I like Twitter. I like Facebook. Both great platforms ruined by other people. I don't think social media is to blame for anything. It speeds things up, like guns or nuclear weapons but, generally speaking, less tragic. The advantage of Facebook is that it can be a long-form platform and the downside is that is revolves around people we know. There is an overlap between stuff you'd show or write about and stuff you'd show or write about if your parents aren't watching. Twitter is, and was great, because it has, by definition, a higher stranger quotient and the nature of microblogging meant every tweet could be 'to the point' or an efficient summary of the content it links. I also think social media, and Twitter in particular, engendered a kind of telepathy. Which sounds differently sane but I don't mean in any supernatural sense, I think that when large numbers of people are exposed to the same sources of information it is an uncontroversial statement that many will consciously have similar thoughts about it, I think Twitter may have taken this to the max with, unintended, organic perception without awareness compounded by tweets been the derivatives of shared sources of information. It was also diverse. I think it was as chaotic as a weather system and as reflexive as a stock market. That aside...
I have chosen to use Nostr, for now, because it represents a frontier, and the protocol and algorithm are open and elegant. I may give in and go full Twitter Blue or move to something similar to Bluesky. It's a shame they all make twitter seem like the pre-Dark Crystal crystal. I like Instagram too. My Instagram search page is dominated by eye-candy, boardgames and pens. Occasionally food. The algorithms are not rubbish.
back© John B Everitt