My mental health improved in meaningful ways when I dropped all social media close to a decade ago. Now I can feel the impact when someone insists I look at some shared item they sent me on Instagram or whatever. I´d rather not return to algorithm-driven services if I can avoid them.
Shameless plug for the thing I built: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672734 - meepr, basically not algo driven (except the hashtags are curated), no recommendations etc, if you wanna "grow" on it, you need to tell your friends like the good old days. It's just run by me, not planning on having it run by anyone else, if people like it I'll add a subscription to cover the server cost. (check out the retro theme!! :))
> With that said, social media still works for connections. DMs are good. Having actual conversations in comments is good.
No. DMs are not e2ee so you’re allowing an advertising surveillance company to leverage private conversations with friends against you and your friends. It’s also available to federal police WITHOUT A WARRANT.
Friends don’t let friends use surveillance platforms.
When I left Twitter and Reddit there felt like a loss of what those sites used to be. The sites I replaced them with are off-ramps, I'm not letting myself get as engaged with them. If they go bad too, they won't feel like a loss.
What worked for me was just engaging in my local community more. There are a lot of great people out there, many of them are just a few houses down from you.
I can assure you, whatever hobby or interest you have, there are others that want to do it with you too. Find those people.
I can "finish" reading my Mastodon timeline because it's not designed to scroll endlessly. Then I read a book.
I just don't do Facebook, any more. It's been ages since I logged in.
I never really did Twitter/Twatter, or anything else.
The closest thing I have to social media, is HN comments.
As much as others seem to hate Snapchat, I seem to avoid all the fake news because its just friends on snapchat.
Strava is pretty great too. No fake news on there.
4Chan? Well, I doubt any company wants to get caught astroturfing on 4chan, but I do think there are government psych-ops on it.
Facebook/IG/Reddit/HN? Dangerous stuff if you are trying to avoid fake news. I'll continue to consume. But I come in highly skeptical.
My mental health improved in meaningful ways when I dropped all social media close to a decade ago. Now I can feel the impact when someone insists I look at some shared item they sent me on Instagram or whatever. I´d rather not return to algorithm-driven services if I can avoid them.
Shameless plug for the thing I built: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672734 - meepr, basically not algo driven (except the hashtags are curated), no recommendations etc, if you wanna "grow" on it, you need to tell your friends like the good old days. It's just run by me, not planning on having it run by anyone else, if people like it I'll add a subscription to cover the server cost. (check out the retro theme!! :))
> With that said, social media still works for connections. DMs are good. Having actual conversations in comments is good.
No. DMs are not e2ee so you’re allowing an advertising surveillance company to leverage private conversations with friends against you and your friends. It’s also available to federal police WITHOUT A WARRANT.
Friends don’t let friends use surveillance platforms.
When I left Twitter and Reddit there felt like a loss of what those sites used to be. The sites I replaced them with are off-ramps, I'm not letting myself get as engaged with them. If they go bad too, they won't feel like a loss.
What dod u replace them with?
What worked for me was just engaging in my local community more. There are a lot of great people out there, many of them are just a few houses down from you.
I can assure you, whatever hobby or interest you have, there are others that want to do it with you too. Find those people.
Also read the book Tribe by Sebastian Junger.
Volunteering especially
TLDR: "I manage my alcoholism by only having two drinks a day."
I wish "Hacker News front page but the titles are honest"[0] was a real thing. Your TLDR does it for this article.
[0] https://dosaygo-studio.github.io/hn-front-page-2035/news-hon...