The effect of deactivating Facebook and Instagram on users' emotional state

I believe many of the problems in our current social media landscape could be solved by eliminating the "feed" and instead displaying posts, updates, and pictures from friends, family, and those we know in real life. This approach might conflict with the profit models of big tech social media and could go against what most people have become accustomed to. Personally, I would love a smaller social network where I can stay connected with my school friends, college friends, and distant family without having to see irrelevant posts, like some stupid remark from a politician halfway around the world or influencers doing something outrageous just for attention.

I think the EU should flex their regulatory muscle and forbid algorithmic feeds on by default unless the networks break european society as the US is broken.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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 ?