alt Hacker NewsText-based social media is cancer, the best example being X but also its derivatives, Facebook, Reddit etc. They are too susceptible to astroturfing, manipulation, political slop and outrage, bullying etc.
I get a lot of value out of Instagram despite its ongoing enslopification. It lets me keep up with old friends, share memes with my friends, and the reel algorithm never fails to put me in a good mood.
I'm 50/50 on HN, because even though it's a text-based platform it's not so bad compared to X for example.
I do think people will be drastically reevaluating their internet usage over the next decade tho, especially as the dead internet theory becomes more than just a theory and people return to the real world.
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X/Twitter is awful, but the difference is that I used to be able to follow channels I enjoyed, and there was often humour. Now I find I am seeing content that Twitter has selected for me rather than subscribed to.
As soon as non-text gets integrated in any meaningful way, it all goes down hill.
Text is fine. Text with some images that aren’t always integrated so well like forums are fine. Full on image/video media is just reptile brain fodder.