GeekNights Monday - Social Media

Speaking as a public health microbiologist, Nate Silver is way out of his depth on epidemiology and consistently pushes a factually incorrect message that reflects an absolute ignorance of science and public health in particular. And, like all Silicon Valley tech-bros of his ilk, he refuses to accept correction because he is convinced of his intellectual superiority.

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Mm. Well. Guess Iā€™ll continue only 538ing for election forecasts.

I didnā€™t delete my Instagram account, but I did basically stop using it entirely as of recently. Thereā€™s only so much you can do to block ads on there when using a mobile app.

Just recently they finally added the ability to post content to Instagram using the web version, even from a desktop computer. I went to check it out and discovered you can make a new post, but not to the story. Itā€™s just to the main feed.

I also realized hey, the web version of Instagram doesnā€™t have any ads. I donā€™t know if it actually has no ads, or my adblock just blocks them all. Either way, itā€™s really great. It feels like the original Instagram. Just content from people I explicitly follow. If everyone exclusively used the desktop version of Instagram, it might be the best actually?

Thinking about all of the link rot when Twitter dies.

Well deal accepted. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/twitter-accepts-elon-musks-buyout-deal.html

Hmmmā€¦ been feeling for a few years that I need to reduce the time and attention I spend on Twitter. I guess the monkey paw closes another finger. I will begin nervously holding my breath to see what is created or existing service grows in acceptance as a result. As with the downfall of democracy, if it is going to happen then let it be swift and spectacular so that all will recognize the cause and effect so that the new system that arises can explicitly put up guards against the failures and short-sighted decisions that doomed it. Much better than slowly bleeding out for years and years inflicting more harm on more people drip by drip.

If twitter dies I will do what Iā€™m already doing is. Follow all the artists on Instagram.

Some company in China will create Twitter 2.0 and no one will care because only the kids will use it and all the boomers will be on Original Twitter.

Fine by me.

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Well, Instagram is dead to me now. lol The recent update to the timeline now means you canā€™t scroll freely.

It now snaps precisely to the next post. You canā€™t, with control, skip a bunch of posts and view just the stuff that you want.

You have to stop at each post, and yeh fuck this lool

Twitter really is the last standing timeline. :grimacing:

This is giving me lots of red flags. It seems like their primary concern is resistance to ā€œcensorshipā€. They say that nobody can be kicked off unless all nodes agree to do so. Also, all these nodes cryptographically hosting everyone elseā€™s stuff. Iā€™m 50% sure this is a scheme to distribute CSAM, if it even works at all.

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I thought it was a primer on the social media platforms that it was good to share. I will wait to see if it actually does anything in a larger sphere of the Internet before I go and actually take a look at it.