What Social Media do you use? Has that changed recently?

Lumeinshin · 2023-07-08T11:40:21+00:00

Do you use the main social medias, Reddit, Facebook, Twitter etc? Have you found your usage of the platforms to be better or worse lately? Are there any alt-...

NaiJi

Lumeinshin I am somewhat forced to use Discord to play tabletop games with my normie friends, but that's it. The only social place I am using aside messengers is Fediverse!

Lumeinshin

Yeah im not surprised most of you dont use social media aside from when absolutely needed 😆

NaiJi
shewasacarpenter
Murderbunny
These are very much how I use it all.
There are a few things you can do to make discord a less dodgy place, I may do a series of blog posts detailing them, might be good to have some things like that available outside of videos. If you guys have any tips or tricks for using them feel free to also make blogposts or longer posts where desired

Murderbunny

I'm not a social media person at all. The closest thing I've ever had to one was tinder back in my college days.
Currently I use Discord and Telegram to keep in touch with online and irl friends respective but really just as a messenger app really.

Williwizard

I use Fcebook but only for the messenger app. Besides that, well, I'm newly here. I used to have a mild Facebook addiction, so I had to leave any app I could scroll on. Unfortunately, I seemingly replaced scrolling on Fcebook with scrolling on 4chan. /tg/ native, /wg/ appreciator, /k/ wannabe, and /x/ in-frequenter.

Murderbunny

Lumeinshin There are a few things you can do to make discord a less dodgy place, I may do a series of blog posts detailing them, might be good to have some things like that available outside of videos.

I'd be very interested in this.

agoraoptera

Fantasy

I dropped all social media besides forums more than a decade ago. The dangers of becoming addicted to scrolling forever were very obvious to me even back then.

ayy same. I lurked reddit for quite a few years, but finally dropped it after the recent API hoohah because my preferred app croaked and I thought it might be good to cut the habit.
I used to be very active on a forum, but that was many years ago. I rather miss those days, which is part of why I'm here now.

Eugehi

I only use YouTube (and SheepishPatio is p cool too). But, in my opinion, considering YouTube a social media is a stretch. I see it more as a replacement for the TV.

Merulox

I'd cut off all social media for a while, but then came the Reddit boycott and the rise of Lemmy, which got me using that (initially out of curiosity). It's great, but I still want to avoid feed-based social media, so I don't want to keep using it on a regular basis.

I have an account on a Pleroma instance and one on a Misskey instance. Although they are scroll/feed-based, if I had more friends who used them, I'd probably use them more frequently as they both offer feeds for only people whom you follow. Those aren't as bad as algorithm-based feeds (as long as you don't have too many mutuals).

As for youtube, I use the df-tube extension which removes video recommendations and the homepage, so there's no way to get lost in recommendation hell. I only watch specific videos I search for, which end up being mostly worthwhile (in theory). I do have an Odysee account, but I don't really use it that much.

At some point I was really extremist in my view of "banning all social media from my life", but then I realized that (good) social media websites, in spite of everything, are a great way to look for differing opinions and partake in mind-opening discussions, effectively preventing you from becoming narrow-minded. Of course, social media websites that purposefully act as eco-chambers offer none of that and deserve to get wiped off the internet 🙂.

Theory_of_Everything

Unlike may of my peers, I haven't really been one to use much social media, at least the bigger services. Most of my time was spent in discord dms with the couple of friends I had from school to play video games. I never really interacted much with many public big servers until the lockdown, and even then my involvement was only minimal, it just really wasn't my jam. I mostly just uhng out with my friends to game every week or so until they fell off the internet.
I also had a Reddit account for about a year and a half, but it was used mostly for lurking and downloading (admittedly terrible) memes. I was never really frequently on it much, I only really checked like twice a month because I would end up forgetting about it and then suddenly remembering it existed. Ive recently deleted that because I haven't touched it in ages and really I had no use for it.
If YouTube counts as social media then yeah Ive used that, but my frequency with it has dropped off HARD in the last year, of which I actually really proud because I have a lot more time on my hands now that I'm not addicted to the recommended feed.

As for alt-media, ive been enjoying the Fediverse. A friend recently got me back into it and got me through the fediblock wall. I had a mastodon account back in 2019 but never used it because it was even more boring than Reddit. Of course I ended up finding a quite comfy space and decided to host my own pleroma instance just to have a bit more fun with it.
Im also in a couple of miscellaneous group chats hosted by people I know from fedi, but its mostly low activity because its like 5-8 people in 1 room on a self-managed RocketChat.\

Other than that I haven't really touched anything else.

Lumeinshin

Porter dw bro I spend too much time on YouTube, tho i'm definitely spreading time across to Odysee now because more content is on both.

Since making a Twitter Account for the forum i've noticed im scrolling more on it than i'd like I think 😅 I can see why people can spend all day on it.

Murderbunny been writing something, I want to make it a good one stop shop so it may take some time

Theory_of_Everything Fedi is good fun, I dont post as much as I used to, I do think that it is far lower energy than it was say end of 2019/2020, I spent a lot of time in heated arguments then. Could just be me but that hasnt been happening as much anymore

Porter

I'm a pretty private person so I've never really liked the big names in social media very much. I had a reddit for a long time that I used to chat about whichever videogames I was playing at the time but I deleted that a while back because I was scrolling too much. I used Skype back in the day but the friends I kept track of through Skype have all migrated to Discord so that's what I mostly use now. It's just friends and mutual friends on Discord, I stay out of larger channels (except for certain modding communities so I can keep an eye on their development progress, but I keep them muted).

I was very into 4chan for a few years, and still kinda am. My usage has dropped off a bit these last couple months though and I'm trying to keep that trend going. Again, scrolling too much. I also have the impression that most of the people I used to like posting with have left the site; real discussion seems hard to get rolling no matter which board I'm on.

I'm on Youtube too much, if that counts as social media. I'm trying to throttle that back a lot and return that time to more productive (or even just less passive) hobbies. It's really easy for me to get stuck in a loop on that website.

Ideally I will eventually cut out all my social media use except for Discord and a couple of smaller communities like this one. The larger sites are noticeably bad for my mental state but I don't want to check out of online life altogether.

Theory_of_Everything

Lumeinshin

Could just be me but that hasnt been happening as much anymore

cant really speak much for that, as its kinda not really the kind of stuff I enjoy for the most part.
Ive actually liked how at least my fedi circle is quite small and manageable. I can leave it and come back and still be able to keep up with things.
Though I cant really say much on what has happened before 2021 because I was stuck on mastodon (or rather I only regained interest in fedi after learning that mastodon wasnt the only part of it).

gingermilk

I am a lot less active nowadays on social media. I shamefully admit that I still browse Twitter and Reddit quite often, but haven't participated for a long time. If Telegram is considered mainstream, it is also something that I use to keep touch with my Twitter day friends and other than that, the only places I still occasionally participate are small forums and fedi.

mechap

Lumeinshin
I used to use reddit in the past, when it was less corporate. Currently, I prefer to use niche websites like this one, IRC servers, HN/lobste.rs, image boards, and occasionally the fediverse for a more enjoyable long-term experience.
Nevertheless, my overall time spent on the wired has considerably decreased.

kurisu

I do have Instagram and Twitter, but I've started using them less and less over time. Not like I posted much anyway, but my consumption has moved from those platforms to forums and decentralized platforms.
Honestly I'm glad I'm stepping away from mainstream social media. Sure, I'll still keep my accounts on them for my IRL friends to send me stuff or to see how some of them are doing, but again, I barely even open them.
I hope this new "revolution" gets more people into decentralized platforms and more people off meta/X corp/whatever other company is trying to monetize absolutely everything to a ridiculous point

kurisu

kurisu Update: The only social media I'm still "active" on is twitter, because of a bunch of friends that still post there. Still, I don't use it all day and I don't interact in a large scale, I just joke around with my friends.

The rest? I still have instagram... only for DMs. Other than that, I've switched to forums. I'm happy with them! I love browsing around with my morning coffee, perhaps posting something quick or commenting somewhere (like I'm doing right now, when I should be working lol). I'm also active in a few discord servers, among friends and a few chats/threads about programming.

I feel the peace, I don't have the need of checking my phone all day, my phone is now a brick that's on my pocket and does these things:

email
calendar
whatsapp
podcasts
music
tracking runs (thinking of getting a second hand smartwatch exclusively for this)
notes
chatgpt/perplexity (unironically good solutions for when a question pops into your head and you don't wanna waste time scrolling thru SEO-filled websites)

...and that's it! You don't need more. If I'm gonna browse around some forums, social media or whatever, that can wait until I arrive home.

And now that summer is starting again, and I don't have the thing that made me waste hours at a time, I think I'm more motivated to start doing things on my own in the morning, and hang out with my friends in the afternoon, instead of just wasting my morning away while waiting for the afternoon.

I feel like I still have some ways of improving things, such as uninstalling twitter from my phone completely and browsing only at home, same with instagram. Maybe also getting a tab time limiting extension for my browser (can't find a good open source solution, so I might make my own, it sounds like an interesting project!)

light

The modern internet has been ruined. Everything has unfortunately been converged to big tech which has essentially a monopoly over the technology. I guess that's why I joined a this site, it's a lot more reserved and nice. Definitely feels a bit more personal and less soulless, owner seems like a nice guy too.

kroner

light

Oh absolutely, I wish the internet returned to the days where it was full of small communities and less centralized. I'm glad that places like this still exist

1996FordMondeo

Honestly I used to have most of the big soc media accounts.
But in last few years I pretty much purged most of it.
ATM I am using:

zucc but only as messenger to talk to people
reddit but I exclusively use it for like 3 subs, without an account
discord but also mostly to just talk to people in dms. Im only in 2 channels, 1 is my personal which I use to write something down if needed and official server for my linux distro for troubleshooting.

The rest I have gotten rid of and see no point in using.
Wouldnt mind ditching discord for more FOSS/privacy oriented alternative ngl
I do use few messeging apps but I dont count them as social media.
Same goes for 4chan.

light
Honestly I absolutely agree that the internet has gotten shit. I genuinely joined this site because it seemed to be similar to forums of the old internet.

kroner

Hey friends, long time no see. I never really got into social media when I was young and don't use any of the centralized ones like X, Facebook, etc... 😉

I guess I used to shitpost on Reddit but that place just grew increasingly shitty so I left it for good

The only real social media I use is probably Pleroma. I've tried making sort of a different version of Lemmy with some friends as well and we have a lot of functionality so far (and apub integration working) but my frontend dev friend has gone AWOL and it's really hard for me to make any progress with the project as I suck at frontend shit and web design 🥲

Fimm

I don't have use any social media because I have nothing to post and have found nothing to follow.

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