Social media

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social media is the marketing term for silos and silo posts, ironically more anti-social than social, and encouraging of extreme opposition rather than medium perspectives, typically with like/repost counts UIs that incentivize inflammatory posts rather than considered thoughts & dialog.

How to

How to decentralize social media

1. Get Started with decentralizing yourself first, to both understand the current challenges, and the benefits for doing so
2. Participate in IndieWeb discussions for how to help others decentralize their own social media
3. Keep iterating until you yourself are free of social media, and we have more people on the IndieWeb than social media, at which point momentum takes over.

Examples

See: silo#Popular_Silos

Specific Pages

See the following pages for more specific aspects of social media:

• social media fatigue
• social media break
• lost infrastructure of social media
• social media icon set
• social media map

Brainstorming

Possible Future

via 2019-03-11: Comic by Joey Alison Sayers: Posting Your Opinions Online: A Timeline (@thenib)

Criticism

Amplifies Misinformation

• 2023-10-15 Social Internet Is Dead. Get Over It.

  the primary task of these platforms is not about idealism or even entertainment — it is about extracting as much revenue as possible from human vanity, avarice, and narcissism.

  …

  Their research, published in Science, found that misinformation is ’70 percent more likely to be retweeted on Twitter than the truth,’ and that the fake news ‘reached 1,500 people about six times faster than the truth.'”

  Emphasis added.

Harmful To Democracy

• 2016-11-15 (updated 2018-01-05) Vox: Why social media is terrible for multiethnic democracies
• 2018-01-20 https://www.thedailybeast.com/social-media-shreds-the-social-fabric-one-click-at-a-time

  Forget Russian hacking—the real threat to democracies around the globe is social media’s inexorable and unavoidable destruction of common ground and shared perspective.

• 2018-08-28 How social media makes fascists of us all
• 2018-12-17 NYTimes: Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media

  The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook

• 2019-01-22 Vox: Social media is rotting democracy from within / How social platforms enable far-right politicians’ campaigns to undermine democracy.

  At the inauguration of Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in early January, a crowd of his supporters began a surprising chant. They weren’t cheering for Bolsonaro or his running mate or their party; instead, they were reciting the names of social media platforms.

  “Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!” the crowd yelled. “WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp!”

Increases Polarization

• 2018-03-20 PNAS: Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization

• 2019-07-03 Stanford Engineering Newsletter: What is different about how Democrats and Republicans talk online?

  Researchers examined 4.4 million tweets posted in response to 21 different mass shooting events. […] help understand the causes and consequences of social media polarization?

Harms Productivity

• ~2015(?) Neal Stephenson - Social Media

  Though I never became a heavy poster on social media, I did reach a point last year when I was checking Twitter and my personal Facebook every few minutes. When I found myself manually refreshing the Facebook window in the hopes of dredging up posts I hadn't seen yet, I decided it was time to think a little harder about the effect that this was having on my ability to get things done.

May Harm Career

• 2016-11-19 NYT: Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.
  • Counterpoints: 2016-12-03 NYT: Don’t Quit Social Media. Put It to Work for Your Career Instead.

• 2019-04-13 NPR: Under Employers' Gaze, Gen Z Is Biting Its Tongue On Social Media

  More than half of employers said they have not hired a candidate because of content they found on social media, but a similar number said if they can't find an applicant online, they are less likely to call that person in for an interview.

May Harm Business

• 2019-04-26 How a social media network could bring down your business

  According to a report by the University of Surrey, commissioned by IT security firm Bromium, cyber criminals are currently generating at least $3.25bn in revenue every year through their aggressive exploitation of social media.

Normalizes Surveillance Capitalism

• 2018-03-17 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/975147858096742405
  • "Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as "surveillance companies." Their rebranding as "social media" is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense." @Snowden March 17, 2018

Used For Behavior Modification

• 2018-04-10 TED Conference: https://www.ted.com/talks/jaron_lanier_how_we_need_to_remake_the_internet

  "what started out as advertising turned into behavior modification"

  ...

  "I can't call these things social networks any more, I call them behavior modification empires"

Encourages Inauthentic Representation

• 2017-05-17 When You Love Your Friend But Hate Her Social-Media Presence

Used For Border Screening

• 2018-03-30 NYT: 14 Million Visitors to U.S. Face Social Media Screening

Government Shutdowns of Social Media

Entries here are encouraged more thoroughly than documented in Wikipedia: Social Media: Censorship by governments

Sri Lanka 2019

• 2019-04-22 Time: Sri Lanka Blocks Social Media Following the Deadly Easter Bombings

  The block on social media including Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram … YouTube, Snapchat and Viber. Twitter appeared unaffected.

  Local wiki-links added.
• 2019-04-22 NYT Opinion / Kara Swisher: Sri Lanka Shut Down Social Media. My First Thought Was ‘Good.’ / As a tech journalist, I’m ashamed to admit it. But this is how bad the situation has gotten.

  … while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred.

Liberia 2019

• https://twitter.com/glueckpress/status/1137102573364809729
  • "Aaaaand again.
    This is BAU in African countries, and increasingly around the world. Protest -- shutdown.
    
    Now, imagine a social web where they can't do that. It exists. It's free (as in speech, not beer). It's standardised. It's semantic. It's accessible. It's yours. #indieweb" @glueckpress June 7, 2019
• https://twitter.com/qzafrica/status/1137083314479779840
  • "Liberia has blocked social media as protesters demand the return of missing millions
    
    http://qz.com/africa/1638173/ via @qzafrica" @qzafrica June 7, 2019

See Also

• silos
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/sep/06/social-media-good-evidence-platforms-insecurities-health
• https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-end-of-the-social-era-twitter-facebook-snapchat
• 2018-04-07 Buzzfed: Teens Also Sometimes Quit Social Media

  Adults talk a big game about #deletefacebook or taking a break from Twitter, but true digital natives actually know how to take a break for their own mental health.

• 2018-09-03 2018 is the End of Social Media as we Know It

  For the first time, the majority of US internet users between the ages of 12 and 17 won’t use Facebook once a month this year.

• http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/skimmed
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
• https://twitter.com/tomcoates/status/1120529046163664897 and thread unrolled: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1120529046163664897.html
  • "A few quick things I've learned recently from interviewing people about social media, which has been super interesting." @tomcoates April 23, 2019
• Criticism of assuming existing silo social media framing: https://twitter.com/jvelo/status/1126014424215621633
  • "Diaspora and Mastodon problem is they accept the tech giant's forms of social media as the only playing field. They are attempts at rebuilding decentralized Facebook and Twitter, but this premise doesn't make sense in my opinion. A thread ↓" @jvelo May 8, 2019
• Criticism: 2012-09-24 How Social Media Destroyed my Generation
• Perils of outsourcing/delegating it, thread: https://twitter.com/jaredomaramp/status/1153742493034438656
  • "Comms Team signing off... forever: Jared, you are the most disgustingly morally bankrupt person I have ever had the displeasure of working with. You do not care about your constituents. You do not care about anyone but yourself." @jaredomaramp July 23, 2019
  • All the tweets on Thread reader, and an archived version of that page. Original tweets have been deleted.
• "Twitter / Facebook infinite loop syndrome" http://achewood.com/index.php?date=12052009
• 2019 Oxford (PDF) The Global Disinformation Order 2019 Global Inventory of Organised Social Media Manipulation

  Evidence of organized social media manipulation campaigns which have taken place in 70 countries, up from 48 countries in 2018 and 28 countries in 2017.

• Setting social media boundaries: https://www.instagram.com/p/B81m2rWgMhA/
  • "Boundaries don’t just apply to the relationships we have. We also need to have boundaries that protect our time, energy, and exposure to negative content/interactions. Social media boundaries may look differently for everyone, but here are some examples. •
    •
    •
    #boundaries #selfawareness #awareness #reflection #feelings #mentalhealthtips #selfesteem #mentalhealth #psychology #psychotherapy #time #therapist #selfdiscovery #selfcare #selflove #human #identity #authenticity #worthit #intentionalliving #bed #socialmedia #millennialtherapist #detox #mentalhealthmatters" @Sara Kuburić, MA, CCC February 21, 2020
• ^^^ many of those could apply to IndieWeb posts too!
• 2019-08-02 Salon: Social Media Platforms Need Hotlines to Report Harassment
• corporate web
• doomscrolling
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problematic_social_media_use
• The_Social_Dilemma
• Abstinence isn’t safe – why quitting social media isn’t the solution
• Criticism: 2021-01-10 Another way social media is bad

  Full-fat Twitter and Facebook (and others) are computationally expensive: the bells and whistles cost in terms of JavaScript, and there is no shortage of other client-side analytics to feed you the posts to keep you engaged and to monitor your actions to construct ad profiles.

• Criticism: https://twitter.com/JoannaStern/status/1350831824319221763
  • "Social media algorithms amplify the incendiary—the attacks, the misinformation, the conspiracy theories.
    
    And we have no control.
    
    What’s the solution? I explored a few in my 🆕 column.
    
    https://on.wsj.com/35OIR52" @JoannaStern January 17, 2021
• 2021-04-07 Pew Research: Social Media Use in 2021
• ^ full article: https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/lifting-the-mask
• Information you post on social media might be scraped: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-57841239
• 2021-07-22 ZDNet: Physics explains why there is no information on social media / Physics dictates machines should minimize entropy, and humans are complying on TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
• https://twitter.com/plinz/status/1433262733080743942
  • "The supply of aggressive stupidity on social media is unlimited; trying to correct it is as futile as sweeping sand in the desert. Be deliberate: every pointless interaction is a missed opportunity for experiencing insight, love or beauty elsewhere. Don't fight what you can mute." @Plinz September 2, 2021
• Criticism: 2017-08-15 MIT Technology Review: Eliminating the Human

  This is social interaction that isn’t really social. While Facebook and others frequently claim to offer connection, and do offer the appearance of it, the fact is a lot of social media is a simulation of real connection.

• ^ longer original posted by author on his own website: 2017-05-15 ELIMINATING THE HUMAN

  Social media is not really social—ticking boxes and having followers and getting feeds is NOT being social—it's a screen simulation of human interaction.

• Criticism: 2021-06-26 Vox: Why some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity / One challenge is how little we know about the dangers.
• Why not: Social Media is NOT your portfolio (12h22m video that itself is sponsored by Squarespace):

  … having a website as a central hub … having the best of the best on that hub, that central station…

• ^ "Are You Sad?" — video pitching Social Media as a pharmaceutical
• https://twitter.com/joannastern/status/1319287042275115010 and also in https://deadline.com/2020/10/ex-google-ceo-eric-schmidt-social-networks-serving-as-amplifiers-for-idiots-crazy-people-1234601635/
  • ""The concept of social networks broadly speaking as amplifiers for idiots and crazy people is not what we intended.”
    
    One of my favorite quotes from this interview." @JoannaStern October 22, 2020
• Criticism: 2022-07-25 Axios: Sunset of the social network

  Mark last week as the end of the social networking era, which began with the rise of Friendster in 2003, shaped two decades of internet growth, and now closes with Facebook's rollout of a sweeping TikTok-like redesign.

• ^

  … it [Facebook its rivals discovery engines] also looks a lot like a mutant TV with an infinite number of context-free channels that flash in and out of focus at high speed.

• Criticism: 2022-07-28 The Atlantic: Yes, Social Media Really Is Undermining Democracy / Despite what Meta has to say.
• Criticism: (especially Twitter) enabled amplifying extremism: 2022-09-18 NYT: How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step / As American feminists came together in 2017 to protest Donald Trump, Russia’s disinformation machine set about deepening the divides among them.

  Social media now provided an easy way to feed ideas into American discourse, something that, for half a century, the K.G.B. had struggled to do. ... There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

• https://www.instagram.com/p/Cji3fqcvRcw/
• Criticism: 2022-12-15 NYTimes: ‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes / When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all.

  … the Luddite Club, a high school group that promotes a lifestyle of self-liberation from social media and technology

• Alternative dfn: https://boffosocko.com/2023/01/05/55813452/
  • "social media (n):  /ˌsoː.ʃəl ˈmiː.di.aː/
    
    A DDoS, usually perpetrated by surveillance capitalists, on a person’s attention preventing them from traditional sensemaking, clear thinking, learning, and generally otherwise experiencing life." @Chris Aldrich January 5, 2023
• Alternative services & apps: https://alternativeto.net/category/social/
• How not to: 2023-03-07 How To Build A Blog Without Social Media

  If Twitter in 2018 didn’t hold any pleasure for me, Masto and Post aren’t going to get me in 2023. And with the changes to Twitter, it seems to many people like they’re technically shadowbanned if they don’t cough up for Blue. There is an argument for using social media as a syndication engine, but honestly, right now, I don’t see that game as being worth the candle.

• 2023-05-23 NYT: Social Media Can Be a ‘Profound Risk’ to Youth, Surgeon General Warns / Dr. Vivek H. Murthy urged immediate action from policymakers, tech companies and parents to safeguard against potential harms.
• Criticism: 2022-11-10 The Atlantic: The Age of Social Media Is Ending / It never should have begun.
• Criticism: 2022-11-09 Social media is sugar. It’s time we limit its negative impact
• 2024-01-25 WaPo: New York is first city to declare social media a public health hazard

  “Just as the [U.S.] surgeon general did with tobacco and guns, we are treating social media like other public health hazards and it must stop,” Adams said.

• Use the hashtag #socialmedia when you federate and you’ll be reposted by https://newsmast.community/@socialmedia
• Criticism: 2024-09-19 NYT: F.T.C. Study Finds ‘Vast Surveillance’ of Social Media Users / Meta, YouTube and other sites collected more data than most users realized, a new report by the Federal Trade Commission finds.