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With how social media turned out to be, is there any sustainable benefit for the users in participating? Users locked themselves into a system that provides ab

With how social media turned out to be, is there any sustainable benefit for the users in participating? Users locked themselves into a system that provides abusers and other trolls a very direct access endpoint into the user‘s emotion. If you receive suddenly 10.000 intimidating messages - even if Instagram now hides them automatically one click away - you still will feel very agitated and it might ruin you day, night or even life substantially. Mind, that there is a substantial imbalance which results in a situation of duress for the user: The user gardened their profile in the social network over a very long time, decades even, on arguably more than a daily basis and will perceive very high cost if they remove themselves from the social network. Meanwhile the abusers can create new accounts and doxx the users with virtually no cost. Users locked themselves into a system that siphons out any personal information they willingly and unwillingly give up and which is used directly to manipulate or trick the user into changing their behavior towards whatever the social media wants. Users locked themselves into a system that fosters a show off culture and spreads a fake perception of reality and feelings of envy, inferiority and vanity. Continued and sustained usage leads to dependency and depression. Not even to talk about how the culture of political discussion and bubble of misinformation harmed our democracy. What do the users get from this? What do we get from this? Why should anybody use social media? Why shouldn’t we see social media as a public health issue?

_ph_ 5y ago
I am using social media to be - social. My facebook friends are mostly composed of people I have interacted with in real life first. I use Instagram/Facebook to display the photos I want to publicly share, easiest way to get some audience, especially people I know. I use Twitter mostly as a news service to follow people whom I know to post interesting content. Especially Twitter can be a valuable source of very up to date information if you have a trending hash tag. E.g. with the recent flood disaster in Germany, you could get a stream of posts from the affected areas. The trending hash tag can though be quite a snake pit, as, depending on the tag, a lot of bad posts can appear too, there are a lot of hash tags to avoid :)
- rootsudo 5y ago
  That isn't how life is supposed to be, you're manipulating your image and selling a version of yourself that isn't truly you. Twitter is also not news.
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Sorry, how you state it, it is just plainly wrong. I am not manipulating my image at all. I am not posting images of my self, but general natural photography. Animals, flowers, landscapes. I am not selling anything. I also have not claimed that Twitter would be "the news". But it is a great source of specific information. To repeat the example I had put into my previous post: when a disaster strikes a certain place, the best chance to find immediate information like pictures/videos taken is people affected tweeting. This is raw material, just some data. This is of course to be complemented by the news media, though these often enough are limited to the same sources, but they might do some aggregating and processing. Often enough news events never make it to the news, because they are only of local interest. Also Twitter is often the outlet of official organizations. Like the police of a large city informing the inhabitants about events they should be informed upon.
    - hodgesrm 5y ago
      > Also Twitter is often the outlet of official organizations. Like the police of a large city informing the inhabitants about events they should be informed upon. That's definitely the case where I live. It's second on my go-to list after our local news website.
13years 5y ago
Pre-social media vs. Post-social media: Pre-social: Find people you have things in common, hang out with them and enjoy life. Post-social: Find people with which you only have disagreements, harass them, ridicule them and live in misery because they exist.

_ph_ 5y ago

I am using social media to be - social. My facebook friends are mostly composed of people I have interacted with in real life first. I use Instagram/Facebook to display the photos I want to publicly share, easiest way to get some audience, especially people I know. I use Twitter mostly as a news service to follow people whom I know to post interesting content. Especially Twitter can be a valuable source of very up to date information if you have a trending hash tag. E.g. with the recent flood disaster in Germany, you could get a stream of posts from the affected areas. The trending hash tag can though be quite a snake pit, as, depending on the tag, a lot of bad posts can appear too, there are a lot of hash tags to avoid :)

rootsudo 5y ago
That isn't how life is supposed to be, you're manipulating your image and selling a version of yourself that isn't truly you. Twitter is also not news.
- _ph_ 5y ago
  Sorry, how you state it, it is just plainly wrong. I am not manipulating my image at all. I am not posting images of my self, but general natural photography. Animals, flowers, landscapes. I am not selling anything. I also have not claimed that Twitter would be "the news". But it is a great source of specific information. To repeat the example I had put into my previous post: when a disaster strikes a certain place, the best chance to find immediate information like pictures/videos taken is people affected tweeting. This is raw material, just some data. This is of course to be complemented by the news media, though these often enough are limited to the same sources, but they might do some aggregating and processing. Often enough news events never make it to the news, because they are only of local interest. Also Twitter is often the outlet of official organizations. Like the police of a large city informing the inhabitants about events they should be informed upon.
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    > Also Twitter is often the outlet of official organizations. Like the police of a large city informing the inhabitants about events they should be informed upon. That's definitely the case where I live. It's second on my go-to list after our local news website.

13years 5y ago

Pre-social media vs. Post-social media: Pre-social: Find people you have things in common, hang out with them and enjoy life. Post-social: Find people with which you only have disagreements, harass them, ridicule them and live in misery because they exist.