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.
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!
Pictures on social media counts as interaction but its very limited. You still get to feel like you see them regularly.
You get your desired social interaction but it is arguably fake. Then we stick a display on your mums forehead and rotate advertisements. Not offensive at all.
You get your desired fake soical interaction fix therefore, when you finally meet the person irl (after say a year) you can both look at your phone the whole time because you "interact" with them every day. There is no need to tell stories or go do something.
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?
It's fake as hell.
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.-
Why do we need to build one? Before the internet, we had letters and memos. The Email and IM came. The reason to have a feed is to share things, it shouldn't be for people to come consuming it. And there's no reason for it to be social. To have a special feed that mix everything from everyone on the platform according to "the algorithm"
No need to build something else. Blogs, Email, and IM are still here.
In my experience this makes for a far more meaningful way of staying in touch without much additional effort than passively checking up on each other through social media. And it comes without any of the additional baggage social media brings.
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.
Maybe normal people underestimate the scale of corruption the companies do or something. Often some bogey man is blamed not the main culprits by pundits but dunno if people believe that or not.
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.
[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?
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.
Maybe someone will create some enlightened LLM based algorithm that solves the engagement optimization problem but what we have now has proven to be pretty disastrous through many iterations.
Small scale group chats/discord servers are the clear solution right now. Which is sad in some ways because the question then becomes how do you find your way into a good group chat.
But it’s the only way for the sane to not be overwhelmed by the engagement farming, political nonsense, and what Noah Smith calls the “shouting class” of people that have nothing else to do in life but dominate these platforms by stirring up drama all day every day.
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.
Is this a generational divide? There’s no way I’d ever convince my immediate family let alone my extended family to join a discord server.
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.
At a certain point we'll all have AI personal assistants that are easier to use, more convenient, and less harmful to us than smartphones have historically been. The cool kids will move to the shinier new format, and the poor will continue to use the moderately dangerous, addictive, less efficient legacy tech for a long while.
Maybe these things will come in smart glasses format that we interact with primarily by voice, better smart watches that don't require a phone at all, or maybe it will be something like the star trek communicator?
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
I love the idea that media consumption is tied to a specific place, which the whole house shares, and that if I want to watch something, I may need to plan for it and know when it'll be available. Moreover, not always getting exactly what I want, when I want it, in the largest possible dose, seems the right way to consume media.
I really think that part of what's healthy about cable is precisely that you don't control when or how much of something is available.
That full hard drive doesn't hold much appeal for me.
Great point, this.-
The thing that scares me the most about the times we are living in right now is that while I can choose how I shape my engagement with technology, I am still stuck living in a planet/country/society/democracy filled with people who may be making radically different choices and I still have to deal with the consequences of that.
It really doesn't matter that much if I figure out ways to avoid toxic disinformation when I'm outvoted by idiots who haven't. It doesn't matter that much if I spend less time staring at a screen so that I can spend more in-person time with people I care about when it's a grueling task getting anyone else to commit to hanging out because they are still enthralled by the glowing rectangle.
I'm doing my best to navigate this chaotic stressful time, but ultimately I share a boat with many many other people and have only my own tiny little oar.
But on many other days, I remember that all the asshats are also doing their own "build it and they will come" and pimping their own brand of toxic nonsense. And, worse, the billionaires are all doing it too and they have many orders of magnitude more influence than I ever will.
If there's one thing twitter showed us it's that humanity isn't yet ready for the hive mind.
As for me, I am on bluesky, but I limit who I follow to the point that I can mostly take in a whole week of posts in about five minutes. I'm at the age where a few hours of my time is a horrifyingly significant fraction of a percent of my remaining time on this planet. I have better things to do with that time than to squander it being miserable so the world's third richest person can get a little richer and buy another private island.
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.