"The enemy of my enemy is not a great friend of mine." That should be the common phrase.

All the Meta history with data privacy aside, Threads not launching in the EU tells you everything you need to know about the intention of the image-less Instagram, and why it'll not be “killing Twitter“.

@alessandrahull5637

Жыл бұрын

It’s not in the EU for now, but will be. (Although I do agree with you in the data privacy issue).

@danielcrafter9349

Жыл бұрын

​@@alessandrahull5637- the EU has stronger privacy and content laws; it will take longer to implement there to be compliant

@alessandrahull5637

Жыл бұрын

@@danielcrafter9349 Yes.

@neonwired4978

Жыл бұрын

it probably will though

@kjaime7030

Жыл бұрын

Its not privacy laws hindering Threads in the EU. It's monopoly laws. And Musk seems more concerned than you do. It's already made records. All liberals, including lost créatives, dont like what Musk did, so they had already stopped using Twitter as much. They just didn't have a decent alternative to make it really apparent. They do now. DESPITE hating Zuckerberg ALMOST as much.

It sucks because looking back I genuinely think Facebook used to be pretty great. I remember being in school and everyone would add everyone else in their yeargroup, you could contact anyone you went to school with, it was actually a useful social tool. It was a social media where you just added people you knew in real life and you would see what they were getting up to. I don't feel like I have that anymore which is sad

@shaneg9081

Жыл бұрын

Yeah, it was great when the only people who could get on it were people who had a college email address. And then they let grandparents and children on and it rather quickly became an absolute cesspool.

@teen-at-heart

Жыл бұрын

@@shaneg9081 don’t think that that was the problem….it just coincided time-wise. The problem was/is the business model as well as the arrogance to think that the company and its algorithm know best what people would want. You could’ve easily left the ads on the sides and let companies pay a monthly fee for their presence/page on the site. The feed could have stayed all about your friends. Naturally, such a business model would have made far less money due to its much lower profit margins and revenue streams. The sad thing about it: Zuckerberg had a controlling stake for such a long time that he could have done these things against the will of the investors, when this is simply often not possible due to investors owning big chunks of start-ups. Then again, a person who’s definition of success are numbers, power and profits…no surprise that he made the decisions that he made.

@lukeodubhda

Жыл бұрын

Yes! and events for college clubs were great nothing has replaced that where u can go to a page and see if they have any events coming rather than scrolling and reading posts

@shaneg9081

Жыл бұрын

@teen-at-heart An algorithm is just an algorithm. It doesn't turn a service into a cesspool unless the users are looking for garbage or putting garbage into the system. By and large alt right trolls, conspiracy theorists, and manoshpere dips don't go to college. If they had an education, they wouldn't fall for the craziness. If Facebook had simply stuck to the initial user base, it would not have become the greatest source of disinformation the world has ever seen. Those people might have still found each other in some numbers, but they wouldn't have had the power to be anywhere near as widespread as they are now.

@MERCHIODOS

Жыл бұрын

The worst is when I see a post from a friend on Facebook and the post is few days old and its the first time I'm seeing it.

“You have to pay us to create content for us so we can make money” is literally the business model for academic journals

I'm been on twitter a year after it launched, pruned it so I didn't see drama, used tweetbot, so a chronological feed and no ads. then Elon ruined it, then Reddit seemed to follow suit. So I was exited for Threads, preinstalled it, woke up Thursday morning, opened the app, no chronological feed, a ton of suggested posts that I've never shown any interest in, deleted it immediately, not going back, fuck Meta

@evan

Жыл бұрын

Deleting your threads account also deletes your insta too. Crazy

@randomxnp

Жыл бұрын

What? Elon saved Twitter. It had become shit, dominated by corporate crap, with everyone knowing a blue check meant "bad take on current thing". It was a thing, you would say "yeah, it's a blue check". Anyone who said anything not approved by The Establishment would be banned. Even hinting at dissent would mean shadow ban, we would never see that person's tweets. So many leftie bullies proclaiming stupid opinions about everything. Even if you tried to avoid politics they were there. I had completely given up on it. So much better now.

@benfulford3943

Жыл бұрын

I'm not on threads and will never join it as I do not need another app to be soaking up all of my attention but surely the reason why there wasn't anything interesting on it to start with is because not many people were on it yet? So yeah a bunch of suggested posts for things you aren't interested cos it takes time for things that you are interested in to be on it...

@Dazreil

Жыл бұрын

@@benfulford3943 I make you right, but it felt so much like insta and FB, both ruined by Ads, Suggested post and a terrible algorithm I instantly quit.

As an artist, Meta / Facebook has always hit me with the vibe of “oh we will pay you in exposure” lol 😂 anyone else ever dealt with that

@amyloriley

Жыл бұрын

So apparently Facebook doesn't even pay in exposure. 0 views.

I was side eyeing FB over 12 years ago. After attending a marketing seminar, I was horrified. Their cavalier attitude towards privacy, data mining, and demographic exclusions were troubling. It still baffles me that companies refuse to respect people’s privacy preferences.

It's hard to find any genuine posts from Facebook friends in amongst all the ads and hidden stuff they don't let you see from friends anymore.

I remember when Friends Reunited was the big thing, yes I'm old!

@orwellboy1958

Жыл бұрын

Yep, me too.

@davidcook7887

Жыл бұрын

School revisited 😀

Omg the ending 😂 honestly, it’s the best parody I’ve seen so far

@hsellors

Жыл бұрын

I've gone on far too much of a CB rabbit hole this week and that. song. 😶 is now stuck in my brain continuously...but Evans parody was great 😂

@thatotherted3555

Жыл бұрын

I seriously love how everyone and their step-cousin is hopping aboard the ukulele meme train

Facebook did me the greatest favor when one day, after having an account for over ten years, I couldn't log in and I got the message "We've determined you are not eligible to have an account" and they deleted me without any advance warning or explanation. So I didn't have the chance to notify any of my FB friends and contacts or save any of my photos or other saved materials. It was really tough but wow what a relief.

The points you made about how Facebook has changed our feeds to become just random memes and ads from pages I don’t follow and products I don’t want or haven’t got any interest in absolutely nailed it. I’ve been fed up just scrolling endlessly through crap and not realising why, it’s such a habit now for me to just pull up Facebook and start scrolling and not even see any actual “content” aside from the news outlets I follow on there and the previous mentioned rubbish meme pages.

It was only this week my wife asked why I never like or comment on any of her Facebook posts and I told her I didn't she even made any - it turns out, it's no longer good enough to be friends with someone AND following them, to actually see their stuff you also need to FAVOURITE them too! Jeez.

@BStorheim

Жыл бұрын

Hey, it's kind of like having to click the Bell after hitting the Subscribe button on KZread to actually GET any updates about your subscribed channels' videos.... I remember the absolute SHITEstorm when the Bell was introduced, and now it's like it was always there... But yeah, at least KZread's Bell system pretty much works. Facebook's Wall system is totally messed - sometimes even Favouriting someone or selecting "see first" doesn't work right. Not to mention that to change any setting means navigating Facebook's ridiculously complicated UI.

Evan I freaking love you! You just exploded on all the frustrations we’ve all been feeling. Thank you💕

@barrysteven5964

Жыл бұрын

Agree. This rant was an absolute work of art. Fantastic.

I am still enraged by Instagram's lack of chronological feed. I used to love that app so much - I found fellow makers and made actual friends. Now I don't see anything from them as Instagram tells me I'm up to date, but lies because then I'll go and think 'hmm, I haven't seen anything from so and so in ages' and I'll look at their feed and there'll be ten posts I've missed, but it's shown me the same post from two weeks ago by an influencer every day for a week. And don't get me started on Facebook's showing you 'most relevant' comments as default - don't fecking decide what I think is relevant! I took one look at Threads, saw that it wasn't chronological (the one feature of Twitter that I liked) and noped right out of there.

My social media activity is hitting like and occasionally commenting on KZread videos. 🤣 I developed social media burnout. I deleted them all. Thanks for another great video!

Pretty much the only Social Media I use is this, Reddit, & Discord. Reddit, I stick to subreddits I actually like. Discord the same. Here I watch interesting vids about stuff I like, & tend to stick around when the creators heart or comment back to their subscribers, because it means they care xxx

Ah, yes, MySpace. Now Facebook is for Baby Boomers connecting with high school friends. Plus other stuff.

@shaneg9081

Жыл бұрын

And by other stuff, I assume you mean baby boomers connecting with neo nazis.

@robertwilloughby8050

Жыл бұрын

In my case, my childhood first girlfriend. I was 7. I'm 49 now.

@christineperez7562

Жыл бұрын

What's wrong with connecting with friends? Your grandparents are cooler than this new generation.

@eattherich9215

Жыл бұрын

@@christineperez7562: virtual friends are not real. Friends are people you have seen through the years and made the decision to keep in your life.

@nisc2001

Жыл бұрын

@@eattherich9215 hard disagree. there are many people i have met online years ago and continue to hold a relationship because suprise! i put in work and made the decision to keep them in my life. i've even met a few of them in person. Sure, not every internet relationship will stand the test of time due to a weak basis. but there are some that are truly gems. I do agree with your point that a facebook feed of people you haven't spoken to in years might not constitute as friends. And that's one of the reasons i dislike facebook, if i want someone to know about my life, then i'll be actively talking to them and telling them. But to use the blanket statement that virtual friends can't exist is inaccurate.

The trouble with Facebook is that they got so big and entrenched that they could afford to make it shittier and shittier because everyone would stay because of whoever else is one there that they still wanted to be connected with. They didn’t have to keep it good because people wouldn’t leave when it got worse and they were making money by making it worse.

@Tom2kvals

11 ай бұрын

Don't agree, many people live, FB is set to be forgotten soon

It surprises me that many people seem to forget that all social media are businesses looking to make a lot of money. What they care about is not whether you and I like or enjoy the experience, but the number of clicks and the money they make from it. The fact that FB is the way it is, indicates that there are apparently still enough people using it because otherwise there would have been an adjustment. In my opinion, the name social media is misleading because that is not at all the purpose of the companies behind FB, Twitter and alike. Connecting and sharing with each other is not a goal for them, but a business model.

@klundyates1

Жыл бұрын

They didn't start like that, when the internet started and Facebook was young, ads were a brucey bonus but more so the growth was driven as it transformed the way we interacted with each other - it was driven by user excitement and enthusiasm. Evan's exactly right, once we were all together in those places, the money signs started dinging and it's all been downhill since then (I'd say the notifications turning red did it 😅). I think there's just a part of a lot of us that are nostalgic for the genuine social connection you could feel.

@vitalspark6288

Жыл бұрын

Not all social media is businesses looking to make money. Open source federated social media has been growing loads in the last year or so. Mastodon, Lemmy, Kbin, etc.

@niallblack2794

Жыл бұрын

Tumblr is unironically continuing to be the best run, best designed and least invasive, least capitalistic, least skeezy and most enjoyable social network platform with the most variety, the most content YOU ACTUALLY WANT TO SEE and let's you choose whether you want your own cultivated feed as a DEFAULT or if you want a small smattering if suggestions, if you like. Plus, Automatic's tumblr Algorithm isn't terrible. It's actually really good and well designed so even if you do end up using it it doesn't completely swamp or inundate your carefully cultivated feed with stuff you don't want because it's actually using the information that was already there to show you things that are tagged correctly and linked together by genuine interest of actual real people. And the people running it and coding it actually understand what works about the platform and isn't trying to make it a carbon copy of anyone else. They have somewhat allowed more adult content back and they are doing amazing work! TumblrForTheWin!

I kept shouting "Amen!" out loud all through this. Must be confusing for my neighbors, since I don't usually do that on a Sunday.

THANK YOU. god ive been so skeptical about threads because im so used to seeing this happen. as well as ig morphing into more and more of an advertising platform over the years, i'm not sure why everyone is so quick to trust this too good to be true twitter clone

I left all Metas products and Twitter at the end of last year. First of all, for privacy reasons and secondly, there were too many people that just gave me a bad mood that I wish I could grab through the screen. This is why I replaced 100% of all those apps with federated systems, even if that meant cutting off communications with some people. That's how frustrated I was back then. At least no company can control what I see and it's chronological, too ... by default :) Wouldn't wanna go back ... only in time, if that would be possible :D

@lloroshastar6347

Жыл бұрын

You're my hero, I swear social media has contributed heavily to my anxiety but I'm just too weak minded to just stop using them. I wish I had your strength

@StormhavenGaming

Жыл бұрын

@@lloroshastar6347 It's easier than you think. I left Twitter about seven years ago and Facebook about four years ago. My mental health immediately improved and I only missed the scroll addiction for a couple of days.

@Liggliluff

Жыл бұрын

Yeah I only use Discord where I spend most times with private conversation and not servers, and only have Facebook Messenger installed to chat with people on Facebook, but not actually using the rest of Facebook.

Literally the only reason I still have a Facebook account is so that I can contact friends who still have an account if I ever want/need to. I will also occasionally open it when I am supremely bored, but it's never a good time.

I'm also a 90s kid and it's sad how social media is now. I use it to post my hobbies, interact with friends and family. Also be in a few suppert groups. Everything these days is about shorts or how to be viciously nasty to people because of their beliefs, disability, age, gender /sex/orientation etc. There is also a lot of people just advertising things that shouldn't be or showing people bad habits & saying its OK to do them. There's is no community or support how. I am a small channel so it's expected that I don't have many followers but I hate that KZread stops so many from seeing my videos because I don't have enough viewers to fit into their algorithm. Then again the world in real life may as well be the same as there is so many nasty, judgmental & vindictive people these days. So much has changed in 20 ywars (I'm 26 but I remember what was around when I was a kid). Hugs. Xx

Something I wasn't expecting from Threads is how good it is for showcasing photography. Photos just look way better on there than IG and with all of the horrendous changes that were made to IG it seems like photographers are transitioning to Threads in droves (or at least the ones I'm following).

@chrisamies2141

Жыл бұрын

What about Flickr? (or others, but I've been on Flickr since 2005 so unlikely to move).

Every time I start Evan's videos, I think "wait, did I turn up the speed on KZread recently?" and then I realize he just talks really quickly. 😆

Lol I go way back to MySpace too, and I really didn't want to change to Facebook. Love love love the ukulele singing added at the end ❤

Thank you Evan! I didn’t understand all of this before, but I’m so glad that you have explained it! Thanks again.

I don't trust Meta any longer now that they removed hashtags from Instagram as well. When searching for hashtags now, you only see the content Meta wants you to see. There is no way to sort by recently uploaded images with that hashtag. So now I can't find any new creators to connect with.

That Coleen song at the end. Chef kiss

Holy sheet🤣 here for ragey Evan🔥 I was not expecting to agree so fully lol but here we are🤣

I remember the fond days when all the different apps were an enjoyable place to be. I’m only keeping my Facebook alive because of all my photos on there. I mostly use Instagram to share photos of my makes with the sewist community but that’s being more and more drowned out by ads and shit I don’t want to see. And KZread is going the same way, forcing shorts onto me when I come here deliberately for the long form content. If I wanted shorts I’d go on TikTok 🙄

@sarahrosen4985

Жыл бұрын

Get your photos while you can.

Oh, what a glorious start to my day! Do a 12 h livestream trashing FUbook and I’ll be there.

Ahhh remember when it had filters? When you could literally shut out the 80% of post types you didn’t care about? Those were good days. It was when they chose to remove that that I walked away.

I am very much enjoying your videos - especially your humour. You've persuaded me, at least about 75%, that Facebook has been damaging - it was so different back in the Noughties. I suppose the difference for me is that I am from Gen X, and a ton of my friends are still on Facebook, so it is still the fun place for me to connect and I do my best to filter out the negativity. I suppose the age group/generation and size of following has a significant impact on user experience - but I hope to enjoy these early days of Threads.

This was very well articulated. Thank you

For me, Facebook lost its way when the "time line" became the algorithm based news feed. You could change the view, but it didn't stick. Then instagram did the same. That's why Twitter was better, until Elon got involved. Edit....which is what you then say...doh

For this video I shall like & subscribe 😆 Social media is dead tbh, or at least to me, it has been destroyed by greedy men wanting money -- as they strive to make as much money as they can, they are driving social media into the ground. The problem is that they're treating social media as a business when really it needs to be treated as the opposite 😂 Humans ruin everything 🤷🏼‍♀️

@vitalspark6288

Жыл бұрын

The problem isn't social media; it's corporate-controlled social media. The Fediverse and the wider IndieWeb are still a lot of fun... and no ads!

Evan!!!! Bravo, my man. Bravo!! I too think it'll get to the point when I'm going to go completely offline (cept for have-do posts regarding my art and such) But I think the age of relying on the internet will come to an end in the not too far future. Amen to that!

Not expecting that ending 😂😂

the uke at the end cracked me up LOL great vid evan

I never cared about seeing what my friends were up to, as it usually wasn't particularly interesting. So I've unfollowed most of my friends, except some few that actually have something interesting to share.

That was the most eloquent rant I have ever heard.

Great take. Honestly, it might be the last push for me to intentionally drop most of my social media. I dumped Twitter several years back and it felt so good.

Well hello! Never been first before! I'm going to give Threads a miss for a while and see how it fairs.

@evan

Жыл бұрын

Congrats on being so quick

why is Threads thought to be the only alternative to twitter? Mastodon has existed for a while now

@Xtrems

Жыл бұрын

People falling for big guy with big money again. They'll never learn.

I’m concerned that zuck is going to try and invade the fediverse with it

Facebook kicked me off eight years ago for not giving them my ID, I refused and haven’t looked back…

You summed it all up perfectly 👍🏼

That ending 💀

Totally agree! I went off FB in 2016.

Surprised to hear you say that Threads doesn’t have ads (yet). When I signed up (also to spite Musk) I spent the first view minutes blocking football after football group and just assumed these were ads because it’s the kind of unwanted garbage I’d normally see in Twitter. But apparently it was just what the algorithm thought a new member would want to see? I’m honestly not sure I believe that.

Avoided facebook for years until I started travelling, then I found it amazing for keeping in touch with friends back home and following the adventures of the new people I met as I travelled. Only about 600 people on there as friends. Barely know anything of where they're travelling or what my friends are upto. Facebook doesn't show anything I joined it to see, just endless ads and memes I don't want. Absolute rubbish.

If only someone from Facebook would actually see this. My main gripe about all the platforms is that they are so big that it is literally impossible to contact them or make sensible suggestions or constructive critical comments.

I've never been into any social media. I have Facebook but I only have it to contact my friends, family and various hobby groups. Closest I got to getting into social media was Twitter, but I literally used that to RP in communities.

15:49 the end was unexpected but great

I love your videos. And you are spot on. 👍🏼

I remember joining Facebook ca. 2005, when it was still just for collegiate connections - I'm old, lol. Nothing seemed threatening or bad about Facebook until it started to become bloated with ads and addictive pay-as-you-play games - ex. Farmville, which was the worst waste of time ever. That was around 2008 or 2009, I think? Something that you didn't touch on the regarding change from social media then vs. social media now is that before the iPhone, basically, no one was using using social media on their phone. The smartphone changed our relationship with social media to That Thing I Play Around With Sometimes on a Computer to It's Always There, Sending Its Siren Song from the Notifications Menu...And Even if I Silence It, It Stares Back at Me from the Home Screen... 😳 I'm still on Facebook, too. Not because it's so much fun to use, but because my friends are still there, posting updates. I also feel like if I erase too much of my social media, hiring managers may get suspicious. But maybe that's silly of me to think, IDK. I mean, I have a LinkedIn, what more do they really fricking need?

Spot on, Evan. Spot on!

I loved the Yahoo chat rooms back in the day.

I'm a millennial n never got a Facebook account because it always looked dodgy af to me. Then instagram came n I had a look at it via a friend n realised that it'd be pure crack for my adhd brain so I nopes out of this one as well. I genuinely never would have joined twitter either if tumblr hadn't crashed n burned (I really just wanna follow my artist buddies n show off my own art). N now a dozen new twitter replacements pop up n fight for the crown. I am exhausted. We all are. But if nothing else,I truly hope the crown doesn't go back to fucking Zuckerberg.

Consider Mastodon. It's a better twitter, and a better "threads". This is only my point of view, but you know in a couple of years "threads" will just be yet another disaster just like anything else facebook touches, and betting on it now only makes you more bound by it later on.

There is always the option to quit social media when it doesn't serve you anymore, I feel like everyone feels like there are no alternatives. I think people would be happier if instead of begrugingly going on social media, they went to a library and borrowed a book, learned to crochet etc. Reducing my social media time worked well for me - those companies do not deserve your attention if they give nothing of value in return.

All my friends are on Facebook and I still see some of the stuff they post. Maybe not everyone but more than enough.

I guess naming the app after a film about a nuclear apocalypse is appropriately meta.

To paraphrase another ukulele diss/cover you sang, "buy my merch, watch my stories, I only view users for what they do for me"

Yeah all the info they wanted scared me. And yes, i had fun watching this 😁

Have you tried Mastodon or Calckey or any of the other Fediverse options?

Excellent Evan!!!!

@evan

Жыл бұрын

Thanks!

For me, Threads is a depressing TV drama of a nuclear bomb dropped on Sheffield sometime back in the 1980s. So watch Zuckerberg’s Threads go much the same apocalyptic way.

MySpace, you don't know what you've got till it's gone!

tbh the weirdest thing about Facebook that I've noticed is the bizarre auto-flagging of content. I hate that I kinda wanted to support Threads, and I hate that pretty soon, googling it isn't going to turn up a horrific old British TV movie that scarred millions of people's brains.

@chrisamies2141

Жыл бұрын

Quite. I was going to point out that for anyone over a certain age, they'll immediately think of nuclear war.

@FTZPLTC

Жыл бұрын

@@chrisamies2141 - It is quite funny though that, for a lot of people googling Threads to find this new app, that was what was coming up.

Thank you Evan for perfection explaining why I don't use Facebook anymore so I don't have to. 👏 I still can't delete it because if you delete Facebook it deletes Messenger and I do occasionally use that app to contact irl friends.

I was a pretty active user on Livejournal. Then Facebook came along and everybody switched. I took one look at that algorithm driven chaos, turned on my heel and never looked back.

The problem with the algorithm, which is honestly the same on youtube (which I hate, but oh well), is that WE are the people giving it it's info. They give us 10sec reels, we hate it, but yet every day we still go down the rabbit hole of watching thousands of those videos. Even though we hate it, the fact that we are still using it and (over)consuming it, gives the algorithm the idea that we like it. It's not a human, it doesn't think like us. It only goes "people watch this, let's show it to more people" I personally think if we all decided to leave the apps because we hate it, then they would actually start making them better because how else would they get money? Nobody's using their shitty app

I still miss MySpace.

Absolutely superb breakdown of the current situation. I'm about to sign up for Threads, I know it will become horrific, but right now...what's the choice? Zucks already got all my data, though I've not used FB in years, so basically wtf, I'm diving in for now.

As a regular user, not a content creator, I applied a radical solution years ago: get rid of social media alltogether.

YOUR NOT WRONG! EXCEPT Threads will be just that way in 6 months. 😂😪

@roguechevelle

Жыл бұрын

I agree. It's shiny now to draw in new people but it won't be long for it to go downhill.

I used to love twitter. I joined in 2009 (always been an early adopter of social media apps) and it was fun. Getting to interact with my favourite celebrities and talk about whatever I was watching on TV etc. and I remember when Facebook was only for students at specific universities (joined early 2005 when I was at King’s College London). If somehow we could rewind the clock eh?

i can't get threads. apparently it's not been approved in the e.u yet because it breaks privacy laws. won't even show on the app stores

Loved the outro!

100% with you Evan. ❤

Loved this video

Its a little emporer's new clothes - the marketers (FB etc all of them) 'we know more about what you like than you do' 'we will drive your information feed' Turns out - they don't - automatic feeds are terrible as you point out. Once the add sellers work it out - the cycle completes and the platform fades. KZread is on the same curve - just earlier perhaps.

You are brilliant.

Awesome video. How Facebook/Meta bs has fallen from grace, so well deserved. I'm avoiding Threads as long as I can. The Murdoch Media comparison is scary.

If you have a fanpage on FB still it's only a matter of time until some scammers will have hijacked it to spam ads for their scams.

I'm holding out for BlueSky social to go out of the beta testing stage

Just a heads up there’s a bit in the privacy policy of threads that if you eve delete threads it also will delete your instagram.

I find FB & Insta boring and have to force myself to interact with them both for my Style business as a creative. Full of ads as you said also if I really want to know what my friends and family are doing I have to go search for them! Nuts but millions of Ads are free-flowing on my feed. I do not think I need to join Threads yet.

I got rid of faceache six years ago and I ain't going back.

I still have Facebook and twitter but I rarely ever post anything at this point...i also have Instagram but I've posted like 5 times on there, i never really saw the point. I basically keep Facebook for one of the groups I'm in (pertaining to my field that I work in) and my extended family uses fb messenger to communicate anything with the family, mostly reunions. I also love that twitter has filed a lawsuit against meta for threads...it will be interesting to see what comes of that.

*Pulls up a rocking chair* Back in the day, a lot (and I mean a *LOT*) of us used a social media platform called Livejournal. Livejournal was brilliant. There was a decent community for anything you wanted, populated by like-minded people that you could have rational conversations with. It had a brilliant FAQ section, it showed you baby step by baby step how to do things (these things usually involved an aspect of coding, so it was educational too). Then Facebook came along and some of us used them alongside each other, still leaning more towards Livejournal. But then Livejournal was bought by some Russian dudes (as far as we know) and everyone dropped it faster than you could say "Russia's after all the secrets!" or "hot coals burn!". But then the "powers that be" started tinkering with Facebook and ballsing it up for everyone, but there wasn't really anywhere to go now since Livejournal got bought out by these Russian blokes. Fast forward to all the talk about "Threads". The main thing that's missing, and that a lot of people in the UK that are around my age remember, is that in the mid 80's there was a mini-series of I think three episodes of a programme called "Threads". It aired at roughly the same time that "The Day After" aired on TV in the US (but "The Day After" was extremely tame in comparison to "Threads"). Bearing in mind that at that particular time we were still living under the threat of the Cold War and a nuclear missile attack at seemingly any time (true story, in my home town of Rotherham at least, every house had a leaflet dropped through the door on what the consequences of a nuclear strike might look like in relation to your geographical placing to the area the bomb dropped). The point I'm trying to make here is that "Threads" was about the result and consequences of a nuclear strike on Sheffield, the city nearest to where I lived in Rotherham. It was filmed in and around Sheffield and genuinely gave me nightmares for about a fortnight after it was aired - you should be still able to buy copies on DVD from Amazon. The mysterious "they" seem to not know that to a certain per centage of people living in the UK, the word, title or whatever you want to call it, "Threads" still sounds ominous and very scary.

I really like the lighting and audio in this video But yes I’m just on threads to see how fast it will go up in flames.

Loved the end of the video 😂❤

I still use FB/IG/Twitter and probably will end up using Threads as well, just because I'm an author and I sort of feel like I have to have a presence. I feel like I've managed to make my usage pretty chill (Twitter implosion notwithstanding) but I don't really have any fun like I used to. One thing that really frustrates me is that people talk about Tumblr still being great but I just can't use it any more. It was partially a personal choice because it was way too much of a timesink, but then when I tried to go back on occasion my app stopped working properly and it barely loads on my PC. It's a shame because I feel like I'm missing out on one of the only places people still seem to find fun.

As Gen X (although maybe an unusual one?) I find it funny how many Millenials, are like "I won't go on TikTok" and also "I hate Meta/Facebook/Twitter". To me TikTok has felt a bit like the early days of KZread, and sure, it won't feel like that forever, and we'll have to jump ship again, but at least it's not Meta/Elon (yet). And it does feel fun (depending what part of it you're on of course). I'm sure it's as bad as the next thing, but it still feels fun. You're right about Murdoch/Zuckerberg, I hadn't thought of it in exactly those terms, but the similarity is uncanny now that you mention it.

I mostly agree with you. I've managed to make it fb & insta work for me professionally. I'm a designer maker, and have business cards on my stand at shows with my fb and insta accounts on them. I use insta as an online portflio and it autoposts to my fb page. I also use them as a way to communicate with customers through messaging. This whole thing with the advertising shoved at us..... when you're bored, screw with the algorithm, I managed to confuse it once, to the point it started shoving ads for cafes in California..... I live in the UK. I laughed so hard at that one. The most important thing is to never ever ever interact with the ads. And if you really hate a particular ad or company, hover over the account until you get the little pop-up, hit the 3 dots and click block. I do that for all religious and gambling ads, because NASTY! Anyway, fb still has it's uses, it's just not the uses it used to be good for. The thing that really angers me though, is the censorship on swearing but not on racism, conspiracies, hate speech etc because 'free speech' . but nooooooooooo you're not allowed to drop F bombs or even non-swear words such as dick. It's disgusting. Even yootoob is known to demonetise videos because there's a couple of swear words. FFS! Swearing is healthy, racism and hate speech is not! Censor that. As for Threads, I've signed up, but meh, the UI is kinda clunky, like they slapped it together using chewing gum and baling wire, I'll give it a few weeks for the devs to deal with all the bugs that turn up, and see just how many people sign up. In 36hrs, I had maybe 130 of my followers join and auto follow, that was a nice feature, being able to import all that from insta to the new platform. But it's only just got going, give it time to become good, or just get junked by Suckerberg