Quote:
Originally Posted by KTrain
I watched it and, while it's all stuff I had basic knowledge of, it still frightened me to see it presented in one film.
This year I've been trying to actively push myself away from social media. I've removed most of the apps from my phone (Instagram is my only vice there) and I've blocked access to the sites at a router level during the day so I'm not distracted during work. It's definitely helped to stop the "doom scrolling" you do on Twitter and Facebook.
My wife, kids and I need to have watch it together now so we can make some decisions about their consumption of social media and how it might be affecting them.
That said, CP is another form of social media that you can tell a few people are addicted to and could use a break from.
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I'm about halfway through the documentary, and I was thinking about places like CP and other forums, and I don't really think this bit is true, at least not in the way described in the film. With Facbook and Twitter, you get to select who you talk to, or see updates from, and the algorithms will also do that. There is active prompting, and tracking, and analyzing going on. So you are actively filtering what you see, and selecting only the things you like, at the same time the algorithms are doing it for you, but also feeding you stuff that you haven't selected, typically not to your benefit.
Around here, we are forced to interact with the people who are here. They are not necessarily our friends, or even people we would typically spend time with. You can't really unfriend those that say, love Trump, like you would on Facebook. Yes, you can ignore, but I don't think it is used much.
Perhaps the most dangerous feature here is the "thanks button", and if that is the worst of it, well, it's pretty innocuous. I think you need to separate interacting with people online form being force fed other people's thoughts and opinions, along with products and advertisements. Having meaningful interactions online isn't a bad thing, it's just a different way to discuss topics. Social media is an entirely different thing.