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Where does this stop though.
Signal is hosted on AWS. If you are boycotting the tech bro, Trump brown-nosing, US hypercapitalism freak show then I suggest you just stop using the internet.
not just the morality of using musks app, its just so full of misinformation clickbait and bots its not worth it
most of what i want to find is on bluesky and it's far less spammy
For anyone running/participating in Club stuff and using Facebook for it, my running club switched over to Spond earlier this year. It's much better for handling meet-ups/events and we have a number of sub-groups to keep it all manageable. Worth a look at anyway.
Not bothered about friends, that’s easy. Family and changing tech is far more painful!
Have you considered falling out with your family?
But really even your older family members will probably be fine using signal, it isn't that long ago that whatsapp was new to them, it will probably be easier for them to add signal to their phones and understand it than when they first started using whatsapp.
Even trying, even if you are still forced to use whatsapp for a few % of calls because of hold outs, if millions or 10 of millions do the same it still has an impact.
Where does this stop though
When facism losses or kills us.
Twitter: Gone
Facebook: It's where I keep up with musicians and artists and greyhound rescues I care about although with the steady increase in sponsored stuff lately it's getting a lot more tiresome.
Instagram: Its where I keep up with musicians and mountain biking along with friends who have/do both as well as greyhounds. Still largely OK albeit with some questionable suggested posts from time to time. Also fun to spot AI reels.
Going to have a sniff around bluesky and see how that feels.
Well I use X to bait the morons, provides me some light entertainment of an evening and occasionally I encounter a proper shit for brains inbred redneck MAGA type who usually end up threatening to visit me, then I explain they need a passport and someone to show them the way. Childish but hey ho. Not on face****
Bluesky is ok, less crap but that will change.
I’m getting more and more random spam. I think this may be due to fewer friends posting on it, therefore falling below some sort of critical mass.
I think facebook is slowly dying anyway. I do use it and do curate my feed to keep it clean. Facebook never had any real moderation anyway. The announcement does not really make much change. After this trip which is being recorded on facebook I will decide. Facebook has been incredibly useful in getting back i contact wirh old friends
My most used group is on signal and i will see if i can get the other groups to move to signal
Never used insta or ****ter
Amazon I got locked into for e readers as an early adopter. Never use it for anything else because of its unethical behaviour. When my last e reader fails ill drop completely
Facebook: desktop only with FB purity installed. No ads or recommended content. Groups are useful and marketplace is better than eBay/pinbike.
On the whole it's terminally enshittified and I won't miss it.
Twitter: Never used it. It always always a conveyor belt of toxic bollocks and arguing. I've got STW for that.
Amazon: Never used it.
Instagram: Rocket fuel for fomo/depression. Deleted my account when I quit being a photographer and got an office job. Now have a lurker account and only follow humans who I know in real life.
MySpace: sorely missed. I used to do well on there as a sweaty BMXer in the days of emo girls.
I never got on with xformerlytwitter. Ever. It annoys me no end when I see that needle and thread emoji, which seems to be used as a signifier of something incredibly deep and meaningful, but usually is just a paragraph of throwaway opinion, instantly forgotten.
Instagram I like for following people with whom I share interests, I don't use it otherwise, no interest in using it for personal or social life.
Whatsapp, I'd ditch but so far only one person has mentioned signal.
Facebook for local MTB groups, local village stuff, occasional marketplace bargains/freebies - installed FB Purity a few months ago and it's massively improved the FB experience. Again I don't use it for personal/social stuff.
Whatsapp is the only social media app on my mobile, others I just use from desktop.
Never had twitter and used FB for a month a few years ago after being nagged by the owner of the gym I attended. Honestly never saw and still don't see the appeal or point of either or TikTok, Insta etc. I'm just not that interested in what people are doing. Have WhatsApp and the horror that is Linkedin on my works phone and Signal and this place on my phone. That's all I have. I just find most social media platforms weird and unappealing.
I gave up on Facebook late 2020. Probably now missing out on loads of relative and family news?
I joined X last night as I wanted to try out Grok ai. I won't bother installing the X app on my phone but I might skim through topics of interest on X on my tablet.
Separating owners of companies from their platforms is something I can do. I'm pretty irrelevant in the grand scheme of things and whilst my use of a platform might generate some cash for the owners. I'll live with it.
This is the way the world seems to now operate?
If everyone stopped using social media would the world be a better place?
Price of stamps for snail mail drives family's towards social media platforms?
Price of stamps for snail mail drives family’s towards social media platforms?
That argument pretends that email doesn't exist.
WhatsApp and the like allow informal group chat, at people's leisure... something writing letters etc doesn't really do (especially paper letters).
If everyone stopped using social media would the world be a better place?
My opinion? Based on current social media platforms?
A definite yes.
I am OK with platforms (e.g.messaging platforms) that work on the basis of opting in to a group as a personal decision, rather than those that use data models to decide what unsolicited stuff to spam you with from people you've never heard of.
Anyway to the question of the thread I do have logins fox x and Facebook..I never use them so I'm going to bin them.
WhatsApp is tricky. I'll have a look at signal I think.
I’ve never had Facebook or Twitter / X so it’s easy to quit them!
whatsapp and insta are still useful for groups chats and hobby stuff. I’m pretty good at curating my feed on Insta so I just get synth electronics and band / music.
seeing Bezo gurning at Trumps inauguration made me finally cancel Amazon Prime. I hadn’t been using it much as the shopping side has turned to a Temu like barrage of tat, and the TV had nothing I wanted to watch. I think the only show I’d watched all year was Fallout, which was meh anyway.
Bluesky is so far a bit more like old Twitter, far less toxic, and far easier to nuke the Nazis when they pop up by selective use of blocklists. Even the ‘discover’ algorithm seems OK now I’ve managed to reduce the amount of hairy chubby men in underpants and sexy furry cartoon art which for some reason* it seemed to be offering me every third post.
yeah, WTF is that about, I get it too. Every other post is either a bloody cat or some Japanese type comic art with a sprinkling of hairy men in front of a mirror thrown in. **** knows what I looked at for the algorithm to think that’s my kink! No matter how much I hit ‘block’ or ‘show less like this’ they keep coming! My wife is questioning my browsing history on bluesky!
Using Fb, have done for years, but I don’t post much and, like here, I don’t have much personal info on there, but I do have lots of contacts on there, so I’m happy to keep it going for those connections.
X/Xitter I only use to troll the Xitterati that infest it; being able to call out Elonia directly does fill me with a sense of enormous wellbeing, a bit like feeding the pigeons and sometimes the sparrows too… 😉
…PARKLIFE!
I do have accounts for Instagram and Bluesky, although I don’t use either very much.
Being unable to avoid aws's background services is one thing, it doesn't mean stopping direct use of amazon is wasted.
If western leaders are unwilling to challenge the power of the oligarchs, then consumer activism is one thing that we have the power to do in our own lives. Individually it may seem a futile gesture, but there does seem to be a bit of momentum growing at the moment, and with political parties having largely broken their engagement with society I can't really think of many other methods of getting our voices heard.
perchypanther
It’s a dilemma.
It’s all tits and Nazis now…and I hate Nazis.
@perchypanther looks like you're in luck - Fox News have announced the arrival of Titkok. More tits. No Nazis. (some cock)
hard to imagine you can avoid AWS
A lot of NHS stuff is propped up on AWS.
WhatsApp is going to be the hardest. I have no plans to dump it yet, but really want to. Not a tool you can replace without “everyone else’s” buy in. Any ideas?
Just use SMS? I mean, I use WhatsApp like everyone else, but I could just SMS people instead, all contracts come with unlimited SMS these days so it's still free?
I ditched IG a few months ago because I realised all I was doing was staring at videos of people farting and pictures of 90's hot hatches and pretty much nothing else. Can't say my life is any better for it, but it's definitely not any worse!!
My wife is questioning my browsing history on bluesky!
Reasonably enough. Did you get an invite from a singletrackworlder?
More seriously start following some normal people (mine is some news, sport, computing and history) and it seems sane enough.
Just use SMS? I mean, I use WhatsApp like everyone else, but I could just SMS people instead, all contracts come with unlimited SMS these days so it’s still free?
The plethora of messaging apps - all doing the same thing - is a real bug bear of mine. (I even got pretty narked when STW started include a facility for DMs)
Theres a guy I work with sometimes who, for reasons that baffle me because he's very thorough and steadfast in so many repects, will somehow manage to start a conversation with an FB message and then over the following few exchanges the conversation seems to jump from there to whatsapp, then email, then text. Then if I need to remind myself of a date, time, price or whatever thats been part of that conversation I have to track back through all those apps to find it. I'm sure if he knew what my ebay account was then part of the conversation would have popped up theres too
Dropped Twitter & deleted account last year. Bluesky fresh air in comparison. Not only is there less toxicity but also less people reposting toxic posts, that I really didnt need to see, saying look! this is toxic!
Struggle with deleting Instagram as there are a few posters solely on there I love. EG eerder_metaal., ben_kinetics, stridsland_journal and a quite a few friends from old I cherish, but think I just need to delete it now and check their web pages now and again..
Facebook, I have local community pages that I really need to follow plus a few interest groups. I think I will create a chrome tab group with just those pages on for now so I dont have to do any feed rubbish
You can control your feed – if you interact with the crazefest that’s what you’ll be fed.
This is the critical thing with Twitter. If you just stick to the "Following" feed and don't engage with trolls and nazis, you'll just get stuff you want to see. I follow a lot of journalists and academics, it's really useful for that. It's kinda like how IRL, the world is full of people you don't want anything to do with so you only invite people that you like to come round your house, you don't put an open invitation out there.
Facebook just seems to have died. Almost nobody I know posts anything these days, I just get random AI generated nonsense and there doesn't seem to be any way to stop that on FB, unlike Twitter, where you can just stick to your Following feed.
An NPO that I contribute to uses both for publicity, FB especially is still very useful for that.
Are you denying that twitter and facebook is promoting hate, and a far right ideology? Do you apply that to all immorality and corruption, if you don't see it does it not exist, are you happy to just look away to make it not exist? Are the views displayed on the Trump and Musk threads just for public display, just a pretence, do you really not give a ****? Maybe you are addicted to social media.
Because just repeatedly twisting the conversation back to "see no evil, hear no evil" is deliberately missing the point, and the people doing it are smart enough to know what the are doing.
That just confirms my point, thank you.
I think this underpins a lot of FB and Mark Z's thinking. They are ahead of the curve when, frankly very regressive thinking becomes law. Its one of Trumps policy promises.... Making America 1950's again. It reads as if it will be legal to discriminate on the basis of all the diversity issues that had been so hard fought for up to now.
If everyone stopped using social media would the world be a better place?
Yes.
Perfect timing: mini-a11y's primary school messaged today to say they're sacking off X and will be sharing learning via Bluesky now instead. I approve.
(TBH I wasn't seeing their posts on X anyway as I don't use X...)
I sacked off Twitter during the summer riots. The barrage of disinformation and far right BS wasn't compensated for by the more mainstream breaking news, politics and comedy stuff I followed.
I am still on Facebook grudgingly as I am still involved with community stuff that uses it for comms. Still on the 'gram for climbing content but there has been a bit of unpleasant right wing stuff bleeding into that recently - given I only look at rock climbing and cat content, I guess I'm being profiled because I'm a late middle aged man.
WhatsApp is basically impossible to avoid using in a lot of professional contexts or even in a social context - most people aren't going to switch to a niche comms app to please the ethics of an individual
I binned Twitter many years ago after realising that it just made me angry. This was when I lived in west London and various Chiswick types were getting extremely angry about the possibility of a dedicated cycle lane absolutely destroying their precious village high street.
Facebook and Instagram came a few years later. Facebook because I didn't use it and even at the time their data gathering procedures were known to be predatory, and Instagram because I was wasting time on it plus the whole 'owned by Meta' thing.
WhatsApp I'd like to get rid of, but it's so embedded in our area (used by our after school wraparound care provider, the street WhatsApp group etc.) that I fear it's not going to happen.
I have two young girls and I'm really hoping the whole 'social media' thing totally implodes before they get near it. I wasn't very optimistic a few months ago but with this whole 'let's all cosy up to the Orange Gibbon and/or just be nazi about it' thing I'm a bit more hopeful these days. Silver linings and all that.
I find Signal a very viable Whatsapp alternative and the least dodgy of the encrypted messaged apps, I stared using it when Zuch first started monkeying about with Whatsapp and have been gently nudging my social group to move over to it as I've always suspected that Meta will ruin WA at some point and I'd like to have an alternative ready to roll.
Never had an FB, Xitter or Insta log in. I'm too OCD, I'd never leave them alone or get any work done.
Still browse FB/Insta regularly but rarely post anything. Insta's not too bad in my experience but Facebooks a time vacuum/barrage of bad vibes these days (excluding some of the groups I'm in). Really want to sack it off but I'm addicted TBH. WhatsApp comes in very handy for arranging rides ect so thats going nowhere.
Never bothered with ****ter/X thankfully!
This is the critical thing with Twitter. If you just stick to the “Following” feed and don’t engage with trolls and nazis, you’ll just get stuff you want to see.
Yes well aware how it works, my issue is that it it owned by a nazi troll. Bluesky has 80% of the content now. Is far less toxic so that will do for me.
I stopped all social media, except linkedin. Sites like twitter, FB, Reddit and Instagram weren't adding any benefit to my life. Data privacy and supporting bozos/mz/musk were also concerns.
Linkedin is the last one. It does seem to be shifting towards the right. I now don't read the comments. I'm tempted to get rid. The only reason to keep it is incase of job hunting.
Facebook: desktop only with FB purity installed. No ads or recommended content. Groups are useful and marketplace is better than eBay/pinbike.
Just to revive this, and a bit off topic but.....
This could be a game changer...Put it on chrome at home and edge at work. Oh, my - it's like facebook from 10 years ago. Well - not quite as most people I know hardly post anymore. But now no ads or suggested stuff. And once I went into the options, no bloody reels which somehow manage to get my attention despite my best efforts.
So - I think I'm going to take FB off my phone and just access via laptops. There's currently too much useful stuff in there I can't get elsewhere in groups (such as safety warnings on local whitewater paddling groups or backcountry skiing groups) to completely drop meta. But this could be at least a bit of compromise.
With that storm approaching, I did some random monitoring of FB and X and it's difficult not to conclude that the latter was much more up-to-date with road conditions, warnings, power outages and so on. I guess that's very much a personal priority thing. Might mean more if you're a bit rural. It's got me pondering. Are the road authorities, police, power distributors and so on using any of the other platforms?
The Met (weather not London plod) are on Bluesky and pretty active.
Not sure about other services being there in a major way yet, but I think they'll pop up there eventually.
I am gradually tapering down my social media usage. As a 45 year old, I have been on it my whole adult life. Usenet and IRC in the late 90s, forums from 2000ish, FriendReunited, Myspace, Facebook. I joined Twitter in 2009, Instagram around 2013 and Reddit around 2015.
Due to my music I was always busy on these platforms - had a couple of thousand followers on Twitter, and plenty of people to chat to.
And honestly, i had some really great evenings whiled away on Twitter. Whether getting ahead of breaking news, joking around, following elections, laughing at memes. I still remember where i was the day Michael Jackson died - at my parents house, on twitter. It was far better than watching the news.
Facebook, for me, started getting crappy around 2016 and I haven't logged in since 2020. I am migrating my twitter presence to Bluesky, but it's not quite as fun. I never did TikTok or Snapchat because I have a strange aversion to video content (i also don't really go on YouTube or even watch much TV).
So I'm mostly left with STW and Reddit. Both of which I do find genuinely useful!