What do you think about this approach to social networks? I think she is right in this, for me the social networks don't make much sense any more as it doesn't lead to any real interaction, which was the purpose of having online connections in first place.
https://caoilainn.substack.com/p/just-delete-them
I've never like social media based on following other people. I care more about following a topic not a person.
Ie Lemmy/Reddit vs Mastodon/Facebook.
On my Mastodon I follow ... maybe a dozen people? Total?
I follow, like you said, topics in the form of hashtags. This gives me a much better feed than Xhitter or Farcebook ever did.
This seems like obvious advice.
I mean, way back when Myspace was new (I'm old) I looked at it and thought "This is going to make me sad." Like, if people post fun stuff without me I'm probably going to feel left out. If people post sad stuff about their life, I'm going to feel sad. If people don't interact with me at all, I'm going to feel lonely. There's such a narrow path forward on that kind of thing that's a consistent, net positive.
People could keep in touch with email, or texts, or even ancient modes like phone calls and letters. Would probably be happier. The social media stuff is a black hole.
Also remember that time Facebook tried to see if they could just make people sad? And they could? And somehow no one went to jail or anything?
Now, instead is reaching out to have conversations with folks, you're expected to just read up on what they're doing and thinking for yourself. That's not interaction. It doesn't make for a fulfilling friendship and honestly most of us aren't really interesting enough to study up on.
Dude these platforms don’t even show you that much stuff from people you follow/connect with. It’s 90% stupid meme slop and reels or whatever the fuck. Oh and ads of course. They’ve removed the feature that actually made anyone want to use them in the first place. If fb and Insta didn’t have messaging, they would have tanked even more users than they already have
I frequently purge connections that have gone dead. I didn't realize that people didn't do this routinely.
