For context when I say Mainstream, I mean Reddit, FB, IG, Twitter, etc.
With privacy and data concerns mounting more and the change of things in the general overall and day to day, I have started to rethink the use of mainstream Social Media and begin to make the migration away from it.
So far I have taken to the Fediverse with Lemmy, Pixelfed, and Mastodon. This is after Reddit just just shooting itself in the foot and blowing the damn thing right off. Twitter after Elon also just started the using a platform for his pissing context with Zuck. Instagram, I have no real use for now as it has become so hard to get any actual engagement beyond “likes”.
My issues with Facebook come from constantly changing how the timeline works and it got to a point to ONLY seeing pages I had liked and ads and not even seeing posts from anyone on my friends list. I was able to take the time and clean it up, but compared to the alternative of moving away from Facebook, it got old real fast. I continue to use Facebook primarily for the messenger functionality, but even there now everyone who I would talk to on the regular is either via text message or some other platform.
Eventually, potentially by the end of this year, I can see myself completely closing out my Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit so long as I like what I see here on Lemmy. That’s not so say Lemmy isn’t good, but IMO a I’ll has some ways to go.
The ONLY reason I can see keeping an Instagram is because there are some accounts I do find entertaining and have some good bits of information(Costco/Target finds, etc).
I don’t expect for these platforms to be replacements for the mainstream. And I hope they don’t become that, because that’s what making it special right now. The communities are small, instances make things close knit and that’s nice. Oh and also, not seeing ads after every post post is always nice as well.
So the TL;DR here is I plan on migrating away from Mainstream Social Media Platforms completely by the end of 2023 and wondering what everyone else’s game plan is or if they plan on keeping both the Fediverse/decentralized platforms and the Mainstream.
Reddit was the most difficult, and the only thing i really wanted to replace instead of delete. I’m happy with the fed and only really use Reddit now when looking for info. I only used Twitter for following my favorite bars, restaurants, and music venues to see what’s going on and happy hour info, so that was pretty easy to wander away from. Funny thing about Instagram - I made an account years ago just to see what it was and recently deleted it. I use fake birthdays on random websites and apparently had done that on Instagram. When i deleted it, Facebook picked up that fake birthday and i spent several days getting birthday posts. I feel like i have to keep FB for family connections. I check it 2-3x/wk. It takes about one minute for me to be disgusted with the marketing. I’ve never tiktokked - I have friends that use it and I don’t really get it. Sometimes they talk about getting news from there - I don’t understand spending the time watching videos from random idiots about the news when you could just quickly skim an article from a reliable source.
Thats about how often I check Facebook as well. TikTok I like for the food recipes and some out of left field facts and info(that I check for validity of course and deeper reading), but news? No way.
Why TikTok for food recipes instead of a different format? I’ve seen a few TikTok pages from people sending them to me and their video player is atrocious. It doesn’t have any controls, you can’t maximize it, and about 20% of it is covered with hearts, usernames, and other random stuff. I don’t understand how such a thing could have ever caught on, since it’s a UI travesty. Is the app a different interface or something?
I just happened upon a couple of recipes that looked pretty good and I did bookmark them for later and the algorithm just took it from there which I don’t mind as I like to cook. It would be different if I just kept seeing things I didnt care for.
The Web UI has WAY too much going on. The App UI does have all of the hashtags, icons, etc along the perimeter of the video frame, BUT you can select “clear mode” which removes all of that so your JUST seeing the video.