I'm out. I gave up. Purged FB, Twitter, Insta, Snapchat, fuck it all.

So I see. Did a good job of it too - no photos, no posts, etc

LinkedIn's there doing the "So you're saying there's a chance.. " Jim Carry meme.

You waiting for someone to call you out like what happened with Azis Ansari?

I just realised that participating in those machine-learning-powered "engagement-optimised" networks wasn't a net positive in my life. Had some fun interactions with lots of people. But the cost in time and aggravation and loss of privacy was just too high. I'm out.

The power of "Like" compels you!

I dropped Fb in 2013 I think? Re-activated in 2016, just to reconnect with some people, otherwise I minimally engage with it. I pretty much only engage with this forum and Reddit. And InstaG, but mostly for Lead's dog Butters. I guess YT counts as well, but for some reason it thinks I love Norm MacDonald, so somehow I've successfully masked myself from its AI.

The weirdest thing is IM becoming the norm just as I drop it in favour of more face-to-face engagement.

Joel spolsky explained my decision after I made it:

https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2018/...rdcage-liners/

I have no idea why you posted this in the Labour thread, but alas - I have to say that the recent FB algorithm change to the feed, so far, seems to be better. I'm seeing more stuff from actual people and less just, crap. I still treat everything on there with a grain of salt ("Look at this beach I'm at hahah... just ignore the fact I had to sit in 2 hours of shitty warkworth traffic and i hate my job and really I hate my life, but lOOOOK") - but it does seem a little better.

(forked)

Really? If you had followed the flow of the discussion I think you might have had some idea... Is obsessively sticking to the thread subject of higher value than ongoing discussion?

Stay away from the crap and you shouldn't have a problem being steered towards it? I've had to unfollow only a couple of people, aside from that my social media is all family, friends and electronics/computers

1) I know I'm slowly turning into a grumpy old man when I talk about the anonymity of the early internet - you wouldn't dare use your real name, or discuss anything about your personal life. These days it's a barrier to entry. If you don't share your full name, the city you life in, your cats name, your mothers maiden name, all at the door - you're not allowed in.
The issue now is that so many online services use facebook as an avenue for access. Sign up for yet another lot of credentials, or just click the facebook api button and give big blue yet another big data source.
I would hate to think how much content is out there with my real identity attached to it, even with me actively avoiding it most of the time.

2) The machine learning based curation has got out of hand in social media, to the point where i never see a viewpoint that differs my own, and my online persona is in this bubble where only similar views and interests get through. I can't google for "weddings" without the top matches being about Auckland based wedding photographers. Sometimes it's handy, for sure, but it's a delicate balance. On a more global scale I'd see this as way worse than people give it credit for, it'll have everyone double down on their values as the reinforcement comes in droves, rather than expose them to alternatives. Get an anti-vaxxer to google for vaccinations and see what comes up. Nothing good I bet.

youre doing the internet correct, my friend. all i use insta for is looking at pictures of cute puppers.

Wasn't that the main finding after the US election as well.
Basically everyone just saw things that agreed to there POV.

All "agreement bubble" and privacy concerns aside, I strongly suspect that my use of social media was making me worse at reading. I think I was getting conditioned to only being able to absorb information in "post"-sized snippets. I was starting to struggle with maintaining focus for the time required to read books and long-form articles. Reading is one of most important things in my life and the possibility that my brain was changing to prevent me from doing it for extended periods really scared the shit out of me.

Killed FB without regret.

Now my issue is feedly / my-choice-of-news sources - feels just as high-calorie. I'm currently digital detoxing with a lock-app app. Anytime I feel the need to pick the phone up I just lock it down for a couple of hours. Then checking the limited daily device use on the thing gives me the happys.

I have this issue at the moment, not sure why it wasn't a concern earlier.

I've definitely been spared that problem, although I still buy more books than I have the time/motivation to read.

Twitter for jokes and real time weather/traffic/some news; I mute/un-follow/ignore anything like the #metoo stuff.
Facebook for memes
Insta for following interests based on my hobbies
FB messenger for organising friends and keeping in touch with family

Found this over the weekend.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...ign=pockethits

Read the first two paragraphs, started scrolling looking for hot topics, realized the irony, scrolled back up and started again.

I find part of the problem is that with the surfeit of content, finding something in long form that genuinely interests me enough to commit to is hard.

If you hadn't been trained to need instant gratification, you'd be able to read entire chapters before deciding whether or not the work was interesting enough to commit to.

TL:DR version plz?

Welcome to the grandparent thread where the oldies don't understand the youth of today. lololololol! :P

I've gone through a purge of social media, deleted all FB posts, removed just about 1/2 my contacts. I haven't deleted FB totally as a lot of my family use this to keep in touch.

Aisde from that the only thing I have left is instgram for something to look at between sets at the gym.

Fuck social media.

Social media has pushed people towards the Macdonald's version of reading and literature, instead of having the patience to wait for a tender, slow cooked roast.

This thread made me think a bit; I've been slowly peeling back the time I spend on social media for the last week or so. Picked up a Lukyanenko novel I hadn't got around to finishing a few years ago and re-read it. On to the second in the series now and really enjoying it _b
Don't think it takes long to get back into the old habits again :)

I think that article which Ab linked included some McLuhan - he summed up communications theory quite well in the 60s with "The medium is the message". (Though the original is massage, which is a lovely joke).

Which series if you don't mind me asking? I do enjoy a bit of Russian fiction :-)

The Night Watch series _b

Ahh - have read all of 'em, lightweight but good value!

Yep, I have rediscovered the patience to read again. It took a few weeks but I've really started get back into reading instead of looking at snippets of crap on FB. Things got so bad at home I couldn't sit through a movie without looking at posts or the news or whatever on the phone....

I was making a joke, but thanks anyway :D

The exact reason I chose them _b Was quite a voracious reader of lightweight fantasy and/or horror when I was younger, so it was easier to slip back into than going straight for anything with more substance. Going to re-read The Power of One again (still my favourite novel) after I finish this series.

Yeah I figured, I was just so proud of my Macdonalds and Roast analogy that I had to post regardless :p

You lost my interest at McDonald's and I don't know what you said after that, so it was all for nothing.

Jokes aside, I believe the quality of writing has gone down as well - typically that which is on the internet. Of course, some of the writing is designed for the drive-thru reader in response to the lowered attention span. Little chicken nuggets rather than a full roast chicken. But the writing I'm concerned about is the stuff that thinks it is good. Writing can still get to the point without being simple, click-baity and throwaway. It can be succinct with being a Tweet. This writing that believes it is 'good' really tends to fucking waffle on about shit while taking paragraphs and paragraphs to get to the point. These aren't whimsical think-pieces. They're articles intended to communicate information but they can't seem to achieve that without the writer assuming you're interested in their musings. They writer mishmashes personal blogging into something that ought to be a useful article.

I'm not talking about amateur writing. That can be excused. It's the so-called professional writers that really boil my piss. I think part of the problem is that they've probably never had an editor breath down their neck. They've not been told the importance of explaining the "how, what, why, where, when, who" that we were taught in school. Maybe it's because they're part of the Me Generation that has gown-up admiring themselves in the reflection of their phone camera and they think that everything they write is great and deserves to be read.

Or maybe I'm just pretentious.

^^^ totally agree.

If you have time for an hour of podcast this is really interesting:

The Ezra Klein Show
How technology brings out the worst in us, with Tristan Harris

https://itunes.apple.com/au/podcast/...=1000402947458
or
https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/vox...how/e/53379049

Corbett Report has been doing a few deep dives into this recently.

Don't Believe Your Lying Eyes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_PLNeMuqu4

YouTube is now ThemTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WV8yOzhRfI

#Winning: Facebook "Fake News" Flag Makes People MORE Likely to Click
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm05KxzHN_k


Regarding social media:
I am proud to say I am free of all Social Media (exceptions being gmail, YouTube, and WhatsApp).

I recently dropped my Linkedin account. It does _appear_ to be the least offensive, and most useful social media network. However, it has some of the creepiest network generation algos and mechanisms in place. And for that reason, it must go.

Case #1: I signed up to Linkedin with my icloud email account, which doesn't have any emails in or out. Within 2 months it suggests my girlfriend as a connection (different industry, no 2nd or 3rd connection). It's clear it is not serving me, but rather is generating a web of inter-personal connections.

Also I am looking to drop WhatsApp, maybe going to Discord or Signal. There was an instance where I was babysitting a dog in our apartment. It shat on the carpet so I sent a WhatsApp message to my girlfriend "Pedro has defiled the carpet." . She might have had a verbal in-person discussion with the dog's owner... that evening she was getting instagram ads for Dog Wash, Carpet Cleaning Services, et al. Creepy!

Also, lol Facebook as the gatekeeper of news:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...first-casualty

CNN = Good, Independent Publishers = Fake News

I think what's happening is also that large institutions really fail at engaging with the masses on social media. They want the millions of followers, but their content goes through the same old regulations and death-by-committee that ultimately gives us boring, sterilized, biased, politically-motivated bullshit that keeps their subscriber numbers low. What they are doing is using their money and influence to re-balance the platforms so that they handicap the authentic voices that get the millions of subscribers.

The winners here are the platforms who give voice to all, make money off the advertising, and deplatform / demonetize some users for their "dangerous ideas". Unfortunately, the definition of dangerous ideas is broadening by the minute.