I left Facebook very early on because it was too intrusive and didn't respect my privacy. Some people want to share every aspect of their lives on social media. I don't. I'm from the generation that uses codenames online wherever possible.
On reddit, I first limited what subs I frequented and then stopped posting entirely. It's been almost 1 year since my last post on Reddit. These were conscious choices that took some effort to follow through on.
I left political subs years ago due to endless flamewars and bad moderation. Bad moderation tended to enforce dominant views in political subs, making honest discussion with diverse people (formerly the main draw of message boards) virtually impossible. Either everyone agreed with you or you were the literal Antichrist. It was also hard to tell just who the moderators were, who they represented, or just how much they were doing to control discourse. Sorting by new revealed a lot, but not all, of what was going on. To make matters worse, as subs became echo chambers, users themselves began to expect to never have their views challenged. They'd self-sort into subs that matched their views and then circlejerk endlessly, often becoming more extreme as time passed. I didn't want to see that happen to me, so I swore off political subs entirely.
After the Canada-U.S. tradewar broke out early this year, I made a passing historical joke about the war of 1812 that was perfectly in keeping with the norms of the sub I was in. I was temporarily banned (24 hours or something like that) by the main reddit admins, who appeared to be using AI to blanket ban people saying anything remotely anti-Trump. I appealed and the response denied this was AI moderation, but showed no understanding of a very obvious joke that any American or Canadian would get. (i.e. They misconstrued a tongue-in-cheek comment about burning the white house again as a real threat of violence).
This was the final straw for me. The overall feeling I was left with was that, by posting and voting on Reddit, I was volunteering my time to support a pro-Trump American corporation that didn't respect me or my country. I still search/read reddit for specific things due to a lack of alternatives, but I can't wait for the platform to die and the users to move onto something better. I no longer contribute to Reddit, even by reporting spam.
Hacker News is the last remnant of social media I participate in. We'll see how much longer that lasts. I suspect I am subconsciously trying to quit social media entirely. Doing so really does free up your time for far better things.
On reddit, I first limited what subs I frequented and then stopped posting entirely. It's been almost 1 year since my last post on Reddit. These were conscious choices that took some effort to follow through on.
I left political subs years ago due to endless flamewars and bad moderation. Bad moderation tended to enforce dominant views in political subs, making honest discussion with diverse people (formerly the main draw of message boards) virtually impossible. Either everyone agreed with you or you were the literal Antichrist. It was also hard to tell just who the moderators were, who they represented, or just how much they were doing to control discourse. Sorting by new revealed a lot, but not all, of what was going on. To make matters worse, as subs became echo chambers, users themselves began to expect to never have their views challenged. They'd self-sort into subs that matched their views and then circlejerk endlessly, often becoming more extreme as time passed. I didn't want to see that happen to me, so I swore off political subs entirely.
After the Canada-U.S. tradewar broke out early this year, I made a passing historical joke about the war of 1812 that was perfectly in keeping with the norms of the sub I was in. I was temporarily banned (24 hours or something like that) by the main reddit admins, who appeared to be using AI to blanket ban people saying anything remotely anti-Trump. I appealed and the response denied this was AI moderation, but showed no understanding of a very obvious joke that any American or Canadian would get. (i.e. They misconstrued a tongue-in-cheek comment about burning the white house again as a real threat of violence).
This was the final straw for me. The overall feeling I was left with was that, by posting and voting on Reddit, I was volunteering my time to support a pro-Trump American corporation that didn't respect me or my country. I still search/read reddit for specific things due to a lack of alternatives, but I can't wait for the platform to die and the users to move onto something better. I no longer contribute to Reddit, even by reporting spam.
Hacker News is the last remnant of social media I participate in. We'll see how much longer that lasts. I suspect I am subconsciously trying to quit social media entirely. Doing so really does free up your time for far better things.