I want to get off Mr. Bones' Wild Ride
We've given Meta too much and asked for too little.
In June of ‘25 I shut off most of my social media accounts: Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I kept reddit under the happy delusion that I could learn to use it responsibly (lol) but I’ve made strides to curtail that as well.
Since then, I’ve often thought about what the experience of being “on the internet” is like, and how that’s changed since I began forming digital habits back in High School. My memory is relatively poor, so a habit-forming tool for capturing a bit of life is wonderful. Having my good intentions packaged up to generate ad revenue and give teenagers an anxiety disorder is less so. 10% of Meta’s revenue for 2024 came from fraud.
Still, I enjoy reading posts by people I’ll never meet. Putting stuff out into the world is fun. The Bear Blog discover feed is usually pretty wholesome, HackerNews is still rockin’, and my RSS app is chock full of honest work by decent humans. In the near future I’d even like to recommend some of them.
The prevailing form and style of most social platforms lack honesty and curiosity.