Social Media's Effects On Our Minds & Lives

Social media has everyone living in a constructed reality.

X seems to be doing a significant bot sweep, one of our accounts went from 286 followers down to 12, granted it was an experiment to see if wee could create an account with 100% bot followers.  

fyi, bluesky is great for free bandcamp codes

@freealbumcodes.bsky.social

Legit?

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-17135-1
 

Spammiest Bluesky profile so far

I'm in a bit of a dilemma right now. Taking a break from BlueSky because I'm getting burnt out already. Somehow managed to accrue more than 500 followers within the first five weeks of my account - a vast majority who seem to be women using it as a dating app. And I don't know a single follower IRL, or whether most of them are bots or what.

As for FB/Meta, it's very tempting to delete my nearly 17-year-old account. But I don't want to go to the trouble of warning everyone first. Maybe if I do it quietly, nobody will notice anyway. (Aiming for the 20th because Zuck is full MAGA toady now)

  On 1/8/2025 at 4:58 AM, ambermonk said:

I'm in a bit of a dilemma right now. Taking a break from BlueSky because I'm getting burnt out already. Somehow managed to accrue more than 500 followers within the first five weeks of my account - a vast majority who seem to be women using it as a dating app. And I don't know a single follower IRL, or whether most of them are bots or what.

As for FB/Meta, it's very tempting to delete my nearly 17-year-old account. But I don't want to go to the trouble of warning everyone first. Maybe if I do it quietly, nobody will notice anyway. (Aiming for the 20th because Zuck is full MAGA toady now)

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got that vibe a little on bluesky too but i know a lot of the people there irl. a few i follow because they do cool stuff or make me laugh but i have 62 followers and i'm following 40 people so it feels about right as far as what i want to do w/it. 

instagram is the last one that's a big pile of dog balls. i took it off my phone and that helps. no more scrolling and reels or recommended posts etc.. just music, art, memes. i've had the same amount of followers there since 2015. it goes up or down a handful at a time over months and weeks.. probably bots getting booted. but there's a couple people who i know irl that live on the other side of the country and i'd miss them if i left IG.. but i think about it a lot. getting it off the phone helps a lot. 

this meta news blows.. full chud-o-sphere. 

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5070980-meta-fact-checking-policy-changes/amp/

gonna be so bad on FB w/all the old people and scams. what a waste of time too. the sooner that ship goes down the better. 

seems like all the tech oligarchs paid tribute to trump by donating to his inauguration party and changing policies on their platforms. 

'The discourse' is far too nice a term. Everything gets politicised. Everyone loses. 

  On 1/8/2025 at 6:02 AM, ignatius said:

got that vibe a little on bluesky too but i know a lot of the people there irl. a few i follow because they do cool stuff or make me laugh but i have 62 followers and i'm following 40 people so it feels about right as far as what i want to do w/it. 

instagram is the last one that's a big pile of dog balls. i took it off my phone and that helps. no more scrolling and reels or recommended posts etc.. just music, art, memes. i've had the same amount of followers there since 2015. it goes up or down a handful at a time over months and weeks.. probably bots getting booted. but there's a couple people who i know irl that live on the other side of the country and i'd miss them if i left IG.. but i think about it a lot. getting it off the phone helps a lot. 

this meta news blows.. full chud-o-sphere. 

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/5070980-meta-fact-checking-policy-changes/amp/

gonna be so bad on FB w/all the old people and scams. what a waste of time too. the sooner that ship goes down the better. 

seems like all the tech oligarchs paid tribute to trump by donating to his inauguration party and changing policies on their platforms. 

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Bluesky is just more of the same. Tired of going trough the same loop over and over again 

  On 1/8/2025 at 7:58 PM, o00o said:

Bluesky is just more of the same. Tired of going trough the same loop over and over again 

m a s t o d o n

  On 1/8/2025 at 8:04 PM, ignatius said:

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piece of shit wearing a $900,000 watch while announcing end to fact checking

an example of social media making people (more) stupid??? i mean, cave dwellers falling for this nonsense...it's beyond me.

also note the parallel with people telling each other to remain nice in order for some artist to come back, or something. hehe  

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-ended-facebook-censorship-165529547.html

https://www.foxbusiness.com/media/meta-orders-removal-tampons-mens-rooms-amid-zuckerberg-post-election-shakeup-report

  Quote

At "Meta’s offices in Silicon Valley, Texas and New York, facilities managers were instructed to remove tampons from men’s bathrooms, which the company had provided for nonbinary and transgender employees who use the men’s room and who may have required sanitary pads, two employees said," The Times reported. 

also, an end to Meta's DEI programs: https://www.axios.com/2025/01/10/meta-dei-programs-employees-trump

  Quote

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta is terminating major DEI programs, effective immediately — including for hiring, training and picking suppliers, according to a new employee memo obtained by Axios.

Why it matters: The move is a strong signal to Meta employees that the company's push to make inroads with the incoming Trump administration isn't just posturing, but an ethos shift that will impact its business practices.

Also, Zuckerberg's Public Relations rebrand (where he dresses like a wigger, complete with his lil bitch boy thin gold necklace) has now entered its conservative phase. Here he talks about pressure from the biden admin to censor things on his apps. I agree with him that it was wrong for biden admin to do this, at the same time he just comes across as a real snake in the grass, shifting his views not on principle but to help serve the new powers that be. As rich and powerful as him and his companies are, he a principle-less bootlicker at the end of the day probably, serving up apps that are nothing more to me than marketing-surveillance apps which are most likely (in my opinion) a net negative on society and that do not contribute to overall but hinder individual autonomy (take my view with a grain of salt here: I know that social media has a lot of positive uses and allows people all over the world to connect and share information, but ultimately I think that these apps wind up tarnishing rather than uplifting the human spirit):

he's transitioning to joe rogan elon musk mode

  On 1/8/2025 at 8:04 PM, ignatius said:

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FB is a party now 

Please stop making us look at that guy's face 

  On 1/14/2025 at 8:06 PM, toaoaoad said:

Please stop making us look at that guy's face 

i wonder if he can feel the internet looking at him?