The Death of Social Media

Roadwarrior

Roadwarrior

Member
For more than a decade, social media has brought people together on a handful of platforms, most notably Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. But in an effort to feed the rapacious desire for growth, these platforms have transformed from places for people to connect to entertainment channels. As the big players have deteriorated into a chaotic mash of shouting and sponsored content, alienated users are decamping for a hodgepodge of platforms.
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Quote taken from an article on 'Business Insider'.

I've taken my ball & gone home on all Social Media since 2016 & found somewhat of home on this Senior Forum, I can relate as a senior to the trials & tribulations voiced here, Thanks!
 

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I think I have an account at Facebook. Can't remember why I do, but I've never used it anyway. Never used the other two.

As far as I can tell long ago they were gamed to influence people, either selling them on commercial products and services or trying to engineer their outlooks and opinions.
 

-Oy- said:
What makes you believe this site is not Social Media?
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Oh! I believe this site is social media but more of a niche forum designed for seniors, sans politics & I believe that banning religion would be a step in right direction. But since I have the option to pick & choose my readable subjects, whom am I to complain.
 
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-Oy- said:
I agree 100% - but this is also how I use Facebook.
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Friends of friends control what gets posted on your wall not you. I just got tired of all the negative entries in 2016 on my wall that couldn't be unseen unless I kept my friend list below 5 that had to be conditioned as I. My son has over 360 friends, he doesn't know that many people, but was my friend, so I got a lot of BS I could have done without. Maybe I'm not as astute with FB (a charter member of the 'Dirty Dozen') as you, it was just as easy to quit.
 
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I keep my Facebook mainly to stay in touch with a few long distance friends and family. Plus there are a couple games I like. Otherwise I spend more time here (even when I do not post often) to keep track of info that is of interest to me, and one particular game site I love.
It feeds my introverted personality here...I have a tendency in real life to just sit back and listen to conversations.
 
Marie5656 said:
I keep my Facebook mainly to stay in touch with a few long distance friends and family. Plus there are a couple games I like. Otherwise I spend more time here (even when I do not post often) to keep track of info that is of interest to me, and one particular game site I love.
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I got hacked from the Ukraine through a game on FB back in 2015, Google did catch it but the threat was always lingering in the background. No thank you! I'll stick with Linux & a good VPN.
 
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There are smaller platforms coming online frequently. I have tried several. Some are good, some not so much. Also if you get a specific interest you can sometimes find a forum or such to exchange interesting info on that subject. I hope many more SMALLER platforms spring up to counter the big tech/profit game.
 
I do or did belong to a few 'of interest' to me forums. I haven't tried to access many over the last few years, some are defunct & unreachable so I guess I've quit them.
 
I do believe Social Media is in its death throws. When people can make hundreds of thousands a year just recording themselves posing, eating, licking a microphone, pretending to be a cat or dog or some other equally moronic BS, there has to be a point when people - even the brain-deficient - just can't watch it anymore. There has to be a time when they've just had enough; when they simply lose interest. I mean, how many different ways can you lick a microphone? How many nuances can you work into eating an ice-cream cone or a plate of spaghetti?

And as for places like Facebook, people are complaining they're seeing more ads than posts from their friends or whatever.

Even YouTube is constantly shilling their "upgrades" and their pay-per-view "offers" and inviting you to rate the last video you watched. "Click on 1 to 5 stars and then explain why by checking one of 6 boxes: Heart-Warming, Informational, Life-Changing..."

Life-Changing? Really? Some billion-dollar CEO at Google actually thinks that watching a YouTube prank video has the potential to change lives.

And therein lies the problem.
 
Roadwarrior said:
I've taken my ball & gone home on all Social Media since 2016 & found somewhat of home on this Senior Forum, I can relate as a senior to the trials & tribulations voiced here, Thanks!
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I did the same over the last 3 years. Twitter went first, then Facebook, then Instagram, Tiktok and finally, Reddit.

I think back to the birth of social media, how nice it was to reconnect with people and to meet new friends. It was disappointing to see how fast it devolved into censorship, lies and division and led to the complete obsolescence of genuine face to face socializing. It's sad and disheartening.

Then again, it also led me here :)
 
I can only hope ...
i know the numbers using have dwindled people may have forgotten accounts or barely get on them. they use how many accounts they have in articles not how many active users because those # are clearly showing a falloff

I had no issue until the division and censorship started full speed.....
I was email notified in March 2023 by Facebook ...... that a post i re-shared in OCTOBER 2020 has been ruled misinformation.
Seriously i have no idea what it might have been.......
they are going through 3 year old crap instead of working on the Current fraud and scams on their site ........says a LOT about their concerns and agenda .... i have not signed on probably since 2020 i do not even remember.
 
-Oy- said:
What makes you believe this site is not Social Media?
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Theoretically it might be, but since it has a moderator and things are kept refreshingly civil I don't think of it that way! Commercials are kept to a minimum as well.

I am not sure if YouTube is considered Social Media but I am about to give up on them since every video longer than five minutes now gets additional commercials in the middle ****, something I despise, along with the ones you first confront when you start it.

**** or something even more distasteful, people who are being paid to promote a product halfway through their show, on top of the usual commercials!!
 
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When Google + closed to non-business users I decided to forgo social media sites thereafter. Google + was never the size or success of Facebook, but I could barely handle that size.

What works for me are sites that have a theme or focus on a subject like Flickr. Flickr was once a free-for-all, screaming place. But, with the advent of the smartphone it has largely become a much more civil and focused site. You have to be interested in the subject of photography to find Flickr attractive, but that keeps most of the nut jobs off the site. One has to be good at photography rather than just running your mouth to gather a following on Flickr.

Frankly, I wonder if the die off in social media is actually a trend or more a rest until 2024 which is an election year here in the U.S. Then the up roar will surely begin once more.
 
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NewlySenior said:
I did the same over the last 3 years. Twitter went first, then Facebook, then Instagram, Tiktok and finally, Reddit.

I think back to the birth of social media, how nice it was to reconnect with people and to meet new friends. It was disappointing to see how fast it devolved into censorship, lies and division and led to the complete obsolescence of genuine face to face socializing. It's sad and disheartening.

Then again, it also led me here :)
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As a new member here, like yourself, the same issue haunts me here as elsewhere. Who are these 'people', really? The thing that attracted so many to social media, the anonymity is the very thing that makes it feel alien to me. We all got along pretty well without the internet or smartphones and for a very long time. I'd love to have my old, reliable newspaper back. We've given up a lot and lost it for what?
 
Jeni said:
I can only hope ...
i know the numbers using have dwindled people may have forgotten accounts or barely get on them. they use how many accounts they have in articles not how many active users because those # are clearly showing a falloff

I had no issue until the division and censorship started full speed.....
I was email notified in March 2023 by Facebook ...... that a post i re-shared in OCTOBER 2020 has been ruled misinformation.
Seriously i have no idea what it might have been.......
they are going through 3 year old crap instead of working on the Current fraud and scams on their site ........says a LOT about their concerns and agenda .... i have not signed on probably since 2020 i do not even remember.
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A huge increase in gov't control is another nail in the coffin of social media.

Didn't Canada just recently pass a law about what kind of content can and can't be allowed on social media? And if so, who'd they appoint to be in charge of making those decisions? Because I'm pretty sure they didn't hold a *special election* to fill that position according the wishes and standards of a majority of The People.

And when a gov't decides to take over a business, they have to build an organization around it, and it has to have a computer system and administrators and secretary administrators and tech support people, and taxes pay for all that. So people are literally paying to have themselves scrutinized and censored and admonished and even punished. And meanwhile, this gov't organization shapes social media; what you can say on it, who you should and shouldn't "friend", what you should and shouldn't think and opine about, and, of course, what products you should buy from it.
 
Speaking of social media sites there is one particular jig that goes on within one site in particular and that one site is YouTube.

At first I was told that anyone can make millions by posting their podcasts on YouTube. A fellow that I have known for years and goes to the same church told me all I need to get is a commercial grade microphone and a set of high end headphones, for what reason, zi don’t know.

He invited me to his house to watch how he makes it all happen. When I went to his house, he took me out to his garage, which looked like a small TV studio. He had a really nice table in front of him with a black tablecloth on it and the name of his company, which I won’t repost, but the letters are in purple and read Joe Johnson, Inc (fictitious). He has a real nice microphone and his laptop all on the table in front of him.

His wife has an expensive video camcorder on a tripod and hooked into her iPad on another tripod while she is videoing him. On most days, he speaks like a preacher giving a sermon, but on 1 or 2 days a week, he mixes it up a bit. He might do 1 hour of sports on one day and 1 hour of area news, or travel, or whatever he feels like talking about the other day day. On weekends he takes off.

He told me that last year he was all in and made a gross income of $70,000. Is he for real? Can that be right? I don’t understand any if it. Who pays you and how do you pay the taxes? Is this all legitimate?
 
As an independent author, I tried a few social platforms. The bile thrown from anonymous users was too much on Twitter. Now the latter has changed dramatically and renamed X. In my book a check mark ✔️ would have been welcoming, X isn't, so I'm staying away.

Using my email list from my indie author's days, I tried to restart my Instagram. One jealous person on said list (yes, I found out who it was) blackmailed me on Instagram even before my first post. I just gave up.

Facebook, not since the rash of hacked accounts circa 2009. We lost all four accounts to hackers who were into identity theft. Luckily, we were able to bypass their demands, and we managed to delete all our four accounts and never looked back.

I enjoy senior forums very much. That's what I use daily.

Yet to update blogger, milkshake, BMAC and KF, Google Docs sites but that's for later on.
 
Facebook is no longer a place where one can connect with others. All people do on there is fight over EVERYTHING! And it's mostly meme central. I get one there maybe 10 min a day tops and sometimes not even that. If nobody has messaged me I usually hop back off. Once dad passes I won't be on there much at all and the friends I have that don't bother with me ever (family included) are being let go. I get on Reddit. I like to read the informational posts on there and sometimes I participate. I have 2 forums I use plus one in a game I play. Other than that, I have little use for it anymore.
 
Roadwarrior said:
Oh! I believe this site is social media but more of a niche forum designed for seniors, sans politics & I believe that banning religion would be a step in right direction. But since I have the option to pick & choose my readable subjects, whom am I to complain.
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If we start banning everything we disagree with then we'd have nothing we were allowed to discuss.
 
Murrmurr said:
Didn't Canada just recently pass a law
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Nothing like what you described.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/online-news-act-meta-facebook-1.6885634

It’s to stop these big companies from ripping off legitimate news media companies and posting it as their own content. They have to pay for the content if they want to use it.

People starting whining that they’d have no way to read the news now. Duh. There’s dozens of new media sites that are free or low cost. They can also turn on the evening news. Many choices there.

The newspaper/media industry is/was being destroyed.
 

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