I don’t call it a social media addiction. I have a twitter and I go on there occasionally, and I go off of there, and that’s that.
I joined Facebook in 2007 and I don’t recall what year it happened, but they introduced a feature called Newsfeed, it was a feed of all your friend’s posts in chronological order. That was really cool.
Then they introduced the “like” button, and then they started doing a buncha weird shit where what they put in front of you is based on what you give them to keep you on there longer. Then they became publicly traded. Facebook makes their money by leveraging their user data and selling and targeting advertising. I never heard the phrase Dark Patterns until this week, and I’m not sure what the sociological or marketing term is for what Facebook does, but it’s bad too.
Congress did pretty good on the topic of antitrust, I didn’t give much thought to the antitrust issues, until this week but considering how the last time Mark Zuckerberg appeared before congress went down and how pathetic it was, either members of Congress learned a few things, or they just understand business law issues more than technology ones, either way, they did good.
I think from when I joined the thing up until they did away with the chronological feed, the time spent on there wasn’t a waste, but from then until the present, which is a lot of years, the thing has been doing more harm than good to me. I don’t think anybody goes to their grave wishing they spent more time watching TV, same goes for Facebook. I’m probably never going to delete the thing entirely, but I gotta cut down. When an alcoholic walks into a bar and orders a drink, you don’t blame the bartender, but, unlike Facebook, they do not allow children in bars. A generation has grown up thinking that thing is the internet. That sucks.
I know I’ve said it before, I’m gonna do most of my writing and sharing of stuff here from now on, I think for real this time.
