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Ask HN: Anybody else missing a 'pure' social media?

Literally all of the platforms have become poison for the mind: Twitter -> Pretentiousness, Virtue Signalling, Misinformation, Crypto-Grifters YouTube -> Clickbait, Vanity, Grifters, Content Bloat, Soft porn Instagram -> Soft porn, Narcissism TikTok -> Obnoxious Dancing, Confused Gen Z, Vanity, soft porn All of them: Algorithm Prostitution I can't bear spending a minute on any of them anymore (except for specific educational videos on YT, but screw the start page! (I'm not logged in)). Where is the space for normal people?

DamonHD 3y ago
In theory the Fediverse, including Mastodon, sidesteps at least the algo and ads portion of the motivation for the bad behaviour elsewhere, and it does seem like a reasonable place.
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  Why do I get the impression that it's so politicised though? I don't have any political affiliations and I don't care about any of that stuff anymore. Frankly there are too many retards on all sides of the spectrum. Just more poison. Where's the wholesomeness.
  - ColinWright 3y ago
    Choose the right instance. Choose any instance, follow a whole bunch of people, block a whole bunch of other people, see where the interesting people are, migrate your account. There's almost no politics on my instance.
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      I'm on two instances: the largest one and a specialist energy-related one, and neither has much nastiness going on, at least that I see. There is some politics, but from people that I have chosen to follow. So if I get bored of the (mainly US) stuff, I can just unfollow or mute. I've blocked about 2 accounts so far. And even those weren't too bad.
iabdelgawaad 3y ago
Reddit is a place which normal people can enjoy in peace.!
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  I have seen a lot of communities shut down / get shut down, idk what's happening there lately? Anyway I'm not a big fan of Reddit either (except for specific reviews/experiences): Too Politicised (in a lopsided way too), too much vanity content.
  - iabdelgawaad 3y ago
    Yes, a significant portion of the content appears to be imbued with sarcasm! For shutdown or going private, I think it was related to start charging for data or something like that.!
rvz 3y ago
> Where is the space for normal people? None (As in no social media.). The solution to a pure social media / network is having none. Or just go outside. It is not replacing one social network with another. It just prolongs the outrage and addiction regardless of the platform. Just delete your accounts on all of them. You will feel much better rather than participate in the $current_outrage of the day. They deleted their accounts and never looked back: [0] [1] [2] [3] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/18/in-the-year-since-i-quit-social-media-my-screen-time-has-fallen-my-mood-is-up-even-my-resting-heart-rate-is-lower https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/18/in-the-year-si... [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162 [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fjollaarifi/quit-social-media https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fjollaarifi/quit-social... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62589423 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62589423
- jdthedisciple 3y ago
  Solid advice. The Internet has turned into quite a dystopian realm. Surreal, when you think about what we all imagined it would be.
- dotcoma 3y ago
  Agree. 5 minutes a day on Twitter (after muting or blocking all the politics bullshit) and 5 minutes a day on LinkedIn is more than enough.
- rvz 3y ago
  The last one [3] shows exactly what happens when you don't leave social media. You don't want that one.
thaanpaa 3y ago
You've got TikTok backwards. It transforms into whatever the user is. If you use it for a while and keep following creators you like, it will eventually learn what kind of content to show you. On the other hand, if you quickly scroll past the obnoxious dancing, it will fairly quickly disappear from your feed. At this point, my TikTok is essentially electrical engineering. But it kind of keeps shifting to wherever my interests are at any given time. Now, I wouldn't necessarily place too much trust in TikTok, and I do understand it has a major echo chamber problem, but out of all the social media, it is actually one that, with some effort, can be a fairly pleasant place to waste time.
ColinWright 3y ago
Mastodon seems to be surviving, especially if you pick one of the smaller instances with a specific focus. Federation means that you can still follow, and be followed by, people on other instances, but it does mean that you get light filtering of content, no algorithms, no ads, responsive moderators, and people who share (at least one of) your interests. If you decide you're on the wrong instance and find one you think is better, you can migrate your account (with some limitations), so the decision of which instance to choose isn't critical. Mastodon isn't perfect, and I'm sure people will weigh in here to tell you why it's dead and will never succeed, but I'm enjoying the instance I'm on.

DamonHD 3y ago

In theory the Fediverse, including Mastodon, sidesteps at least the algo and ads portion of the motivation for the bad behaviour elsewhere, and it does seem like a reasonable place.

jdthedisciple 3y ago
Why do I get the impression that it's so politicised though? I don't have any political affiliations and I don't care about any of that stuff anymore. Frankly there are too many retards on all sides of the spectrum. Just more poison. Where's the wholesomeness.
- ColinWright 3y ago
  Choose the right instance. Choose any instance, follow a whole bunch of people, block a whole bunch of other people, see where the interesting people are, migrate your account. There's almost no politics on my instance.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    I'm on two instances: the largest one and a specialist energy-related one, and neither has much nastiness going on, at least that I see. There is some politics, but from people that I have chosen to follow. So if I get bored of the (mainly US) stuff, I can just unfollow or mute. I've blocked about 2 accounts so far. And even those weren't too bad.

iabdelgawaad 3y ago

Reddit is a place which normal people can enjoy in peace.!

jdthedisciple 3y ago
I have seen a lot of communities shut down / get shut down, idk what's happening there lately? Anyway I'm not a big fan of Reddit either (except for specific reviews/experiences): Too Politicised (in a lopsided way too), too much vanity content.
- iabdelgawaad 3y ago
  Yes, a significant portion of the content appears to be imbued with sarcasm! For shutdown or going private, I think it was related to start charging for data or something like that.!

rvz 3y ago

> Where is the space for normal people? None (As in no social media.). The solution to a pure social media / network is having none. Or just go outside. It is not replacing one social network with another. It just prolongs the outrage and addiction regardless of the platform. Just delete your accounts on all of them. You will feel much better rather than participate in the $current_outrage of the day. They deleted their accounts and never looked back: [0] [1] [2] [3] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/18/in-the-year-since-i-quit-social-media-my-screen-time-has-fallen-my-mood-is-up-even-my-resting-heart-rate-is-lower https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/18/in-the-year-si... [1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162 [2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fjollaarifi/quit-social-media https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fjollaarifi/quit-social... [3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62589423 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62589423

jdthedisciple 3y ago
Solid advice. The Internet has turned into quite a dystopian realm. Surreal, when you think about what we all imagined it would be.
dotcoma 3y ago
Agree. 5 minutes a day on Twitter (after muting or blocking all the politics bullshit) and 5 minutes a day on LinkedIn is more than enough.
rvz 3y ago
The last one [3] shows exactly what happens when you don't leave social media. You don't want that one.

thaanpaa 3y ago

You've got TikTok backwards. It transforms into whatever the user is. If you use it for a while and keep following creators you like, it will eventually learn what kind of content to show you. On the other hand, if you quickly scroll past the obnoxious dancing, it will fairly quickly disappear from your feed. At this point, my TikTok is essentially electrical engineering. But it kind of keeps shifting to wherever my interests are at any given time. Now, I wouldn't necessarily place too much trust in TikTok, and I do understand it has a major echo chamber problem, but out of all the social media, it is actually one that, with some effort, can be a fairly pleasant place to waste time.

ColinWright 3y ago

Mastodon seems to be surviving, especially if you pick one of the smaller instances with a specific focus. Federation means that you can still follow, and be followed by, people on other instances, but it does mean that you get light filtering of content, no algorithms, no ads, responsive moderators, and people who share (at least one of) your interests. If you decide you're on the wrong instance and find one you think is better, you can migrate your account (with some limitations), so the decision of which instance to choose isn't critical. Mastodon isn't perfect, and I'm sure people will weigh in here to tell you why it's dead and will never succeed, but I'm enjoying the instance I'm on.