Dormant Social Media Life While Sorting Through Drives

Dormant Social Media Life While Sorting Through Drives

Byrichard

Recently my Social Media Life has become dormant. I do visit Facebook every so often but I ignore Instagram, barely touch Mastodon or the fediverse, and in general have stopped looking at social media for a social life. It’s not that my life offline has become vibrant. It’s that online is empty of meaningful engagement, especially in winter.

From the nineties right up to around 2018 or so social media was a place to meet and be social. It’s during the pandemic that social media seemed to die. I think that social media relies on meeting people in the physical world to have value. People on the social web use it when they’re on the toilet, or waiting for something else to happen. They’re just filling small gaps in their schedule.

Plenty of Potential Storage

The other reason is more positive. I have terabytes of storage spread across twenty two drives, or more and I am re-organising everything in order to see how much space I have free. I have at least twenty terabytes of data storage. I might have as much as fourty two terabytes of storage but due to file duplications I don’t have much space that is free.

Required for Video Projects

That’s frustrating, especially if you want to take video and can generate up to 64 gigabytes of data at a time. 64 gigabytes, because my Sxs cards have that amount of storage. The drone could have up to 512 gigabytes of storage if I put the right SD card into the camera.

Freeing Cloud Space

I can’t delete data from cloud storage solutions because I haven’t consolidated all of my photo and video files from iCloud, Flickr, Google Photos and one or two other services. If all of my files are organised chronologically then I can migrate from cloud storage solutions without worrying about losing images that might have been backed up only to iCloud, or Google Photos, or another solution.

By consolidating the data offline, I can manage data in the cloud with ease.

Shrodinger’s Storage Cat

For data to be safe you need to have two local copies, and one offsite backup. If you have a dozen, or two dozen drives then that data is like shrodinger’s cat. You don’t know whether it’s backed up (living) or a single copy (dead). Delete the wrong file and you might end up losing a few days, or a few months of data. By having a centralised main storage your small satellite drives become working drives. You use them while you’re working on a project, and once the project is over you move it to the main storage solution and either wipe and reuse that drive, or keep it as a backup. Shrodinger’s cat has left the storage device.

Looking Forward

Years ago I bought an eight terabyte drive because I planned to consolidate my personal video and photo files but I never got around to it. This morning I finished moving the junk I had on that drive to other drives and I have now started to backup the video and photo data that I had temporarily kept on a five terabyte drive. I realised that I have more data than would fit on a five terabyte drive, but it also failed to mount at least once.

For years I had the same data on five to six drives but in my move towards centralising, and then backing up my data I made myself unsafe. I was left with just one copy of data. Now that I am backing up the four terabytes of data I have from the five terabyte drive to the 8 terabyte drive I have a little margin of safety.

Consolidation

When moving files from the 5tb drive to the 8tb drive the process is simple. Move the video folde to the video folder, photo to photo, and documents to documents. It’s when I start moving the secondary drives to the main drive to consolidate my photos and videos that the value is generated because this is when I detect duplicate folders, videos and photos. This is when the value comes in.

Moving four terabytes of data takes hours, but once that data is moved, and as I consolidate data from six or seven other drives I will copy only the files that do not exist on the main volume. I will then move the files that I have checked into a zz-backed-up folder.

Low Value

When I was trying to free space on drives I deleted the files from the drive as soon as they were copied over. Now I am moving them to zz-backed-up as a scruffy backup. The aim is to be able to recover files if the 8tb volume fails, but these are a stop gap. The next step is to backup the 8 tb volume.

And Finally

Nothing is backed up until you have at least two copies locally, and a third off-site copy. The next step is to copy the files from an older volume to a newer volume. Old drives fail, so having files on older volumes is a risk. When I finish consolidating files to the eight terabyte volume I will then duplicate it to a newer 8TB volume.

As a side project, once I have two or more drives that are free of data I could experiment with setting up a raid system.

On Silent Walking and Having My Own Mastodon Instance

On Silent Walking and Having My Own Mastodon Instance

Byrichard

In an ideal world Silent Walking would make sense. In an ideal world the environment where you walk would be quiet and free from distractions. How many of us live somewhere that is far from cars, road works, construction, farming and other noises? During my walks I hear the sound of a motorway, the sound of a quarry, the sound of buildings being demolished, and the noises of construction. I also hear the sounds of cars driving too fast and too close.

From my introduction you will be misled into thinking that I don’t like silent walking, but I do practice it often. I often walk for an hour and a half and for the first half hour or the last half hour I remove the earphones and I just walk, in the moment. I also cycle without any distractions, ever, except for the GPS and taking pictures, but that’s part of being in the moment, rather than a negative distraction.

I also mindful drive. I don’t turn on the radio for music. I don’t always listen to audiobooks or podcasts. I often drive without the radio on, because of my cycling habit. I don’t listen to anything when cycling because I want to hear the dangerous drivers as early as possible, to turn around, let them see that I know they’re there, so that they behave in a more humane manner.

Lockdown and Silent Walking

lockdowns were a fantastic time for Silent Walking because at the time people were walking, rather than driving cars, so the environment was silent. Without cars walking routes really open up. Without cars you can walk by a motorway without the noise of cars. Without heavy traffic walks that were unthinkable were feasible, because there was little noise pollution, and less danger. I found a lot of new routes during lockdown, which is why I believe we should have more walking paths between villages and towns.

Walking and Danger

I love walking without using the car, but in order to do these walks I need to walk along busy roads where cars are driving above the speed limit, and give no safety margin. If I tripped or fell, I’d fall under a speeding car and they would have no time to avoid me.They’d be left with a mess to clean up.

Noise Pollution

I believe that for Silent Walking, for Mindful Walking, it would make sense to use noise cancelling headphones, with a podcast or audiobook, rather than nothing. As I wrote before, you have the sounds of construction, of motorways, of speeding cars, of gravel pits and more. The silence that they idealise doesn’t exist, so to be mindful requires creating one’s own silence, one’s own white noise.

The Right Values

During Lockdown people had the right values. They gave up on the car, in favour of walking and cycling locally. Not only was the world more quiet and mindful, but so the freedom to walk and explore, without using the car was around. Modern society has lost a lot, by over-relying on cars. If we would walk, cycle, skateboard and more, we would benefit as a society.

On Having a Personal Mastodon Instance

I was mucking around with WordPress, Classic Press and the Fediverse and it was fun. I lost interest eventually because I found that I didn’t especially like the Fediverse. Everything that I hated about Twitter was transplanted onto Mastodon so I declared bankruptcy and deleted two or three accounts, and didn’t really get back into the Fediverse for a while.

Trending Freedom

By having my own instance I found that not only could I avoid having any trending hashtags but I could also see which tags I see, and which ones are muted. By having full control I can control my own experience, rather than relying on the values of others.

Stream Control

By controlling my own instance I start from an empty feed. I can add, or remove individuals or hashtags with ease. In so doing I control how positive or negative the conversations are, and whether I see toxic discussions or not. By controlling what I see, I control how I feel, and that’s important. It means that if I find something toxic, to me, I can remove it. With Twitter and other instances I can’t control the community with as much freedom as on my own instance so it doesn’t take much for something to feel toxic.

Cost Control

If Azure, AWS or Infomaniak had Mastodon as an option for a self-configuring system then I would use that for experimentation. I’m using masto.host because it was the cheapest option, aside from free. With it I can familiarise myself with moderation tools and more, without having to go through the configuration and installation process.

And Finally

One of the key advantages of having my own Mastodon instance is that I need to behave. I need to be more positive, but I also have more control. For some reason the freedom of controlling my own server makes Mastodon more fun. I hope that I will finally stop bouncing from server to server now.

The Apathetic Mastodon
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The Apathetic Mastodon

Byrichard

On at least three occasions toots that were written as a cry for empathy, or at least venting, were interacted with by apathetic people. For this simple reason I deleted two Fediverse accounts. I deleted my Mastodon.social account, and my FireFish.social accounts. I have a precise desire, when using social media. That desire is to find a community of likeminded individuals that I have such enjoyable conversations with, that I want to meet them in person.

Noise Pollution

Noise pollution is caused by apathetic people, people that don’t consider that people want to sleep, study, think or other things. If noise pollution was not a problem libraries and other places of learning would not require quiet. They would be as noisy as everywhere else.
For daring to complain about noise pollution I was insulted, and then mocked on mastodon.social. When I look to vent, or, ideally, find empathy, and I find apathy my instant desire is to tell the person to duck off. I didn’t. I decided to write one more toot. The second response encouraged me to block the apathetic individual.

The Cult of Personality

I don’t remember what a second person wrote but it encouraged me to speak about normal people as sheeple, and to speak about the benefits of tight knit communities. One individual denounced the term sheeple and then wrote some rubbish about how not all accounts with a million followers are bad. I considered responding but didn’t. Why fight an uphill battle.

The Trigger

The trigger that got me to delete my mastodon.social and firefish.social posts was an ironic “I’m happy for you”. I am almost certain that it was ironic, although due to a lack of emoticons I do not know this for certain. What I do know is that I dumped Facebook early in the pandemic because of such interactions.

The Options

Give Up on Social Media

Sometimes I feel like giving up on asocial media. I feel like giving up on asocial media because the space is shared between generations, and use cases. Some people are utilitarian broadcasts, whose only desire is to find a mass audience. The second group are trolls looking for a misunderstanding, rather than a conversation, and the third group The third group are people, like me, who want to converse, but have to spend weeks or months finding pleasant conversations.

That’s why it’s tempting to give up on social media. It takes so much time and yet it’s so fragile. I’m thinking of returning to Facebook and Twitter because of how bad Mastodon is at the moment.

The Fediverse and Blogging

I wrote Mastodon above, because although I feel that Mastodon is a waste of time, due to how easy it is to be trolled, but very difficult to find empathy, it feels like working with WordPress and other Fediverse compatible instances is an interesting playground to play in. I love that my blog is somewhere so visible now. It is no longer stuck in a desert, it is at the front of my Fediverse streams, when i like and share my blog posts. I feel that this is the Fediverse’s unique selling point.

Revert to Facebook and Twitter

The reason for leaving Twitter and Facebook is/was to leave a toxic environment and look for a healthier community where it is fun to invest time and attention. With my experience of Mastodon, in particular, I feel that staying away makes sense, especially from big instances. The experiences we left Twitter and Facebook to avoid, are present on Mastodon.social.

Stay on Small Instances

The other, more rational option is to stay on smaller instances, and just wait until communities form. It might take months or years, but eventually they might arrive. This will take time.

Use a Nickname

Another option would be to use the web anonymously, using a nickname, like so many people do, to avoid trolls having an effect on your official persona. It’s the rational choice, but a social network where you have to hide behind an avatar is less interesting than one where people use their actual names.

And Finally

Although Mastodon and the Fediverse are growing both places are still filled with solitude. We can devote hours a day, to try to find engagement, or we can take a break, write a blog post that is shared to the Fediverse, and let it do the talking.

ClassicPress and the Fediverse part deux
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ClassicPress and the Fediverse part deux

Byrichard

After my first post about playing with ClassicPress and the Fediverse it was suggested that I try the nightly build of ClassicPress so I did. The result can be seen here.

Mastodon and Firefish

I have tested integration with the fediverse via Mastodon.social but also firefish.social and mastodon.social is faster, but mastodon.social eventually catches up. I tried posting a blog post, and commenting on blog posts and it works although not instantly. You need to wait for the changes to be propagated to where they are needed.

A change in tact

Initially I was going to try using a different domain but I struggled with getting the SSL certificates to work so I decided to create the subdomain ClassicPress.main-vision.com for ClassicPress tests and blog.main-vision.com for WordPress. In the case of ClassicPress I wanted to be able to play around, without making too much noise with my daily blog.

With the WordPress blog I wanted to test whether the webfinger json file for individual users would work, and it does, at least partially. When I looked up the usernames on webfinger it did show the users, but mastodon and Firefish do not detect them.

ClassicPress and WordPress Are Viable Options

I spent most of yesterday playing around with the two, and seeing if ideas worked, and so far the answer is “yes, if you’re patient” but that’s because the idea is still relatively new so progress has to be made. WordPress does work well, and ClassicPress is close behind. If you write a post, and check for comments the next day, then it works fine.

Sub-Domains count

The other question was whether it had to be example.com or whether subdomain.example.com would work and the answer is that subdomains work. If your blog instance is two or three subdirectories deep, then subdomains are a good alternative to manually generating webfinger files.

X-Istential – Podcasts and Where We Find People
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X-Istential – Podcasts and Where We Find People

Byrichard

Yesterday Twitter decided to re-brand as X. X.com redirects to Twitter.com. Within the next few days, weeks, months twitter will change its name and brand, and the URLs will be wrong. All twitter links, all embedded tweets, everything will become dead links. When we look for something on Twitter, we will be redirected to X.


The Podcast Legacy


Every single website, every single CMS, every Static Website, everything, will have to be re-written to point to the new domain name. Plenty of content will not be updated and will be a reminder of the past.


I’m thinking of all the podcast episodes and conversations that speak about Twitter, all the guests that mention their Twitter accounts. All of those “where can we find you?”, “where can we follow you” will turn to nothing. Suddenly mentioning Twitter accounts will be a reminder of the past.


Happy to Have Broken From Twitter


I am happy that I already broke my ties with Twitter, because this change would make me really sad. It’s the end of a culture, it’s the end of an era. It’s the end of an important part of web history. Musk has destroyed an important cultural symbol. “Pour des Prunes”, as the french would say. “For nothing, as the English would say.


Don’t Complain


More than once I have been told not to complain, to filter what I don’t like, and just to accept what I can’t change. Yesterday I was unhappy about a pop up that appeared twice, trying to teach me how to use Mastodon. I expressed my disgust, and was told not to complain. The thing is, I am a heavy social media user, so I am more sensitive to toxic changes, on social networks than most, because I live and breath these networks.


Hashtags


I complain about hashtags because I have seen them destroy conversations on twitter, and undermine communities. If people had listened, Twitter might not have become such a toxic place.


I am happy to see that you can go for toots, before seeing hashtags being used, and that’s great, because the moment hashtags saturate timelines is the moment the community will be dead, and the time to move on will have come.


Kbin


Yesterday I decided to take a break from the Fediverse and went to Kbin but all I saw in the threadiverse were people complaining about Spez and reddit. If those users could, I know that they would return to reddit, because that is their home. They’re expats, refugees. They moved because staying put was no longer possible.


I have been complaining about Twitter since Jaiku was around, but the critical mass were on Twitter so I had no choice. Google + was great, but it was destroyed by Google because they destroy anything that is niche, rather than mass appeal.


Slow to Adapt


It’s interesting that the Web is so slow to adopt to the new social networks. I don’t see that many sites that encourage people to add Mastodon, Kbin, Lemmy or Firefish accounts. They’re sticking with Twitter and Reddit, despite the clear shift by an active part of the social web, from one set of platforms to the next.


Frozen in Time


I was looking at one of my twitter accounts and it has been frozen in time. The last post that was sent from my Wordpress Blog marks the end of Jetpack talking with Twitter. That account is now frozen in history. Until I update a post.


Worth Returning?


I considered returning to Twitter yesterday, because it’s easy to use, smooth and fast compared to fediverse instances. The problem is that every little change Musk makes, to destroy Twitter, is heartbreaking, if you have good memories of the old Twitter.


I left Twitter because I didn’t want ads to be injected every four posts, into my stream. I left Twitter because I don’t want an algorithm to choose what I see, rather than me. I don’t want to be on a site that I consider, is run by a morally bankrupt individual.


And Finally


Twitter has been mentioned in blog posts and podcasts for more than a decade. It has been mentioned in almost every podcast too. By dumping Twitter as a name X is destroying its own legacy. How many people will type x.com rather than Twitter.com? X is not a good brand name. X is just a letter, nothing more. Will people be x-ing? If they’re exing are they crossing? “Are you going to X that later”? X is having an x-istential crisis.

On Mastodon Niches

On Mastodon Niches

Byrichard

Mastodon is a federated social network where people can join a server, based on their interests in tech and more. Most people join the servers that are open and easy to join but in doing so we have communities that grow, without becoming communal. I am on at least three different Mastodon servers.


Instances


I am on Mastodon.social, Techhub.social and Calckey.social and so far my favourite is Calckey.social because that’s where I got the strongest sense of community. In the process it also showed me one of the unique features of Mastodon, compared to reddit, twitter, facebook and other social networks. That feature is scale. I don’t mean that it’s huge and growing. I don’t mean that it has a million users.
I mean that if I wanted to create a Mastodon instance for hikers in the Canton De Vaud I could. I could create a niche mastodon instance that is centered around hiking in Switzerland, and encourage people I hike with to join, as well as to attract a larger community of people who enjoy the outdooors.


The Big Four


At the moment Social media is about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and TikTok, where everyone is thrown into a gigantic melting pot. The issue is that this melting pot is driven by algorithms and influencers rather than human scale social interactions. On Twitter, Facebook and the two others we are fighting to be heard. On Mastodon, if we find the right instance, we are heard without having to become unsociable.
Instead of asking “Which server should I join?”, we can ask “Which community do I want to be part of?”. This is healthier. This is on a more human level.


And Finally


Mastodon is not Twitter or Facebook. It is more like Wordpress. If you don’t like one community then you don’t have to stay on that server. You can hop to another that is more in line with your way of thinking. In a community where you feel positive you do not need to hide your name. I would encourage people to flit from server to server until they find the instance that they like. Mastodon is more like a web forum. There are hundreds of servers, the aim is to find the server that you like being a part of.

MicroBlogging and I
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MicroBlogging and I

Byrichard

Since 2006 I have thought of Twitter, Jaiku, Mastodon and Plurk as conversation channels, rather than microblogging. I go to these places and use them as chatroooms rather than microblogs. If I want to blog I have my full scale blog. This website, to keep me entertained.


I bring this up because at lunchtime today, the time at which I usually get tired with social media, two people frustrated me. One person asked for what reason Musk should have been stopped from buying twitter. The second said that without hashtags they wouldn’t be able to find content on Mastodon.


I might be argumentative on social media but that is not why I use social media. Ideally I want to use social media to have pleasant conversations that eventually lead to me wanting to meet people in person, or failing that, to collaborate online on projects. This lunchtime I found two arguments and my reaction was “I don’t want to invest hundreds or thousands of hours on a social network, like Mastodon, to have it be as big of a waste of time, as twitter, in recent years. I use social media to be social, not to argue.


Social media is an investment in time, attention and more. I stopped using Facebook and Instagram because I felt I was making money for others, without having any benefit of my own. The more posts you see, the more Instagram and Facebook earned. In the end I was tired of giving them a steady stream of cash. At the time I thought, If I took the time I spent on IG and FB and invested it on my own website then it would do better, and I’d get just as much engagement. This is tongue in cheek. If I am being ignored I might as well be ignored on my own website.


At the end of today I will have gone two days without tweeting. If I manage two weeks then I will have kicked the habit. I need to find a replacement. Blogging is one productive distraction.

The Day of Snow Poles and Mastodon
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The Day of Snow Poles and Mastodon

Byrichard

Today during the walk I saw an orange van moving by the side of the road slowly. It was stopping regularly. I crossed the road and looked towards it. I saw an open door and a person placing traffic snow poles into the bollards at the side of the road. Winter is coming and the roads are being made ready for when it snows. I wanted to film but I was told not to, so I didn’t.


It would have been nice to film such a scene, because it signals the change from Autumn to winter. It doesn’t matter. I respect peoples’ right to privacy. I can’t think of a security reason not to film such an event.


Mastodon


Through Musk buying Twitter, and through its swing to the Far Right people have finally decided to dump twitter to try something else. That something else, for many, is Mastodon. People are re-discovering what some of us have longed for, for a long time. Social media and the social web, without adverts, once again. For many years the web was seen as an expense, and everyone questioned whether it was profitable, so it was filled with enthusiasts, rather than others.


Today, with the slow demise of Twitter (theoretically) people have chosen to emigrate from Twitter due to political differences. Instead of going to a centralised network with a single point of failure people are migrating to the federated web where activitypub is used to share content between web servers. In theory every individual and business could have their own server.


This is good. The flaw with Twitter is that it had a board of people who decided that they would agree to sell Twitter to a single individual. This move has made a lot of Twitter users uncomfortable, me included. Social media and social networks are about conversations and communities, and what Musk has done, and those that agreed to sell to him, is show that social networks with a single point of failure, are bound to fail at some stage. Twitter won’t vanish overnight but the golden age of capital driven social media is over. Users are regaining hold of the social web, and people like Musk will have spent 44 billion, for a network where users are volatile.


I don’t mean that they’re flaming each other. I mean that if you open the jar usage stats will evaporate. As Mastodon picks up users at an increasing speed, so it will be more interesting for people to migrate from Twitter to Mastodon, and leave the sinking ship behind.


The Internet, and the web, were designed to be modular and adaptive. If one site or node is taken down, we just move to the next, and the next after that. Wordpress has provided bloggers with this flexibility for decades. Now Mastodon provides the same, for microbloggers.

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The Temptation to Give Up On Social Media

Byrichard

I find myself tempted to give up on social media and focus on blogging instead. I am tired of social media after decades of use. I am tired that users, that provide all of the value are ignored, and that greedy boards of directors can sell users as if they were lumps of coal or sugar beets.


By being sold to Musk Twitter has become a symbol of the Far Right, and Far Right ideologies are being pushed. Musk pushed a poll asking whether Drumpf should be reinstated and for now Drumpf is winning. This means that in a few days Musk will be able to say “I brought back Drumpf because that is what people wanted.” He already said that he would skew the algorithms to favour what he thinks of as positive.


That’s why I don’t want to use Twitter anymore. That’s why the last social network that I have been using discourages me from staying around. It’s not that I don’t like the community. It’s that I don’t like what the person in charge represents.


Yet again, we, the early adopters, who provided a social network with value, and the inertia to become one of the leading social networks, are homeless, and in need of a new place to use socially.


I am not convinced by Mastodon because people are too eager to onboard, get people to add alt text to images, and use hashtags. It doesn’t feel like a community. It feels like a sect trying to find converts. I want to have conversations, not be nagged about alt tags, and the use of hashtags.


When twitter was young, around 2007 or 2008 the introduction of hashtags, to a large degree destroyed the conversation, and turned social media into a popularity contest, rather than a network of friends, conversing with other friends. I am on social media to be sociable. Social media is a shell of its former self. I’d rather revert to blogging and generate content that will benefit me, rather than billionaires who do not see any value in users.


Before I end this post, it feels as if social media has become like normal life. The loud popular extroverts have huge followings and we are competing against them, as introverts. Fighting for attention takes away a lot of the pleasure of social media. I might as well meet people in the physical world, for that type of competition.


I might as well blog. If I am heard, then that’s good, and if I am not then I have practiced writing.