Assuming from the subtext that GP means they're wanting to give up because of (app)(?) censorship. Having a whole strata of society no longer participating in the conversation is not healthy. Politicians are now looking to these platforms to guide policy decisions, so anybody not on them has no voice.

"the conversation" is not held on Facebook nor on Twitter.

_A_ conversation is held there, which presumes to be _the_ conversation.

Surely politicians aren't using social media as the main driver for policy? The demographic who votes the most (the elderly) is also the demographic that has the smallest presence on social media, so only listening to Twitter seems like shooting yourself in the foot.

It doesn’t even matter if politicians aren’t making decisions based on social media—-their constituents are demanding action because of what they see on it. A video of one person in power choking another person to death got widely shared on Twitter and the result was massive and worldwide protests. Hell, in general social media has replaced pretty much every other form of it, we can’t keep pretending the internet is a niche place anymore.

Anybody not on them still gets to vote. If anything, I suspect that making these platforms increasingly unrepresentative will end up hurting pols who pay attention to them, by giving them an increasingly distorted view of public opinion. If you optimize your messaging for Twitter, an actual electorate is going to drop you like third period French.

People will trade off convinience and representativeness. A lot of psychology studies are famously done on students, because it's just so cheap and easy. I think it's very likely they will just say "screw those backwards hillbillies, I bet they are all racist unpersons anyway"

Oh, I'm sure they will. And they'll end up losing elections as a result.

Both sides will. They can't both lose.

Yeah, I totally get the enjoyment of not being "always available". I have had lengthy periods without a phone, and it teaches you that; no, you don't have to be always available, and no the world will not end etc.

The only "social media" I use is Reddit, but it isn't/I don't use it as they person centric networks like boomerbook/twitter.

Reddit is by far the hardest to quit tho. I get constantly dragged into the shitshow, but can't really get off, because there is useful information there, I can't find anywhere else.

In a similar way, I can't quit smartphones for encrypted messaging and navigation (not even Google Maps, but OSMand).

I don't lump Reddit into the same bucket as FB/Twitter. It's perfectly possible to have a sane, even pleasant experience there if you stay out of the default subs and the obvious dumpster fires. And I think stable-but-pseudonymous identity is turning out to have been the right call.

No doubt, I absolutely agree.

However, I was just saying I cannot stay out of those dumpster fires. Sooner or later, I think to myself "Well, I wonder what's up in the world otherwise. Let's check out /r/all for a moment."... And there we go.

It's not like other people are idiots and I am in control over addiction, impulse, outrage and dopamine. I have spend waaaay too much time on reddit. I hate it, for what it is. Yet, I can't manage to not use it for a prolonged time. Too many niche forums I depend on, and I simply can't tolerate linear, unranked forums anymore.

(LOL), you're not alone.

There's literally twos of us!

I am making an effort to also revert back to keeping physical notebooks. I have a mini library of notebooks that stop at 1996. That year I bought a power pc (for Java) and the record of my thoughts are spread over various boxes, legacy media, and buried deep in nested directories. It was a mistake, in retrospect.

My handwriting is far too bad for physical notebooks ever to be an option.