Stop thinking of Twitter, TikTok, IG, (et al) as social media sites.
They are Content Refineries.
Like processed food manufacturers they take user content & extract the most addicting/engaging content. Brains eat it up but in an unhealthy “devour the whole bag of chips” way.
They make hyper-processed social media junk food.
Mastodon is more like a potluck. We're all bringing dishes. It's a mess. Kids are running all over. But we are, at least, real people sharing real things.
@ethanschoonover Love this analogy. And man I love Mastodon exactly because it’s a potluck… in a park… on a sunny day… one with maple trees and a lake… 😁
@ethanschoonover I’ve always taken this as the distinction between a social network, which provides a platform for people to communicate, and social media, where someone is trying to manage what users see. Often with the implicit assumption that the network is supposed to be more like a one-way broadcast medium for brands to deliver programming to their viewers.
I already read that article that promoted this idea of "refineries". That analogy is flat out wrong.
Twitter today isn't a refinery, it's more like an adulteration factory, it's been deliberately set up to inject bad cholestrol and carcinogenic elements into public discourse.
It's a flawed idea to think that it only refines raw material from the grassroots alone.
@ethanschoonover The best way to see what Meta gets upto is to use a search engine that doesnt store data and sends you alerts about tracking etc .I have to maintain a FB account to keep in touch with friends and family but I rarely use it and aside from using it as a back up to store photos I nolonger write posts or regularly comment it feels a very unsafe space .And I usually do a clear out of my cookies etc afterwards because its very intrusive
Great point, but if I can quibble: can we please for the love of God stop calling creative work such as visual art, short stories, film and book reviews, social commentary, etc., etc., as "content"? 🤮
@ethanschoonover
the #fediverse really makes me feel like the pendulum is swinging back towards the #Internet that i grew up with, full of delicious #webrings and bespoke pages, and I'm here for it!
On twitter/FB/TikTok, you get bombarded with so many of the same videos. It’s crazy that this got millions of views and thousands of likes/reposts in 8 h for someone posting a video they didn’t make, that has been reposted countless times, and that is not new. Just steal a known, popular video and throw into the algorithm and profit!
I’d be less annoyed to get fed this on YouTube where you log in to watch videos, but it’s not “social”
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