you gave the owner a special handshake, you'd innocently have no way of knowing and you'd keep shopping at that store. I don't think anyone could hold it over your head that you were shopping at a Nazi store if it were being ran with such discretion.
But if there were a store where the owner occasionally made a little wink-wink-nudge-nudge whoopsy-doodly where he "accidentally" left such stuff out at the checkout counter, just to see if you'd be interested... I'm sorry, there's no way I'd ever go back to that store, no matter how great it's other stuff was. It could be the only place that sold my favorite beer or whatever and it wouldn't matter. Some things are inexcusable.
Gives me some hope for Bluesky, etc. I don't think you need to be Twitter scale or have global network effects to work. Your community just has to choose a particular platform and show a preference for it. You get miniature network effects once your community adopts it.
So if your favorite community doesn't like a particular platform, I don't think they're stuck there, just because it's the one with global scale. They just have to organize an exit.
If you follow tech people and engage with those, you get more of them.
I follow DHH, PG, etc and gaming stuff, I get great content.
I also pay premium to not get ads and get Grok for free which is a nice bonus.
Mastodon and Bluesky are intrinsically more valuable, not necessarily because of the quality of the content itself, but because it's actually possible for people to read and search said content.
Just thousands of people posting whatever nonsense they can to get their $5 in adshare revenue.
The way they do this - topics, language - is less bothersome to me than the underlying economy of it.