Reconnecting

I remember back in the late 2000s, getting heavily into reading and writing blogs and article websites. I went overboard, running multiple separate blogs for a variety of different subjects, and spending a lot of time writing purely for the enjoyment of writing. I truly enjoyed finding and reading all types of things; comedic articles, personal blogs, anything and everything that provided fresh content.

I became embroiled in social media when I got my first smartphone (An iPhone 3G). I discovered Twitter, which kept me updated on many of my favourite writers and bloggers, as well as constant stream of commentary and ideas by anyone and everyone. I made a lot of local connections and posted thousands of tweets. Much of it pointless chatter, but I loved it.

Over the years, social networks really took over for me. Services like Facebook and Instagram connected me with people and entities I found interesting, allowing me to keep up to date in various formats.
These mediums and others (Twitter, YouTube) grew and refined themselves in such a way that they became my primary way to consume, and also create content, rendering personal blogging less and less relevant to me.

As you can tell from this posts existence, nothing lasts forever.

A focus by social networking platforms towards sponsored content and algorithms designed to keep users engaged for longer and longer, have become commonplace. Unfortunately for people like myself, their methods have been very effective.
I have found myself increasingly wasting time on Facebook reels and YouTube shorts, laughing at the 30 second videos that the platforms decided I wanted to see based on all the information they had compiled about me and the people around me. I am caught in content loops that are designed to keep me hooked.

“If you are not paying for it, you’re not the customer; you’re the product being sold.”

That is a quote attributed to Andrew Lewis that I have seen often, especially during online discussion about products by Google and Meta.

It wasn’t until I watched a video that touched on the methods of information gathering and interpretation that these companies actually employ that I started to think about it properly. I knew the basic idea, but had always figured it was a win-win, as I wasn’t doing anything with that information anyway.

The video (I really wish I still had a link to it) focused on targeted advertisements, and how it is more than just collecting your age, habits and recent search history that we commonly associate with it.
The video laid out that companies will establish your relationship with other people based on factors like GPS information (If your phone is often in the same proximity to another phone, you probably know each other).

This information could be and is used for relatively harmless things. For example, Google knows your birthday is coming up next month, and that you have been searching for computer monitors. It also knows who you most likely live with based on a build up of GPS patterns. Instead of targeting you with ads, it will use this information to target the people you live with.

It is easy to see how that and more information can be used in increasingly more manipulative ways, and why it would be in my best interest to stop using these services.
There’s so much about an individual person that Google or Meta’s data collection could ascertain, that it could be very easy to manipulate them in any number of ways, not just for the purpose of advertising. I find it very scary.

Of course, there are many other reasons that have compounded for my wanting to leave these platforms. Elon Musk is one, but let’s not.

I think back to years ago when several friends and acquaintances of mine abandoned Facebook, opting for other options at the time like Diaspora. They saw the writing on the wall.

I am finally catching on, and making steps to change my habits. I no longer have Twitter, and both my Facebook and Instagram accounts are disabled. I plan to deleting them entirely, but Meta’s desire to integrate with as much of a person’s life as possible rivals that of Google, and is a little more complicated. That will be a discussion for another time.

Taking the time to learn how the “Fediverse” works has been the final push I needed to all but disconnect from “Big Tech”. The idea that social networking platforms don’t need to be in the hands of one big company has been a novel idea, and one that I could never have considered. No ads and no desire to make money off of me? Impossible!

I knew of Mastodon from years ago when friends first touted it as a Twitter alternative, but didn’t take the time to properly understand it, and it just didn’t have the activity I was after at the time to motivate me to do so.
But being introduced to Pixelfed as an alternative to Instagram (Funnily enough, it was brought to my attention as I am sure many others, due to Meta trying to censor discussion of it), and discovering that Lemmy may not be as populated, but serves as an adequate open alternative to Reddit, has been another boon.

The fresh start allowed me to pause and ask myself, “What am I after?”. I have signed up for an innumerable amount of services over the years, often just to check them out. But here, I already knew the types of services available, and had a pretty good idea of them already.

Did I want microblogging? Sort of. Maybe.
Photo-sharing? Yes.
Reddit alternative? Yes.
A Facebook style social network?

The last one made me pause – what do I get out of it? Even though I had been a heavy Facebook user, and Friendica exists as an alternative that matches Facebook’s presentation of content, I realized it wasn’t something I actually needed. I can do without Facebook in any form.

This has cut down my time spent on social networks considerably, which I can only see as a positive. I will check for updates on Pixelfed maybe once a day, and post a photo if relevant.
I’ll browse posts both from the overall federation of Lemmy servers, as well as the communities I’ve specifically subscribed to, and see if anything is interesting to me.

But I’m not just endlessly scrolling anymore. Without the content streams I have become accustomed to, I find my habits changing. I’m looking for things to do with a little more substance. I want to write more. I don’t know if I’ll have anything to say, but I feel like I do. At least to myself.

Which brings me to return to blogging. It’s more so I don’t forget things that are or were of interest to me, or when I have a train of thought I want to try to solidify. If Pixelfed is my place for photos and Lemmy my source for news and discussion, this blog is my source for producing longform content that maybe someone will read.

Expect messes of text, disjointed subjects, and streams of consciousness, going forward.