Why you’ll leave X (as well as Instagram and all the other private platforms)
Why you’ll leave X (as well as Instagram and all the other private platforms)
(translated from Catalan by Alain Gertrand) You too will leave X, Instagram and all the other big platforms that, for now, seem like irreplaceable components of our lives. The golden age of these social networks is behind us. And yes, that means for you, too. The 2.0 boom lasted a good ten yea
I'm in my mid 40s huge geek, programmer, gamer...I never had a huge calling to join those platforms. I was always a more forum type. Admittedly I checked out the sites from links of Reddit and such, but never had an urge to join them for anything, probably due wanting to read more conversational type input from others. Maybe I missed out but seems like being an old foggie sort of won out in the end with what I'm reading these days.
I'm sure there was decent conversations on some of the platforms as well, so not saying they were always bad just wasn't something that I had an urge to put time into, mostly so I could game more heh.
This is definitely worth a read and I very much hope the author's predictions come true, but I think it misses the mark in two big areas.
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This article presumes these platforms will remain the same. In reality these companies will pull out all the stops to incentivize users to stay, and if that doesn't work they will just buy up and acquire the competition, wherever the users are. Look at what's happening with tiktok.
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Some users - believe it or not - want a way to keep up with IRL friends and acquaintances. Instagram and Facebook provided a great way to do this (however less "great" nowadays). Still, I don't want to email or text every single person I know just to share a photo or a recent event. And honestly I also don't want every acquaintance I have sharing every detail of their lives over text or email or phone. Even with an alternative, we'd have to find and rebuild our personal networks all over again.
Yea it's way too optimistic to presume these companies will not lash out in their death throes. They'd destroy as much as possible on their way out.
Yes! Instagram is the main way I start in touch with my friends and family and I keep my fb account alive because my parents and aunts/uncles still use it. Whatsapp is also our main form of communication so basically we are super tied to meta. I did close my twitter and Reddit accounts but essentially all the people I care about use meta in some form or another
Facebook is the only way for me to keep up with what's happening in my town. Lots of the older generation of people are on it and always post what's the best repair people, events or other news worthy things. Basically local news feed.
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Why a pic of AoE2?
the author mentions things related to social-cohesion/group-dynamics so maybe he's using artwork that represents the lack thereof? since, in aoe2; you can control the way all of your units can work, except for the villagers.
the author might be right about mastodon, but they're wrong about bluesky; it's significant financial backing guarantees that it will eventually enshittify in at least one of the ways that the author wrote. so much so that even it's primary creator, dorsey, left once he realized that me made another mistake in bluesky as he did with twitter.
But once one has learned to leave one social network without any worry then doing it again is actually easy.
you'd think so, like i did; but i'm learning that it's easy to get caught up in the moment when it comes to social media.
i've been learning the lessons of social media enshittification since the day's of icq & bbs, some like the author described; but there's always some new thing/feature/enticement to draw you in further and you end up learning that lesson the hard way all over again, but from a different angle/perspective/approach.
Dorsey is a massive dick but he was absolutely correct that Bluesky isn't actually very decentralized and was making similar mistakes as Twitter. He and I just massively disagree as to what those "similar mistakes" were. I think the mistakes they are making are about competent moderation, including growing too fast and too large for competent moderation, Dorsey hated that there was moderation at all.
It doesn’t really matter if you’re not willing to leave, because it would hurt too much to lose 50,000 followers, or 12,000 likes, or because FOMO has gotten the best of you. Those who have the least to lose will be the first to make the move. But this change will affect you too, slowly. This social mass will, little by little, become influential… and will end up dismembering these social markers that mean so much to you. Accounts with 150,000 followers will notice that part of their audience has left, and that the remaining numbers have become nothing more than indicators of a distant past.
Beautifully stated. Folks like us made the jump because our internet experience was never about "followers." For one, it always sounded like being fucking stalked, for two I actually like my privacy, and for three, I'm just some random fucking idiot anyway, folks really shouldn't be listening to every little thing I have to say. Don't follow me unless you want to be disappointed.