Anybody else missing a 'pure' social media?

Question

Literally all of the platforms have become poison for the mind:Twitter -> Pretentiousness, Virtue Signalling, Misinformation, Crypto-GriftersYouTube -> Clickbait, Vanity, Grifters, Content Bloat, Soft pornInstagram -> Soft porn, NarcissismTikTok -> Obnoxious Dancing, Confused Gen Z, Vanity, soft pornAll of them: Algorithm ProstitutionI can't bear spending a minute on any of them anymore (except for specific educational videos on YT, but screw the start page! (I'm not logged in)).Where is the space for normal people?

ColinWright · Accepted Answer

Mastodon seems to be surviving, especially if you pick one of the smaller instances with a specific focus. Federation means that you can still follow, and be followed by, people on other instances, but it does mean that you get light filtering of content, no algorithms, no ads, responsive moderators, and people who share (at least one of) your interests.
If you decide you're on the wrong instance and find one you think is better, you can migrate your account (with some limitations), so the decision of which instance to choose isn't critical.
Mastodon isn't perfect, and I'm sure people will weigh in here to tell you why it's dead and will never succeed, but I'm enjoying the instance I'm on.

rvz · Answer

> Where is the space for normal people?None (As in no social media.). The solution to a pure social media / network is having none. Or just go outside.It is not replacing one social network with another. It just prolongs the outrage and addiction regardless of the platform.Just delete your accounts on all of them. You will feel much better rather than participate in the $current_outrage of the day. They deleted their accounts and never looked back: [0] [1] [2] [3][0] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2023/may/18/in-the-year-si...[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63482162[2] https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/fjollaarifi/quit-social...[3] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-62589423

thaanpaa · Answer

You've got TikTok backwards. It transforms into whatever the user is. If you use it for a while and keep following creators you like, it will eventually learn what kind of content to show you. On the other hand, if you quickly scroll past the obnoxious dancing, it will fairly quickly disappear from your feed.
At this point, my TikTok is essentially electrical engineering. But it kind of keeps shifting to wherever my interests are at any given time.
Now, I wouldn't necessarily place too much trust in TikTok, and I do understand it has a major echo chamber problem, but out of all the social media, it is actually one that, with some effort, can be a fairly pleasant place to waste time.

DamonHD · Answer

In theory the Fediverse, including Mastodon, sidesteps at least the algo and ads portion of the motivation for the bad behaviour elsewhere, and it does seem like a reasonable place.

iabdelgawaad · Answer

Reddit is a place which normal people can enjoy in peace.!