Social-Media

If social media is working for you and you don’t care about the moral implications of using social media, then this post isn’t for you.

On the other hand, if the MAGA shift of social media, the love fest between Zuck, Musk, and Tr*mp and their slimey ilk makes you feel a little cringey. Or if you realize that you’re wasting countless minutes of your one wild and precious life, then this may be for you. Fair warning, it gets pretty technical; so stop wherever you want. It takes little more than a decision and a healthy dose of willpower. But if you want to block social media and cast it into the fires of Mt. Doom, here’s how.

This isn’t the first time, but I hope it will be the last.

Facebook, for me has long been a source of enjoyment and connection. But it also leaves me feeling cringey. So what changed?

What changed is that Facebook has gone full-on MAGA and I’m not OK with that:

• “Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President-elect Donald Trump on Friday [January 10, 2025] at Mar-a-Lago, two sources familiar tell CNN. Meta declined to comment on the meeting between Zuckerberg and Trump.” - Source
• Meta said today [January 7, 2025] it will end its fact-checking program in exchange for X-style community notes as part of a slate of changes targeting ‘censorship’ and embracing ‘free expression’. - Source,
  • We all know how this has gone at “X”, where self-proclaimed “free speech absolutist” has actively shaped pro-Republican messaging on the platform.
• “Joel Kaplan, a prominent Republican, replaced Meta’s policy chief Nick Clegg last week. (He said Meta’s third-party fact-checkers have demonstrated ’too much political bias’ in a Fox News interview this morning [January 7, 2025.)” - Source
• “CEO Mark Zuckerberg dined at Mar-a-Lago on Thanksgiving eve. [November 27, 2024]” - Source
• “The company [Meta/Facebook] pledged a $1 million donation to Trump’s inauguration.” - Source
• “On Monday, it [Meta] added three people to its board, including close Trump ally Dana White.” - Source
  • I didn’t know who Dana White was but he appears to be the president and CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) and the owner of Power Slap, which is a “slap fighting” promotion, whatever that is. The bottom line is that he sounds like he’s rich and into violence, just the type of person that would appeal to Tr*mp.

So thanks for the memories, Facebook. But for me this is the end of the road.

Introducing sterilize-ng [GitHub link] - a URL sterilizer made to work flexibily on the command line.

Background

The surveillance capitalist economy is built on the relentless tracking of users. Imagine going about town running errands but everywhere you go, someone is quietly following you. When you pop into the grocery, they examine your receipt. They look into the bags to see what you bought. Then they hop in the car with you and keep careful records of where you go, how fast you drive, whom you talk with on the phone. This is surveillance capitalism - the relentless “digital exhaust” left by our actions online.

Listening to Cal Newport interviewed on a recent podcast, something he said resonated. I’m probably paraphrasing, but a key piece of advice was: “Delete any app that makes money off your attention.”

Seems like really good advice. A smartphone is a collection of tools embedded in a tool. Use it like a tool and not an entertainment device and you’ll be find. For a while, in an effort to pry myself loose from the psychic hold of the smartphone I went back to using some kind of old flip phone. But I realized that I went too far. So much of our communication is via text now, it was really hard to communicate. But now, though I’m back to using a smartphone, I find that I’m much more careful about what I install on it:

I have a hypothesis. The wider the scope of your attention to social media and the popular press the more material goods you consume.

Having had too many hobbies and pursuits in my own life, I’ve noticed that the more diverse my attention, the more I ended up consuming. Is it that one’s physical environment (how much stuff you buy and surround yourself with) reflects your mental environment? Or is it the other way around? Maybe it’s really both. The less focused you are on meaningful, low consumption pursuits, the more you buy; and the more you buy, the more distracted you are by all the stuff around you. A vicious circle.