JustHiThere

I think we're all correct in some sense. The thing is @paulcole is taking "social media" in the strict definition of the term, when most of the people here are talking specifically about a bunch of social media.

Which makes sense to me. Because ask someone on the street to provide the names of 3 social media platforms, they'll in 99% of the cases mention Facebook, Instagram etc ... And none of them knows that a blog post is social media ...

I agree with what you just said. One cannot compare HN with Facebook for instance. Even though I understand what others are saying. We need a better definition for "social media" I guess. Or we might need a new definition to target specifically those you mentioned.

You're correct in some sense. But the kind of "social media" we're actually talking about is the one that tries to hook you up and manipulate you. I mean, this is what I am talking about here.

In that sense, everything is social media. A blog post is social media, because the strict definition of social media is something like that :

"Social media are interactive media technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, interests, and other forms of expression through virtual communities and networks"

Do we agree on some points or I am totally off?

can you elaborate ? This has imho nothing to do with social media. I check hackernews daily, I pick articles (or discover new tools ...) that spark my curiosity and I read them, period.

Sometimes I engage and exchange with other people, leave my opinion etc ... This is nothing close to what Facebook, Instagram and co are up to ...

Please explain.

It's great to see that some people have experienced the same thing I have.

I have deleted Facebook and Instagram 4 years ago. Best decision I ever made. As @smeej said, there's benefits to it, but there's too many downsides to it so in the end, for me, it's definitely not worth it. Have also done the same thing with mainstream media, television and streaming services (Netflix & co). Instead I focus on reading books or blogs that I am really interested in, I take time to write, take notes, think, spend time with my loved ones and pursuing hobbies.

I'm sure I do not even need to elaborate on the privacy aspect of all the (mainstream) social media apps ...

Also, I will be transitioning from Whatsapp to Threema in the next few weeks. People ask themselves "how to", when you have friends, groups or whatever in Whatsapp. At one point, you need to take a decision. Your well-being and mental health and/or privacy or being "mainstream" (or whatever term fits inside the quotes). I personally do not care (as I am a privacy advocate). I will notify everybody and then I will move on. There's still other ways they can contact me if needed and they do not want to ditch whatsapp, and tbh, I am not asking anybody to do it. I somehow think that the better way is to lead by your actions. So I will try my best.

There is a way out. I'm not saying everybody should quit, but everybody should assess the impacts all of it has in their own life. I'm also thinking it might be important for us to realize this pretty quickly, because in the end, we might create a system that resembles the one they have in China, i.e. you do everything from your smartphone and you're tracked 24/7.

For e.g. a poll in Germany found that 23% of 18-30 years think that it might be good to have a social credit system [1] (this tendency is up around 30-40% in comparison to the same poll a few years back). This is scary. And imho, social media is greatly contributing to it, because the main point in social media is to hook people, i.e. providing addictive dopamine shots.

Anyone who has dropped social media and looks around notices that most of social media users are completely addicted and zoned out of (real - [whatever this is supposed to mean]) life.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/d4i6ac/20_of_germa...

Wrong approach imho. This means, all the tools developed for ethical hacking are "bad" because they can used for "bad". This is like saying we shouldn't sell knifes because knifes can be used to kill someone. It's just silly.

This tool could be used to teach people, e.g. in OSINT challenges, it could be used to gather information for a pentesting job, it can be used to teach people about best practices online etc ...