And yet, after joining Lemmy and Mastodon, I post a lot more.

The concept of "influencer" as a career needs to die a quick death.

Talking to real friends more interesting than arguing with strangers? Shareholders flummoxed! News at 11.

I've seen the birth of it in my lifetime, I'll see the death of it in my lifetime. Way to go, evolution!

Social media in general is in the following stage of Enshitification:

• Launch
• Growth at all costs, user focus
• Use size to bring advertisers
• Gradually shift focus to advertisers and money bringers
• Ensure users are way too invested to quit
• >> Sell out <<

It's no surprise that people only end up seeing "carefully curated" content, it's what "sells", or rather, ensures people stay in the stupid app. From TFA: "While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn't slowed"

I have an Insta account for some of the part time 3D printing I do, but since I'm not a "content creator", my stuff has almost zero reach. Whenever I open the app, it's roughly 1:1:1 posts of "recommended", someone I actually follow, advert. 2/3 of everything shown to me is stuff I didn't ask for, not to mention when the advertises are actual scams or fucking pyramids

I still visit Reddit but I no longer engage in any way, other than reading comments. No up/down voting, not commenting, no reporting spam. Nothing but reading with multiple layers of ad-blocking.

PS: the overall quality/value has dropped precipitously

Those platforms are business media now, not social media anymore.

The fediverse, while still social media, has a level of authenticity unrivaled by most major social medias in my opinion. Hopefully it stays that way!

I also noticed how my social media usage (even on Lemmy and Mastodon) is consistently declining, I haven't opened the clients I use for either platform in days (or possibly more than a week). It's bad because I was pretty invested in the fediverse, but it's good because now I can actually do something productive, or even go outside.

No app better defines the changing nature of social media than Instagram. The app started as a digital scrapbook — a place to keep up with real-world connections, close friends, and family. While other networks had more users (Facebook) or generated more news (Twitter), Instagram seemed to define the ideal form of this era of social media. Instagram became a verb, an aesthetic, and a generational signifier.

huUURP! BLAAaahhriifgghhh. . .

Garbage marketing platform dies horribly. Thousands of clueless "journalists" bereft.

No one's posting on BeReal

Nobody has heard of BeReal

Also, if no one is posting on social media, then what the hell are we all doing right now then?

if someone posts on social media and nobody reads it ... does the poster even exist?

I almost never use Facebook anymore because whenever I’m on it, all I see are posts from groups I’m not even in, ads, videos, and interspersed in all that algorithmically chosen content, the occasional post from people I actually follow and know. Social media isn’t social any more.

Even fricking tumblr now has videos on it, and you can only shut “tumblr live” off for a week at most before they come back.

it's interesting how many comments show that people like to read the headline and are content with that to form an opinion. literally the first paragraph says that it's not "THERE ARE NO POSTS" but it says that the "feed is swamped by a combination of perfectly curated photos and professionally created content." - the problem is that the paid content creators have become GOOD. so many of them really look like they are just opinions and casual mentions of movies/clothes/...things. viral marketing is really at a point where so many fronts that have been established have been broken down in the guise of "irony" or "sarcasm". "I'm only buying the Barbie merch ironically" etc.

I dont even want to talk to half the people I know anymore lol. I stopped using FB but keep it running because there are many years of pics and what not for family. And when I bring it down people freak out and think something is wrong with me. Other than that, it has been stripped of any identifying information, only has people I know and I never use it anymore. That was the only real 'personal' place I had on the internet. Everything else is fake names and whatnot, always has been.

My following on insta is dominated by meme pages, influencers, and that one person in your social group who practically shares their life on social media.

Big shock considering everything we post online is being weaponized in various ways.

Wtf is bereal

Does Lemmy count as social media?? lol

I've been trying to cut down social media use ever since 2020. I don't blame people for not posting most social media platforms are either boring or a toxic shit holes.

If a company ever puts ads in my group chats I will jump in a volcano

Group chats were for sharing before social media. It just out lasted them.

Don't mourn social media. It was always too easily astro-turfed.

The fuck even is BeReal? LOL

I've been enjoying using Signal for "social media". I can share things with my friends without being subjected to ads or having my data mined.

There's also a promising Alpha app called Circles from Futo that uses Matrix to do something similar.

Every popular social media wants to maintain complete control and just shove content down your throat, rather than allow you to curate your feed at all. Even subscription-based ones like Strava give you absolutely no control over what's in your feed.

I would argue that the quality of content is in decline more than numerical users. Also, the quantity of ads are much much higher, which hides what little good content there is.

Mix that in with political splits in social media sites (from left leaning Lemmy to the Facebook right), and you generally find yourself in an echo chamber with little to surprise you, and a lot of things confirming what you already know.