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Here I am on a social media platform that emulates MySpace circa 2006. It's not as polished as Facebook. It's not as "sticky" as Instagram. It's not gathering every piece of data about you and not only selling that data to advertisers but allowing it to be sold on a grey market by nefarious characters that use it in political campaigns.
It's just... this.
I miss this. You should miss this too. I was one of the first MySpace users in the world. User 63,063 out of over 400,000,000. I am not a social media prude. But what this has turned into has been a bastardization of what social media was supposed to do. Connect people. Bring the world closer together. Facebook Inc has done the complete opposite.
Facebook slowly and pervasively started the slow boil of it's users... from a News Feed that showed what your friends had to say recently to the most incendiary things imaginable that would stoke you to comment, react, and stay on the platform as long as possible. Little annoyances like your friends asking you to play Farmville turned into the platform using AI to determine by your posts what your political affiliation was, how many kids you have, what kind of car you drive and more to sell to advertisers. And even if you were OFF the site... they continue tracking your travels through the web to get a better sense of your likes, hates and life.
There was once a time when a better option would arise. Friendster couldn't keep their servers up... enter MySpace. MySpace never innovated... enter Facebook. But Facebook ended that streak. If any competitor became remotely worthy, they'd just buy them up. And the government wouldn't step in to stop it. Instagram? Facebook didn't make it. It bought it. What's App? Same thing.
What Facebook has done to the political discourse in America is gross. What Facebook has done to spread mis- and dis-information is grotesque. And purposeful. What Instagram has done to the psyche of teens and young adults is horrific. Body image issues. The feeling of a lack of worth. Constantly pushing unhealthy and unrealistic images in front of impressionable eyes. Then they have the BALLS to float a kids version of Instagram, preparing to groom an even younger generation of children for the stresses and unnatural expectations of the platform.
When they were called out for planning a kids version of IG... they said they were going to "pause" the project. Pause. An inevitable temporary measure. Because they never stop themselves.
For my sake, and for my kids' sake... I hope the sites never come back, and that the "next man up" learns from their mistakes and misgivings and creates a better project that is not a detriment to its user base and society as a whole.
SpaceHey. You're cool. Keep it up.
Comments
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Maddy
Well-written post, resonated with me a lot.
droneriot
Well said!