Is There a Good Social Media Website?

[01010111]

After reading Meta's new "Terms", I'm looking for a better social media site to join. I'd already scrubbed my instagram and facebook profiles, but after reading their new Terms I'm out. I haven't heard about whatsapp updating their terms, but they're probably next.

Is there a good social media website? Is that possible? I'm on Tumblr, and even though it hasn't changed in ten years it's become better than the rest. The issue is no one I know IRL uses it. I've tried to encourage and teach people how to use it, but they are luddites. Is BlueSky any better, or is it like stepping into Twitter circa 2014?

I've also started to think social media websites that completely insulate and isolate people from content they don't like is a bad thing. For example, if I think eating glass is great, find a community of like-minded people, and fully immersing myself there it might not be healthy (maybe). I know our fuzzy corner of the internet isn't an exception to this, and is only another example of isolating behavior. Is there a way to balance the need for self expression and a community's ability to help moderate unhealthy individual behavior?

[Gone Fission]

What's the TLDR on the Meta terms?

Tumblr is still a thing? I kind of liked it and used it for a little while. But I just didn't have as much juice as I wanted to do post interesting stuff and I just wasn't seeing a lot that was living up to its potential. (Best use version seemed to be kind of a "social microblogging" thing.)

Bluesky seems to be an attempt at a redo of Twitter with lessons learned for improvements to try to troll-proof the user experience. So like pre-Apartheid Princeling Twitter, with apparently a more effective anti-troll superblock. But I dunno. I'm having a hard time caring. I had been effectively off of Twitter for years already.

I mostly like the IG experience but they keep trying to kill users' ability to control their own experience, which fucking sucks.

[01010111]

The TDLR from the Meta Terms was agreeing to letting them train their AI on your data and agreeing to settle any disputes via arbitration and outside of a class action lawsuit. They do let you opt out of the legal thing, but you have to physically mail them at their PO box within 30 days of agreeing to the Terms (whatever that means). They also have a lot of loopholes around storing your data for various legal purposes after you deleted it.

This is based on my reading and interpretation, and might not be 100% accurate. It also likely depends heavily on which country you're in and how privacy/legal regulations work there. I figure if they're going through this much trouble to limit the legal actions you can take, then they're doing something shady and I don't want to be involved.

The only reason I've kept my insta/facebook accounts after Meta's forced AI integration was because my family and irl friends still post there. I never did like Twitter. The format just didn't appeal to me, and seemed like a worse version of Tumblr.

Tumblr's a bit more of an open space compared to facebook/insta, because anyone can reblog anyone else's content for anyone to see (including people you've blocked). If your account gets flagged you'll be lucky to get it back after six months (if ever). Tumblr's not without its drama (mainly the anti-trans bias from the moderators). It's also a lot easier to find random nudity there, they have made it a lot easier to avoid (ten years ago it was far more chaotic that way). So, you can't really browse it idly at work. But they make it really easy to opt out of AI stuff and disable all the recommendation algorithms. Then you have a purely chronological feed of only the people you subscribe to (plus ads that you can opt out of for a fee).

[01010111]

Also, I very rarely feel the need to buy anything after scrolling tumblr. So, my wallet's been happier since I've started using it more. If you want to use their algorithm you can, and they have various levels of it too. So, you can go from fully browsing what they recommend, regardless of who you actually follow, to a chronological feed of only people you follow that you can restrict even more by blocking specific tags (like if you follow a meme account that randomly posts ads you can usually block only their ad posts). It's been really refreshing having that much control over my social media

[coldbrightsunlight]

No

[coupleonapkins]

There are few certainties in life: you WILL hear Def Leppard at the strip club, there is no such thing as a free lunch, Santa is not real (despite the soulful and tender convincing argument offered by Paul Giamatti), and social media will never have your best interests at heart (Das Kapitalizme!).

All social media (or SoCal Conglommo LLC Media Faction, IYKYK) is based on the user as the content, or at least the source of it. Without us, it cannot eggsist, but, unfortunately, the opposite has become true. Or maybe both, I guess (hard to say for all those hydraulic press vids, but I digress).

Tumblr was kind of perfect for the first chunk of pre-Yahoo era, and the chaos was almost unimaginable (like Twitter, but with more gifs, and, somehow, less nazis). I'm sure there was 4chan chunks of it as that chit was burgeoning on the sidebars, but I was never that hateful of a) myself or b) other ppl, but I knew lots of people who definitely were. The word banning had begun and was absolutely useless, but the roulette wheel of the dashboard was always a real rollercoaster of emotions, cries for help, weird formatting errors, and pre-meme jokes (also called: jokes). I fell off the wagon when the Yahoo sale went through, and I never looked back.

Afterward, I kept up with most of the people who were still out there, figured out the through line was that a majority of us were undiagnosed ________ (fill in yer blank), and from then on it's been Insta or Twitter since. During the pandemic was the worst for both sites, and after about a year ago, I decided to delete both apps from my phone & reinstall them once every other week or so (a year of genocidal war & elections will wear on your brain faster than anything, but it's always nice to see monthly photo dumps & catch up on messages every once in a while, also see which IG cattes are still aliebe). Twitter is now an empty grave post-election, and though I've tried bluesky but not threads (both shameless "friendly" versions of an era that is long gone, anyway), it's just not the same.

I actually lost lots of ppl 2 tiktok (still haveben't downloaded that thing), who kind of had their brains rearranged by that algo 2 the point that there is just no endpoint to their distraction level, and I think, of all the emboldening that social media is capable of, is the worst of the lot (eyeballs on endless stun). Like a mainstream-funded Hollywood comedy in 2024, I cannot compete with that level of "entertainment", on either a human or social level, at all.

Worst part of all this: now I police myself before even considering what I search for on my phone/intranet, which I should have been doing 10 years ago. But I'd like 2 think it's like having an eggstra conscience (or something btwn the id/ego/superego) that stops me in my tracks before falling off a cliff of information & dissolution & distraction, but, like most of all of this, you're better off in the pre-internet idea of reading a book, seeing a movie, or just being nice to a stranger when you have the chance (unless they are streaming themselves falling off a cliff). And like all social media, there's an account of someone doing just those boring things without comment, just in case you need to complete the feedback loop that says it's ok be "yourself" again.

A hole is a place in the ground that you dig and cannot escape, but it probably can be other things to other ppl

No

[MechaGodzilla]

No

bsky is currently the Best of An Awful Bunch but as soon as they put ads on there it falls off that hollow podium.

[imJonWain]

forums are pretty decent if you can find one you like.

[01010111]

I'm glad I'm not the only one who's not having fun on social media anymore.

No

This seems like the right answer, honestly

...Tumblr was kind of perfect for the first chunk of pre-Yahoo era...

...I actually lost lots of ppl 2 tiktok (still haveben't downloaded that thing)...

...Worst part of all this: now I police myself before even considering what I search for on my phone/intranet, which I should have been doing 10 years ago...

I was on Tumblr pre-yahoo buyout as well. In some ways it's better. For example, I don't remember the last time saw anything on the level of one-man-one-jar/tubgirl/bluewaffle/etc. But I also don't see the cool, gory black metal artwork anymore either.

I was on tiktok between 2018 and 2021. For me it was an interesting source of leftist hillbillies and surrealist comedy. At some point they must have started using the front camera for recommendations and decided a middle-aged white man needed to see what all middle-aged white men like: scantily-clad, dancing teenage girls. I blocked thousands of accounts and frequently broke the app, but it wouldn't take me back to that weird corner of the internet. So, I deleted my account.

I use a vpn for everything, do all my searches via "private browsing", use firefox with ublockorigin, use either duckduckgo or 4get.ca for my searches, and regularly delete all my cookies. So, I don't get recommendations for anything based on anything I do. It's a little inconvenient sometimes, but it also discourages getting sucked down random rabbit holes online.

forums are pretty decent if you can find one you like.

Forums are rad, and for that reason I've been tempted by reddit. But reddit seems like its own kind of hell.

Overall it does seem like everyone's on the same page: social media's bad and we should try to be social irl instead.

[dub]

I use reddit a bit for keeping up with local news I might have missed (although local subs are always people complaining about all the same shit.)
The hobbyist subs always just turn into pretty pictures of the latest stuff someone bought, not always great for a conversation. Plus its all so big/open and anonymous it can be hard to get to know anyone. Forums were always more "cosy".

I joined the c//e discord when ILF was down, just so there was somewhere I could get some gear talk. It's nice over there but the nature of a chat style board is that conversations are far more ephemeral, you can't just necro up a thread the same way, ha.

[Blackened Soul]

It all went down hill after MySpace… I feel the same as everyone else.. scary how we All had the same tumblrperience
I always hated twitter, but I’d go one there occasionally to check one artists I liked.. what made me delete the damned thing for good was I was on there when Cheeto had a pot shot taken at him and mashed a ketchup packet on his ear to then fist pump..and I found out by MTG and Tucker ‘s tweets appearing in my feed like a wall…

Insta.. & fb are my necessary evils for keeping up with friends and family and band promotion (yes I know it’s futile)

I hate TikTok form no reason but I do. I also hate how all the other apps/sites do shorts now.. fucking YouTube automatically make everything under 1 min a short now…

Bluesky… joined last week after a year of a friend bugging me.. so far it feels nerdy and lame….

So um meh?

Epilogue: humanity is doomed. I hate closed circuit apps like ista and Bluesky. Motörhead will always be awesome

[TheTransient]

I'm going to say no also.

Instagram is the place to be as far as guitar related content goes. But the constant ads and the shitty algorithm that has made stories the only reliable way to see content from the people you follow has made it pretty much unbearable. Also it feels incredibly, overtly commercialised, and I dont just mean the ads. It clearly caters to businesses and influencers who are trying to sell you shit. Pretty much over IG now.

Very briefly had a twitter, deleted that shit asap when Elon Musk took over.

I missed out on the original Tumblr boom sadly, same for the ILF boom to a degree (I was here for part of it, just not super active/involved). I do regret that a bit tbh

I've tried Reddit, but I just dont like the format of it. Hard to read, moves too fast, not geared towards revisiting posts. I much prefer this traditional web-forum format, which is why I keep coming back here to ILF, or to TDPRI (very different crowd, but I REALLY like Telecasters).

[friendship]

Deleted facebook in 2012.
Deleted twitter in 2016.
Deleted the dating apps this year.
I have IG, but everything Transient said makes it obnoxious so I should probably delete that too.
Tried Reddit, but I'm predisposed towards subs that make me miserable like politics and environmental collapse, and the condescending smarminess of the average poster makes it insufferable, so I don't use that.

An old friend sent me an email just to catch up and see what's going on. Gmail asked if I wanted to use their AI to summarize it. Yeah man please fucking give me a couple bullet points so I don't have to engage with this genuine and touching bid for human connection.

I took a week off of work recently just to stay at home and rest. I didn't really go online during it, and it felt a lot better.

[TheTransient]

An old friend sent me an email just to catch up and see what's going on. Gmail asked if I wanted to use their AI to summarize it. Yeah man please fucking give me a couple bullet points so I don't have to engage with this genuine and touching bid for human connection.

That's insane

[coldbrightsunlight]

That's bleak

I was being a little glib earlier of course. Forums are great of course if they count. I am still on Reddit but heeaaavily reduced the amount of time I spend and the number of subs I'm in for reasons dub & friendship have articulated. Seems like small subreddits there can occasionally feel like forums - when the post count is low enough you can read any post on a topic, the effect of shitty jokes floating to the top is diminished and it seems to kill that impulse in people to say the thing that makes Number Go Up, but due to the format there just isn't as much name recognition so it still isn't the same.

I do still use instagram, but for the reasons people have said I'm getting increasingly sick of it. I really would miss out on events, gigs & knowing what's going on with my friends without it though so it's tough.