Social Media's Effects On Our Minds & Lives

  On 11/16/2024 at 6:27 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Just joined Bluesky

for all y'all thinking of the butterflysite:

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October 24, 2024

...We’re excited to announce that we’ve raised a $15 million Series A financing led by Blockchain Capital with participation from Alumni Ventures, True Ventures, SevenX, Amir Shevat of Darkmode, co-creator of Kubernetes Joe Beda, and others.

Our lead, Blockchain Capital, shares our philosophy that technology should serve the user, not the reverse — the technology being used should never come at the expense of the user experience. 

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https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

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Blockchain Capital (formerly Crypto Currency Partners) is a venture capital company founded in 2013 by brothers Paul Bart Stephens and William Bradford Stephens.

In 2013, Blockchain Capital became one of the first venture capital funds dedicated to bitcoin and crypto projects.[1][2]

The company invested in several notable category leaders, including Opensea, Kraken, Ethereum, and Coinbase.[3]

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_Capital

Blockchain Capital is (maybe) being at least partly run/funded by Russian state gov actors: https://toad.social/@davetroy/113493454665487197 though i've not seen confirmation of that, it's still cryptocraptastic.

(i'll shut up, not trying to argue just making sure people are aware)

  On 11/16/2024 at 6:49 PM, auxien said:

for all y'all thinking of the butterflysite:

https://bsky.social/about/blog/10-24-2024-series-a

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockchain_Capital

Blockchain Capital is (maybe) being at least partly run/funded by Russian state gov actors: https://toad.social/@davetroy/113493454665487197 though i've not seen confirmation of that, it's still cryptocraptastic.

(i'll shut up, not trying to argue just making sure people are aware)

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Hm, it's so easy to dig up stuff and make everything look bad. All I know is that my timeline is getting a lot more activity as more and more people that I followed on Shitter are turning up on Bluesky.

And I have NOTHING against people from Russia. Their government... those guys seem like they're up to no good.

  On 11/16/2024 at 7:34 PM, Squee said:

Hm, it's so easy to dig up stuff and make everything look bad.

of course. ain't nothing perfect. 

  On 11/16/2024 at 7:34 PM, Squee said:

All I know is that my timeline is getting a lot more activity as more and more people that I followed on Shitter are turning up on Bluesky.

sure, Shitter's still plenty active i imagine. so is Facebook & Instagram. for the passive who just want to see things pass their feed then yeah, those feeds all do you good. nothing wrong with that in and of itself. i'd think people on WATMM would be more interested in interactive places tho which is exactly what Mastodon is shaping up to be. getting to those active hubs is a pain unfortunately, but i'm finding things there much nicer & more...wholesome? interesting? engaging? than any other socials i've been on. not great as a 'Twitter replacement' which...is not a bad thing, imho, but again i'm not too keen on just doomscrolling catching up on every little corner of the internet's day anyway even when i was using Twitter back when.

  On 11/16/2024 at 7:34 PM, Squee said:

And I have NOTHING against people from Russia. Their government... those guys seem like they're up to no good.

ha well yeah, technically same, but i've got plenty against cryptobros no matter their national heritage or residence...if the VK/state actor thing is legit then that adds some extra ugly to things, but that's not confirmed so can't say on that stuff.

Delete all your (traditional) social media.

All social media sites are poison and you don't need them.

way ahead of you. i'm also about to go look for single-purpose devices to replace what few non-phone functions my smartphone still does (alarm clock, music player, camera)

  On 11/16/2024 at 9:25 PM, mushroom said:

way ahead of you. i'm also about to go look for single-purpose devices to replace what few non-phone functions my smartphone still does (alarm clock, music player, camera)

I’ve been fantasising about doing this but my main concern is being without navigation. Without google maps I’d be lost half the time. Another thing is checking public transportation schedules for delays etc. Any thoughts on this? 

I don't really do much social media myself. Seen a few articles about Bluesky taking off recently. It'd be nice if everybody joined that, then it could be re-named/re-skinned as Twitter, then X could be cut loose and left for the groypers.

  On 11/16/2024 at 6:27 PM, Rubin Farr said:

Just joined Bluesky, but starting over with followers sucks. Anyone else on there? 

yeah. been there a while chilling. 

@ignatiusmusic.bsky.social

  On 11/16/2024 at 11:51 PM, user said:

I’ve been fantasising about doing this but my main concern is being without navigation. Without google maps I’d be lost half the time. Another thing is checking public transportation schedules for delays etc. Any thoughts on this? 

there are standalone GPS devices, and you could also write down directions before you leave out. but there's no harm in compromising on some things if you need to. i'm still going to use venmo on the occasions i need to give money to ppl, and whenever i fly again i'm definitely using my phone for ticket/boarding pass stuff because it's just too convenient not to. the important thing is that these are occasional tasks and not something i do every day. my work vpn has to go through an app so there's no getting around that. offload what you can a little at a time

Just deinstall / block everything else. It’s the most straightforward solution 

along the same general lines ive been mulling over how to get away from browsing and watching garbage on youtube for hours when i run out of stuff to read on the various forums i go to or the very small number of discord servers im in. sometimes it's "play a videogame instead" and ive been making music again here and there but i dont always feel like putting in that mental effort.

a thing im gonna try is to stop myself whenever i have the urge to look at youtube and think really hard, "isn't there a movie i could watch instead? a book i could read? music i could listen to? maybe even take a walk while listening to music?" and surely any one of those things will be more interesting than Talking Head Reading Hot Take At You, Again

Tried unlinking my FB and IG accts, there are definitely less video Ads on the IG feed afterwards. 

Everyone is like "Tired of social media? Try this new social media platform and get a better experience" 

i currently really like downloading Books from libgen or having chat gpt explain me very complex topics in voice mode or teaching me languages instead of doing social media. Duolingo is also a very nice “game” that doesn’t feel like wasting time but learning something useful instead 

enjoy this extremely blurry 640x480 photograph of my new portable music player. dime for scale. you will have to take me at my word that they are displaying the split flac files from the ae_2022 lyon set

  On 11/17/2024 at 2:02 PM, cern said:

Everyone is like "Tired of social media? Try this new social media platform and get a better experience" 

Exactly! Hope more people understand this...

  On 11/20/2024 at 1:57 AM, auxien said:

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(hey...)

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psssttt

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did you know

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WATMM is social media too?

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Funny narrative, but I disagree—the way a a forum works is vastly different from a social media the way we know it.

  On 11/20/2024 at 2:04 AM, geosmina said:

the way a a forum works is vastly different from a social media the way we know it.

20 years ago, vastly. these days, not so much, they're much closer than you realize, to the point that the main difference is a matter of scale and scope alone. and since we're discussing this in GenBan, the scope is less different, really.

if you don't think so, look at the clearly social media sites (Facebook-ish) then think of the scope of Facebook these days....a group there operates essentially the same as most any forum in 2024. Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, 'actual' forums, they're generally all nearing towards the same 'social' + 'media' experience, with their own take/scope/scale/approach. the lines are well blurred these days tho, very much. 

to be clear, the forums have leaned towards a more 'social media' experience, where the 'traditional' social media platforms have allowed more corners that have neared towards forums....

a key difference between forums and social media is that on a forum, the posts are in order. this does wonders for usability and not annoying the piss out of personally me.

a perhaps more important difference is that a forum typically doesn't algorithmically churn up random posts when i reach the end of the page to create the illusion that there's always something else to look at in an attempt to addict me. the "similar posts" section here is wholly inoffensive and extremely easily ignorable, to dismiss that ahead of time. reacting to posts is bad though. but not like really bad.

reddit specifically is more of a usability nightmare than anything, though it sucks plenty in a lot of usual social media ways

A big reason I come to WATMM is BECAUSE it’s an old school forum and not social media. Sure there are ads and other annoying “features” of todays internet experience but it’s got a completely different feel from social media, even Reddit. 
 

me again yearning for simpler times we’ll never get back. First time posting in this thread I think? Anyways I deleted all social media except a cycling app to track my workouts which is very well curated. Never missed any of them, not for a second. After the recent election I’ve started blocking news websites in case I even go to them out of habit and I’d say that’s had an even more noticeable difference, for the positive. There will be a time when I need to get back in to stay aware of what’s going on and fight the good fight but for foreseeable future, I’m checked out. It’s been great.

  On 11/20/2024 at 2:25 AM, auxien said:

20 years ago, vastly. these days, not so much, they're much closer than you realize, to the point that the main difference is a matter of scale and scope alone. and since we're discussing this in GenBan, the scope is less different, really.

if you don't think so, look at the clearly social media sites (Facebook-ish) then think of the scope of Facebook these days....a group there operates essentially the same as most any forum in 2024. Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, 'actual' forums, they're generally all nearing towards the same 'social' + 'media' experience, with their own take/scope/scale/approach. the lines are well blurred these days tho, very much. 

to be clear, the forums have leaned towards a more 'social media' experience, where the 'traditional' social media platforms have allowed more corners that have neared towards forums....

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I rather disagree with this. Social media is a much more “algo” driven experience, whereas a forum like this one is simply posts. 
 

insta, fb, x, are designed to hook people into a constantly refreshable feed of content, vs watmm is just whatever the users posts that day. 

maybe y'all are right and my head is skewed on this, idk.

i guess i'm not just thinking of WATMM vs everything else....i'm thinking of forums i use, obviously including WATMM but also a number of others, and other forums i've browsed randomly...they can be largely the same as they were ~10-20 years ago, but those are few. many forums that still exist have shifted in their design, format, and scope over the last decade. many of these forums are trying to drive users to them through a variety of means and are 'selling' a product of some sort, often just advertising...but that's just like Facebook, really?

the scope of these mega-conglomeration social media sites have changed drastically over that time period too....Facebook today, almost any way you look at it, looks vastly different than Facebook 15 years ago. but at the same time, WATMM has changed a lot in the last 10 or so years as well. not just in the face of it, but the userbase and posting styles have changed (largely) too.

maybe i'm comparing forums today to social media from ~10 years ago?

another thing in my head is the fact that there's similar things happening on social media corners as is happening on 'forums' ...the same people browse and contribute to both, and often don't post terribly differently between them. Facebook Groups & many subReddits really are just little forums, operationally....though the points about algorithmic churning of how to navigate seems different on its face are valid, i think that's just down to scope and scale as i mentioned before: algorithms kick in when there's a lot of activity (and WATMM has its own as very rudimentary version as mushroom pointed out above). go browse a dead subreddit or Facebook Group page and it looks very similar in posts/commentary to a pretty empty WATMM thread. the 'pages' load a little differently, but the content/engagement type/etc.? very, very similar.