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I have an account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and many more, but I don't use them actively or passively. Maybe the occasional browsing. On facebo
by 8589934591 5y ago
I have an account on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Reddit, and many more, but I don't use them actively or passively. Maybe the occasional browsing.
On facebook I made it a point to unfollow all friends so that my newsfeed is blank at any point of time. When I did this initially a few years back I felt.. weird. But I got used to it and now I visit once in a while for the facebook groups. After that I don't end up spending time on FB. For quora after I blocked a majority of tags/topics, the feed was cleaner, but it got boring to be a passive consumer. Similarly for Twitter, I blocked a lot of topics/tags/people and followed a certain few which has made it easier to scroll twitter once in a while.
I have an app (StayFree) on android which calculates the time spent on each app. When I see it now for the last 7 months, I see I have used it for 185 hours, of which 40 hours are on reddit. With whatsapp at 11 hours, the rest of the apps are below 8 hours of usage. I also have trackercontrol which blocks the trackers in my phone. In my browser I have ActivityWatch which shows HN is my most visited apart from the occasional reddit.
For me, the benefits of being a part of these social media comes after investing the time to filter and refine my experience. That does take time. Overall I feel my experience with social media has been better, I'm able to interact with people around the world and learn and ask questions. I dunno if I've turned these evil entities (social media) into my friends.
Maybe off topic, does having an account on these social media sites / apps on phone be harmful in any way when you don't consume it that much? If yes then what sort of harm does it have? Is it mitigated by having trackercontrol? What evil happens if tracking my account gives these companies nothing but close to 0 activity? Are there others like me here?
- nobody9999 5y ago>Maybe off topic, does having an account on these social media sites / apps on phone be harmful in any way when you don't consume it that much? For me, it's not about harm to me. It's that I despise the business models of those companies. So I voted with my (lack of) attention because I don't want to be responsible for generating any revenue for those rapacious scumbags. I certainly don't push others to get off those platforms, but I choose to live my values and don't support them. It was never about trying to limit my time on such websites (those phone apps are just poorly implemented interfaces to the existing web platform), rather it was about what sorts of businesses I (don't) wish to support. I'm glad you found your sweet spot with that. Mine is altogether elsewhere.