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Really? I find "really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content" all the time. If not for Facebook or Twitter I likely would've neve

Really? I find "really interesting places with extremely insightful and meaningful content" all the time. If not for Facebook or Twitter I likely would've never found The Athletic, a newer news media website for sports. I doubt they'd have just advertised on ESPN or some other sports broadcast channel website. Some of the content there has been incredibly insightful and meaningful. I even find articles from there on Twitter that I wouldn't normally have seen since I have the content from there filtered to what I like in my day to day consumption.

optimuspaul 9y ago
I might argue that you are in a minority there. I don't doubt that finding good content is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but to be fair it was outside those conclaves that the quality content was actually residing. Back in the day I definitely discovered new things on those platforms, but it has been some time. Most things I see there now are short attention span low quality memes and crap. Might have more to say about who I follow and friend compared to who you follow and friend than anything else. To that I say, good job, I wish I had the time and patience to curate my social graph better.
- coatmatter 9y ago
  I used to think that I knew how to use Facebook properly and that it was everyone else who was using it wrong and getting the wrong rubbish things in their feed. Then I realised what was more likely the case was that only a small proportion out of my friends going back over a decade is interesting in any way. And out of that segment, only a small number are on my level reciprocally communicative terms - the rest are way above my "league" (I don't comment on their posts, and they don't comment on mine). So here was the conundrum: Continue trusting the sorting algorithm by posting and sharing links to a very small obliging audience (as well as continuing to read and comment on links shared by another, but not necessarily the same small group), or change something? I went for the deactivation experiment. So far so good (I think?). At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. Admittedly, Facebook Memories has made me realise that past-me is a poorer version of current-me and if the trend (hopefully) continues, future-me will also cringe at current-me. Seriously, there's so little time to waste: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html * Of course, there's probably a minority who have gotten employment or work connections through Twitter but I'd say that's a small minority compared to main userbase.
  - spike021 9y ago
    >At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. I know it's not optimal because Twitter neglects it, but I find the lists feature to be useful enough for curation. I follow quite a few accounts on separate lists that I wouldn't want to follow all the time in my main feed.
coatmatter 9y ago
Most of the very interesting publications (including The Atlantic) I've found have been through Longform.org or Digg. The latter might be remembered as the site that came to a demise the same time as reddit's rise, but they've since reinvented themselves to become a curator of news features and other amusing tidbits, picked out by reasonable editors (on average). That said, all this is for nought - what is it that we actually do with said day to day consumption? Ever since I started asking myself two questions for any issue - 1) "What's the issue/problem?" 2) "What am I going to do about it?" - I've realised that most of what I pick up is largely for pointless entertainment and time wasting (not to mention that very few friends truly care about me knowing more "stuff"). With that in mind, I've started to curb my news junkie habit with the goal of focusing on more important stuff.

optimuspaul 9y ago

I might argue that you are in a minority there. I don't doubt that finding good content is possible on Facebook and Twitter, but to be fair it was outside those conclaves that the quality content was actually residing. Back in the day I definitely discovered new things on those platforms, but it has been some time. Most things I see there now are short attention span low quality memes and crap. Might have more to say about who I follow and friend compared to who you follow and friend than anything else. To that I say, good job, I wish I had the time and patience to curate my social graph better.

coatmatter 9y ago
I used to think that I knew how to use Facebook properly and that it was everyone else who was using it wrong and getting the wrong rubbish things in their feed. Then I realised what was more likely the case was that only a small proportion out of my friends going back over a decade is interesting in any way. And out of that segment, only a small number are on my level reciprocally communicative terms - the rest are way above my "league" (I don't comment on their posts, and they don't comment on mine). So here was the conundrum: Continue trusting the sorting algorithm by posting and sharing links to a very small obliging audience (as well as continuing to read and comment on links shared by another, but not necessarily the same small group), or change something? I went for the deactivation experiment. So far so good (I think?). At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. Admittedly, Facebook Memories has made me realise that past-me is a poorer version of current-me and if the trend (hopefully) continues, future-me will also cringe at current-me. Seriously, there's so little time to waste: https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html * Of course, there's probably a minority who have gotten employment or work connections through Twitter but I'd say that's a small minority compared to main userbase.
- spike021 9y ago
  >At least Twitter has a larger pool of "talent" to start with, but it still doesn't make "curation" any easier and most users* would probably concede it's a massive waste of time. I know it's not optimal because Twitter neglects it, but I find the lists feature to be useful enough for curation. I follow quite a few accounts on separate lists that I wouldn't want to follow all the time in my main feed.

coatmatter 9y ago

Most of the very interesting publications (including The Atlantic) I've found have been through Longform.org or Digg. The latter might be remembered as the site that came to a demise the same time as reddit's rise, but they've since reinvented themselves to become a curator of news features and other amusing tidbits, picked out by reasonable editors (on average). That said, all this is for nought - what is it that we actually do with said day to day consumption? Ever since I started asking myself two questions for any issue - 1) "What's the issue/problem?" 2) "What am I going to do about it?" - I've realised that most of what I pick up is largely for pointless entertainment and time wasting (not to mention that very few friends truly care about me knowing more "stuff"). With that in mind, I've started to curb my news junkie habit with the goal of focusing on more important stuff.