Happiness and Social Media
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Happiness and Social Media

Byrichard

It is the turn of the Washington Post to discuss whether people are happier after leaving social media. As with every other article I have skimmed on the topic it discusses addiction and more without discussing the reason for which social media might be bad for one’s mental health. 


Remember that social networks, discussion groups, and collaborating with people in different rooms, countries, timezones is normal, and has been for decades. What makes social media different from other social networks is that social media is algorithm and profit driven, rather than community centric. 


As I skim through this article I see discussions about self-perception, bullying behaviour and more. What I see is not a commentary about social media, but rather a commentary on the cruelty of normal people on the social web. As I like to say, the problem with social media is that the bullies we used to spend time on the web to avoid, have made their way onto the web. The web is now as unpleasant as meat space, as some called it. 


The article discusses body image and instagram but there’s something that people forget, or never experienced. Instagram was a photo sharing app, between friends and friends of friends. We didn’t share images of ourselves, or if we did it was because we were at events together. Seesmeetups and tweetups were events where we would have photos of ourselves, with others. If we posted images to instagram they were of landscapes, travel and more, not individuals. Body image didn’t even come into it for us. 


I left Myspace because the community left, I left Jaiku because it shut down. I left Google+ because it shut down. I left Facebook because it became filled with adverts and reminded me of the life I wanted but didn’t have. I left Instagram for almost the same reason, but also because I was seeing adverts, without feeling human connections with humans, anymore. 


I left Twitter for political reasons. I don’t like what Musk stands for, but I also hate what he is doing to the platform. 


People love to speak about social media as if it was addictive, and as if it was bad for mental health. They are missing the point. The point is not whether social media is healthy or unhealthy, because at the end of the day it’s just people socialising. If they were in a bar or pub we’d think nothing of it. If they were on a balcony or in a garden we’d see them as just socialising. People have lost sight that social media is a group of friends socialising. 


They think that social media is about likes, views, about re-shares and more. It isn’t. It shouldn’t be. Social media is a network of friends of friends, and to leave the network is to leave behind that network of networks. 


Twitter, Facebook and Instagram destroyed that network of networks, and now they’re trying to fix what they broke, whilst blaming what they broke on personal weaknesses, like addiction. Being social, as I have said for decades, online, is not addiction. It’s normal socialising via a different medium. 

On Theory of Knowledge, History and Media Studies
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On Theory of Knowledge, History and Media Studies

Byrichard

The Goal of the BBC is to Inform, educate and entertain. The aim of Public Service Broadcasters is to provide people with reliable, accurate information that is not biased, that is neutral, in so far as is possible. Recently with the Far Right getting into positions of power, to control the Radio Television Suisse, the BBC and many other broadcasters and media outlets the need for theory of knowledge, history and Media Studies has become essential. 


I would like to throw philosophy into the mix, along with ethics but I think that the three topics in the title will suffice. In theory of knowledge you learn to know what you know, but also to understand what you do not know. You learn about the limits of what you have learned in order to better handle the information that you do understand. It has been years since I studied Theory of Knowledge so I’ll jump on to the next topic. History. 


In history you question information. You ask “Who wrote it”, “When did they write it”, “why did they write it?”, “how did they gain from this information”, “Who had to gain from this information” and more. The point is that history is not just the study of the past. It is the study of veracity. It is learning to contextualise the information we get, within the context of that information. To put it plainly, did the loser, or the winner, write this information. In the age of “Social Media” and endless streams of information every point if view has an outlet. Information doesn’t have to be demonstrable for people to believe it, as long as it lines up with their agenda. 


The idea that we don’t need to, or shouldn’t study history is wrong for the simple reason that we learn historical facts but we also learn how to identify reliable information from opinion. We also learn to see three or four points of view, before digesting the information and coming to our own conclusions. 


The final topic is media studies. When I studied this topic it was a subject that was relevant to media professionals because at the time if you worked in radio, publishing, television of others you need a good grasp of the social context and history of the media, to work effectively. 


Today we are in an age where everyone is an author, a publisher, a presenter, and more. We are in an age where everyone has the same reach as everyone else. The gatekeepers are emotion, algorithms, sensationalism and more. 


Remember, when people read from newspapers headlines gave the who, what, where. how, why, and when answers in the headline, and people would read the article if it was relevant. Remember that back then we bought the entire paper, daily, or simply picked it up in a pub and read. Clickbait headlines don’t give us any information, and yet future generations are growing up with clickbait titles, rather than informative ones. 


Last week Twitter spoke of “legacy” verified accounts, as if they were something to be scorned and avoided. Verified accounts were to ensure that people knew who was authoritative and who was an amateur. Remember Andrew Keen wrote about how the World Wide Web would change our lives, before social media even came on the scene. Musk is an amateur. He thinks he is a media professional but he is just a wealthy amateur with funds. That’s why he’s targeting the memosphere, rather than the broader World Wide Web. 


As Instagram went from being a photo sharing app between friends, to a glossy magazine for influencers, as facebook went from being a discussion forum for uni friends, to a place to play zynga games, and when twitter went from being a glorified chatroom to a Right Wing amalgamator so the age of Social Media ended. 


Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have become tools to spread disinformation and opinions, rather than social networks. Twitter and Facebook were once tight knit communities of friends talking with friends of friends. 


I was triggered to write this blog post because of this article: https://archive.is/hEwOj. 


But their concerns were largely drowned out by Twitter and Substack accounts with collective followings in the millions, who cheered the finding. With a better understanding of the Manufacturing of Consent such articles and such groups would have less of a voice on social media. When Andrew Keen wrote his book he worried about bloggers, but as today proves, the problem is not with opinionated individuals, but opinionated corporations and people with the funds to buy websites like Myspace when Keen was writing, and Twitter, as I write this blog post. The danger isn’t individuals. The danger is wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals with specific agendas. 


By studying Theory of Knowledge, History and Media Studies people would be equipped with the tools to use social media safely. They see the smoke and mirrors. They are less vulnerable to manipulation. 

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.

The Immature Coming of Age of Social Media
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The Immature Coming of Age of Social Media

Byrichard

Around a decade and a half ago I grew tired of seeing blog headlines that said “The top ten blah blah”, “Three signs that …” and more. It grew tiring to see all those headlines, to a point where it generated the term clickbait. The idea of a headline being written to attract people to a click where there was no content behind it.


Today I worry that the juvenile behaviour and attitude of social media, and to some degree mainstream media, is making it hard to have meaningful adult conversations. A lot of social media is about sensationalism, and tabloid superficiality, rather than meaningful, pleasant conversation and idea sharing.


I realise that terms like woke are apparently based on African American culture in the US to describe white people that are in tune with the reality of the situation, but I hate the term. When I worked in Human Rights I came across the term “The decade of the People of African Descent and I much prefer this term. It isn’t about race, chrominance or anything else. It’s about where a family might have originated. I have no problem with “of European descent” or other terms, because it brings the conversation towards migration and mobility.


Woke is a word that already has a meaning, that we use every single morning. To use it to insult others makes it a useless term, rather than a useful term. I used social media to find pleasant conversations, for friendship, and for more, as time advanced friendhips.


This is the time of year when people complain about the changing of the clocks, and I have the view that those who live far enough from the equator will love the move of clocks forwards and backwards, because it signifies the arrival of spring or the arrival of winter. It also signals an extra hour in bed when the weather is colder and more unpleasant, and waking an hour earlier, when the sun rises an hour earlier. I love the change of clocks.


Others don’t, and wnt to argue about how we shouldn’t change the clocks according to the season. People discussed their hatred of the clocks changing on Mastodon and my reflex is to keep the app closed, and to steer clear.


I loved social media when it was a pleasant, adult conversation about projects, aspirations, friendship and more. Now that it is childish bickering I prefer to take a step back. Why do we invest years of our lives on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social networks, only to see them bought by immoral people, and ruined. The death of Twitter has degraded my desire to invest time and effort into any social network.


If the pandemic was over for real, rather than for commercial reassons I would give up on social media completely. I would use telegram or signal, with a group of people and chat. Paradoxically, not having a car, having a broken arm and then three years of pandemic, encouraged me to dump whatsapp, facebook, instagram and now Twitter. I ran out of things to give up on.


Now I’d like the pandemic to be over. I’d like for there to be zero new cases for two weeks in a row, for the entire country, or even continent, so that I can rebuild a real life, and forget about “social” media, at last.


And Finally


And Finally I really don’t get why Auttomatic bought ActivityPub. For me the product is not ready to be seen as a product. I think that sale was premature.

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.

Why I Won’t Pay 20 USD Per Month For Twitter and FaceBook

Why I Won’t Pay 20 USD Per Month For Twitter and FaceBook

Byrichard

In 2006-2007 I would have payed for Twitter and/or facebook, but not now. Both of them say “pay, to prove that you’re a human being”. For as long as I have been on Facebook I have used my real name. I authenticated myself by using my university e-mail address. Back then you need an educational e-mail address to be verified. it’s only with time that the barriers to entry collapsed.


With twitter I started as anonymous but after plenty of tweetups I used my real name. It’s only during the pandemic that I felt the need to hide my identity. Specifically I hid my identity and changed my name when two or three women tried to start flame wars against me due to misunderstandings.


Before those attempts at flame wars Twitter was a network of friends, and when you’re in a network of friends you behave. Everyone knows everyone and there is the expectation that we meet in person after a few weeks or months of conversations. Not anymore. That’s where thinks become less pleasant.


The true reason for which I would not pay for FB and Twitter is that both social networks offer very little flexibility. For 8-11 USD per month you can setup your own Mastodon instance, with friends and family, or either one or the other. For five dollars per month you can setup a Linode server and build your own blog based community using WordPress if you want the little to no code solution, or other content management systems. If you’re going to pay to be part of a community, make it personal, make it local, or make it professional.


The golden age of social media has been and gone. Now Social media companies that forget that ROI, for their users was important, are penny pinching where they can. If you pay for Twitter, Facebook and other social networks you end up paying hundreds of francs, or dollars, per year, for algorithms that make you invisible, to reach friends that have better things to do. I don’t see what we’re actually paying for.

Twitter and SMS

Twitter and SMS

Byrichard

Back in the good old days of Twitter the length of a tweet was limited to the length of an SMS. The aim was to make it possible for people to tweet and have conversations using GSM phones. With short messages we could leave the keyboard behind and read messages on our mobile phones.


Jaiku was similar except that it was more advanced, having an app that played well with Symbian devices. With time, and the advent of the iphone and ubiquitous data plans so platforms like Twitter and Jaiku could add images and more. With time Seesmic experimented with video and instagram with images. Instagram thrived because it made uploading and sharing images fast and easy, even in the days of limited bandwidth.


Over the years Twitter and other social media platforms have forgotten about their origins and now a single tweet can take an entire 27″ computer monitor, let alone a laptop screen. What was one short and succinct became long winded, and inefficient.


Twitter wants to extend the character limit to 4000 characters, but that’s absurd. The entire reason for Twitter being, is to have short messages, that are quick to read, a list of headlines, rather than full blown essays.


Remember that blogging platforms have snippets and sub-headings for a reason, to make them easy to skim.


Twitter has lost its bearings now. They are trying to be different products, at a high price, rather than highlight their unique selling point. I don’t want to read long tweets. I want short tweets. I even want to turn off images, to make the feed shorter and more succinct.


And Finally


I want to joke that the reason for “cargo pants” or cargo trousers as I prefer to call them is to store FFP2 masks during a pandemic. They are the ideal size for masks. It’s easy to store them during your outdoors walks, and pull them out once you are back indoors, or near people.

The Free Twitter API Ends and The Twitter Silo Begins

Byrichard

Social networks and social networks are based on people connecting with other people. Twitter is a glorified chatroom masquerading as a microblogging platform. As twitter shifts from being free, to being paying, it is losing it’s appeal.


Fifteen years ago there was plenty of discussion about Social Media silos and the social graph, and discussion about ROI for businesses, PR firms and personalities. They always forgot about the user. They exploit the user because the user, in their eyes, is an addict. This attitude make it okay to exploit social media users, in their eyes.


Screen capture of twitter dev account tweets about paying API


I am not worried about losing bots. Bots make a lot of noise, but don’t help Twitter, as a social network. What bothers me is the phrase “Twitter data are among the world’s most powerful data sets.” Facebook said the same thing, and then we read about Cambridge Analytica, emotion experiments, phone draining potential and more. We also read from books like Mindf*ck that Facebook was used to manipulate people to vote one way rather than the other. We learned that FaceBook could not be trusted with our data.


Now Twitter is using the same phrases. As I see the changes made by Musk I see that Twitter is becoming a silo, like FaceBook and Instagram. Twitter is no longer a social network. Twitter is a data farm where we are expected to pay, for content to be pushed on us, rather than seeing organic tweets, and where our data is mined by untrustworthy groups.


Through his actions Musk is turning Twitter into a data silo that I no longer want to be a part of.


Techcrunch addresses the topic from the reverse angle. “Twitter’s new announcement might impact research in different areas, including hate speech and online abuse.” On the one hand Twitter is making it harder to police what content is posted whilst encouraging others, with deep pockets to exploit that data.


TechDirt thinks that this move will encourage developers to move towards Mastodon but Mastodon is just one of many alternative websites. I would go further. By blocking access to the API twitter is encouraging people to lose trust in the company. First it blocks the apps people used to post and read tweets, then it blocked the API for bots, and tools for checking account related information, for example “map my followers” and other functionality. With the decline of those tools such actions will need to be manual.


The Washington Times phrased it as “Twitter shutting down free access to its public data”. Twitter should have become Not For Profit. It should have been made sustainable, whilst allowing people to converse globally. It is now sliding in the opposite direction, to become a silo, for people who want to exploit the data to manipulate people, rather than help spread news, information, friendships and conversations. Twitter, by moving towards becoming a silo, is removing the features that made it the strong, vibrant community that it was.


The Instagram API


I posted over 4000 images to Instagram over the years, until FaceBook bought and then destroyed the app. I used to post every single day, until I found that the app felt more and more lonely, and more and more of a waste of time. It had switched from being a social network to being an influencer network, where loneliness was the cost.


I tried to play with the API, to use Instagram externally but because of the blocks in place I couldn’t access my own data, without first proving that I should have access to it. That is what encouraged me to spend a few days trying to import the Instagram JSON file to WordPress. It worked, and I was happy. I had found a workflow to recover my data, and use it for my own website, rather than to provide content for a platform that did not respect me as a user.


Twitter is now doing the same. If we can’t access the API to use twitter as we want, then it does encourage us to move along, to the new alternatives, or, as I am doing, to write blog posts every day. This is day eighty of writing a blog post every single day.


If it wasn’t for the community I would have dumped Twitter years ago.

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.

A Short Twitter Detox
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A Short Twitter Detox

Byrichard

I took a short twitter detox for two days. For two days I didn’t look at tweets, replies and more. For two days if I wanted to rant I couldn’t. For two days I couldn’t see replies. For two days I couldn’t read people complain.


It is good to take a break from twitter sometimes. I don’t believe in social media addiction. Social media is a conversation. If you can get addicted to having conversations then the world is messed up. Twitter is a social network, not an addiction.


What triggered me to take a twitter break, aside from the ownership change and the negativity I see on a daily basis, is the inability to change from the “home” feed. Until recently we could swap between algorithm driven timelines and chronological ones. The ability to switch between both has been made much harder.


Twitter is making the same mistake as Facebook did, which Facebook then did to Instagram. It decided that Twitter will now be a Right leaning tool for propaganda and disinformation, rather than a chronological timeline of tweets by friends and friends of friends. It will throw in sponsored content.


And Finally


You can get Twitter Blue for 8-11 USD per month, to get the blue tick, or you can get Wordpress Premium for 8 dollars a month, if you pay for the year in advance. This allows you to monetise your content and more. It also gives you full acess to a blogging platform, rather than simple microblogging. For four dollars per month you get the personal option, and you can get a personal blog. There are cheaper options. The point is that 8 USD per month for a product like Twitter is extortion, especially given the volatility of the site.


Mastodon is also an option, that is free/donation based depending on whether you choose an existing server, implement your own, and whether enough donations have been made to be sustainable.