2k20 worst social media platform (facebook, twitter, instagram)

Twitter is the most actively harmful

Facebook is the most inept at doing anything that is any use to anyone in 2020

Instagram is the most wholesome but has pretty annoying ads. Lately I've been getting ads for all these magnificently shit urban fantasy novels written by weird dads with like 8 likes tho, which is fine

the amount of clicks it takes to view the posts you've liked in Insta does strike me as sinister though, like “oh that feature wasn't there for *you* but sure ok“

The problem I had with twitter wasn't that I couldn't filter out all the gross/negative/stupid shit, it's that all the funny good people I liked were driving themselves and each other insane about the negative shit, unintentionally aggregating it

I do appreciate that Reddit has usually supplanted annoying Youtube videos in being the first Google result for queries about tricky bits of video games, often as part of some extremely comprehensive FAQ stickied by eager to help youths

RIP gamefaqs tho

if you carefully curate what you follow on insta it can be a beautiful thing, just follow music / art / photography stuff and keep all the other bullshit on the other platforms. i mostly just oogle it though, hardly ever post

I really only follow like 60 odd accounts on insta, mostly family & friends. But because I follow Tokyu Hands’s cat cafe (nekobukuro_official), I keep getting recommendations like <cat account with Japanese name> has just joined. I like it for stories and posting interesting art and things I see, but I accept that’s not most people’s experience, especially those who use it more.

I've been doing a social media campaign for a fostering organisation to get more people into fostering. Of course, for security reasons we couldn't use real images of foster families, but trying to get suitable stock images was nigh impossible. All these photos of squeaky-clean kids in backwards baseball caps in picture-postcard familial settings were unrealistic and would have idealised the fostering experience. It ended up being a serious headache for us and our client.

― doorstep jetski (dog latin), Monday, January 20, 2020 5:33 AM

I've mentioned this before elsewhere, but some acquaintances were fostering a brother and a sister. They knew the rules, but couldn't keep from posting events on Instagram anyway. They did a remarkable job of keeping the children out of the photographs, but everything was set up like:

https://i.imgur.com/MnahaLs.png

Except replace "friends" with "family" and "Nathan Fielder" with "their dog".

The girl had a birthday party and the picture was taken from behind a group of adults standing behind the children who were between the adults and the birthday cake. You could kinda see the glow of the flames behind the shadows.

Why go through all this? I dunno. Gotta get them likes somehow.

The problem I had with twitter wasn't that I couldn't filter out all the gross/negative/stupid shit, it's that all the funny good people I liked were driving themselves and each other insane about the negative shit, unintentionally aggregating it

yea this is very true, case in point the Kent State gun girl who basically built a career out of getting yelled at on Twitter

Reddit has its own problems but it's at least pretty easy to curate your experience on. If nothing else it's pretty good for niche/conceptual humor, stuff like r/wheredidthesodago, r/restofthefuckingowl, r/bonehurtingjuice, etc. Also the NBA sub is surprisingly great, as it seems to be populated by a bunch of people with a lot of time on their hands

Facebook is awful and useless. Twitter is great. I don’t understand the appeal of Instagram at all.

honestly, none; there is this widespread perception that people on social media aren't real people, and that the hostility there also isn't real, which (bots/trolls aside, but there are so many false positives) is obviously false. which is why, I think, people blame "social media" as uniquely toxic, because the alternative would be really grappling with the idea that people are just like this and maybe just hid it better

ello is relatively harmless

haven't read all of this thread yet but imo: twitter >>>>> instagram > facebook

Worst thing about Facebook is that it attracts a never-ending shitstream of fuckwitted bellends who think their algorithmically-target feed is just the way things are, and vote for Trump/Brexit/Hitler as a result.

Worst thing about Twitter is obnoxiously political Americans who Punctuate. Their. Tweets. For Emphasis. Like. This. It's like being poked in the chest while someone's yelling at you for no reason. e.g. "Listen. Up. Y'all. Gotta. Do. Better." or whatever. Fuck all that.

Myspace seems so innocent in retrospect, also it was occasionally useful.

there is much opportunity for continually changing your experience on twitter if you are free about following/unfollowing

honestly, none; there is this widespread perception that people on social media aren't real people, and that the hostility there also isn't real, which (bots/trolls aside, but there are so many false positives) is obviously false. which is why, I think, people blame "social media" as uniquely toxic, because the alternative would be really grappling with the idea that people are just like this and maybe just hid it better

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine)

i mean it's _real_, anybody who works in healthcare knows how nasty people can be in person (and i personally suspect that they don't, particularly, hide it better offline), but social media does have this uniquely distancing effect of shielding people from the consequences of their actions. it feels good to be an asshole to someone on the internet in a way that it usually doesn't in person.

Somehow the relentless negativity on Twitter is more palatable and less exhausting to me than the relentless positivity on Instagram

Social media encourages people to be assholes for attention because of the distancing - in real life the Ohio State gun girl gets isolated and eventually ignored, with social media she gets an InfoWars contract.

Social media encourages people to be assholes for attention because of the distancing - in real life the Ohio State gun girl gets isolated and eventually ignored, with social media she gets an InfoWars contract.

― Greta Van Show Feets BB (milo z), Monday, January 20, 2020 11:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

maybe this is a growing up in the south vs. not growing up in the south thing but in real life the ohio state gun girl absolutely does not get isolated or ignored

I grew up in Texas - she definitely does. You can be a reactionary evangelical psycho all you want but politeness is still expected (I mean, especially from a young woman...).

Twitter (and way before that Usenet/forum flame wars, etc.) encourages you to own people for the little dopamine rush of a bunch of likes/community status/etc.. The person yelling in the bar is cold shouldered by everyone, the person who is relentlessly negative about others finds themself wondering why they have no friends.

that... really isn't how things work in the real world; bullies tend to be quite popular, it's generally the people they're relentlessly negative toward who wonder why they have no friends

Sociopaths generally can find an endless supply of people who haven’t been inoculated against sociopaths yet.

Sociopaths are not the same thing as what happens on Twitter - I've yet to see people flock to the person screaming insults at someone in public.

No one can punch you in the face on Twitter.

if somebody I've been following tweets or retweets things that really irritate me, I unfollow them. I can decide if I want to see their account again later, but there is always new interesting stuff to see

I'm the same way I'm not doing 'dry January', but I am being more conscious of the amount of alcohol I put into my body on a weekend, I'm trying to do the same with social media.

December's election and Brexit-fuelled mania pretty much broke me and I ended up having a mini breakdown on results day. I'd spent weeks and months debating the ins and outs of it online, and it had made me cross-eyed and downcast and I just couldn't think about it any more.

So while I'm still on Facebook, it's nice to consciously scroll past 'interesting-looking' news stories which I would have previously leapt on and reposted and ended up in an upsetting 50 post bunfight with that otherwise nice ex boyfriend of someone I knew back home over.

I don't give a shit about the Royals. I don't give a shit about Boris Johnson. I don't give a shit about Europe. It's becoming a rather soothing mantra.

Of course it's hard not to feel like I'm burying my head in the sand, or just lying down in front of the bulldozers and letting them run all over me.

But ignorance is bliss, as they say, and right now I can't deal with the stress. For my own sanity, I'm detoxing from political social media, and it feels good.

*first word is 'in', not 'I'm'. typing on the phone

facebook (and its subsidiary instagram) is worst for society.
twitter is worst for my mental health (since i quit facebook and find instagram to be pleasant).

I never messed with Facebook - from the get-go I sensed something sinister about it, all the cult-like insistence that you HAD to get on it

FB definitely has an extra layer of creepiness to it

I have a woman on there who is the same age as me, we were neighbors and hung out a lot as kids and were still pretty friendly to each other until the Trump thing happened and she turned into a turbo-chud, like all in on Pizzagate/QAnon shit. and since shes a stay at home mom she posts this shit all day long, which is easy because FB makes it so easy to amplify insane conspiracy theories (while of course at the same time complaining that FB censors all her insane conspiracy theories)

anyway along the way she added hundreds and hundreds of QAnon "friends". the father of her child left and now she posts about that, which inevitably is followed by several 70 year old guys with profile pictures of them standing in front of a TV with Trump on it saying "what state do you live in. I love kids". this lady has become absolutely awful of course but I still get nauseous seeing it

I realize this shit happens on other social media sites but something about Facebook makes it seem a lot more dangerous - she's got a ton of personal info on there, pictures of her family, her house, everything

that... really isn't how things work in the real world; bullies tend to be quite popular, it's generally the people they're relentlessly negative toward who wonder why they have no friends

― like, I’m eating an elephant head (katherine)

idk. that's not my experience? one does of course see many prominent bullies and abusers in positions of power... is that "popularity"? i wouldn't like to be "popular" in the way those people are "popular" (though mind you i would not mind at all wielding the power such people do).

all i can tell you is myself, my own experience being a rude and arrogant bully on usenet in the '90s, the awful things i said that i wouldn't have dared to tell anybody to their face, and while i hope that i have changed at least a little since then, i don't really see evidence the larger internet has gotten any better.

My experience is that people who stick close to bullies are cowards and enablers who live in fear of eventually being targeted themselves. People who participate in that toxic social dynamic, both bullies and enablers, are not well or happy people.

I think FB is the worst of the three on a selfish level, because I find it such a hopeless and depressing "place" to be with its shitty blue color scheme, ugly ass ads, and constant reminders that people you love are tacky and or stupid.

that last line makes you sound like a bit of a bully

Bullying only a relevant concept if he (gonna assume beard papa is a he) starts shouting the odds and trying to make the lamers feel bad. Quiet disdain is arguably the opposite of bullying <strokes chin ruminatively>

i mean i see it, yeah

but bullying just so often used to mean whatever it needs to

had a good thread once iirc we bullied everyone in it

That thread's name? ilxor.com

Twitter is the terriblest and people who like it are part of the problem

― juntos pedemos (Euler), Sunday, 19 January 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Can you expand on this? For the lolz

Twitter is pretty good, but like people are saying it needs to be carefully curated.

I think a lot of people I follow are either on here or posters that I often think would've ended up here, so in that sense there is a bit of hatred towards it.

I spent five mins on Mastodon and if twitter goes it looks like a lot of people will move there.

Never been on FB but it has been pretty terrible if you believe it has had an effect on the last batch of elections. From the US to Brazil to India to the UK. I don't buy it whole, lots of different factors at play.

I think a lot of people I follow are either on here or posters that I often think would've ended up here, so in that sense there is a bit of hatred towards it.

What do you mean?

xyzzzzzzzzzz if you are just going to laugh at me, why should I engage with you?

and maybe that is why I hate twitter

there are plenty of coherent expansions on why twitter sucks itt

People don't laugh at other people on ilx? Doesn't this place get argumentative and difficult? What is so much better about this place that makes you post on it but not on twitter?

What do you mean?

― Frozen Mug (Tom D.), Saturday, 25 January 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Lots of people I have found through twitter and are not ilx ppl could've ended up on ilx if twitter didn't exist.

Loving the new Gucci Mickey Mouse collection, featuring a vintage looking Disney Mickey. Jeans, sweatshirts, tee shirts, sweaters, jackets, and accessories. The Mickey craze is on!!!

— Danielle Steel (@daniellesteel) January 23, 2020

Change your life – one happy thought at a time!

— The Secret (@thesecret) January 25, 2020

lol

Lots of people I have found through twitter and are not ilx ppl could've ended up on ilx if twitter didn't exist.

Where does hatred come into the equation?

Envy iirc.

We hate the fact that all these wonderful people who could be on ILX are on Twitter?

https://www.shortlist.com/media/images/2019/05/923fb68fea6fa36cb4c58afbe92548c8-1556687180-msXP-column-width-inline.jpg

We can’t bring anything to us unless we are grateful for what we already have.

— The Secret (@thesecret) January 25, 2020

Where does hatred come into the equation?

― Duncan Disorderly (Tom D.), Saturday, 25 January 2020 bookmarkflaglink

Hatred is a bit strong. More like mixed feelings as less people post here these days..although there is something to be said for quieter mode ilx