Bonum Certa Men Certa

Thoughts on Quitting Social Control Media, One Month Later...

Speaking from personal experience, with and without it...

Let's pose for a photo to improve our social status; I got no 'likes'
Social control media is not (and was never) a substitute for real social life; it's a mostly meaningless time drain



Summary: Social control media is generally a waste of time; no president (or state leader) was ousted because of the number of "likes" (they're not even a currency) and all Social Control Media Web sites are short-lived bubbles of disorganised (mis)information

DEPENDING on what one deems "social [control] media", I've probably been 'on it' since 2005 with Digg.com, where I was ranked 17th overall (nearly 200 promotions to the front page). As one LibrePlanet talk explained last month, one might consider USENET a "form" of "social [control] media", but I'd not go that far because it's more like E-mails and if newsgroups count as "social [control] media", then "social [control] media" goes back to the early 1980s. Social control media -- no matter if federated, or decentralised, or peer to peer, or "open source", or free/libre -- is generally a waste of time. Hard to maintain, distracting, and totally not worth it. People should set up blogs, then use RSS feeds to 'federate'. Vastly better from a free speech point of view among many other aspects. Too much of people's communications has been centralised this past decade and even E-mail has been centralised (many conflate E-mail with GMail).

"Too much of people's communications has been centralised this past decade and even E-mail has been centralised (many conflate E-mail with GMail)."A month ago I left all social control media. It wasn't a staged exit and it was immediate, 'cold turkey'. Looking back, I realise that I miss none of that. Moreover, I've since then seen two articles about people who did the same thing and had no regrets. We've mentioned their experiences in Daily Links.

Remember that those things being centralised isn't really their main problem (or the main downside). I used to think that it was, but over the years I've used about a dozen different social control media sites, most of them decentralised, and the main concern was uptime, including long-term commitment. Many sites just shut down with barely a prior warning or contingency. A lot of history was lost.

"Spend not a moment longer on "social [control] media"; emancipate yourself from that."If you care about the past and if you value your work, focus on self-hosting blogs, or Gemini capsules, or something along those lines (Gemini lowers the technical debt considerably). The future of the Internet and the future of the Web (I reckon it will last only another decade before it warps into something totally different; Chrome is the new Adobe Flash) will be shaped by those who thought ahead, exercising caution and foresight. The future of the Web isn't Twitter or Facebook. "Apps" too are a passing fad. A lot of 'free' video hosting will shut down or become like television (broadcast conglomerates with advertising).

Spend not a moment longer on "social [control] media"; emancipate yourself from that. Nobody in the future will cherish a "like" or a one-sentence "shitpost" (or shower thought). Nobody will care or even remember.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VII: Washing Their Hands After Corruption and Abuse
"Tragedy or comedy?"
Culling Bad RSS Feeds of Bad Sites
Not throwing out the baby with the bathwater
Live as You Preach
technology is fast becoming dysphoric
Computers Got Smaller, So GNU/Linux Got Bigger
Many people here recognise the lack of urgency (or need) to get expensive new laptops
 
Links 10/06/2025: Jaws at 50 and US Democracy Crushed Very Rapidly (Martial Law Seems Imminent)
Links for the day
If 'Microsoft v Techrights' is Dealt With by a 'Microsoft Court' (or a Court Outsourced to Microsoft)
More on that later
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, June 09, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, June 09, 2025
Gemini Protocol Turns Six in 10 Days From Now
If you haven't tried it yet, then give it a go today
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Addition Addiction and Nitride
Links for the day
Links 09/06/2025: Science, Hardware Projects, and Democracy Receding
Links for the day
BetaNews is a Plagiarism and LLM Slop Hub, the Chief Editor Isn't Addressing This Problem Anymore
SS Fagioli is basically a parasite leeching off or exploiting other people's work
Links 09/06/2025: Chaos in Los Angeles and Hurricane Season
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Grows at Windows' Expense and Microsoft Trolls Infest and Maliciously Target Articles About It
Microsoft is - and has long been - organised crime
They Say I'm Mr. Bombastic
They didn't take good lawyers
Links 09/06/2025: Windows TCO and Many Data Breaches
Links for the day
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part VI: Political Stunts by Former President Edyta Demby-Siwek and the Connection to Profound Corruption at EUIPO
it's like a money-laundering operation where one politician rewards another at taxpayers' expense
Gemini Links 09/06/2025: Pipelines and Splitgate
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, June 08, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, June 08, 2025
Links 08/06/2025: Tiananmen Carnage Censorship Persists, North Korean Goes Offline
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/06/2025: Love as an Ethnographic Method and Monitorix Gemini-Frontend v0.1
Links for the day
Links 08/06/2025: Exposure of More GAFAM Surveillance and Social Security Records Compromised
Links for the day
Linux Foundation is a Mediator for Microsoft et al, Not for Small Companies That Support Rather Than Attack the GPL
Many people still wrongly assume that because it is called "Linux Foundation", then it is pro-Linux and represents the same mindset
This Past Friday, Confirming What We Said All Along About Brett Wilson LLP: It's Shrinking, Has Considerable Debt, Loss of Net Assets Despite the Microsoft SLAPP Money
The documents only became publicly available less than 2 days ago
Some of the Many Reasons We Sued Microsofters for Harassment
perpetrators of harassment
For 20 Years Many People Were Sharecropping for Canonical's Oligarch, Now He's Deleting All Their Contributions
"Ubuntu has erased instead of archiving the trove of material at Ubuntu Forums"
There Was Always Too Much 'Crazy Stuff' Going on Around Freenode
What many IRC users lost sight of
Exposing Crime is Not a Crime (It Never Was)
In the eyes of rich and powerful people, those who speak about their crimes are the "criminals"
GNU/Linux Distros Abandoning Microsoft GitHub
Will curl be next to leave Microsoft GitHub?
Expect More XBox Mass Layoffs Soon If the Rumours Are True
From a Microsoft media operative
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, June 07, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, June 07, 2025
Europe Needs to Move Away From GAFAM; The Sooner, the Better
Europe - not just the EU - must abandon GAFAM as soon as possible
The Issue Isn't GNOME's Promotion of Diversity But GNOME Corruption, Abuse, Censorship, and Worse
So-called "Conservative" (republican, pro-Trump, bigoted) people want you to think the problem with GNOME is politics
When the News Sources Become Scarce and Increasingly Full of Polluted/Contaminated 'Content' (With LLM Slop and Slop Images)
Integrity matters
"Linux" Sites That Spew Out LLM Slop
We're lacking enough material for another "Slopwatch"
Abuse Inside the Polish Patent Office (UPRP) - Part V: Breaking the Law, Just Like EPO
We'll hopefully cover some of the pertinent details later this year