[duxup]

Problems I see:

- Most content produced by people on social media is not good and you probably don't want to see it. Serendipity of a bunch of crappy content "I had a bad day nobody ask me about it" is not something you want, but it is serendipity.

- Social media isn't where you go to get info on Crocodiles, not sure how that would even work? That's Wikipedia. ... or if we're talking social media, YouTube (I searched YouTube and got a lot of legitimate results).

[input_sh]

> and you probably don't want to see it.

Hard disagree. I want to see everything from everyone I follow in a specific newest-to-oldest order. I also don't want to see other shit in my feed (X liked Y, who to follow, whatever), but I'm fine with having it outside of the main feed (be it a sidebar or a click away).

I also want to "tag" my follows into lists (family, close friends, topic X, topic Y), allowing me to filter through the timeline.

Currently only Twitter and Mastodon allow me this use case, and that's what I use on a semi-regular basis. Everything that deviates from that (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube's home feed) also loses me as a regular visitor with zero exceptions.

But the reason everything deviates from that eventually is clickthrough rate on ads. If my timeline is confusing enough, I'm more likely to click on ads.

[briffle]

Exactly this. I WANT to see all those pictures friends and family are posting of their kids going back to school, or of their dog doing whatever. That is the point of social media, to someone keep in touch with the goings-on of family that lives far away. I actually like to read their personal opinions and thoughts they write on things, even when I disagree with them. (its interesting to see things from others point of view) But I wish I could just block everthing that someone 're-shares' since lately, its no different than the huge email chains your great aunt used to foward in ALL CAPS about how if you forward this to 10 people Bill Gates is going to send you money....

[nicce]

At least Instagram algorithm is going towards direction where this is not possible. It might hide content from persons which you have followed, if you haven’t liked or reacted their posts in the past. It wants to show the most appealing content.

[asdff]

RSS works well for this. I follow youtube channels and other media on RSS and its chronological, all in one place, and I can group or filter them however I like.

[input_sh]

I'm gonna be honest, I do use RSS, but I dread it due to a) not every website supporting it, b) random sites having feeds that are way too noisy, c) liking one category of posts or one author and failing to extract those posts only, or d) random people I like publishing on multiple websites.

Now I can get around it with a ton of effort, but it will break sooner or later, which is why why I find Twitter/Mastodon lists far more useful and flexible.

[asdff]

It's not too much effort to be honest considering all the services around RSS these days. You have services that can turn a website that doesn't support RSS into an RSS feed. Services that can filter feeds however much for certain keywords of interest or whatever and cut out the noise. You can even consume twitter via RSS these days.

[zhdc1]

Social media - at least, Twitter, but a couple of other sites before that - is still the go to source for breaking news.

It can take tens of minutes to hours for major news sites to report on a breaking event (e.g., the fall of Kabul). Meanwhile, you can get detailed - albiet in some cases very innacurate - information within minutes of it happening simply by watching for Tweets from people on the ground.

[mikeg8]

But do we really need to know breaking news, instantly? It becomes addicting; it especially was for me during the last administration. I’m completely fine finding out a few hours later about a breaking news story that doesn’t have a material effect on my immediate safety (ie wild fires). If Twitter’s biggest justification is that it lets you stay up to speed on news in real-time, I’d still agree we are better off without it, from a mental health perspective.

[zhdc1]

> do we really need to know breaking news, instantly?

There are good reasons, although I share your general concern. E.g., if you believe that you may be affected by an event, or if it's important/relevant enough that others will start to frame how it's perceived, it's generally good to find out about it as it's happening.

On the other hand, the vast majority of trending events aren't worth being concerned about for most people.

[bluGill]

If I need to know as it is happening there should be sirens going off outside in my town to alert me to that. Everything else can wait.

[nicce]

Plenty of these ”breaking news” are also heavily missleading. Causing side effects and heavy opinions, regardless if truth comes later. It is too late then.

[lotsofpulp]

> albiet in some cases very innacurate

I would correct to most cases. Or that the information you get is without sufficient context to be of use.

[zhdc1]

Actually, I've found that they tend to be fairly accurate at reporting 'what' is happening - it's hard for several people at the same time to post unique, fake videos of people driving around with guns while others are posting corroborating textual accounts.

The 'why' part is a completely different matter. If there's any interpretation or time difference between the event and the post, scepticism is absolutely warranted.

[bryan_w]

It's not that hard if you use "residential proxies"