Owning our social connections
We can kill the dragons whenever we want, because we are their food
When I started using Facebook it wasn’t to scroll endlessly through short videos made by advertisers and people I’ve never heard of. My use of the tool was to stay in touch with my friends and family, share what’s going on in my life and keep up to date on theirs. A place to strengthen my relationships. It didn’t take long for the nonsense to creep in, people reposting entertaining bits or controversial news items, ads showing up ad infinitum, and a secret algorithm dictating which posts I saw from which friends when and the same for who saw mine.
One might say my use of the app no longer aligned with its owners’ intended use. Following the money made it simple to understand: Customers (advertisers) paid Facebook for users attention, so Facebook did whatever it could to give its customers as much of its users attention as possible. This didn’t mean I would always see what I wanted to see, I saw what Facebook wanted me to see. It didn’t take long before opening up my feed was taking a peek into a garbage heap of ads and other things being shared by my ‘friends.’ I had no idea what was actually going on in people’s lives, unless I connected with them through other means.
When The CEO decided to get political and pour petrol on the garbage heap by eliminating fact-checking, I knew it was time for me to move on. At first, I decided I was done with social media. Alternatives like Twitter and TikTok were unappealing to me, already further down the media dumpster fire pathway that Facebook and Instagram were heading. I simply would have to find other ways to keep in touch with people. Thankfully options were plentiful: phone calls, emails, text messages, writing letters or even seeing them in the flesh. These were all more direct and the tech involved had less control over rerouting and delaying my attempts to make contact.
Of course, I still have this blog - which I do classify as a blog despite Substack’s attempts to become a social media platform in its own right. Most of my friends aren’t on here and the ones who are either don’t post or post more about their opinions on various topics than what’s going on in their lives (as do I). I enjoy reading a few of them and hopefully a few friends enjoy reading my eclectic posts - but this is not a means of strengthening relationships. I’m just glad it doesn’t have ads and I can make my posts freely available; we’ll see how long that business model works. I would gladly pay a few bucks for the service Substack provides me here, but so far that’s not necessary. I’m not keen on selling subscriptions, which is what they push me to do.
There are new social media platforms on the horizon. One of which I decided to investigate: Bluesky. It’s simple, it doesn’t have ads, there is content moderation and the leadership seems to want to keep it that way. Not much of a business model, but as with Substack, I would also pay for a social media platform that kept the ads and clowns out of my feed while prioritizing my ability to read and share updates with people. So I made an account yesterday and if you want to connect, please do.
It is a real relief to not be inundated with ads and other garbage while using the Internet. I’m not entirely against advertising, but so much of it is trash that I would rather avoid sites with ads entirely. It’s much more pleasant to learn about good products and services via word of mouth or reliable publications, letting people I trust filter through the noise for me. I do read the newspaper still and I might even pick up a magazine from time to time. But as for the once-dominant social media channels, I’m done.
Our society’s obsession with lies is enhanced by platforms like Facebook, but this self-delusion trend leads nowhere - the truth is inevitable. People can enjoy hearing what they want to hear and saying what they want to say while calling it all facts for the interim. When reality sets in, the fires will die down. I don’t think the social insanity will last all that long - no matter how much money it makes Elon, Donald and Mark.
On one hand, the Internet seems to be getting more and more trashy, with AI bots, advertising, and media channels that have lost sight of their users interests or wellbeing, but the Internet is big. There is still a lot of room for good and a lot of good products and services already out there. We have the power to choose whether to use the Internet or let the Internet use us. With older mediums like television and radio, it was easy for a handful of moguls to seize control, but the Internet doesn’t lock us in this way. New apps and networks are always emerging and we have the freedom to chart our own path. Thank goodness for that.