… stuck in a disused lavatory in the basement with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’ ?
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Specifically to your question, and less general: I use ‘community’ in a loose general sense rather than a technical one, of friends I’ve made on the service, and friends-of-friends, not confined to a particular instance
Just because were in digital formation doesn’t mean Heart can seep through
Take it to the bank
.
How is that “forcing a decision” on me?
NOT before we’ve had a couple of drinks.
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the 25 rule on facebook is fascinating.
So people have to beg people they know to contact them to see their posts!!!
Otherwise you are in a repeating merrygoround
It’s exactly the other way around actually.
If you currently want to visit Boing Boing without being tracked by Facebook, twitter, Google and many others, you will have to install a ad-blocker. The default is that you will be tracked, you will unwillingly participate in their platforms.
Right now you are forcing the decision of your visitors, you are selling your visitors to a long list of unsavory companies. I understand, I know you have to make money, and I can block the things I don’t like. But you (and especially @doctorow) are not walking the walk when it comes to the website.
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I want to add another hearty recommendation for Mastodon. I still have my social media accounts (Twitter/Facebook) but I only use them occasionally for very specific purposes. (Twitter for shouting at politicians or companies, Facebook for reaching out to people I know but am no longer in contact with)
Mastodon fills the hole left by both nicely. It takes a while to build up a follow list that will get you some fun content, it’s a bit more work then on a platform that mines your behavior and predicts what you like and spoon feeds it to you. So this effort you have to put in to Mastodon is for a good cause.
It can also be a bit more boring, I will stop engaging with it sooner then with Facebook or Twitter. But when you think about it, that is also another good sign, it is less addictive, it is less optimized to game your reward center.
There are big communities of normally marginalized people, but that doesn’t mean there is no place for you there if you are (like me) a cis-gender white man. You may just for once not be in the majority and that only means you will get to train your empathy muscles a bit more and in exchange get to see a more diverse community in action!
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I switched off British TV, radio, and newpapers instead. I use Twitter to communicate with other people who’d like to replace our extreme right wing, anti-social government with a socialist democracy. What can I say? I have the politics and social values of the 1970s era Canadian society that raised me.
Also, I’d feel bad about abandoning the Palestinians. I see text, images and video from local activists of many of the kids shot, and other scenes (dawn, breakfast, beach, kids, football, life) that prevent me normalising the violence. I read a thread in real time by a woman who’s dad was being violently arrested in Egypt during the Arab Spring. I am witness to too many AfroAmerican kids in USA being blown away by bad cops. And the First Nation’s water protectors: discussions, art, posters, photos, text. It’s better than TV and there’s no authority verifying interpretations. I have to do my own research to check up on the news media anyway, so why have a corporate middleman at all? (I do see lots of video news, and read both news and blog articles. It’s just not the main event)
But otherwise, I’d deactivate.
#WeAreCorbyn
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If you wanted to pull my triggers, you succeed.
[rant]
Disclaimer: I worked in West Africa for two years, and serveral other countries where clean water isn’t a commodity, but the difference between life and death. I saw kids in intensive care due to dysenteria. I didn’t see them die, but mostly because I didn’t belong. I caught typhoid fever myself, despite being a privileged white etranger with access to filters, steriliser and whatnot. Of course, I did get proper medical care.
Comparing access to clean water vs. shitting yourself to death with a one-click track-all social media solution vs copying a URL to another window/application is outrageous. Funny? Mind? Works?
What the actual fecal matter! Get off of my lawn, or I’ll truly have to delete my account and sulk about the inhumanity of online comments.
[/rant]
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I got online in 1999, developed an Internet addiction in Yahoo chatrooms that climaxed (ugghhh) with Myspace.
WHO CARES.
Pretty much BB is only place i post. I cant wait for the rest of the world to get over that bullshit. Will they?
I also liked that article. Not by clicking a thumb-up icon, just by noting that it furthered the conversation and incrementing my respect for Kara Swisher’s opinion. (Shame the NYT only cares about the thumbs, and not the genuine human opinion, for all practical purposes).
Twitter has repeatedly said it won’t regulate its content, and has made sure it doesn’t even really have a lever to do that. It probably can’t function, financially, as anything other than a passive sluice for whatever people want to flush through it. Asking it to change its editorial policy is like dining from a sewage outlet, then giving the water company snippy feedback on its cuisine.
It has some rules, just as the water company has rules against industrial waste in its sewage, but even if those are enforced, that’s not the same thing as taking responsibility for the overall result. Most of the discussion has ignored that distinction, and it’s become a red herring. People like Alex Jones can game any given set of rules (and they would if they had to). They cannot game a human editor who says “you’re being an asshole and we won’t help you”.
Internet commentators like to pretend this is an unheard-of insult to free speech (almost as if they had a vested interest). That’s bullshit. Does Fox News let Hillary Clinton say whatever she wants as long as she follows their rules, and if not, is that censorship, and if so, does it hurt their numbers?
Twitter was a valuable experiment. It showed promise in some areas (e.g. having more reporters on the ground), and severe drawbacks in others. But it’s run its course, and now it is time for a new experiment.
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“Twitter is a wretched hive of scum and villainy, but let’s not be too hasty in our exit.”
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I don’t know. I gave up Facebook last year, both because their lying ways, and because it often made me miserable (even without any ads, which I’d successfully blocked). But still, I am feeling a lot more disconnected to my so-called social groups. Without twitter I think I’d feel like a hermit. My regular checking news sites, BB or a site dedicated to board games doesn’t seem likely to compensate.
I don’t get ads on twitter either (and can’t imagine I ever see anything from a Fortune 500 company), but there’s still the background buzz of their bending the rules in unsavory ways. It’s a modern dilemma.
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oh come on Mark, this is a weak position. Your own argument to Twitter is that it is not a platform for ‘free speech’ but a private co. that can choose values,. as is BoingBoing.
You can not make the argument against twitter, then use it as an excuse for leaving the share buttons on your own site. If FB & Twitter are worth boycotting then scrub the buttons, or just admit they drive traffic and that is more important then principles.
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Wow, no triggering intended – my apologies.
I’d meant it in the context of the “share” buttons being there, as though they’re doing us a favor, else we’d have to drag our fingers a couple of extra centimeters. I’m not sure this explanation makes you feel any better, though, and I certainly wouldn’t want (nor intend) to give you another reason to leave.
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I’m with you Mark.
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A slim volume of poetry, written in the form of tweets, and based around the life of an Instagramer who stops posting photos of their meals.
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I’m on facebook for a fistful of friends and a couple of model-making groups. Everything else, I just ignore. Though there is occasional fun to be gained from looking at the “featured ads” to see just how far of the mark the algorithm has got today. 
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Since I already have a couple of ad-and-tracker blocking tools in operation every time I am online, it’s not like I have to go out of my way to use them when I am visiting BB.
You know that FB keeps record of all your PornHub visits, right? On any of your devices. Without you even being logged in on FB itself. Forever. Even after you have deleted your account.
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