The majority of people on LinkedIn aren't posting and interacting with things all day.
To be honest, most people I know consider being highly active (posting) on LinkedIn to be a potential warning sign for a hire, because it's associated with people who will spend more time hustling on LinkedIn for their next job than working for your company.
Personally, I've had better luck finding jobs in other ways (searching companies websites, using more old-school platforms like Indeed), compared to LinkedIn.
- publicly hosting a resume in an "industry standard" format that can easily be shared
- playing queens each day
linkedin is bad at:
- being a social media platform
- accurately capturing real-world relationships/networks/skill assesements
- everything else
In a general sense I'd love to hear about what people do, see where people I've worked with ... work and do now. LinkedIn should be the place I can do that right? And yet LinkedIn feels like such an artificial place that I would want nothing to do with the most active people posting as far as working with them.
A guy claiming he vibe coded "30 startups" in a weekend (yes, 30—with some becoming instantly profitable/revenue generating) and then went on to shame actual developers as being "cooked" and "over" if they were taking their time to build something.
Did he have any evidence or links to these 30 apps? Of course not. But that didn't stop him from lying and peacocking about it on LinkedIn.
This is what scares me the most about social media. We've lost all sense of judgment of what makes someone a professional or expert and have delegated that to likes, comments, and subscribes. Everything is just a "hype" game now, and real honesty and truth are given a "eh, have anything that can entertain me?"
Well you see, everybody is equal, especially in the age of AI which is the great cognitive equalizer (in the same way gunpowder and firearms equalized one's capacity for violence). There is no such thing as individual expertise now; expertise is soon to become the exclusive domain of AI.
So yes, in the future, the only thing that will matter is hype, marketing, and how good of an "ideas guy" you are. Surface appearances don't need to have anything real underneath - that can just be synthesized and backfilled as needed, on demand, by the AI.
That is right, and it's a terrible shame because society has been built upon the uniqueness of individuals. The loss of that will be a very bit psychological hit to human beings and make life seem much more meaningless. Because in reality, it's demeaning to be an orchestrator of AI, and after the novelty of it wears off we will all be just pulling levers, having lost the uniqueness of our culture and spirit.
Haven't used FB in years, mail looks legit, I get kinda curious. I tap it, and am immediately logged in, in DDG browser (which has 0 cookies when closing)!
To top it off, she didn't mention me, she mentioned some #tag on some stupid lottery for a van.
It's so disrespectful. So dirty. I know they don't give a * about me, but do they have to put it on so thick?
Perhaps social media companies are not interested in anyone who wants to manage their feed or is looking for somethings specific, they want to point their product AT you, not have you use it.
It is so pathetic how they beg and wheedle and connive to get you to engage. I’ve honestly lost all respect for that site at this point.
Expect more trash from them since it worked once.
Clicking "forgot password" typically sends you an email prompting to set a new one; this is similar, in a sense.
I mean, that's how it works for most websites. I think I have 2FA turned on for FB, but honestly the phone system is way less secure than email at Google/Microsoft.
When it comes to the security implications, consider that email has long been a "single point of failure" for a lot of services in the form of the "forgot password" feature that emails you a link to reset your password.
When I'm talking to non-tech people in my life about how best to protect themselves, I usually tell them to think about priorities and disaster scenarios. What would suck the most if it got hacked? The two that are usually at the top of the list for pretty much everyone are email and online banking. Others might include Amazon accounts (hackers can order themselves gift cards with your CC if compromised etc.) Prioritize securing those with a strong password + MFA. The rest is case by case but make sure to use a password manager so you're not reusing passwords.
Google is comparable, but it's too risky for them to have so many magic links hanging around in customer inboxes, because Google identities tend to be tied to far more sensitive 3rd party applications. Which is not to say that there are no sensitive applications with "Login with Facebook", but I'll argue there are fewer.
Edit: I just found I didn't set up 2fa. I wonder, if I had, would they still do this? Then it would have just blatantly ignored my second factor...
You will be asked to authenticate if you try to do anything.
Can still log in as often as I want into clean browser sessions. Even when I log out, clean the session, tapping the url logs me in again.
And every time FB sends me an email: "Someone logged in from some location, was it you?"
It's scummy and terribly insecure to pass around someone else's credentials via email.
It's a lie to get him onto the site and to start scrolling. In that context, skipping the login is pretty dirty.
The ethos in tech seems to be a simplistic toddler-like mindset for "more for more's sake" that doesn't care about others' agency.
I’m noticing more people taking stock of what’s actually important to them and taking a stand on their values. This is good in the long run, but in the immediate it results in a lot of binary/black-and-white decision-making that results in dustups and conflicts between groups who would normally be allied behind common goals.
All of this is to say that I expect we’ll see many, many, many more of these types of posts in the future, as everyone remembers they can choose to shape their engagement with technology, and that naturally includes the right to disconnect from it - not out of any sort of anti-technology position itself, necessarily, but simply from realizing that a specific thing isn’t something they need or are interested in, and that’s okay.
Props to the author for being so clear about their engagement with social media, their background, and their thought process. If it encourages more folks to reassess their own relationship with social media (or any technology), I’m all for it.
People have lost agency to the degree that they're looking to the very tech that stole their agency for answers, and I view that a sign that perhaps the push-back is actually beginning in earnest.
So yeah, I have a smartphone, but I barely use it compared to how I used to use it even 5 years ago. By unplugging, I've found myself way more productive. I'm reading two or three books a month now. Its an amazing feeling knowing you can drive what you want to do instead of having social media driving your life, manipulating you into using it more and more and not feeling like you're in control.
I've essentially logged off and I really don't miss it. I feel like I can't be the only one.
You're not, but you're also not the majority. I'm continually surprised that people are still on Facebook. I get why they use Facebook Messenger, or Facebook Marketplace, but the actual Facebook "news" feed? Have you seen that, it's ads or ads disguised as content... How the hell that thing isn't dead i beyond me.
You might not be seeing it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/science/back-land-mo...
HN is big enough now imo that it's worth starting to tag users so you can know where they're coming from.
In three decades computing went from a toy of the rich and tools of the biggest businesses to a “necessity” of the everyman, but without any formal training on usage, value, or feedback on boundaries. Thirty years to go from only nation states being able to effectively surveil people at scale, to any tech company with a magic pixel being able to gather far more and accurate data than anyone prior could hope to.
This has been a gargantuan shift in civilization in an impossibly short amount of time, and we’re only really just now agreeing that there’s some growing pains that need sorting out. Maybe most businesses don’t need cloud-based services for everything, maybe most humans don’t actually need public social media, and maybe some of the stuff we take for granted as necessary today are actually quite worthless to most people/entities.
Viewed through that lens, I also see the desperation of the AI movement to continue accelerating “advancement” forward, before more people start asking the same questions regarding necessity and importance of existing tools and technologies. Once people start questioning the utility of a purchase, they’re less likely to spend money on it - and there goes your business.
I remember what these social media platforms used to be like. They didn't consume my entire life because I was just checking in on my friends. I looked at my screen time recently and decided enough was enough, and deleted everything. Now I only look at my phone if I have an actual reason to. I don't think I'm the only person this is going to happen to.
Just delete your accounts. Trust me you’ll feel much better. If your usage is truly basically zero there is no need to keep having an account. Break it off completely.
What if, instead of berating people for using social media, we discussed how we might build a healthier alternative?
Totally for that. We really need it.-
Now that I’m expressing judgement, I stand by my judgements.
You’re free to disagree, hop on and Tweet a picture of it or whatever, but you should at least have respect enough for yourself to acknowledge that in matters such as this others can have genuine differences of opinion and be dogmatic about them, and have thought through such matters at least as much or maybe more than you yourself have.
> [You] should at least have respect enough for yourself to acknowledge that in matters such as this others can have genuine differences of opinion...
Physician, heal thyself.
> Physician, heal thyself.
What opinion did you provide? As far as I can tell you started with this whole nonsense about judging others. Did you lose track of the conversation or do quips like this make you feel good about yourself?
See what social media is doing to you?
> See what social media is doing to you?
I can see that you imagine I'm in some kind of torment nexus, but again, you're bringing your biases and preconceptions into this discussion and not listening to what people are saying, so you end up boxing shadows.
Though my general statement I think still stands regarding Blue Sky. That’s another damn cesspool.
> I can see that you imagine I'm in some kind of torment nexus, but again, you're bringing your biases and preconceptions into this discussion and not listening to what people are saying, so you end up boxing shadows
Hmm I must be imaging the comments you wrote calling me these things then.
Ok I admit it - even I have found a use for social media. To pointlessly argue with folks!
I can tell you this works because I do it. You’re not missing anything. If you don’t communicate much because of distance either the relationship isn’t that important - so you’re lying to yourself about it, or you should move and live closer together.
Things that work for you might not work for others. Communication and connection is a need, not a vice.
The idea that you can tell them that their relationships aren't important is so chauvinistic and inappropriate. You ought to take a step back and reflect before commenting further, that's out of line.
> The idea that you can tell them that their relationships aren't important is so chauvinistic and inappropriate. You ought to take a step back and reflect before commenting further, that's out of line.
Save this stuff for someone who cares because it’s not me.
I'll refrain from criticizing you for being a chauvinist if you agree to take that behavior someplace else, because it's not for this community. Save that for some toxic no-holds-barred social media. Maybe think on whether your actions are contributing to the social media environment you decry.
No thanks. You don’t get to define what is toxic behavior nor do you speak for this community or others.
Also, grab a dictionary. Your usage of chauvinist here is incorrect.
> There is no evidence their curiosity is ingenuine, that's your image of them but it doesn't have a basis in reality.
They already said they need information about events to have something to talk about. That’s not how conversations work, nor is it how you establish new friendships or build and maintain existing relationships.
> It's based in your biases and preconceptions about social media.
Well they are biases (yours is showing) but they’re not preconceptions, they are just conceptions.
I'm not attacking you, I'm giving you feedback. I'm being as neutral and uninsulting as I can be.
> If someone was being a chauvinist to me I would want someone to say something.
On the flip side you’re being condescending toward others, “giving feedback”? C’mon. You know it’s good practice to not give advice to those who don’t ask for it, right?
(I would also point out that this thread started because you were offering unsolicited advice about using social media. I could be wrong but it seems to me like you think it's appropriate to offer someone advice unsolicited if you have a perspective that's able to see through their "excuses".)
This was the closest definition to my usage I found (American Heritage #4):
Exaggerated and unreasoning partisanship to any group or cause.
I can see how it comes off condescending, and I apologize for it. There's a paternalistic element to telling someone they've done something inappropriate, and that should be reduced as much as possible, but I don't think it can stop us from saying something altogether.
Maybe you should ask yourself why you’re so upset that someone says to delete it? Does it cut too close to the truth?
Also, Blue Sky generally sucks. It’s another awful echo chamber.
You know that buying a domain and setting up a few pages is something you can hire someone to do for you, right? And that it's a thing people often do if they want to engage in public relations, such as if they had a book coming out that they want people to buy.
And yet the vast majority of the population doesn't do it, because they don't need it when they're perfectly happy with mainstream social media, which is the point.
Most people work, but most people aren't a programmer/barber/chef/construction worker/farmer/etc. Most people listen to music, but most people don't actively listen to <insert any artist below top 100 or so>. Most people use some form of computer daily/weekly, but most people aren't visiting reddit every day, or HN, or a specific youtube channel. Most people aren't a small business owner, but small business owners aren't a niche thing, they are a cornerstone part of the economy.
Add all of these "not mainstream" activity participating people together, and suddenly you have most of the population.
Bonus points if it doesn't have an app and is only a website.
If you want actual meaningful social interactions online, it needs to be small-scale and completely useless for advertisers. Group chats are that.
Myspace or early Facebook is closer to what I'd want.
I do think there’s an opening for a “landing page” of sorts where invited persons can easily share photos and updates with one another (I’ve seen it in the Enterprise repeatedly, though it never gains traction) like the 2010-era Facebook you describe, but it’d have to be something you (or someone in your circles) hosts for everyone if you want the privacy and utility without the ads, spam, and miscreants.
Self-hosting is a non-starter but a service that charges a reasonable subscription fee could avoid the ads and dark patterns.
A non-profit model like Wikipedia plus low cost subscription would be ideal.
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/adversarial-interopera...
You want an AI to sift though endless piles of crap, just to find the few specks of gold. Why not stop mixing your gold into the dung heap before consuming it?
I am using old nokia phone for 3 months now, I am not going back to my iphone. (means no whatsapp, banking, uber, reddit, hn, whatever)
It took almost 1 week to get rid of the cravings "I am slightly bored, I *MUST* look at my phone"
Now, I am just bored, I had forgotten how nice it is to be bored, I just stare at things, poke something with a stick, look for patterns, ask questions, have ideas.. etc; when I have a meeting and the other person doesn't show up on time, I just watch the world and wait.
I also noticed I can watch movies properly, I have more patience, I dont look at my phone at the first "less exciting" moment. It is really nice especially for things like Star Trek where they have not algorithmically optimized every frame to keep you engaged because they were not competing with instagram for your attention.
I even bought a walkman. When the song is not very good, I just wait it out. Very quickly I got my sense of time back, just after few days I can measure time in 'songs' or 'cassette sides'.
I have also blocked all socials except hn on my local pihole.
If you survive the first week of cravings after that it gets nicer every day!
Some people say I am doing those things because of "nostalgia" but this is incorrect, I just want to be able to be bored.
> I also noticed I can watch movies properly, I have more patience, I dont look at my phone at the first "less exciting" moment.
I’ve started leaving my phone in the bedroom when I’m playing games or watching movies in the Living Room. It’s a PITA to extract myself from the sofa to retrieve it, and I find myself far more engrossed leaving it physically in a different space. The eventual goal is to have a designated “phone drop” for folks to drop the device on to charge that’s far away from living and sleeping areas, to further break that habit.
> I even bought a walkman.
Same! I turn off WiFi except for OS updates (it’s one of Sony’s new Android-based Walkmans), and have no streaming apps on it. It’s just my microSD card of music from my NAS, and it’s blissful. I need to use it more, but writing synchronization scripts has been a PITA.
> I just want to be able to be bored.
I’ll confess to using an “herbal” crutch for this of late, because of (diagnosed) OCD making it impossible to pause or stop on my own in most cases. Combined with an outdoor walk, I’ve developed a newfound appreciation for just laying on a bench and watching the clouds and planes go by in the sky, or watching cars on the highway. It’s helped me appreciate humanity more, forcing myself into a sort of bored observation of others instead of constantly rehearsing new work tasks, new project ideas, or new contingency plans.
More people need to be bored.
I also have severe ocd, maybe I should try the herb
PS: I am on call for 25 years, so far I have no issues because of no smartphone, opsgenie just calls me and then I get my laptop few minutes later
Edit: but if you have actual OCD as you say below, that puts a different slant on things.
I am using 'bored' quite loosely, I mean allow yourself to not be constantly engaged, the content creators, the algorithms, the advertisers all are trying to keep me at this extreme state so that I could be sold. The bar is really high, in order to be patient I had to re-learn how to not be engaged all the time. Some times I think of nothing, but most of the time I am having fun with stuff either real or not.
PS: yea I do have ocd, my bored or patient probably mean different things to other people
Great point, this.-
It also probably was pretty good advice until ~3 years ago.
Sometimes Facebook et al feel like a complete ghost town, with algorithmic content completely overwhelming any engagement from friends or acquaintances.
Mine is mostly one old friend posting about politics (and like, I agree with his politics but the stuff reposted on social media is hit by the dumb-viral filter and becomes unbearable even if you agree with it).
For the rest of the day I couldn't stop thinking about it, had high levels of anxiety for a few hours. I told all my friends I'm switching off for a bit on the socials. Mastodon and signal for a bit.
Edit: Just thinking about this happening yesterday puts me into a high state of anxiety.. Its absolutely bllsht these companies can effect us in this way.
Second Edit: Its my choice to expose myself knowingly, not entirely blaming meta. And I'm not going to anymore, but this is a more common experience than usual since Zuck got a chain and Tall-T
1. More cancer cases being recognized efficiently.
2. More bombardment of cancer cases news through diverse outlets.
3. Social media refreshing our minds with same cancer cases, even 4-5 year old ones.
4. The same news circulating through offline interactions.
This gives us insecurity that a particular disease is out of control. I think there was a Lesswrong post about this phenomenon.
How humans adapt remains to be seen, it seems like a lot of (young) people adapt by shoving the barrel of a gun in their... Maybe they would have done that anyways idk.
I'd be one of the last people to defend Instagram/Meta/Zuck, but is that really your takeaway from this? Execution videos are absolutely against Instagram's TOS and I'm sure they want it on their platform even less than you.
If anything, Instagram's issue is they're too heavy on the robo-censorship. My friend posted a photo of him standing on one leg with a chair in his hands, making a goofy face, with the caption "I'm gonna hit you with this chair!" directed at no one in particular, and it was taken down for, quote: "encouraging violence and leading to risk of physical harm, or a direct threat to public safety." Appeal was rejected too, and the post had to be deleted.
This happens because they're trying to moderate against people posting execution videos. One slipped through the cracks seemingly, but it's not like they don't put a lot of effort into preventing that. It's pretty hard to do at Meta's scale where most of the earth's population is using their platforms.
Hardly a comforting statement to someone who just watched one of these videos served algorithmically to them on a very, very mature platform.
The point is that these short-form videos deliver no actual value to those consuming them but come with plenty of mental health downsides. (Literal PTSD, for starters.)
The only way to win is not to play!
I think growing up online alongside websites like Rotten and LiveLeak from a young age pretty much desensitized me to being bothered by such types of videos or images. The late 90s and early 00s internet was wild.
If anything, I find mainstream news to be worse. They don't show the act of murder itself, but they are definitely going to show you a bunch of scenes and let your imagination fill the gaps. They constantly tell you how ugly the world is and how it is becoming worse. It is all war, natural disasters, climate crisis, overpopulation (or is it underpopulation), toxic chemicals, etc... Yes, these are real problems, but these are problems we solve. Wars end, natural disasters are better predicted and mitigated, we are using more and more renewable energies, it turns out that population self-regulates, toxic chemicals get banned and replacements are found, etc... It seems we are breeding a whole generation of people who think we are doomed instead of seeing all these things as obstacles to overcome.
Overall, I find social media more positive than mainstream news. I dislike how they turn our brains into mush, but we get more cute girls dancing and less massacres in Gaza.
May I suggest this minor hygienic practice ?
When you wake up in the morning, immediately go on a walk.
Just 5 minutes. Walk around the block. Whatever.
The first thing your eyes see in the morning should not be print/screen and the first thing your body does should not be sitting.
Remember that (old?) internet 'meme' (concept, more like it) that was something like "can't unsee this"? Yeah, that.
There's all sorts of "infohazards" (written and visual) that one has to avoid today, largely a product of the social media landscape.
I've heard such practices and attempts at curation as psycho-social security (or something like that); the process of deliberate avoidance of certain "content" and attempts/diligence when interacting with these various platforms and landscapes to avoid such things. It actually does take a concerted effort now to avoid being exposed to "content" like you described, as addiction and "habit" of "scrolling" is in some ways more natural than not, now. Strange time to be alive.
She's saying "I'm done trying to use social media for commercial purposes".
But that's more than just abandoning it for business reasons.
It's clear we've pretty much completely lost the spirit of the hacker ethos to Silicon Valley.
A conformist does exactly what the public does, and a contrarian does exactly what the public doesn't do.
Either way the public decides.
If you independently decide that you don't like social media, then that's not being a contrarian. Just as independently deciding that you do want to engage in social media doesn't make you a conformist.
How do LLM's assist us in this regard? It creates more content, but it's not even made by anyone, whilst guzzling up resources that we actually need (this applies to physical things like water as well as our own attention/time).
It feels like technology gets put out to the world and then humanity gets dragged "forward" by it, when there's nothing inherently wrong with resisting change if the current evidence points towards further problems.
Ten to fifteen years later and the rent has been increasing by huge amounts every year on that apartment, our maintenance requests go unanswered, and the neighborhood outside has gone downhill. Meanwhile, the same property management company is trying to get us to sign a perpetual lease in their new building just down the block. Is it really a surprise why people aren't jumping at that the opportunity?
TikTok has changed the way people communicate and interact more than Twitter or Instagram ever did. I agree that not all things have gotten better and some have gotten worse, but it’s mostly just that the world has changed and it’s required a lot of adaptation. The same could have been said 20 years ago too.
This. I watch youtube through my RSS feed. The videos actually loads instantly, without their BS loading times if you load it on their page (in FF with adblock). I can set up rules in my RSS feed to filter out previews/trailers from channels I follow. I can sort my YT channels into categories (music, sports, etc). It's actually usable, and the controls are in my hand.
More people needs to use RSS feeds. Don't let algorithms dictate your life. Youtube engineers are the worst.
The best one to delete was definitely reddit. It’s too easy to doomscroll. It’s such a time sink, and being hyper-aware of everything that’s going on nowadays just made me anxious all the time.
HN hasn’t proven to be much of an issue for me. I guess it’s just less active, so I run out of new content faster whenever I visit.
- No mobile apps
- 10 min/day time limit on web
- Only browse 6 subreddits individually
- Filtering all posts below a certain karma level (depending on the subreddit)
- Collapsing all comments by default
This has completely changed my relationship with the platform for the better. I would quit it entirely, but unfortunately it's the best news source for a few of my hobbies.
This isn't a "I'm so smart I saw the writing on the wall" thing it's entirely that I'm not hugely social anyway and social media is a weak reflection of been actually social.
Same with doom scrolling, it just doesn't seem to take with me.
For me the (bad) usage patterns are very similar between here and there.
I read things and I think: "I have an experience I want to relate!" But I am trying to take a breath more and realize people aren't really that interested in my opinion. I am trying to be at peace with that in general.
Made my own site instead: https://photos.dombarker.co.uk/
Gets about 1 visit a week from google. And thats ok.
Would you consider adding an RSS feed to your website to help people keep up with it?
But I think I learned that being candid about yourself on the internet is a mistake. I have no idea why the fuck it would be a good idea to be upfront about my mental health history; who the hell knows how many jobs I've been declined for where they were smart enough to not say that that's why they were declining me.
I had already deleted most of my social media, the only ones I use regularly are Hacker News and the aforementioned blog [1], and I think I should probably just stop mentioning anything that isn't purely technical on either of them.
[1] Not really social media, but it is a public-facing thing with my name on it.
I'm not sure if I want to do it, because this is a relatively small company, it would be very clearly me who reported them, and the leader of this company is sort of a known sociopath who would probably not be above blackballing me and making it very hard for me to be employed.
It's a little depressing, because I wrote that blog post so that I people searching for how certain medications affect them could know what they were in for, I didn't think it would be weaponized against me, but I guess that was a little naive on my end.
I don't want to say the person's name in fear of getting a letter from an attorney, but this person is connected enough to where I am hesitant to do anything.
Me: "Do you use social media?"
Them: "NO! Social media is so toxic!"
Me: "You mentioned earlier that you are trying to get a job in X field, correct?"
Them: "Yes, that's true"
Me: "Have you found the relevant sub-Reddit, part of Twitter etc where people in that field hang out and/or share ideas?"
Them: "Well, no."
Me: "So how about this: first find the online place where those people hang out. Second, why don't you write up a blog post or summary of something you've done in the field and post it there. If you haven't done something IN the field, then maybe talk about how you learned about the field or what you find interesting about it etc. Then post that in the sub-Reddit etc."
<few weeks go by>
Them: "I followed your advice and someone from a firm in the field I'm interested saw it, read it, commented on it and reached about having a conversation."
Me: "Excellent! I always say that the lifetime marginal benefit of going from zero to one social media post about you describing/writing about your preferred industry is ENORMOUS"
(We usually move on to another topic with the mentee after this)
Prior to social media, the only way you could do this was to do one of the following:
- go to college in that field
- hangout, physically, where the folks you wanted to interact with were
- physically send letters to people with your article/summary idea
- etc
I feel like a lot of folks forget this and are blinded by the downsides of social media (which, to be fair, there are many)
Add to this the addictive way Social Media engineers their sites to keep people swiping rather than interacting with real people and you have a product which may be more net negative than positive.
I wish there were more instances of Social Media operating in the way you describe. That was the dream...
There's also nothing wrong with this! The more and more interactions we move online, the more purely transactional they become and we miss out on a lot of connection with our fellow humans, which have a multitude of benefits other than just professional networking.
The other problem with social media is your choice is removed from you. I run a photography business as a side hustle, and without social media, it would have never gotten off the ground and if I want it to continue I'm required to basically not only be good at the photography aspect, but to be good at social media and having that social media persona.
It's draining, and extremely damaging for one's mental health and if you run a small business chances are you just don't have a choice, you have to do it or you don't get to exist (up to a certain point until word of mouth can carry you, but even then not having a social media presence is a red flag for many).
Social media itself doesn't need to be bad, or harmful, but that would require getting rid of algorithmic feeds, and to stop rewarding engagement, which will solve the "influencer" problem. I'd also go as far to say that social media shouldn't be the end game, but a tool that eventually leads to a real, physical connection/in person event. Social media should augment those communities, but not be the entirety of the community.
Currently its infestation of for-profit content that got even worse with generative AI and curated through for-profit algorithms that drain our life for attention.
However, if you pay close attention to the non-advertiser friendly content and content that AI refuses to generate(which is mostly extremist left and right BS), you will see that there's a sustainable path for content that is not discovered and created the way it is now.
Yes, currently the only organic content is the extremist content. Yes, those de-platformed people actually didn't go away. They create authentic high quality Bull Shit, have audience that care and they are doing just fine. Which makes me believe that there must be a way for non-crazy, non-racist, non-extremist people for once again have authentic high quality content.
Interestingly, when Erdogan of Turkey cornered the mainstream media and deplatformed the non-complying journalists those journalists also adopted new ways. For many years, the advertisement on those channels were laughing stock. It was mostly hair removal cream and ideology oriented books but they survived anyway and the Erdogan acquired media lost steam as it wasn't authentic anymore and those small channels and social media platforms became mainstream. To the point that he is now once again trying to destroy them as his media is no good to push his narrative.
So yes, content is king and nature finds its way.
You aren't going to find them because Google does not care about discovery they care about ads.
Webrings are one trick to find your people, but it's hard and most webrings don't point to "gathering spots."
I frequently post to two very small, hobby-specific phpBB forums with old-internet-style communities that I found by googling the hobby. The forums themselves were listed at the top of Google's results when looking for the broader hobby, and I regularly find specific posts in Google results when searching for very specific subject matter.
Not quite. As McLuhan said, the medium is the message. Once you get a new medium, it changes how people think and behave. Television changed how people treated entertainment forever, cars changed how transportation worked forever (I'm sure the horse industry hoped history was cyclical), etc, etc.
Even within the realm of social media itself, we saw successive irreversible stages. Text content gave way to images and memes which gave way to videos which finally gave way to short term video content. They are all competing in a Darwinian struggle in the attention economy, and once they gain traction, they change how people use their devices completely.
Social Media is fast food. The masses will consume it to their death...
The rest of the population is bifurcating. The only people who will remain on Social Media will be poor, uneducated and the stupid. Not that different than the people who eat fast food, often.
You can do this through email. But a personal website is a bit more interesting and preserves some privacy for the audience. Hosting your own site is beyond the abilities of most people, so it makes sense to have some easy hosting solution. A social media service is a fantastic idea.
Doom scrolling through Tiktok is not social.
Most people do not use "social media" services strictly as social media services. They use them as news services, music streaming services, etc. And most "social media" services encourage this and make it difficult to use their sites for social media.
A decent social media provider, like a decent email provider or hosting provider would have to charge money for their service. I don't know how many people would want such a service nor how many people would be willing to pay for it.
They would have done better and would have resented it less if they had just owned it and not worried as much. They would have become more comfortable on camera as a result. You first attempts at this are going to be rubbish anyway.
So it better to just put stuff out there and iterate. All the big mistakes have been made by others and if you avoid those you will be fine.
When I first started doing YouTube vids. I was determined I should be like some big coding channel. I didn't have the video editing skills, nor really knew enough OBS to do it effectively. So I was stressing about it. My videos did pretty decently (I had less than 50 subs and I had 1200 views on one of my videos).
Now I am doing as if it is a hobby that I will hopefully turn into something more and I am enjoying it a lot more. I get decent engagement / views for my channel considering the size (200-1000 views per vid) when you have less than 500 subs is decent IMO. As I get better with the OBS/Kdenlive/Resolve I am sure I will have more fun editing.
There's a beach in Northeastern Brazil called Maragogi. The water is calm and warm, and you can easily see schools of fish passing through your legs in many points. "Brazilian Caribbean" is its moniker, but if you ask me, the Caribbean should be called the "Central American Maragogi".
Anyway, I rented a small apartment there for a while, and this one morning I observed this couple acting quite strangely. The young lady was repeating some movements -- none of them naughty. She was going in and out of the sea, splashing theatrically through the surf. Then I noticed the man of the couple: he was chasing after her maybe 4 or 5m away, holding and looking at the phone all the time. I went about my morning, walked a bunch, enjoyed the water, and started back after a couple of hours - the Sun gets dangerously strong around noon. The couple was still at the same spot, tirelessly repeating the same sad, pathetic choreography, again and again.
I still can't understand those people. What a miserable existence we've built for ourselves.
gives.
a.
shit.
> If all of this — a non-famous writer with a podcast deciding she's replacing Instagram with blogging — feels too inconsequential to write 4,500 words about, then you're not alone. I think so too, but I also couldn't not write this.
Crazy that she gets it but doesn't get it at the same time.
It's a long ass post about how fake those people are and how fake you yourself become once you start creating that content.
Wishing the best of luck for the journey.
This was a refreshing exception among all those "enough, I quit social media". OTOH, here I am still surprised how many people find it fulfilling to either be a performing monkey in this palm-sized vertical cage, or the opposite, why is it so fulfilling to watch those monkeys hours long, daily. "monkey" sounds harsh, I know, but in reality, these performers are barely more than just copying, mirroring other ones, with possibly more followers.
What a time to be alive in.
The OP was never going to succeed in her efforts there.
He says in a post on social media website.
Get your song featured on curated Spotify lists or Instagram/TikTok accounts that review books of a specific genre, or get a guest spot on a podcast about your topic.
This is like the old way of marketing. In the old days, you’d apply to talk at writing conventions, table, do book tours at stores, go to relevant events locally, and partner with libraries locally. To follow the song analogy, musicians used to send songs to DJs and radio hosts. Maybe your at a college radio level, or local broadcasting. Find your stations, build up your reputation.
In the end of the day, people have found their networks and communities. You should try to enter them and be a part of those communities rather than build one up for yourself.
The author has this insite when she describes most of her following is through some form of word of mouth. This social media era is the same, except some of the word of mouth is direct (DMs, IRL conversations) and others are through communities.
In an era of everything being algorithmically served to you, I’m impressed by how often personal recommendations weigh far heavier for people. A good example I’ve seen is restaurants. Sure, I might Google or Yelp, but if someone I know has similar taste recommends a place, I’ll give it a shot. It doesn’t need to be someone I know IRL or virtual, it’s just a person who shares the same interests.
I think this works well if you’re trying to promote something real, like what this author is doing. I have no solution for personal content.
It's deeply uncertain, even unlikely, that this will work because users crave engagement, feeling like their involved, and this "shape" of social media is more akin to legacy TV and print media which is "fire and forget". But still, I think it's an experiment worth doing.
its just that for whatever reason, we've invested the lives of many of our best minds into pulling you into the unhealthy ways, as they make the line go up.
Personal plug:
Wait what? Is this true? Can anyone familiar with the journalism field chime in here? Because if this is true then it would explain the general deterioration of the media environment we live in.
Hell sometimes I listen to NPR while driving and I here the jounralists talk about random reddit comments and I feel perturbed that browsing reddit would be considered journalism. But being on social media all the time is considered journalism apparently?
Remember the countless thinkpieces about the wisdom of crowds? Conceivably, social media crowds could somehow solve all sorts of really hard problems because in the mass of people conversing we'd be able to amplify voices who weren't being heard and get harder problems solved.
The truth of it is social media is a massively multiplayer video game where the goal is to build a following through posts, replies, and various social metrics.
This reframing situates it correctly for me: should I play video games for 4 hours straight everyday? Maybe not if I want to feel balanced as an individual. Should I let randos from a video game tell me I should be putting more time in? Absolutely not: they are still randos, regardless of how many Internet Points they have. Do I want their level of brainrot? No, thus I should I always be mindful of the effects on me.
It also makes exceedingly clear that social media should never be confused with whatever your quality work is that needs to get done. It is not a substitute for actually doing things. It offers a pale shadow of communication, friendship, and action. People should want more than the lousy facsimiles that it provides.
I currently 'go hard' on tiktok, because I've recently been collecting tons of footage of mobility networks via drone and 360 camera (mostly while I ride my scooter/small motorcycle around)
the tiktok editor is pretty good for that purpose, and then I bring some clips back to my blog.
For instance, https://josh.works/traffic-bean has text, links to some substacks I wrote, a youtube video embed (drone footage) and tiktok embeds (insta360 footage).
It does the trick.
But everything that isn't on my website I count as ephemeral, discard, creative detritus that I create lots of so I can occasionally get the good bits.
I love having my website. I can write whatever I want. I can write about grief, or supremacy, or ruby, or american road networks, and I have a list of subscribers (~300) via email that I can talk to directly.
I love to see other people's blogs. It's so much more interesting to me than an instagram or tik tok or whatever.
:)
Big tech algorithms are filled with absolute dog shit. What were previously information discovery algorithms have been replaced by, basically dog shit.
I have gave up on Facebook, Twitter, and most recently LinkedIn as a millennial. All I see is fantastical nonsense and spam. The rate it's going, if you want to reach someone over 40 in the UK, try Ceefax.
I think there are a lot of reasons for this trend:
* People are becoming increasing distrustful of platforms and there owners.
* The platform algos push a lot of noise and inflammatory content for engagement, something that users are getting fatigue from.
* On the creator side, the professional producers of social media will find it increasingly difficult to monetize from their platforms. In fact, I think the platforms will eventually realize how much power they have over their popular creators and charge the creators in order to have full access to their audiences.
* Additionally on the creator side, they can be banned at any moment with little or no recourse. Imagine being a professional creator on instagram, and one day you are banned for no reason. You lose total access to your following.
So I think the attention will slowly shift away from the platforms, which increasingly just serve as a parasitic middle men, back to creators + their followers (newsletters, blogs, private chat, websites with owned domains, etc).
[1] Whatever people tend to post on social media, whether its images, text, audio, or video.
[2] Blogs, websites, email, owned domains, etc.
I don't understand how you can get eyes on your blog without social media, and with how Google works nowadays, unless you are a celebrity.
metabagel•6h ago
Absolutely
raincole•6h ago
Then I realized that pretending to be witty on HN is a skillset that completely distinct from being someone who writes software as well.
legacynl•5h ago
duxup•6h ago
I've met some folks, even taken classes from some people who are involved with some important frameworks and so on, all great experiences ... and yet their social media posts about coding are just pithy garbage, even when they try to say something important.
At times the profession and social media posts straight up seem at odds where I think "I get why this limited number of words plays well on social media, but it's not correct... and I think it even indicted the opposite of what the words originally meant."
Social media doesn't really make for a good communication channel for anything except social media.