Can I just brag for a moment? I feel like I am among my people, and there is a little lesson at the end.
to calibrate: White dude in my 40s, nerdy by nature but non-technical in my education/employment
Twitter - signed up in the early 2000s when it first came out, pretty much stopped using by 2011
Facebook - signed up in the early 2000s when it first got big, pretty much stopped using by 2011, deleted my abandoned account last year
Google +, I'm sure I never signed up, but I had an account that I never used. Google being google negated me ever having to contemplate whether or not I would ever use it
Snapchat - never used
TikTok - never used
Instagram - never used
Are there others? I don't know.
Reddit was the only "social media" I ever used for a sustained period of time and the only one where I felt part of any sort of community. I left reddit in June of 2023 when I made this account and I've never been back.
So, in many ways, I am successfully resisting/avoiding "the algorithm" and I am a good example of high media literacy with good resistance to manipulation by social media.
But, just to emphasize why community itself is so valuable and worthy of exploitation by techbros, here are life changes I've made since joining Lemmy, even without any algorithms or dark patterns. Not that Lemmy is strictly causal in all of these, but the relationship is there:
I am now making my way through TNG, and am generally more Trek-literate
Linux, natch
Cancelled all streaming services (honestly most 'subscription services') in favor of a NAS running Plex (for now, will probably move to Jellyfin), Calibre, AudioBookshelf, Immich, Joplin, NextCloud, etc, etc, etc
Now using Steam Deck as my daily driver for gaming
In other words, though I prize my independent thinking and avoidance of Big Cloud, and though I think all of these are positive changes representing a positive influence, I am clearly impressionable. And so are you.
I want to pay. I want creators to be fairly compensated for their work. I just want a structure that doesn’t require a predatory middleman that adds no value.
Even knowing this allows for the questions being asked, Humperdinck. It is one thing to have franchisees operating in your country. That doesn’t answer the legal and technical mechanics of the actual Saudi Government arranging for this. It’s also well known but not common knowledge that the royal family owns a lot of the businesses in the country anyway so the lines are extra blurry but the point is that none of this is like…in the zeitgeist or something. Certainly not straightforward enough to rate such a shirty response.
I could read a similar report for almost any cabinet post, or more likely multiple cabinet posts, and I wouldn’t bat an eye. I would almost assume this is happening in most cases to some degree.
Most of these secretaries are picked for their willingness and ability to absorb what passes for tough questions in congressional hearings while the real power like Hobgoblin here make the decisions.
I say this quite a bit. Whatever the opposite of buyer’s remorse is, that is how I feel about the Steam Deck. Hands down the best purchase I made last year, and that is continually affirmed.
All the time. I just wish I could understand them because they always seem to contemplate carefully whatever I have them smell, which makes me wonder what they are thinking.
No gas at all. Pumping the brakes in fact. Forgetting a link happens, and they were quick to address it, which is why I was just gently pushing back on their minimization of the need for a link.
Forgetting a link is innocent, the thought process the suggests that an image alone can be informative, and that a link might be in some way redundant; in this age that is insidious and should be called out before it takes hold. You’re welcome to feel I’m overreacting, but I will politely disagree with you.
This, truth, isn’t going to get any easier any time soon, and folks who care about it need to look out for each other with accountability.
modifier @ modifier @lemmy.ca Posts 6Comments 1,467Joined 2 yr. ago
Can I just brag for a moment? I feel like I am among my people, and there is a little lesson at the end.
to calibrate: White dude in my 40s, nerdy by nature but non-technical in my education/employment
Twitter - signed up in the early 2000s when it first came out, pretty much stopped using by 2011
Facebook - signed up in the early 2000s when it first got big, pretty much stopped using by 2011, deleted my abandoned account last year
Google +, I'm sure I never signed up, but I had an account that I never used. Google being google negated me ever having to contemplate whether or not I would ever use it
Snapchat - never used
TikTok - never used
Instagram - never used
Are there others? I don't know.
Reddit was the only "social media" I ever used for a sustained period of time and the only one where I felt part of any sort of community. I left reddit in June of 2023 when I made this account and I've never been back.
So, in many ways, I am successfully resisting/avoiding "the algorithm" and I am a good example of high media literacy with good resistance to manipulation by social media.
But, just to emphasize why community itself is so valuable and worthy of exploitation by techbros, here are life changes I've made since joining Lemmy, even without any algorithms or dark patterns. Not that Lemmy is strictly causal in all of these, but the relationship is there:
In other words, though I prize my independent thinking and avoidance of Big Cloud, and though I think all of these are positive changes representing a positive influence, I am clearly impressionable. And so are you.