2k20 worst social media platform (facebook, twitter, instagram)

well, that was an unclean start.

https://nplusonemag.com/issue-36/essays/my-instagram/

Twitter for not banning Trump

you missed the obligatory "ILX" option

i quit facebook 2 years ago this month. feels great! i wish everyone i knew would quit, but i understand it's a good way to find out about events and keep track of how many children your relatives have.

twitter can be ok but you have to remind yourself that it is slowly warping you and everyone else who uses it into a conglomerate of sentient turds.

instagram's badness is more insidious. i have a dumb idea about the insidious nature of google image search and other image search engines - the "algorithm" (uh oh - i learned on twitter recently that i'm a piece of shit for using that word in a vague way!) results in pristine, glossy catalog platonic ideals of even mundane objects. when you google image search for Living Room, you won't see what a living room typically looks like. you will an infinite series of perfect living rooms that will always be beyond your reach. your own living room does not belong with these living rooms. it's like that with pretty much anything you search for. you will only see beautiful advertisement people, model home furniture and accessories, things that are for sale, and then a bunch of low-resolution 3D model assets that some company is selling. what does all that have to do with instagram? i'm not sure, but it feels like the people and places i see on instagram are being sucked into the same weird thing. we all post the best version of our lives, and as we see each other irl less and less, these selective images are what's left to form mental pictures of each other. the third image down is an advertisement, and it's related to something you bought using a credit card last week. how did they know that? children have thousands of published images of them before they hit kindergarten, and embedded in each of those images is psychographic data that is then sold to other companies.

anyway, i vote for instagram but i understand it's more of an "up-and-comer" in this rivalry

Depends on if it's "worst company" or "worst for you"

Facebook gets a lot of flack for their nefarious deeds, and rightly so, but tbh mine is just pictures of my friends' kids and people posting songs they like.

Twitter, otoh, is an absolute cesspit and I need to stop looking at it because it's really bad for my health

One afternoon, Dr. Phil was playing on the monitor above the elliptical. The sound was off, but closed captions were on. I pulled out my phone to take a picture, just in time to catch

WHEN SHE DIED IMMEDIATELY AFTER

GETTING A BRAZILIAN BUTT LIFT.

Frozen under the text was a selfie of a woman wearing a paper hospital gown and a blue hairnet. Instantly I knew that the picture I’d taken, of image and caption, was too dark for Instagram, too dark even for Stories, the feature that lets you post images and videos that autodelete after twenty-four hours. This woman died, I think. Died.

Facebook for people over 55, Twitter for people under

Instagram is the only one I don't instinctively hate but the worst aspects aren't targeted at me - I just see friends, bands/music-related stuff, architecture and puppies.

Facebook probably in the lead overall since they added the in-app local news aggregator that seems designed entirely to make people even more scared of the world outside their door.

Twitter is the terriblest and people who like it are part of the problem

d all of the above

Twitter is absolutely the worst for my own mental health. I have almost no exposure to Facebook anymore, and Instagram doesn't seem to get into my head in the same way.

'Twitter = anxiety, Youtube = depression' is sort of how I think about it.

d all of the above

― american bradass (BradNelson)

I hate facebook and twitter for sucking the life out of forums.

I hate twitter for the way it turns people into cliquish shits trying to be super-cool all the time. I realize that sometimes there is value in making ethical statements that are obvious to most of your audience, but I see some really intelligent people being reduced to saying things like "I think bigotry is wrong, but that's just me being me, that's the way I roll *nonchalant mic drop*"

Instagram is the only one I'm a member on. The dashboard is rubbish (they need an inbox instead). The scroll for all the people you follow is rubbish. You cant save or re-size images.

instagram’s terribleness touches me the least so i’m still active there but it’s becoming “twitter but only images” more and more every day

I hate facebook and twitter for sucking the life out of forums.

Feels like Reddit is the real supervillain on this front.

All bad. My twitter is useful to me bc I use it mostly for friendship rather than content but if it shut down I wouldn’t shed a tear.

I can only judge indirectly. Twitter is the vehicle of choice for the vile shit that drips from our POTUS in addition to tens of thousands of lesser lights. Facebook has been complicit in inciting ethnic cleansing and its management lies almost as much as the POTUS does. Weighing these against one another I voted Facebook.

Twitter is definitely gonna shut down first, they can’t possibly retool the product enough to entice a buyer

The n+1 article has a bit about rue Crémieux in Paris, which led me to this.

Feels like Reddit is the real supervillain on this front.
― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Sunday, January 19, 2020 7:00 PM

Really? I know reddit isn't always the MRA stereotype but I didn't really notice people going to there specifically. It is a forum and I did consider going there because other forums were dying but it just wasn't active enough in my interests to justify that.

Reddit covering every possible topic ate away at bbs-style forums pretty hard but it has all the terrible qualities of Twitter - the liking/upvoting rush of getting good Twitter numbers but no topic really lasts more than a few hours. ILX has conversations spanning decades now, nothing like that can ever exist on Reddit because of the system.

instagram is p great

Facebook is terrible

Twitter seems to give people trauma and/or brain damage but also it has da Share Z0ne

I mean I don’t know anything about Instagram, I just like posting my photos there and looking at pics of synths and old ads and new releases from my local record stores

I hate twitter for the way it turns people into cliquish shits trying to be super-cool all the time.

Instagram bores me now. Might change. I go from Insta to FB and back again. I quit FB for a long time but decided to return. Lemmy’s breeder told me she posted pics of her puppies. So I decided to come back.

Twitter is vile. Just pure cesspool.

twitter and instagram both still pretty great. facebook plumbing new depths

PEOPLE YOU CAN FILTER POLITICAL TWEETS AND SOCIAL ISSUES TWEETS (well mostly)

That would leave like three people to follow, though. Four if you count dril as more comedy than politics.

nonsense

twitter is the most easily curatable and therefore the most usable

feel like people who say that are usually 1-2 years away from abandoning the site

I use Twitter like a message board; I only follow about 200 accounts, many of which just post images, or are linked to magazines and websites I read regularly. The few actual people I follow are people I can have interesting (to me) conversations with.

On Instagram, I hardly follow anybody; I post pictures of CDs I'm listening to, or live shows I go to, and that's pretty much it.

I use Facebook more like LinkedIn, in a way. Almost all my Facebook friends are actually professional contacts. Musicians, other writers, publicists, record industry people, etc.

If I was to keep just one, it'd be Twitter. Facebook is the worst of the three, but I don't feel like it's actually harming my brain (yet).

i use twitter like the back half the local news: traffic and weather together! your local sports teams!

very rarely do i bump into the horror twitter can be. the only downside is i follow so few accts twitter always tries to get me to use ‘home’ instead of ‘latest tweets.’

ive been using twitter for 12 years i doubt im gonna suddenly abandon it unless they make changes that make it not usable in the way i want

PEOPLE YOU CAN FILTER POLITICAL TWEETS AND SOCIAL ISSUES TWEETS (well mostly)

― I have not yet begun to fart (rip van wanko)

PEOPLE YOU CAN USE TECHNOLOGY TO PRETEND ALL OF THE TERRIBLE STUFF THAT IS MAKING LIFE IN 2020 UNBEARABLE DOESN'T EXIST

i'm going to go "twitter" because nobody i talk to ever tries to seriously defend facebook

youtube probably worse than all of the options above, though

came here to post more or less what wanko, ciderpress and unperson have posted. if your twitter feed is a cesspool just unfollow the cess

I mean it is still kind of dreadful but it has a slightly substantial purpose when used well

otoh it annoys me that I have to maintain a skeleton presence on fb to touch base with ilxors offboard. let's start our own private messaging platform and we can all leave for good

otm (although I’m really just there for meme pages)

^^ otm

[a]Ilxbook
[b]Ilxtagram
[c]ilx0r

a live chat with various rooms wouldn't be too hard to implement to the ilx site surely

same login, same username

or... an ilx discord lol

not the worst idea I’ve ever heard

but wouldn’t here just die?

instagram's badness is more insidious. i have a dumb idea about the insidious nature of google image search and other image search engines - the "algorithm" (uh oh - i learned on twitter recently that i'm a piece of shit for using that word in a vague way!) results in pristine, glossy catalog platonic ideals of even mundane objects. when you google image search for Living Room, you won't see what a living room typically looks like. you will an infinite series of perfect living rooms that will always be beyond your reach. your own living room does not belong with these living rooms. it's like that with pretty much anything you search for. you will only see beautiful advertisement people, model home furniture and accessories, things that are for sale, and then a bunch of low-resolution 3D model assets that some company is selling. what does all that have to do with instagram? i'm not sure, but it feels like the people and places i see on instagram are being sucked into the same weird thing. we all post the best version of our lives, and as we see each other irl less and less, these selective images are what's left to form mental pictures of each other. the third image down is an advertisement, and it's related to something you bought using a credit card last week. how did they know that? children have thousands of published images of them before they hit kindergarten, and embedded in each of those images is psychographic data that is then sold to other companies.

anyway, i vote for instagram but i understand it's more of an "up-and-comer" in this rivalry

I've been doing a social media campaign for a fostering organisation to get more people into fostering. Of course, for security reasons we couldn't use real images of foster families, but trying to get suitable stock images was nigh impossible. All these photos of squeaky-clean kids in backwards baseball caps in picture-postcard familial settings were unrealistic and would have idealised the fostering experience. It ended up being a serious headache for us and our client.

Reddit is good but not good not bad.

I only really use Facebook. I know it's terrible, but it's one of the only ways I can keep in touch with friends, promote my events, find out what's going on in my locale. It also works as a nice extension of ILX to discuss current affairs and culture with people I only know through the internet.

I have Instagram and Twitter accounts, but rarely use them.

I find Twitter bewildering and never got used to the idea of how threads and replies work. I hate the character limit. I hate the 'Now I am going to say something important and you are going to listen because I am a very smart person' tone of a lot of the posts. I'm also concerned about how open and public it all is.

Having little to no interest in what famous people are tweeting about, I have even less interest in what they're promoting for breakfast. Instagram just feels like a big promotional platform (and yes I know that goes for all social platforms, but still). Why anyone would willingly want to follow an influencer who's paid to pose with various products is just bizarre to me. As for photos, yeah I get people like to take photos of their holidays - but why would I be interested in looking at these on a tiny square-shaped screen? I think I'm missing the point of it perhaps as many of my friends are super invested.

I hate the character limit. I hate the 'Now I am going to say something important and you are going to listen because I am a very smart person' tone of a lot of the posts.

Combined, these two factors result in smarmy 'threads' that read like cramped manifestos. Burn it all down.

There's been talk of ILK moving to platforms over the years*, but part of the secret of ILX's success cockroach-like tenacity over the years is that a plain black-on-white site doesn't obviously look like not working.

*Arguably LiveJournal worked!

Why has WhatsApp never taken off in the U.S.? It seems ubiquitous in other countries.

there's a huge first mover advantage with this stuff - whatsapp got to a lot of the world before fb or anything else did (before fb acquired it), while fb messenger is still fairly popular (the most popular? idk) in the usa. it's also why line is the most popular in japan/taiwan/thailand, and why kakaotalk is the most popular in south korea.

i remember teaching a class at columbia the day whatsapp was acquired (2013?) and going into the class and saying to 20 students "did you hear how much facebook paid for whatsapp? crazy right?" and the only one who had even heard of whatsapp was from iran.

So you're saying it didn't devolve into a bad "who's on first" routine?

ha!

is whatsapp just a messenger? when i had it, i just used it to message people, but apparently things "go viral" on whatsapp

think of it like something going viral via email forwards

kind of. it has a "forward" feature which boomers use, and the groups can get very large (e.g. conservative MPs famously use it).

maximum group size is 512. (imessage is 32 by comparison.)

The only reason I have WhatsApp is because I don't have an iPhone, so it's the easiest cheap way for me to communicate with family overseas.

like a discord

xp
yeah groups mean you don't have to type out a bunch of people's addresses, but the basic principle is still the same, no? hence the word "forward" enduring. It's much faster and scaled-up ofc, but my point was virality originated in messaging media so it's not surprising or new. I haven't been on it in years though, so maybe I'm missing something

I don't think with Whatsapp that you can join topic-based servers filled with randos like on Discord, but I genuinely don't know if that's right

you can't. it's basically imessage but with a better UX for large groups and no fear that someone with green bubbles will mess things up, and a thing called "broadcast lists" which are groups where only one person can post (schools and daycares like those IIUC).

interesting correction to my "virality originated in messaging media" claim that I just remembered: https://viraltexts.org/

Genuinely had no idea WhatsApp wasn’t popular in America. My account dates back to 2009/2010(?), when I had a blackberry (lol) and WhatsApp was the only app that allowed you to talk cross platform with friends on iPhone and Android.

i use whatsapp for chats with my husband and no one else. i have absolutely no idea or recollection as to how that happened, and i don't care. thanks for listening.

I also use WhatsApp for family chats to include family living overseas.

I have a bunch of different groups on Whatsapp (basically the only social I'm still on if it even counts): family, teacher mates, a group of old-school friends (some of whom are abroad), a bunch of people into cricket, a group specifically for soul music shares, etc. They're all active, some daily, some weekly.

First got WhatsApp when I had a baby and it was a good way of keeping in touch with my NCT group... so nearly 8 years ago. Like kettles, I had no idea Americans don't use it...

it was "sold" to me as phone messaging you can do on Wifi instead of using/ paying for SMS. Something like Facebook messenger has never been as widely used or simple to use imo.

People pay per text???????

PS I am an ignorant American

A long time ago you paid for phone minutes and texts. Now iirc it's more common to have a contract with a set number of minutes and texts allowed and charged per if you go over - but that still might be outdated, I dunno, I think I have unlimited texts now and possibly unlimited minutes - who even texts any more? Things have changed a lot in the last 8 years but WhatsApp still covers most bases.

When I lived in the US you had to pay to RECEIVE a text as well - if you had a pay-as-you-go plan. Never had that in the UK!

I like texting because there is no read receipt functionality, unlike WhatsApp. I like the idea of sending a message out there into the ether and not knowing when or even if it will be picked up and read. Also I turn my 4G off when I'm out of the house so I've trained my family to text me if they want to contact me when I'm out.

otm. Can't believe that "last seen" online business with whatsapp. You can turn that off but not the read receipts.

Text and call minute limits are a not so distant memory in Canada, to the point where every single current plan by every provider boasts "unlimited calling and texting!".. Other than some lower tier ones that might still have a very limited $15 a month rate. It's generally all about the gigos now, $50 a month for 6gb and whatnot on the website rates, with more reasonable prices traded in whispers at kiosks.

I'm picking up a new sim card today. God bless.

You can turn read receipts off in WhatsApp, it's right there in privacy settings. On my version at least.

so there is! done. cheers

I like the idea of sending a message out there into the ether and not knowing when or even if it will be picked up and read.

I've actually just bought a house phone... which will function as a landline pretty much, but without the line rental I refuse to pay. I'll put a PAYG sim in it and just remember to use it twice a year or so so it doesn't expire. Thought it might be useful to have something the kids can use in an emergency etc. It's like an office phone and it receives SMS!

$50 a month for 6GB

Is that a contract where you're also paying for your phone?

Because I pay £8 a month for 20GB and unlimited calls & tets

yep mine is £10 for 30gb, unlimited calls and texts

nope, no contract or phone subsidy

$50 for me for unlimited data, calls and texts. (They apparently throttle you at the 60 gig mark, but I've never used more than 20 in a month.)

US 5-10x more expensive than most of Europe

https://www.cable.co.uk/mobiles/worldwide-data-pricing/

Yeah, gotta love our phone cartels. U-S-A!

Mark Zuckerberg Quietly Buries the Metaverse

There will be no press release, no big announcement, as he would have to acknowledge that he was wrong.

But make no mistake: Mark Zuckerberg just buried the metaverse. The metaverse is dead.

The metaverse was supposed to be the Next Big Thing for the social-media tycoon, who in 2021 went so far as to rename his empire -- created from Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp -- as Meta Platforms.

Simply put, the metaverse is an immersive virtual world in which we are supposed to interact with each other using specialized glasses and virtual-reality headsets.

It was the future of technology, according to Zuckerberg, whom Tesla CEO Elon Musk dubbed "Zuck the Fourteenth" in an apparent nod to the French king Louis the XIV, famous for his hubris and excess.

...

Zuckerberg has just held the funeral by turning to the next big shiny thing, namely artificial intelligence.

"We're creating a new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area," Zuckerberg said in a Feb. 27 post on Facebook.

"We're starting by pulling together a lot of the teams working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful experiences around this technology. ...

"In the short term, we'll focus on building creative and expressive tools," he wrote. "Over the longer term, we'll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways."

The legacy of the metaverse remains because Meta will continue to develop remnants of this virtual world, such as headsets, but it will be more for a target audience, such as videogamers and the crypto world.

Meta will continue to develop remnants of this virtual world, such as headsets, but it will be more for a target audience, such as videogamers and the crypto world.

makes sense for the games - i don't have a VR unit but i think the new gran turismo 7 looks pretty incredible; i think VR games are here to stay.

what is the metaverse use case for crypto, though?

swimming in a virtual money bin a la Uncle Scrooge

it's skins

Fun little read but I don't see much to actually support the headline. No real indication that new "top-level product group" is taking resources from metaverse.

what is the metaverse use case for crypto, though?

nfts originated as part of a virtual world game, so they could try to monetize that approach by running their own roulette crypto table.

yikes: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/oct/20/instagram-palestinian-user-profile-bios-terrorist-added-translation-meta-apology

almost impressed at the baldfacedness of claiming this was a bug

"sometime last night, the core software Instagram runs on became racist"

Facebook is really dead, isn't it? I barely open it anymore. last time I posted a status update, I noticed that over a month had gone by since my prior update. When I scroll through my feed it's 2/3 ads and junk content, 1/3 the same 10 people, none of whom are even close friends or family.

Thought I would see how long it took to see a post from a friend on Facebook. Scrolled past

* 3 posts from groups/pages I follow
* 12 ads
* 5 posts from people I don't know or follow
* 22 posts from groups/pages I don't follow

Before I found my first post from a friend, the 45th post in total, not counting the reels (also not from friends)

(just posted that on fb an hour ago! synchronicity!)

My feed right now

1 post from college friend I haven't seen in 15 years

8 ads/junk posts/media posts in a row

1 post from guy who briefly played in my band and photographed my wedding

9 junk/media/group posts in a row

1 post from college friend I haven't seen in 20 years

10 junk/media/group posts

1 post from dude I only know through facebook, and barely

And it just goes on like that for probably hundreds of posts - in fact I gave up before I found a single update from someone I'd legit call a friend that I've actually seen in the last decade, a family member (other than one from my wife's aunt), or even a neighbor.

It's full of junk unless you go to "menu" and "feeds". Then it's only half-full of junk and people you used to know

it's Facebook

https://bsky.app/profile/mims.bsky.social/post/3lfd4tl2tl22k

billionaires all ended up becoming the same person

"People that aren't tapping into the MetaVerse are obviously virtue signalling..."

*sent while e-wakefoiling on Lake Tahoe*

https://i.imgur.com/77pFcZp.png