For a while, I’ve been considering setting up a GNU Social instance. Needless to say that most other forms of ‘social media’ are hostile, considering their data mining and restriction of freedoms, but rms has some wonderful pages on that so I won’t get into that. However, I will write about why I’m not going to be setting up a GNU social instance. These are not technical reasons, just reasons it wouldn’t be useful for me.
Ever noticed that everyone seems to post a bunch of stuff but beyond a given 4-or-so set replies people never talk? People broadcast their thoughts into a space full of posts other people never read and it seems so very pointless. I’ll admit that that’s pretty much how I use this blog but it’s a blog, it’s not really meant to be social, it’s where I write down stuff for other people to maybe-but-probably-not see.
As far as communication goes, I’m on IRC basically 24/7 on my desktop, laptop and phone.. I have an XMPP client open on my phone and desktop 24/7. My phone has a SIM card so if people really want to they can call or SMS me. I don’t see how some form of indirect communication would help here. I already have 4 types of direct communication, where if people want to talk to me, they can.
The other use for social media is news, apparently, but there’s this amazing thing called RSS that lets me get the news directly from the source, be it a news site, a person’s blog, an automated weather station… Hell, even I have RSS on here.
Oddly enough, people don’t want to be social on social media. I’m not entirely sure why some people use it, beyond narcissism and games.
Again, people write lots but read little. I don’t see any reason to set up something that doesn’t do what it’s meant to.
I already waste plenty of time shitposting on IRC, playing games and looking up useless stuff. Why would I want to set up something explicitly designed to keep you looking at it for as long as possible?
I’m not very social online anyway. I don’t talk to people a huge amount, especially the people I know personally, as if I want to talk to those people, I go to them, and I talk to them like a real human being (or, if it’s late or inconvenient I SMS them but whatever, it’s not really online).