[madaxe_again]

I don’t know how much of a difference it would make, as then we just become the algorithm.

I quit Facebook over a decade ago, because others used it to go “look at my shiny car/wife/house”, and I would use it to lose friends and alienate people.

These online environments do not foster any kind of human connection.

[ay]

Blue sky allows you to have many different kinds of feeds and I can say the difference in adrenaline level and mood is palpable depending on the feed I use.

News items - frustration at the state the world is in.

Urban bicycle feed: annoyance at the atrocities of the inept drivers.

Feed with cycle side trip pictures: fun.

Rust projects, Electronics: the curiosity of learning.

Also: Bluesky has an absolutely amazing feature which is you can subscribe to someone else’s block lists. That changes the experience quite a lot, to the better.

[Zambyte]

Bluesky has felt like the healthiest experience I have ever had with social media. I don't really use any algorithmic feeds (though I have been toying with building my own), just my following feed.

[ay]

I find the algorithmic topical feeds nicely solve the problem of discovery for me. There’s a lot of people who are experts in their fields, totally different to mine (e.g. astronomy, physics, photography etc) which makes it interesting for me.

[Zambyte]

Yeah, I'm sure they're useful! I have just found myself in a neat community, and I have > 700 followers and followers (mostly mutual), so I haven't really felt a need for discovery. I usually just find people through replies to people I know already at this point.

[ay]

Nice! That’s the beautiful part - everyone can shape it according to how they like, and be comfortable with that.

[projectazorian]

> Also: Bluesky has an absolutely amazing feature which is you can subscribe to someone else’s block lists. That changes the experience quite a lot, to the better.

Oh yeah I remember how this worked on Twitter. Make a post that annoys some anonymous blocklist maintainer, and suddenly you're blocked by a whole swath of accounts. Sometimes just following the wrong person or liking the wrong post is enough. No accountability for these decisions and no way to reverse them, or even figure out whom to approach to reverse them.

Sounds awfully exclusionary for a service that purports to be inclusive. It encourages the formation of authoritarian cliques, as tends to happen in any left-wing group sooner or later.

[ay]

The solution is trivial: just be polite and respectful to others.

Everyone is entitled to say their opinion.

Nobody is entitled to force others listen to it.

It’s quite simple, really.

[projectazorian]

I was always polite and respectful on Twitter and still wound up on a blocklist. So did many others. There was no notification or explanation provided and no recourse, I just suddenly found myself blocked from various accounts to the extent it degraded the utility of the platform.

Lots of people on the left love to be little commissars, and this sort of thing provides a perfect opportunity.

The implication of your statement is "you probably did something to deserve it, comrade" which is very much in keeping with that mentality.

[ay]

If they blocked you, evidently you didn’t clear the bar for them, and even if it was some completely lunatic reason - you have to respect their right to not talk to you, however lunatic it looks for you.

Now, if their blocklists were popular - either they weren’t lunatics or there was a crowd of lunatics. Now, why would you worry about not talking with a crowd of lunatics ?

But, regardless - again - nobody is entitled to an interaction with those that don’t want it, directly or by proxy.

Baffles me, why is it so hard to understand this ?

[projectazorian]

People can do whatever they want. I simply observed that this is a toxic practice that reinforces my decision to stay away from the platform. Entitlement has nothing to do with it, and I don’t appreciate the implication of your statement.

(You do know that blocking removes the ability to view posts, not just interact with them, right?)

[exceptione]

* Bluesky is from the same people that launched Twitter and, optics aside, just the same ideology. There is no real deep divide on values. It is about locking up people in echo chambers, information filtering and ultimately ripping out people's ability to organize around a common good.

There is only one danger for the 0.1%. The 99,9%.

* The people that got disturbed by Twitter's boosting of extremists and nazis, now took refuge to bsky. Only to get ripe for the next iteration. But see how many people are still on X, increasingly less aware of the abnormality they are drowning in.

This playbook of cultural engineering should be super clear by now. Ad tech => Private Intelligence.

* How to sell it? Invest in narratives that bend the notion of free trade in order to instill rigid beliefs about Free Markets. Now look at the free markets. :) It only takes you a few million bucks and a dinner to set your company free.

Like parent hinted at, "social media" means the opposite for society.

[ay]

I can not argue about the values of people I do not know personally. I only said that the tool they made seems to be okay in my experience, which I shared.

“Free markets” is an uneducated nonsense. An entirely unregulated market evolves into monopoly. Even without corruption.

Social media for me is just a tool (HN is also social media btw). I find it useful and it meaningfully interacts with the other aspects of my life. When it stops being the case (eg facebook and twitter) - I leave it behind.

As for the hierarchy: it had always existed and for better or worse the humans and other animals are wired for it. Likewise, they are wired for maintaining the total perceived fairness of the system - so the system eventually autocorrects the extreme imbalance. Often brutally, though.

[exceptione]

> I only said that the tool they made seems to be okay in my experience,

I could understand that! I wanted to make a general comment, to warn people that although things feel fine now, they should imho pay caution to what these things devolve into. There doesn't even need to be any particular evil scheming from people involved. We usually focus on tech solutions. While blindness to cultural forces is generally what leads us into problems. It is a self-feedback loop in which societal fracturing and extremism is fostered.

> When it stops being the case (eg facebook and twitter) - I leave it behind.

I feel the same. But most people, not only the young, are hooked to social media. For the young, they are essential for social validation, and thus they are easily pried on by people with less morality than you likely do.

> HN is also social media btw

Sure, but it is in a different class. HN at least does it best to be the least dopamine awarding. It is hard to read, and it is difficult to see if someone replied to a question or remark you made.

Traditional fora, mailing lists, HN--they are far more benign than what we are talking about.

[ay]

Absolutely true about focusing too much on tech solutions, it’s often a very tricky problem that is best solved at non-technical layer.

To your other points: I find that people who are addicted never heed the warnings, they just get annoying. Just occurred to me: wonder if the addiction is to some extent internalization of the habit; so that fighting the habit becomes fighting oneself….

About HN being less addictive than the others: that is arguable :-) though it is much less driven by pure emotions than the other forms of exchange, indeed !

[lc9er]

I lasted a little bit longer, but it grew shocking to see how eager friends and family were to display how cruel and bigoted they can be.

I sometimes wonder if it’s the addictive, attention seeking nature of social media that encouraged such behavior, or if they simply lacked the courage to be so inhumane in person.

[ljm]

I wouldn’t rule out the radicalising properties of social media either. You don’t have to fly out to the Middle East and join a militia to be turned against Western ideals when Facebook can flood your feed with targeted propaganda for a price.

It does say something about one’s character that they would be targeted by this and would also buy into it, though. You’d hope people might see it for what it is and take a step back.

[kjkjadksj]

These people are just as inhumane in person actually. In fact they want to test their opinions on you and see if you signal that you are also in their in group. Stuff like an old creepy guy gawking at a woman and asking you “how about that” is a someone common example of this. Or telling some story about some human condition where the punch line is well they were black and this isn’t surprising behavior given the racist stereotypes they believe in. These guys come out of the woodwork too. Like a total stranger on the bus would be like this, turn over at you unsolicited.

[barnabee]

My Instagram account is private and I only follow real life friends and family. I mute (posts or stories or both from) any that post in ways that I don’t find positive. I haven’t had to mute many, but it’s some.

If it wasn’t for the algorithmic feed showing “recommended” posts from accounts I don’t follow and the constant ads, I would have a perfectly healthy and pleasant experience with Instagram.

I really wish they’d let us pay to get rid of ads and configure the algorithm to e.g. only recommend from accounts I follow.

[kjkjadksj]

Click on the instagram logo at the top of the app and click “following” to get a chronological feed.

[blitzar]

madaxe_again checked in at the First Class lounge.