Why I don't use social media

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+title = "Why I don't use social media"
+date = 2021-12-12T13:41:21Z
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+
+Many friends sometimes find it strange that I do not use any social media,
+besides instant messaging, if that counts. Very often I find that I keep
+answering the same questions over and over again, so I've decided to write up my
+thoughts on social media, and the reasons that I don't use such platforms.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+Even though I don't have or use any social media platforms, I used to be
+registered and was a somewhat active user of Facebook and VK[^1]. Active in the
+sense that I would login from time to time, and in the case of Facebook, I used
+to use it as a sort of backup for my photos, so I would post them there. I never
+found it particularly interesting to constantly post whatever I was doing. For
+me, those platforms were useful only in the sense that they helped me keep in
+touch with friends, family and other acquaintances. 
+
+I also used them to read up on some content in such platforms like news or
+memes. Eventually, I realized that most of the content in such platforms was
+worse than subpar and it was just distracting me from whatever I should be doing
+at the moment. Even if I wasn't doing anything at the moment, I realized that I
+wouldn't lose anything of value if I lost access to said content. So I stopped
+using social media for that, and I would get my content from other sources,
+which didn't distract as much as social media and provided much better quality.
+
+After some time, I found that I had less and less use for said platforms. I
+unregistered[^2] from Facebook right away, because it was the crappiest of the
+platforms, but I kept using VK, because there were still some people that I had
+to keep in touch with and was still tolerable, until it was not.
+
+The only use that I had for them was instant messaging. However, most of the
+people I actually care about and with whom I constantly keep in touch are using
+Telegram[^3]. So I stopped using social media altogether.
+
+Of course, these reasons are mostly superficial. There are other aspects of
+social media that when put together made me actually consciously drop their use.
+Whereas before I considered social media a necessary evil that was kind of
+useless in its own, but necessary because of networking effects and the way our
+society works nowadays, now I consider social media not only useless, but
+actually malign.
+
+## My problems with social media
+
+### Privacy, or lack thereof
+
+This is probably the biggest problem, yet many people either don't realize
+social media has a privacy problem or they don't think it is a problem. For
+years, people have been warned about the problem that social media platforms
+pose for our privacy, yet only recently[^4] have people begun to realize that
+all those warnings weren't paranoia but well founded concerns[^5].
+
+On the other hand, there seems to have been a shift in the value of privacy for
+many people. It seems as if big corporations and governments have successfully
+convinced people that privacy shouldn't hold any value for them since, after
+all, "you shouldn't worry if you have nothing to hide"™. Yet if you talk with
+most people, even if they say that they don't care, they won't give away private
+information to just anybody, and there's certain that they won't give away even
+to their most trusted friends or their spouses. That is, however, a topic for
+another post.
+
+In the end, the business models of most of these platforms relies on the
+constant violation of your privacy. That's another reason why they will try and
+convince you, that this violation of one of your essential rights is beneficial
+to you.
+
+### Control and Manipulation
+
+This is an issue that goes very much in hand with the privacy issue. Social
+media platforms are run and governed by centralized organizations, i.e
+corporations, or governments in some cases. Not only can these organizations
+decide what gets censored and what is allowed, but they also have the ability to
+manipulate in which way the information is presented.
+
+In the case of Facebook and YouTube, for example, there's an algorithm that
+decides what gets more visibility and what gets delegated to obscurity. Nobody
+outside of Facebook or Google actually knows how this algorithm operates, yet it
+is what decides what the people in said platforms get to see. And these
+algorithms have been shown to have greater biases towards certain kinds of
+content or information.
+
+There's also the case of filtering content for deeming it to be
+"disinformation". It might seem like a noble thing to do, but you cannot trust
+these big entities to act on your best interests, and more often than not, the
+information that they censor or label as "fake" or "bad" is information that
+just goes against their favored narrative. It is the right and duty of each
+person to use their mental faculties to decide for themselves what constitutes
+factual or desirable information, not some central authority. This is no better
+than the government censorship to which many countries are still subject
+nowadays and which, ironically, these corporations often decry.
+
+### Bad habits
+
+This one is probably more subjective, but it has been my observation that social
+media tends to have more of a negative effect on people, rather than a positive
+one.
+
+The reason most people keep using social media, and this is especially true of
+women, is that they can satisfy, albeit in an artificial and meaningless way,
+some of their emotional needs. It can be just plain vanity or ego, seeing people
+react, especially positively, to your posts sure boosts your ego. It's not a
+coincidence that most mainstream social media don't have a dislike or equivalent
+button. 
+
+![Oh look at me! I am so enjoying this beach, and totally not posing just to
+seem interesting, and there are totally not other 3 girls doing the same thing
+next to me](insta-posers.jpg)
+<figcaption>
+
+An example of social-media-induced degenerate behavior in the wild.
+[Source](https://old.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/92tw8e/i_was_stood_taking_a_photo_of_my_girlfriend_in/).
+</figcaption>
+
+Now there are a lot of people that seem to be living their lives through a proxy
+called social media. Or rather, it would seem as if their life has become social
+media. They can't just enjoy a night out at a restaurant with friends, they must
+photograph every dish and every little detail of their table so that they can
+prove to other people on the internet that they have an "interesting" life. Then
+they spend their time buried in their phones waiting for people to react to
+whatever they posted.
+
+There's also the gossip aspect of social media. Now it is not enough to go about
+gossiping in real life. People attached to social media seem to have an
+unhealthy need to "know what's going on". It's as if not knowing what Alice or
+Bob did means the end of the world.
+
+Of course, there is also the blind following of "influencers". This is not a
+problem exclusive of social media, but it certainly has been exacerbated by it.
+The voice or opinion of certain people or group of people is made more important
+not by what they have to say or the actual merit of their actions or words, but
+by how big of a following they have.
+
+### It's just useless
+
+If somehow all forms of electronic correspondence, such as email and instant
+messaging were to suddenly disappear, a lot of people would suddenly find
+themselves in a problematic situation. Nothing that couldn't be managed, but it
+would certainly be troublesome. If, on the other hand, the same were to happen
+to all social media, e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.; nothing of value
+would be lost.
+
+There are of course some arguments that could be made in favor of social media,
+but I believe that all of these supposed benefits can be had without social
+media:
+
+* **It helps me keep in touch**: we've already had email and instant messaging
+  for quite a while, actually before social media, not to mention both mobile
+  and landline phones. All of those are much better alternatives in many
+  different ways.
+* **How would I keep people up to date on some information**: if you actually have
+  something worth sharing, the best option is to keep a blog. If you are not
+  technically savvy there are always free blogging options that don't require any
+  special knowledge to use. Of course, if you have the skills, or the time to
+  learn the skills, the best option would be to host your own website[^6].
+* **How do I keep up to date with what people have to say**: Analogous to the
+  previous point, if somebody has something worth reading or watching, they
+  should post it to their own blog or website. Furthermore, there's a great
+  technology that has been forgotten by most people that works in a fashion
+  similar to social media feeds, RSS[^7], except you don't actually need an
+  account and you control the information that you get.
+* **I want my friends to know what I'm doing**: touch some grass, 'nuff said.
+  But seriously, just get together with your friends and, tell them what's been
+  going on with your life. Or if you can't, give them a call or text them.
+* **I run a business and to promote it**: Of all the pros of social media that I
+  have heard or could come up with, this is the only one that has some merit. In
+  this case I would suggest promoting your business locally first, and keeping a
+  website for your business through which people can follow any new information
+  about new products/services or special promotions. In the end, word of mouth
+  is the best tool businesses have to promote themselves.
+
+## In conclusion
+
+Most of what I wrote here have been my opinions and observations that have led
+me to decide to don't use social media at all. I never had any real use for it
+and kept it mostly as something that was expected of me for a while. In the end
+I just decided that there's no reason I should actually have a social media
+account.
+
+With all of the above said, I know most people will continue to use social media
+just because it's what all their friends are using and it provides a
+superficially pleasant service. These are just my reasons why I refuse to use
+said services. If this text convinced you to stop using social media, great; if
+not, fair enough, but just keep in mind that you can't expect everybody to use
+those platforms.
+
+[^1]: If you don't count instant messengers as social media.
+
+[^2]: Boy do they want your data really bad. Deleting my Facebook account has
+  been one of the worst and most tedious experiences I've ever had in my life.
+
+[^3]: I don't consider Telegram to be the best option for IM communication out
+  there, it's just he lesser evil option that I could choose for the time being,
+  certainly much better than WhatsApp, Viber or VK. Almost nobody that I know
+  uses Signal, and it's centralized anyway; Matrix seems like a nice option, but
+  their problems with metadata leakage put me off; XMPP seems like the best
+  option for decentralized, E2EE, truly private IM, but I'm not sure if my
+  "normie" friends would be willing to switch. This footnote is already long
+  enough, but I will definitely switch to a decentralized, E2EE IM in the
+  future, and might write about it here.
+
+[^4]: As usual, Stallman was right. To paraphrase him: “Facebook doesn't have
+  users, it has "useds"”. <https://www.stallman.org/facebook.html>
+
+[^5]: See the somewhat recent scandal surrounding Facebook and Cambridge
+  Analytica for some examples.
+  <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/17/facebook-cambridge-analytica-kogan-data-algorithm>
+
+[^6]: I might write an article on some the ways you can easily set up your own
+  website and/or server. In the meantime, you can checkout this great resource:
+  <https://landchad.net/>
+
+[^7]: Technically Atom is the superior format, but most people (myself included)
+  refer to both of them as RSS, and basically all modern RSS readers support
+  both equally. Maybe I'll write about (I keep saying that too much) RSS/Atom in
+  the future.
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