Social Media's Effects On Our Minds & Lives

[ignatius]

2 hours ago, o00o said:

The TikTok algorithm can serve you pretty interesting and deep content if you train it correctly especially concerning mindfulness and psychological content. its not just people dancing. But yeah I am also interested in trends currently forming and tiktok is a great platform for this. 

isn't a lot of that kind of stuff full of misinfo and just plane bad information? i'm sure there's some genuinely wholesome smart people doing what they do but there's also an ocean of grift right? and outright harmful nonsense?

[o00o]

2 hours ago, chronical said:

I'm just of the opinion that tiktok should be something we actively disregard the use of but that's also a silly rabbit hole like not using plastic straws, and how different is it for me to use Instagram, not a whole lot, just feeding another social media maelstrom with my attention.. God what a mess the internet has become   

Sure it’s like watching too much television. Sometimes after a busy day my attention span is too short for a book or normal tv but TikTok doesn’t require that much. Last week I discovered some great idm d&b DJs from london playing live on there or today I found a helicopter pilot posting short videos out out his cabin. 
 

I think it’s just important to still be conscious about what you are doing there and not just falling into it. 

[o00o]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

isn't a lot of that kind of stuff full of misinfo and just plane bad information? i'm sure there's some genuinely wholesome smart people doing what they do but there's also an ocean of grift right? and outright harmful nonsense?

It really depends on the creator. It’s like the rest of the internet. You can just watch a bunch of videos the creator did and get a really good impression what the channel is about. Also when you use the search engine it starts showing you more of what you search for. It feels a bit like training a dog. If you train your algorithm to show you nice things and mute the bullshit it’s really interesting and high quality but you can also train it to just show a bunch of shit 

[ignatius]

anyone want an invite code to bluesky? it's like twitter w/o all the people. 

https://staging.bsky.app/profile/ignatiusmusic.bsky.social

 

[exitonly]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

anyone want an invite code to bluesky? it's like twitter w/o all the people. 

https://staging.bsky.app/profile/ignatiusmusic.bsky.social

 

uhm sure. i'll bite. if only to have a shot at reserving my handle on it. i'm not on social media at all and I'm still on the fence about joining a mastodon server, setting up my own or trying an activity-pub enabled alternative like gotosocial. i'm a little put off that they developed their own alternative to activitypub as a protocol though. i feel like things have splintered enough as it is.

[chemick]

On 10/1/2023 at 10:29 AM, o00o said:

It really depends on the creator. It’s like the rest of the internet. You can just watch a bunch of videos the creator did and get a really good impression what the channel is about. Also when you use the search engine it starts showing you more of what you search for. It feels a bit like training a dog. If you train your algorithm to show you nice things and mute the bullshit it’s really interesting and high quality but you can also train it to just show a bunch of shit 

That's the thing though, on TikTok it's become easier than ever to be less intentional with what you're consuming. You can put in the work to curate like you've done but how many others have as much scrutiny? The interest?

If there's a trend I'm seeing it's in platforms making it easier to not think about the message in the content. You can swallow questionable platitudes framed as wisdom in corny fonts, even plain bad advice, and with scarcely a memory of the origin of the advice: You scrolled quickly and the phrase became lodged in your brain forever.

Compare to the conscious effort required to read a book. The context of its author, their reputation and their research, a body of work, and deciding how to interpret the author's thoughts behind their words. Reading criticisms and contemporaries. Etc.

Bit of a tangent but yes, I know there is "reliable" and helpful advice/wisdom on these platforms. There is also plenty of bad advice and misinformation and hardly any tools or context to tell the difference, save for one's personal intuition.

[ignatius]

modern phone minus all the bullshit. 

might be cool for kids too. to keep them off the socials. 

[exitonly]

i am on mastadon now. I followed some of you already like a big ol' creeper. https://ravenation.club/@exitonly

[may be rude]

anyone interested in the sociological transformation that is occurring with the explosion of information technology, especially the impact on people's beliefs, should really be following the Pod Save America podcast called Offline. it's a podcast series about this frontier of society that we are still in the process of understanding. 

 

Edited October 29, 2023 by trying to be less rude

[o00o]

[o00o]

How Online Mobs Act Like Flocks Of Birds by Renée DiResta via Noema

 

[o00o]

On 10/22/2023 at 8:25 PM, chemick said:

That's the thing though, on TikTok it's become easier than ever to be less intentional with what you're consuming. You can put in the work to curate like you've done but how many others have as much scrutiny? The interest?

If there's a trend I'm seeing it's in platforms making it easier to not think about the message in the content. You can swallow questionable platitudes framed as wisdom in corny fonts, even plain bad advice, and with scarcely a memory of the origin of the advice: You scrolled quickly and the phrase became lodged in your brain forever.

Compare to the conscious effort required to read a book. The context of its author, their reputation and their research, a body of work, and deciding how to interpret the author's thoughts behind their words. Reading criticisms and contemporaries. Etc.

Bit of a tangent but yes, I know there is "reliable" and helpful advice/wisdom on these platforms. There is also plenty of bad advice and misinformation and hardly any tools or context to tell the difference, save for one's personal intuition.

Absolutely, the ease of consuming content on platforms like TikTok has a double-edged sword quality. It’s incredible that we have this fountain of diverse information and perspectives at our fingertips, yet it does come with the drawback of often being a passive consumer in the rapid-fire digital landscape. The critical thinking, the context—these layers are essential, and it’s a significant shift from the more deliberate process of engaging with a book.

The truth is, not everyone has the interest or takes the time to curate their feeds, leading to a vast difference in the quality of content that people are absorbing. This isn’t to say there aren’t valuable nuggets of wisdom on social platforms, but the onus of discerning valuable advice from noise falls heavily on the individual. Personal intuition, as you say, becomes the primary filter, which is highly subjective and not always reliable. 

I was surprised how deep some of the content was but I am always aware that it also suggests you weird bullshit if the algorithm finds your interest in it. 
 

As you say you really have to take care to still have a healthy distance to the content and not let it flood your brain without any critical thinking. But that’s something everyone should be doing anyways. Sadly some people are not that self aware 

Edited November 4, 2023 by o00o

[LooseLink]

I only share things that I created and that I feel it's worth someone's time somewhat. You don't really know how much it's worth....but you do get the feeling... depends on your mood sometimes though, if you know what I mean  

 

I'd like to say though that, I just find it funny, that on the "Favorite Youtube Video" thread here, I mentioned when I said "No Youtube, I ain't switching my damn adblocker off, knock the ads off seriously they are annoying, punk" etc. Now at times I'm able to view videos, but now I'm seeing things like this in this screenshot below. Weird timing for me after I said what I said, the big thing here is, it gives you the feeling you are being watched, unemployed mostly immigrant peeps now employed to hide in the shadows, tied to their damn notepads, writing notes, gathering information, watching you and reporting back to their employees.......... The Five Eyes, seriously man, they are getting to be a problem now......

 

[dcom]

After $500m Zuckerberg donation, Harvard university gutted its disinfo team studying Facebook (Boing Boing)

[ignatius]

Nebraska cops used Facebook messages to investigate an alleged illegal abortion

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/12/1117092169/nebraska-cops-used-facebook-messages-to-investigate-an-alleged-illegal-abortion

"Every day, across the country, police get access to private messages between people on Facebook, Instagram, any social media or messaging service you can think of," says Andrew Crocker, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Warrants for online messages are a routine part of police investigations, he says, but "a lot of people are waking up to it because of the far-ranging nature of how we expect abortion investigations are going to go. And it's going to touch many more people's lives in a way that maybe that they hadn't thought about in the past."

Facebook's parent company, Meta, wouldn't speak about the case on the record, but it released a statement saying, in part, "We received valid legal warrants from local law enforcement on June 7, before the Supreme Court's decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. The warrants did not mention abortion at all."

[iococoi]

Quote

The simplest tech-world thing I learned from the whole Meta in Myanmar project is that Meta is WAY more callous, deceptive, and incompetent with the life-or-death things that matter the most than even most of their critics understand.

https://erinkissane.com/meta-in-myanmar-full-series

[ignatius]

watching this now.. reads like the standard process of young person social media fuckupery. 

 

[iococoi]

Quote

Paris Marx is joined by Naomi Klein to discuss the problems with personal branding pushed social media, how the left’s insufficient response to the pandemic created an opening for the right, and the fight over the roots of Western society that will shape our future.

 

[Squee]

Facebook has no idea what to show me anymore. I've muted everyone I know so I don't get any updates and I've clicked on "not interesting" on pretty much every ad I've gotten the last 2 years. So now I'm getting stuff like this.

[iococoi]

20

[decibal cooper]

 

 

[o00o]

can‘t wait until this is the new normal. Looks exactly like it did when people started using a mobile phone or a smartphone 

Edited February 4 by o00o

[auxien]

<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@haentz/111873104918456302/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="400" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><script src="https://mastodon.social/embed.js" async="async"></script>

^tried embedding but that probably won't work so, Vision Pro users in public super cut, ~1 min video:

https://mastodon.social/@haentz/111873104918456302

[MaartenVC]

1 hour ago, o00o said:

can‘t wait until this is the new normal. Looks exactly like it did when people started using a mobile phone or a smartphone 

 

1 hour ago, auxien said:

<iframe src="https://mastodon.social/@haentz/111873104918456302/embed" class="mastodon-embed" style="max-width: 100%; border: 0" width="400" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe><script src="https://mastodon.social/embed.js" async="async"></script>

^tried embedding but that probably won't work so, Vision Pro users in public super cut, ~1 min video:

https://mastodon.social/@haentz/111873104918456302

I want to be excited about new tech... but it seems so very dystopian to me.

It almost activates a primal fear in me. Weird. Can't really explain it.

Maybe this tech really is inevitable. In that case we better get used to it.

Maybe a bit too distracting to use this in public? But then again, so were smartphones.

Or will this tech stay more confined to work and home-entertainment, and these are just early adopters testing the waters?

Anyone here has this, and willing to share their experiences?

Edited February 4 by MaartenVC

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, o00o said:

can‘t wait until this is the new normal. Looks exactly like it did when people started using a mobile phone or a smartphone 

"watching a mr. beast video on a subway platform is a pretty special experience"

ugh. is it really?  there's probably something cool about this thing but for everyday things walking around in a city i don't know what it offers over a smart phone other than eye protection.