#socialmedia

You can't build Place People Go as a feature. It's a thing that happened over time, through a specific and unrepeatable sequence of events, most of which were not planned and some of which were just luck.

Describe what you want to see and watch your feed compose itself around you.

As an actor or author you don’t send your body or stunt double to attend interviews or sell autographs at comic con. Don’t create a virtual double that posts for you on social media when you can’t be arsed or feel overwhelmed. Take that overwhelming feeling and write about it, showing the world that your mental health is as fragile as the one of the people who follow you and read your work. Be human and only there when you can be there.

None of this means that social tech use as it is shouldn’t be interrogated, that it’s fine to allow such influence of our social selves from VC-funded companies maximizing engagement, that there aren’t ever circumstances where we have opportunities to get something better by pushing ourselves harder. But while pulling chalk milk off the market was clearly the right call, further stigmatizing the lowest-barrier-to-entry ways that people can feel less lonely… isn’t.

Bluesky’s early promise has eroded. The platform’s inconsistent and retaliatory moderation practices have drifted steadily rightward, protecting prominent racists and transphobes while suppressing those who speak out against them. Even mild criticism of the company’s failures to safeguard marginalized users is now met with shadowbans, takedowns, or silence. That’s not leadership. That’s an abdication of responsibility — and we deserve better.

Social media as we know it is dying, but we’re not condemned to its ruins. We are capable of building better — smaller, slower, more intentional, more accountable — spaces for digital interaction, spaces where the metrics that matter aren’t engagement and growth but understanding and connection, where algorithms serve the community rather than strip-mining it.

What is a social object? Learn about social objects from the Corporate Culture Consultants at Gapingvoid, a top Change Management Company!

Crucially, though, what defines a member of the posting middle class is their love of the game. They don’t post because they’re trying to sell a product, or solely to advance their career. They don’t post to advertise themselves or their company. They post because they must. There’s something fundamentally wrong with them and the worms in their brain makes them spend entire days posting away on the computer.

Did you know? You can self-host and/or mirror almost all of Bluesky's infrastructure today!

I don't know why Bluesky hasn't added the federation systems that would enable freedom of exit to its service. Perhaps there are excellent technical reasons to prioritize rolling out the other systems they've created so far. Frankly, it doesn't matter. So long as Bluesky can be a trap, I won't let myself be tempted. My rule – I don't join a service that I can't leave without switching costs – is my Ulysses Pact, and it's keeping me safe from danger I've sailed into too many times before.

On the internet, there is a clear social understanding of hashtags. If we create web rings for hashtags, we can use that to connect arbitrary web pages that add those hashtags to their content. This will allow us to create hashtag aggregation pages (like those on Twitter or Mastodon) that cross platform boundaries. The web ring will act as a community library that people can contribute to, filing their posts and articles and resources where they feel they fit.

I want things to be sociable, to be friendly, to be fun. I don't mean to try to avoid conflict entirely, which is neither possible nor truly desirable. But to envision a sociable web is to envision a place where interactions that make your world richer are easy to realize, and those that make your life worse easy to curtail. I want to be able to chat in public without the world overhearing, to meet new people and be able to block creeps, and to have conversations without being drowned in a sea of bad faith.

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

The company says it will restrict any image, video, or text post that “identifies a problem that impacts people and is caused by the action or inaction of others,” which is an incredibly wide swath of content. If you speak about these things on Meta, your reach will be limited and your account will be surfaced to fewer people.

Highlight:In our current digital landscape, where a corporate algorithm tells us what to read, watch, drink, eat, wear, smell like, and sound like, human curation of the web is an act of revolution. A simple list of hyperlinks published under a personal domain name is subversive. Curation is punk. Lets break away from the protective layer that is our For You Pages.

Here are my personal thoughts about how we could handle Trust & Safety features in Mastodon software.

Here are my personal thoughts about how we could handle Trust & Safety features in Mastodon software.

Anyway, I’d like to posit seven basic rules for any internet CEO looking to avoid the enshittification death cycle. Think of these as the rules that Steve Huffman maybe should have learned years ago, rather than whatever the fuck he’s doing now.

Anyway, I’d like to posit seven basic rules for any internet CEO looking to avoid the enshittification death cycle. Think of these as the rules that Steve Huffman maybe should have learned years ago, rather than whatever the fuck he’s doing now.

If delivery is going to take a non-trivial amount of time, you should focus on delivering to the people who are going to notice first.

When the only thing better than a flip phone is no phone at all.

DOOR LOCKS ENGAGED

My first tweet

So, no. The fact that you’ve replaced that picture of yourself mugging for the camera with a red square and an equal sign will not cause Justice Kennedy to bang his gavel or stomp his foot and say that he’s come to a final decision on the matter, and that it’s all because of your new profile picture. Changing your Facebook image will not have a direct impact on our legislation. But a widespread descriptive norm implying that it is socially acceptable to advocate for same-sex marriage and that most people in contemporary American society seem to be pro-marriage-equality? Now that just might.

So, no. The fact that you’ve replaced that picture of yourself mugging for the camera with a red square and an equal sign will not cause Justice Kennedy to bang his gavel or stomp his foot and say that he’s come to a final decision on the matter, and that it’s all because of your new profile picture. Changing your Facebook image will not have a direct impact on our legislation. But a widespread descriptive norm implying that it is socially acceptable to advocate for same-sex marriage and that most people in contemporary American society seem to be pro-marriage-equality? Now that just might.

Yahoo has the opportunity to make Flickr the photo-sharing site on the Web. And if it continues to innovate and update the service, Flickr could even become the next Flickr.

Yahoo has the opportunity to make Flickr the photo-sharing site on the Web. And if it continues to innovate and update the service, Flickr could even become the next Flickr.

Now, we've shown that Facebook promotes captive content on its network ahead of content on the web, prohibits users from bringing open content into their network, warns users not to visit web content, and places obstacles in front of visits to web sites even if they've embraced Facebook's technologies and registered in Facebook's centralized database of sites on the web.

A new Pew study finds news outlets using Twitter almost exclusively for one-way distribution — of their own content. And this is why I only follow live human beings on Twitter, for the most part. That, and funny bots.

"As readers, we consume. As authors, we create. Our society is changing from consumers to creators."

"But what is NPR doing differently that’s causing their listener numbers to swell? They basically have a three-pronged strategy that is helping them not only grow now, but also prepare for the future media landscape where traditional methods of consumption (TV, radio, print) could be greatly marginalized in favor of digital distribution."

"The Social Fresh Cruise is your opportunity to enjoy a Cruise vacation while also connecting with others who are leaders in the Social Media industry. It is a networking vacation; a Netcation if you will. Sharing the unique experience of a cruise is one of the best ways to strengthen relationships with your peers. Although you will be getting away, you will actually be making your network much stronger than if you would have stayed at home and worked. There is no focus on going to tons of speakers and sessions. Instead the focus is on relaxing and personally getting to know one another. Organic, quality discussions will happen. This is the goal."

"RT is an outmoded and misguided way to dish out your hi-5's. It seemed cool at one time, but now we know it's noisy and doesn't add value. Let's create a better Twitter. Whether you are a reformed re-tweeter *points to self*, have always hated it or are somewhere in-between, join us to keep RT's from clogging up the intertubes. There is no shame here. Only hugs."

"I just nearly burst my appendix laughing at Chris Applegate’s 20 signs you don’t want that social media project. I am thus inspired to write my own list of tips that, perhaps, one doesn’t really want that internal social media project after all."

"In this thread, the context starts with a pesky cat looped cartoon and ends with a discussion of non-attachment. What @mitten dubs the “kitteh paradox” after Brian defines the core issue – happiness is transitory if you are attached to a certain definition of happiness (cereal or sitting on the table)."

"MMO servers are currently limited by technological sizes. But what does a server where you know everybody (even a little) look like? What if we limited group sizes for social, not technological reasons? ... We wouldn’t have these servers that resemble sprawling cities; we’d build villages, and hamlets, and travelling camps. And as they grew too big, or small groups within the community grew, they’d break off and move to places where there’s more space for them. In one sense, that’s a more natural metaphor for our users, and it’s a scale that makes sense for them. ... I like this idea that everything, fundamentally, happens at a group level."

"As I have written before, publishers are increasingly leveraging their authors’ own personal platform to market their books. With more than 400,000 books published each year, it is harder to make an impact without a platform strategy."

"One way to stay pertinent is to scan, learn, absorb, reflect, and synthesize relevant information faster than the others in your space."

"There are some great things happening in social media in Metro Detroit. If there was one clear lesson from last night’s gathering of Twitterati from the Metro area, it’s that SF, Boston, Austin & Toronto are NOT the only social media hotspots."

"Boy, it's been quite a week so far."