Thread to discuss anything regarding social media- its usage, the benefits it has, the obvious evil it comes with and if it can be improved or all hopes are lost.
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I believe what I posted earlier, the problem at one level are the platform itself which allows vile behaviour with no check. Ofcourse people are the problem, but that can be and should be moderated in some way. The same people using Twitter, are completely different when on a platform like LinkedIn, atleast from my observations. The behaviour and conduct changes drastically on Twitter for example. It’s the anonymity, lack of moderation and proven lack of consequences that brings out the dirty side of people.
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I fucking hate it.
Don’t use it at all.
Disclosure, I have been dealing with the nasty side of social media at work since mid-June…scrolling through hundreds of teenagers’ tweets has made me lose the will to live.
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But keep those Twitter rumours coming, please.
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“He’s 19” trending on twitter in the UK as a result of the abuse directed towards Neco
At least it’s getting pushback although nobody should be subjected to abuse like this, regardless of their age.
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Good to see the pushback. Think of all the platforms, Twitter is the worst. You get banned, you can create a new ID and start over.
Most of these ones abusing might not even be Liverpool supporters.
The problem on social media is there is a lot of small knobs thinking they are big knobs and giving it large. #smiley.
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I was on FB a few years ago. Bit crap really. I’ve avoided Twitter and Instagram and so on. Tends to bring out the worst in people. Back in the day your competence, plus time, sort of gave you a platform to speak. Nowadays everyone has a platform, instantly, and there’s no requirement for competence. Consequently it is largely a waste of time, at least to me.
My wife uses social media adeptly to help grow her business. That’s the plus side.
My seventeen year old daughter is all in… but I don’t like it. Sometimes her feelings of self worth and wellbeing are too wrapped up with how her social media contributions are received. And like probably every teenager on the planet, she has also suffered some nasty crap on there too.
My fourteen year old son doesn’t care about social media, but he does have a couple of gaming things he does.
I see social media as a great magnifier of a lot of the worst with the species.
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Should shut down the lot. The downsides of it far outweighs the pros that it does have and It serves very little purpose for a legitimate usage that some other avenue cannot do imo. This means that whatever good it can do is far outweighed by the damage it has done, and is doing, to the collective psyche of alot of people that now expect real life to be a mirror of the short termism and instant gratification that is magnified by the continued usage of these platforms. Masses of people are living vicariously through these platforms while simply not realising that actual life is out there for them too if they can only find enough time to get off their device while those who do go out spend more time on their phones talking out selfies and pics with weird poses (for the benefit of those who find it too time consuming to actually go out, of course) than actually enjoying the setting that they are in. It’s very literally 90% taking pics and selfies and uploading it with the other 10% engrossed in making sure one looks good in the selfie.
Then there is the absolutely vile nature of the person with an opinion provided with almost ironclad anonymity which sadly translates by and large into a complete train wreck of abuse. We say that the same person writing that is a completely different and normal person elsewhere but that sort of behaviour display will manifest itself somehow. Nobody can go on spouting abuse anonymously on one side, put the devise down and be a wonderful person to all and sundry on the other. Such hate/angst/anger will change them, and at some point it will out. Fake news is also a massive, massive problem leading to mass disinformation being disseminated with absolutely no ramifications. In terms of societal developed social media usage is still something relatively new and we won’t see the actual results of such a shift in mentality for a while yet although honestly we’ve already become incredibly advanced as a species in an incredibly short period of time relative to history while at the same time we’ve also become much sillier and stupid as well.
The best thing to do would be to shut it down before it does any serious and lasting damage.
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Excellent post.
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If you mute the right words (and people), Twitter turns to what it was, when it first came in - full of humour and interesting stories.
Twitter gave me Atlas Obscura, Longreads, taught me history that is not taught in school, fascinating trivia, etc. So it can be priceless, when properly used.
Also, the best way to deal with trolls is mute them. Even blocking them gives them a sense of victory. But if you mute them, then they don’t know it. They keep shouting, while you are in peace.
Of course your patience will be tested as well. It’s difficult to restrain yourself from peeking into the political side.
I personally have two accounts. One that has a zillion things muted. And another that has none. I visit the second one rarely, when I can’t control my curiosity.
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I feel social media is not much different than its predecessors; print and electronic media. Those two have done much evil too. So it’s how you manage it at personal or macro levels.
Yes the frightful thing is the social media giants seem to be above and beyond any jurisdiction.
To be fair the twats abusing him were probably a lot younger.
A few years ago I was working on the French/Spanish border. The mountain ranges there are truly spectacular. One early summers day we stopped for lunch at a typical mountain lodge - the views from the patio area were amazing, snow covered peaks stretching for miles into a sky of unbelievable blue.The only sounds were of birds calling to each other and the faint rustle of leaves as the trees gently swayed.
At first we were the only people there - we were soon joined by a group of 4 youngsters aged 16 - 20 probably.
In that setting,on that beautiful summers day, where it was indisputable that being alive was not only a gift but a privilege the universe had bestowed upon us, those 4 youngsters did not once look up from their phones. Hardly a word passed amongst them - as if they were saying “not only do I not want to be here, but I would rather be with someone else right now.” Life, all life, was half a metre away, completely contained and packaged in a thin black rectangle.
That’s what these social media companies do - they are vampires that suck the life from you and replace it with an imitation of life.
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Completely agree with this. If you add to what you wrote the addictive nature of these tools, the increasing spying on everyone’s private life, the incessant harassment to get you more and more on these platforms, the negative, if not destroying effects on children and youngsters, the danger of being misinformed and literally biased by the IAs commanding these programs, and it’s a no-brainer to shut them down.
For anyone interested in the above-mentioned dangers, have a look at the film ‘The Social Dilemma’, I saw it on Netflix recently. Former Facebook and Google reps talk about it all, how it works, what the purpose of all this is, and where it can lead to if we let it unravel unwatched. It’s absolutely frightening, but nevertheless very interesting and informative.
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Agreed. Q Anon is an extreme example, and comes from a place that is often not thought of when talking about social media (online message board), but the effect is the same. Lots of those communities were places where people would play out versions of the aristocrats, being performatively awful for the hucks of it all. Over time you have either the people doing it losing the distinction between the jokes and their beliefs (although a good case can be made that the jokes only come from people who kind of have the beliefs anyway and use this as a way to test the waters of overt bigotry), or you have new people come to the community who dont get the joke.
In time, you have a mother of 2 marching down the street with a save our children sign believing that Hillary Clinton eats babies.
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I think, we as a society have always had our groups of loonies with crazy conspiracies or beliefs. But these people were largely confined to their localities or areas, living inconsequential lives.
Social media has allowed them to amplify their messages and in turn brought these tiny clusters together to create a larger group, that worryingly has a voice now that opportunistic politicians and
certain media people are seizing upon and trying giving credibility. And we know how all this will end.
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I had an email from a supermarket chain the other day.
It detailed which store I went to, how much I spent, the time of day I went there and the amount of times I had been there in the current calendar month. The email asked if I wanted to complete a customer satisfaction survey.
I found this downright creepy. Maybe years ago I had joined one of their points schemes and given them my contact details - I cant recall it but maybe I did. Personally I do not want my spending habits or my movements logged by a giant corporation on some database - I did not give permission for that and if I had been asked I would have refused.
Anyone else come across this?
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I use twitter to view the news, but dont engage.
A simple rule to spot the crazies is anyone with a flag next to their name.
