Thoughts On Decentralised Social Media
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Thoughts On Decentralised Social Media

Byrichard

The web was decentralised for a long time. The internet and social networks were designed around different niches. We had niches for people that did sports in the same area of Switzerland, that wanted to discuss a variety of topics, for music lovers and more. The change brought on by MySpace, Twitter, ICQ, Facebook and other projects is that it centralised all those communities so that everyone was in different communities, on three or four social networks.


That centralisation internationalised certain networks, like Twitter and Facebook, although with a heavy US bias. With the decline of Facebook, Instagram and Twitter the implosion of social networks that happened before is moving in the opposite direction. We are going from a centralised to a decentralised social network landscape.


The more I use Mastodon, the more I take long breaks from the “federation”. People are arguing, disagreeing, and in general trying to impose a vision, onto people, rather than seducing them, and encouraging them to think the same way.


I watched an episode of Northern Exposure that deals with racism, bias and prejudice that I appreciate. In the 90s cultural differences and other differences were a source of discussion, and existential questions. People would explore what they felt, and try to find a new way of seeing things, to make them more open minded. People would aknowledge how they felt, and see about changing their views and attitudes, through discussion.


Twitter is swinging to the Right, and there are adverts every fourth post so it has become less welcoming. Mastodon has another related problem. People are saying “if you don’t think this way then you can leave” and “everyone has to behave this way, rather than that way”. I go to social media to have pleasant conversations and interactions, not to be told what, and how to think.


What I want is not a Twitter, Facebook or Instagram replacement. I want to find a new social network, in person, that uses Signal, or another IM platform, to converse with a small network of friends. I am tired of the big social networks that lack social warmth. I want to find a new community of like-minded people. Not easy, when COVID denialism makes being social a risk.

Twitter, As a Joke
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Twitter, As a Joke

Byrichard

Twitter went down and I didn’t notice, yet again. According to The Verge it has been down five times in five weeks. It goes down so regularly that it feels as if they have allowed the Netflix Chaos Monkey to run freely around Twitter code. They say that they need to rewrite the entire site.


Twitter had plenty of downtime many years ago but these were growing problems that were eventually resolved. It would go for months or even seasons without serious issues. They had learned how to make Twitter reliable. Now that so many staff have been fired the people with less experienced are stuck, trying to understand the old logic, and failing.


They want to rewrite the entire website. I wish them good luck. I don’t see how they can when they’re firing people, and overloading those that are left behind, with work.


“This paved the way for a single engineer to be staffed on a major project — one that is linked to several critical interconnected systems that both users and employees depend on. “

https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/6/23627875/twitter-outage-how-it-happened-engineer-api-shut-down


Google Reader, Jaiku, and plenty of services have lived, thrived and eventually been abandonned. Twitter is not something I rely on anymore, so whether it lives or dies, at this point, doesn’t matter.


I am no longer invested in the social network. I am no longer invested in social media, because social media has shown that it is a glossy mag, rather than a social network. Glossy mags are not social networks. They are advert sellers. I loved Twitter. I expect nothing now.


And Finally


I don’t want to use Twitter anymore for the same reason I stopped using Facebook and Instagram. I don’t trust those in charge to be moral. I expect that our data and attention will be exploited. We will be used.


I am not a user. I am a community member. Destroy the community, like you did with Facebook and Instagram, and I will migrate.


My issue with Twitter is not that it goes down, but why it goes down. I also have issue with who owns and controls it. No social network should be controlled by the Far Right, especially when algorithms affect what you see.

An Easier Run
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An Easier Run

Byrichard

Since the start of the year I have been running regularly. Yesterday I went for a run and I found it easiser than other runs. It might be thanks to the audiobook, on the one hand, and to consistent training on the other. I am not pushing hard. The training program is a 5k programme over twelve weeks. I don’t need twelve weeks for this. I was a runner before. I don’t care about beating distance records or other things.


My primary goal is not to write “I didn’t feel my shin splints today” or “This run really hurt”. I want to run, without pushing my body to breaking point. I also want to run and feel comfortable. I want to allow my body the time to adapt to the sport, rather than pushing too far, too fast. If and when I can run five kilometres comfortably my one hour walks will take half an hour and my one and a half hour walks could take fourty five minutes. It’s not that I don’t like my long walks. It’s that I want to feel that my fitness is improving rather than stagnating.


Lifehacker currently has an article about “walk score and quality of life. I don’t like that there are so many roads with people who show apathy to cyclists and people walking by the side of the road. I walk into fields and I get thanked. I don’t walk into the fields out of curiousity. I walk into the fields out of fear and fatigue of cars skimming by me too fast. That’s part of what motivates me to run. Running is a sport where you can easily get away from cars.


I don’t need to take the car to go for a run, and I don’t need to buy anything extra for the scooter or car, if I want to run elsewhere. Although everything seems to indicate that the pandemic is over I am not convinced, so I prefer to run outdoors, away from people, to be safe. I value my health, and I enjoy walking and running locally. The pandemic has shaped how I think of sports, and which sports I would consider doing.

The Illusion That The Pandemic Is Over
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The Illusion That The Pandemic Is Over

Byrichard

Switzerland is living under the illusion that the pandemic is over. If you look at the data on the RTS website and other sources of information such as Cotrack – Grafana then the pandemic is over. The number of new cases has gone done so if you look at the metrics then it is over.


There is a good chance that this is an illusion, demonstrated in three ways. The first of these is the number and saturation of hospitals now, with many of them overloaded and in a situation of crisis. The second indicator that things are not fine is the increased mortality for years, at this point. The third indicator is that people with COVID compromised immune systems might have stopped testing positive for COVID but there is a lag between when someone stops testing positive for COVID and when their immune system has fully recovered from the disease, able to combat other illnesses that would otherwise have little or no effect.


They charge for COVID tests. They no longer test sewage for traces of the disease. They tell people that the pandemic is over, and then they provide data that gives this illusion.


Two things bother me about this situation. The first is that I don’t trust that the pandemic is over. If we had frequent tests, and everyone was testing positive then I would trust that the pandemic is over. The second is that by not having data that proves that the pandemic is over I will keep wearing a mask when I am indoors and keeping my distance outside of people in my family, or that I am staying with.


Graphic from RTS insinuating that the pandemic is over.


Information for the Canton De Vaud, 44 tests, 4 positive, 9 percent positivity.


At the start of the pandemic there was a thing that said “the pandemic will be over when we have zero transmission for two weeks”. We are not at that stage yet. We are also at a nine percent positivity rate. That’s four percentage points higher than the five percent required for a situation to be considered under control. In reality I don’t need to be confused. When I see 0 new cases for two weeks, and the test percentage is down to 0 then I can consider removing the mask.

Twitter’s Not For Me
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Twitter’s Not For Me

Byrichard

Twitter has a new For You page inspired by TikTok’s For you page according to Quartz. Many years ago we had Seesmic, a video chat community where people could share video messages 24 hours a day. We even experimented with recording videos and sharing them by phone when this was still novel.



Tik Tok has a critical flaw, as do plenty of the more popular social networks. As someone said on Mastodon today, “You have to be fast to say something new, before hundreds of other people have posted every possible reaction. That is what’s wrong with social networks today. I use social networks because I think social media is an awful term, used to encourage abuses rather than empathy.


By shifting to the “For You” algorithm based model Twitter is making the mistake that Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and other websites have made. It is forcing people to see populist crap rather than personal and meaningful chats.


I saw someone tweet “I have 8000 followers and my tweets have 3 million views.”


Social media should never be about huge follower numbers, and millions of views. It should be about personal conversations that lead people to want to meet in person. It should be about connecting with people.


The more Musk destroys Twitter, the easier it is to stay away for hours at a time, and to spend minutes rather than hours on the site. I played with Substack but I don’t want to post too often because I don’t want to generate too much noise. I am also playing with a shorter form WordPress blog. With the short form blog I don’t mind being noisy because I clearly state that it is a Facebook/Twitter replacement.


As soon as websites use recommendation engines, rather than chronological posts, I move away and I lose interest. Social media should be relevant and timely, not algorithm driven populist mediocrity. Time to move on.

Limited Bandwidth and Twitter
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Limited Bandwidth and Twitter

Byrichard

Let’s take a step back from today, and let’s remember the 2006 tech landscape. In 2006 we had Symbian phones, GPRS, text messages. We used the world wide web whilst sitting at computers usually via wifi. We would tweet until the moment we left home, and then we had to rely on SMS to keep in touch with people that we either wanted to meet or communicate with.


At the time phones were small, with just a few lines of text at a time, and little to no media content. We used Twitter and Jaiku because they allowed us, in a time of limited bandwidth, to have a conversation either, sitting at a computer, or by SMS.


Eventually bandwidth and data plans improved and increased, especially with the arrival of the iPhone, but blackberry users had lived in the future for years beforehand.


Twitter benefited from the iPhone, and it was favoured over Jaiku, so it won, but Jaiku offered everything that Twitter took years to offer, in turn.


That twitter has only a third of a million users tells you about the niche that it has, and the use cases that it fails to provide to its users. Medium was spun off from Twitter and others a blogging variant. Facebook, Reddit and two or three other solutions offer web forum style websites.


Twitter lost its niche back in 2007 when it went from being a network of friends of friends, who come across each other, and talk between each other to a hashtag driven, celebrity following mess. It’s when I read this vox article that I thought of the topic.


The web of today is mature. Everyone, or almost, has a smartphone and uses the web for information and staying in touch. Bandwidth is unlimited for many. What we need is not another twitter. What we need is a local, social web, where people that are in the same village, town or country, chat together. For too long the web has been about talking with people thousands of kilometres away. We need to progress towards a local social web.

A New Yorker Cartoon, Existentialism and The Absurd

A New Yorker Cartoon, Existentialism and The Absurd

Byrichard

Today I saw a picture of a frog sitting in a sauce pan on a cooker speaking to another, saying “I Know the water is heating up but that’s the next generation’s problem” and this can be a comment on a few things. The first, linear comment is of course about global warming and its consequences for current and future generations. Every generation, we, as children, want to make a better place when we grow up. The realities of adulthood make this more of a challenge than we had anticipated.



The second comment, and the one I leapt to is about the habit of saying “We’re safe, everyone can remove their masks and meet in big groups this summer, before, when winter comes, seeing that there is a huge new wave of Covid cases. In my eyes summer is the best time to work towards Covid Zero and be like most of Asia, New Zealand, and before recent changes, Australia.


The existential part of today’s blog post title comes, from knowing that the pandemic will get much worse again, and that we are windmilling towards another wave. Data I saw today suggests that the next wave is already on its way back. If this is true then self-isolation is not absurd.


In Summer it does feel absurd to self-isolate but at the same time there is evidence that it is not absurd, that it is rational, and normal. Another existential question is whether I want or need friendships anymore. It has been at least five years since I have had any. Any need, or deep desire has been muted years ago. Years ago I cried with pain, due to solitude. Now I think I’m blazé about solitude. I feel that if I wasn’t growing older I would be completely fine with the pandemic solitude I am currently living with, as well as the solitude I felt before the pandemic.


We couldn’t live in self-isolation for two years, going into the third if we were convinced that we needed to have a social life and all that other crap. People will think this is posturing but I’ve been solitary since some of my earliest memories. The pandemic doesn’t help. Neither does job insecurity, and neither does having to drive to see people who will never return the favour.


One of my reasons for not wanting to do things, either alone or with people, is that if you do things with people you need to walk close to other people who are not wearing masks. If you go to walk a mountain path it will be narrow and people will not be masked. If you wear a mask you will looked at as if you were swearing at them whilst playing a bagpipe. You do get strange, disapproving looks when you wear masks.


I don’t mind in the shops when I buy food, but in stairwells and other places it is uncomfortable. This discomfort is the government’s fault, for spreading disinformation about the pandemic being over, when it clearly isn’t.


Trevor Noah was at the correspondent’s dinner two nights ago and called it a super spreader event. This morning I saw multiple reports of people testing positive for covid, and aranet4 readings in the 2000+ range of c02 parts per million. Western countries are constantly selling the lie that the pandemic is over, when all of the data and previous seven waves prove are premature. The Northern Hemisphere should work towards Covid Zero but has chosen covid denialism instead, so the window of opportunity to stop covid before window is being missed. Spring and summer are the ideal opportunity to get to Covid Zero with the lowest social cost.


We have provided the virus with a pilot light of opportunities to spread this summer and we will pay the price in September, yet again.


When I check glocals I see that no events are planned anyway, so i am not missing out at the moment. Those that do sports where groups meet, and use cars, are still self isolating. it is only the alcoholics and others that are meeting and socialising without masks during a pandemic.


And that’s it for today. Less euphoric than sometimes, but this situation induces a level of fatigue that we just have to get used to.

Playing With The Aranet 4
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Playing With The Aranet 4

Byrichard

Countries like Switzerland recently decided that the pandemic was over because lobbies wanted it to be over. Despite high numbers of infections and the percentage of tests being positive Switzerland decided that the acute phase of the pandemic was over. For them the lack of deaths, and the lack of people in ICUs meant that the pandemic had entered a safe stage.


557 PPM in a shopping centre at around 0845


From Wednesday to Friday we went from masks must be worn indoors to “there is no need for masks anymore, even on public transport. From one day to the next we went from “masks are obligatory” to “masks will be tolerated”. In Spain we read about how some psychologists noticed an “empty face” syndrome within the Spanish teen community, which was then spread via the free press to other European states. Wanted to wear a mask had become stigmatised as almost being a sign of mental illness.


From one day to the next the Swiss media went from writing twelve lines of text about the pandemic to writing zero for days at a time. We now hear about Swiss covid numbers once per week. The body that was in charge of monitoring the situation has been dissolved, the state of emergency has been lifted and the pandemic is being ignored.


Meanwhile France, next door, is blood clot read on the RTS map of European infections. The pandemic is far from over but the Swiss government has decided to pretend it is.


That’s where devices like the Aranet 4 come in. For as long as Switzerland was taking the pandemic semi-seriously I felt that such a device was a waste of money and a gimmick. When Switzerland decided to ignore the pandemic such a device became crucial because we need to know how risky the environment we are is. The higher the co2 level, the higher the risk of Covid-19 transmission.


You can set the device to update every minute, two minutes, five minutes or ten minutes. The battery lasts for two years and there are two apps. The first Aranet 4 allows you to keep a log of the air situation over time and see the trends. Aranet 4 display allows you to see the display but nothing else. In theory every mobile phone can access an Aranet 4 without the need for pairing with the display app.


I go to the shops as soon as they open and in the time it takes for me to shop the reading goes from 540ppm to 600 within a few minutes of the shops opening. I have not been later in the day, to see how much further it climbs. The point is simple. co2 rises very quickly, whether you are home alone with closed windows, in a car, or in a shopping center.


We see people queue to wash their hands and disinfect their trollies, but they fail to wear a mask. Masks are the single and best line of defense and people are washing their hands instead.


Aranet 4 devices are great because they are small, light, easy to carry, easy to read and the data is easy to keep an eye on. It allows you to assess air cleanliness within one minute of walking into a room. You can see how quickly opening windows can make a room safer. You can also see whether a lift or hallway is safe. Surprisingly I got low readings in a lift.


Aside from checking that shops, lifts and hallways are safe you can also use it when you visit friends or family. When you step into a room, you can go and open the windows, and when you see that the Aranet 4 shows that the air is fresh you can take the mask off and behave more normally.


And Finally.


The Aranet 4 is expensive for what it does and outside of a pandemic where governments of several nations fail to keep people safe I would class it as a luxury. Due to Switzerland and other EU countries deciding to pretend the pandemic is over the situation has changed and such a device becomes worthwhile. It provides us with a quick way of assessing the level of risk in a room, so that we may decide whether to stay, leave, or open windows. It allows us to quantify whether removing the mask is a risk worth taking or not.


I do not carry this device unless I plan to spend time indoors. It is not designed for falls, being exposed to the outdoor elements etc.

Wearing a Dumb Watch Or a Classic

Wearing a Dumb Watch Or a Classic

Byrichard

Before the pandemic I liked to track sports, whether walking, indoor climbing, cycling, walking or more. I have tracked sports activities for two to three years at this point. I think I have almost 3000 tracked activities. That’s tracking my walks and more almost every day for at least ten years.


Recently the English, Swiss, Danish and other governments decided that they would declare the pandemic over, with no concern about the reality on the ground, or the warnings by the WHO not to assume that the pandemic is over. I also keep reading about how serious long Covid is, so despite the billions spent on propaganda to tell us that the pandemic is over, I am not convinced.


This does come with a psychological cost. While others can return to normal life, and either ignore the risk because they have already fallen sick, or ignore the risk because they don’t read hard news like some of us do, there is a social divide. On one side there are people who want to be careful and reach covid zero before resuming normal life, and on the other the people who don’t worry or pay attention to the details.


This summer we have a choice to make. Do we self isolate, to stay safe, and continue to wear masks, or do we give up and give in, and play Covid roulette? The data shows that solitude and masks are much better than long Covid but others are not careful. It is within this context that I am tempted to give up on fitness watches, and smart watches. What value is there in tracking our every move, our every breath and our every heart beat if we’re going to dine alone, walk alone, and ride alone?


I hardly look at Strava, Garmin Connect or the Apple Fitness app. I was excited that I walked five and a half million steps in a single year, but at the same time where is the end of this pandemic? Where is the safe social event? Where is the guarantee that a state or country is covid free.


The shift from pandemic mode, to no pandemic mode, in Switzerland was from one evening to the next morning. Within 10 hours we went from masks and being cautious to no covid passes, no masks, no social distancing, no event restrictions or anything else. In other words we went from being able to do things without danger. Now that there are no safety measures it is better to shop online, and not to do anything social in meat space.


I don’t expect any summer waves. What I am frustrated by is that we could profit from the summer virus lull to get to Covid Zero and eradicate the problem. Instead society is going to do everything it can to leave the pilot light burning for the virus, so that, when Christmas and New Year comes, we will have another tragic winter.


It is within this context that I am tempted to wear dumb watches again, to downgrade from the iPhone 8 plus to the iPhone SE and more. It is hard not to lose hope for the future. I haven’t lost hope. I study two to three hours a day now, four if you consider podcasts as studying. I am working towards a future, because I see no short term possibilities, during this pandemic. I am not depressed. I am despondent. I am going through the motions, whilst waiting for hope to reappear.


The Curse of The Electric Light Bulb
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The Curse of The Electric Light Bulb

Byrichard

Have you ever considered how nice it would be to wake up when the sun comes up, and to end the day when the sun goes down? In summer the days would be long and filled with memories. In winter we would head to sleep when the sun sets. Every day we would either gain three minutes or lose three minutes.


The curse is not the light bulb itself, of course, but rather in the ability for people to make noise for extended periods of time. For all the talk of blue lights, yellow light, reducing distractions and more, the real challenge is to live somewhere where neighbours or family do not wake you too early, or keep you up too late.


The Balcony


Although many people fantasise about balconies I have grown to hate them. People either sit on them all day and smoke so you never have fresh air, or they sit out at night, talk, yell and make noise all night long. By creating the balcony architects have created a way for people to inconvenience their neighbours. I find balconies and gardens to be uninteresting.


For me there is more pleasure in going out for the day, in going to climb, to walk, to ride a bike or to do something else for a day, to spend time in the fresh air, while doing sports.


A balcony, is like a summer beach. It’s nice to walk on in the evening or in the morning, but it’s boring to sit on it all day. I’d rather be in the outdoors doing something active, rather than passive.


The Sound System


Apartments are built to stop the noises from fridges, toilets, dishwashers and washing machines being transmitted across from one apartment to another, but soundproofing against televisions and other audio systems is lacking. This means that every single day you are at the mercy of neighbours suffering from hearing loss. The noise is just loud enough to be heard, but not enough to be enjoyed. It invades your personal space.


Until I moved into an apartment, I never understood why people wanted to spend money on white noise machines, but over the last two or three years I do. The problem with white noise machines is that you need to find one that is loud enough to cover the noise, without being too loud to prevent you from sleeping. I have yet to find the ideal solution.


Duration


When written down, the issues above do not look that problematic. Close the windows and you deal with the issue of smoke. Find a white noise machine and you deal with the issue of noise. The problem is that both of these problems can last from 1600-0300, or even longer. That is a long time to be inconvenienced, especially every two to three weeks.


Impact


Quality of sleep, and consistency of sleep are both impacted. It means that every two to three weeks your sleep pattern is shifted by a number of hours resulting in fatigue or other problems. It also makes it less interesting to make early plans. We’re in a pandemic so there are no real plans for early in the morning. Out of Pandemic it does have an impact. Being able to go to sleep when the circadian rhythm says “bed time” is useful to avoid fatigue. A few years ago, when I was sleep deprived I was breathalised, to see if I had been drinking, which I hadn’t, but I thought, “my sleep deprivation is the danger at the moment.”


Common Courtesy


When I watch television I normally put it loud enough for me to hear, but not so loud that it can be heard through walls. When I listen to music, podcasts or audio books I listen with earphones. This prevents too much sound making it through the walls. No one has complained about me making noise, but I still have that habit anyway. I prefer to be unheard if possible.