Social Media discussion

I’m struggling for an alternative though. Tribel seems to have some apparently dodgy people behind it and Mastodon isn’t very intuitive.

Here’s an idea: don’t use social media.

I never have and never will.

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Twitter’s code is not remotely sophisticated and so a functional equivalent could be knocked up by a small team of unremarkable engineers in quick time. I keep seeing people point to this to convince themselves that if Twitter does take a turn for the even worse that a replacement will pop up. This piece by Ben Collins points to what the real limiting factor is

https://twitter.com/oneunderscore__/status/1519095987070914560?s=20&t=U8KsQre6qWay7iyFy-b7zQ

Maybe I am just getting to be a grumpy old bastard, but I find myself agreeing with @cynicaloldgit and thinking of getting rid of it all.

Apart from speaking to family back home, can’t remember the last time I used FB. IG is just full of T&A that want you to join their onlyfans. The whole industy is a cesspit

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I’d love to be able to post what I have had to deal with in the last few days.

Cesspit is right.

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I don’t have any problem with twitter, it’s easy enough to curate a feed so you only see things you are interested in. Wums and trolls can be blocked. I just have a problem with the new owner.

While it should be easy for a new one to be made, Parler and Truth Social are great examples that this isn’t the case.

Mastodon seems to be the best alternative, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere for ‘normal’ people to draw content from. Every other one is (boringly) tech focused, lgbt specific or some niche sexual fetish.

Also I hate to be the one to break the news, but internet forums are social media :grimacing:

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I have FB, Twitter, IG. I use them as tools, nothing more or less.

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Do u think Elon has other motives for buying twitter…buying big names, buying other social media platforms…taking over the world…(slight exaggeration)…all said in jest​:smile::smile:

I think Elon was trying to pull a publicity stunt and got caught. Couldn’t wriggle his way out of it. Maybe he didn’t want Zuckerberg to absorb it into the Metaverse?

That said, somehow this platform is now worth $44B so there must be some kind of revenue stream behind it (that I just don’t understand).

I think the £44bn was based on the number of users. Obviously there are ads on there that you have to at least scroll past and could possibly interact with, so there is money to be made from that. After the initial offer he tried to lower the price based on the number of users he thought were inactive or bots.

Possibly it was a publicity stunt gone wrong, but potentially it’s to reinstate the banned republicans (including trump) and inspire the liberals to stop using it…just in time for the midterm elections.

And now reports are…Facebook and Instagram are down…or were…whooooooooooò.

I wonder is it possible to live a life (particularly in the West) without social media or internet technology?

I am not talking about living like a recluse, but just the ability to conduct your daily life without having to use digital technology.

Like life was, just 40 or so years ago.

He’s bought it at a massive over valuation and with a view to supposedly doing with it something that will reduce its value to sponsors (several major companies have already put on hold their advertising on the platform until they get a sense of what his policies are on allowing hate speech).

There may be 2nd order business benefits he’s looking to get out of it (how directing twitter can help him make more money in other areas), but there is no way this is a profit play for twitter per se. The figures just dont add up for that.

Everyone who uses them thinks the same.

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It’s really difficult to rationalize the timeline, but the iPhone is still recent enough that it wasn’t released until several months after Obama launched his first presidential campaign. I’d never heard of twitter until it started being used as a source of news for that plane crash landing into the Hudson River in NYC. That was sometime in 2009.

Sure, this is over a decade ago which is a god amount of time in real terms, but for people in the ball park of my age, people who are comfortable with these technologies but lived significant portions of their adult life without them, that time when we didnt have it seems a lot longer ago than it actually was.

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I mentioned on a couple of threads how underappreciated the real world consequences of Gamergate were. We’re now seeing reporting that the Pelosi attacker appears to self-identify as being radicalized by Gamergate

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Sounds like Jack Dorsey is already working on a new Twitter called Bluesky, which will be free. If everyone moves to there, then I’m not sure what Musk will actually own.

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Yes, I’ve seen people I follow talk about switching to either BlueSky or Mastadon.

Somebody sent me a screen grab of the actual tweet mentioned in this and many other articles. I thought it was fabricated spam. I mean, if this is him out of the blocks I might not want to be one of the banks holding these loans.

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