I quit most social media in 2012, I had lost interest in the platforms I was on.
Facebook and Twitter had become normalised, everyone I knew were on them. They had lost their novelty, and with the growing discussions around privacy and mass-surveillance, I ultimately decided to leave those places.
I didn’t fully quit social media. I’ve been on Something Awful for longer than I’d like to admit, and I browse Reddit occassionally.
I view these as the more old school type of social media, the discussion forums that truely constitute the most social of medias. In the case of Something Awful, you don’t even have up or down votes. You’re promoted to give your take, to say your piece, there are no abstractions to make your approval or disapproval seen. Reddit is more modern in the sense that it does have those abstractions, and I think that’s for the worse.
Yet, when I think of social media, I don’t think of discussion forums. Maybe that’s just a me thing, but my thoughts are more drawn towards stuff like Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. Microblogging services, I guess.
Since leaving Facebook and Twitter, I’ve tried new stuff every now and then, but have never stuck with them for long. I was on GNU Social in 2014, had a brief stint with Diaspora, and was one of the early users of Mastodon in late 2016.
I was invited to Bluesky in 2023, quite early during the invite-only period. I’m not sure why I decided to go on there, I guess it reminded me a lot of early Twitter, while also sporting new stuff such as federation, feeds and letting you use your own domain as a username. It felt new, cool, techy, and I actually found myself staying.
A lot has happened with social media during the years I was away. And it’s not just the services themselves, but more importantly what makes social media social. The tone and culture is so different.
I used to think that the term ‘echo chamber’ was bandied about very freely, but I see now that it quite accurately describes modern social media. I seldom see conservative takes on Bluesky. Perhaps it’s because I follow a lot of liberals, but even in the ‘Discover’ feed I rarely see any (I can’t recollect having seen a single one right now). But people seem content with this. If you want conservative takes go to Twitter, Bluesky is for the libs, stupid.
I tend to be fairly open minded. A lot of the people I follow are people I disagree with politically. But that’s fine, I don’t follow them for their politics, and I don’t think people should be defined by their political alignments. Sometimes I get the impression that I’m quite alone in this regard.
Social media has made the polarisation of society really palpable for me. Neutral or level-headed takes are rare. The things that seem to get the most traction are often sensationalist outrage bait. Most political takes that show up in my feeds are almost always devoid of nuance.
An example from today: a law was passed here in Sweden which has become known as the ‘Onlyfans ban’, and which will go into effect on 1 July. There’s been a lot of posts about it today.
The law will make the purchasing/commissioning of sex work over the internet illegal. It will still be legal for people to sell sex work, but this aspect doesn’t seem to be discussed as much. Instead, it seems more fashionable to discuss how this is an attack on women’s rights (ignoring that most consumers of sex work I would imagine are men), and that this ban will force women into more predatory lines of sex work (ignoring that that sex work isn’t the only line of work available to them).
I don’t disagree with the law, I think it’s a step in the right direction. I’m not alone in having this opinion, yet I have a really hard time seeing it represented on Bluesky. I guess I would have to hop over to Twitter for that…
I think this fragmentation is bad.
Sure, maybe it’s tiring for people to constantly read things they don’t agree with, and that’s why they build these echo chambers for themselves. But you’re only tiring yourself because you allow yourself to be swept up in the storm of outrage that’s so prevalent online.
I’m reading things I disagree with daily, and I’m not tired in the least, because I don’t let them affect me deeply. I can put my phone down, I can close my browser.
Accept the fact that people always have and always will disagree with each other. There will never be a world where all people see eye to eye on everything, and we would not want such a world.
Diversity of opinion is good.