Last line of the article: “Just like choosing not to ride on airplanes isn’t really an option, for many, using social media isn’t much of a choice either.”
Holy crap. We have reached that point. As someone with no social media, it just amazes me how people have let these apps become ingrained in their lives. Sad in my opinion.
someone with no social media
Doesn’t Lemmy qualify? Well, it’s definitely not paid.
Depends. Everyone claims they are on social media platforms to stay in touch with family and friends. I know no one on here and am fine with the anonymity. So it’s up to you if you count this.
I personally never counted Reddit and am not counting Lemmy as a social media. Both Reddit and Lemmy are just a really huge forum which contains many subforums.
Last line of the article: “Just like choosing not to ride on airplanes isn’t really an option, for many, using social media isn’t much of a choice either.”
That, and not only is not riding on an airplans an option for a lot of people, its their reality for a lot of people and out of reach financially. Way to be completely out of touch, Gizmodo. Couldn’t have used a worse example lol.
Depending on where you are and where you’re going, an airplane ride isn’t that expensive. Just a matter of why you need to do so, and if you’re willing to put up with budget airline issues. Oh and I guess the carbon footprint.
Here in Ireland, it’s often faster to go to the hospital emergency department by hopping on a flight to Belgium or Germany than to drive to a Dublin hospital. Before Covid, it used to be cheaper as well.
Dunno your financial situation, but a lot of people are having a hell of a time affording groceries, gas, rent, and utility bills, let alone a plane trip or even a vacation right now. And as for the carbon footprint, typically flying is more carbon friendly than driving somewhere at scale (a plane with ~100 people as opposed to ~50-100 cars on the road).
I think you’re misreading it. In the same way as there are people that need to ride on planes (for example for their job, or to move to where they have a job, etc), there are people that need to use social media.
For example, if you own an online store you really need to have a social media presence. Same if you are an artist, and live off of commissions. I’m sure there are plenty more examples.
Yeah that’s one of the stupidest comparisons that they could make. Transportation is a necessity, sharing what you’re doing to the entire world isn’t a necessity. I’m 37 and grew up with MySpace and I was part of Facebook back when it was still The Facebook and was only open to 4 years universities (I got in about 2 years after I was created).
I wouldn’t give two shits if every social media company was destroyed tomorrow, including Lemmy and Reddit. They’re just time killers to me.
For example if I meet a woman I like, it’s infinitely more socially acceptable to ask for her instagram than it is for her number after meeting.
Is this really a thing now? Any idea why it’s considered more acceptable? It’s definitely not a thing in my social circles and it got me curious.
Any idea why it’s considered more acceptable?
Because it’s far less susceptible to abuse. The block button will deal with anyone being a creep or asshole.
If someone wanted to be abusive, they could come by the address you gave them to send letters or bombard your phone with abuse via the number you gave them for texting.
Even for phones that can block calls and texts coming from a given number, withheld numbers are a thing and they could still sign you up to all sorts of SMS services.
See, to me, all of those people are willing to trade their privacy for convenience. And the fact that others are getting rich off of sifting through and collecting all of this data also is wrong in my opinion. To each his/her/their own, but I still think it’s sad how dependent people have become on social media.
See, to me, all of those people are willing to trade their privacy for convenience
They are, in exchange for a free service.
And the fact that others are getting rich off of sifting through and collecting all of this data also is wrong in my opinion.
So how should social media companies make money?
To each his/her/their own, but I still think it’s sad how dependent people have become on social media.
Social media is an undisputed upgrade over what came before. Back in the day if you wanted to stay in contact with someone, the only methods of doing so opened floodgates for abusive pricks to make your life a living hell. If you wanted to have group discussions about a certain topic, your only real option was in person.
To your point, there is nothing wrong with making a social media account to serve a specific purpose. Just having the account doesn’t mean you have to install the app and post everything about yourself. If you have one for family, set it all private and only share things you would post publicly. Same for dating, work, etc. It doesn’t have to be an all or nothing thing. I did give up all the major social media, but there was a time I needed to make a Facebook account to coordinate with student clubs that I was an advisor for. Once I no longer did the advising, I deleted the account. Yeah, they have the data I shared. Dates and times of student meetings and recommendations on how students organize events. Nothing to clutch pearls about.
I never scroll my facebook wall, but in my country people use fb messenger instead of whatsapp to communicate with each other, so I’m stuck with it as a communication tool. Also, most of birthday/event invites come with a facebook event, so I would also miss those.
It’s just so integrated in to a lot of people’s lives, that it would be hard to remove individually.
I am going to say this, and it’s because this is such a cliche’ response to me at this point, but I call bullshit. People making these excuses are laughable to me now with this. You aren’t talking about scaling Mt. Everest levels of effort here. Everyone you are communicating with has a phone number, and you could take the time to call them if you wanted to communicate with them, use text messaging, or email. As for the birthdays and events, go to the dollar store, or an equivalent and buy a calendar. They sell them with cute pics, or funny quotes, or whatever. Then mark the dates down. It’s fucking comical to me now how people act about getting rid of facebook. If facebook was waking up every morning and driving you to work, then yeah, it might be hard, but come on people… I feel like I am watching a b movie where everyone has been put in a trance and is just walking around mindlessly all saying the same mantra. “It’s too hard. Can’t break free.” And none of this has even touched on privacy, of which there is none on facebook. People spouting this are just willing to give up any shred of privacy for some minor convenience and it’s frustrating to watch.
I love the idea of paid social media.
Theres so few people who’d pay for it that all the social media companies would, hopefully, collapse and cure us of one of the worst technoplagues of the 21st century.
I’d pay some reasonable subscription, say $1 a month to the maintainer of lemm.ee for the promise to keep my data safe. To Zuck and Elon absolutely not.
Theres so few people who’d pay for it that all the social media companies would, hopefully, collapse and cure us of one of the worst technoplagues of the 21st century.
I would not be that sure. As long as they will offer the choice between paying with cash or with data, social media companies will survive.
Imagine paying a company, who sells your data, to see memes
If you read the article, you’ll note that paid subscriptions are for ad-free services, which means your data is worthless, which means it won’t be sold.
The entire point of these models is to comply with EU rules on data harvesting.
Lol, it will still be sold. They are still tracking your attention span and clicks. I can already think of two or three correlation tests to sell to advertisers based on that information alone.
Well, Fediverse it is. When thousand people pay for thousand servers, it’s better for everyone - no ads and no fees and the ones hosting the content don’t need the money to survive. Some people will voluntarily donate to you, most will not, but in the end everyone is happy.
It works for Wikipedia, which is probably the single most important site on the Internet.
It also works for podcasts, well enough to produce an enormous amount of high-quality content, both from independent productions and networks.
I just wish that Wikipedia didn’t donate the money that people donated to it to other charities.
They recently donated a million dollars of their donations to other charitable causes and in theory I’m fine with that but in practice I feel like sort of tricked or betrayed and I just don’t like it.
I refuse to ever donate to them again until they swear to never ever do that again.
If it makes you feel any better about not donating, Wikipedia makes money hand-over-fist and absolutely does not need your donation. Their financials are public; they’ve been in the black for YEARS. They only beg for money because it works. It’s gross and exploitative.
Wikipedia also has to regularly beg for donations and is probably something of an outlier.
Pretty much every podcast I’ve ever heard has sponsors and built-in ads, or at least shout-outs.
I do think Patreon-style funding is a really good model, but ultimately, most people will not pay for a thing if they can get it for free and tell themselves that other people will pay for it instead. Exceptions to that exist, but they’re rare.
Wikipedia get big donations from big cooporations and wealthy people unlike most other donation based app
*looks around at Lemmy*
I love y’all.
