Politics and News

Social Media is Dead, Long Live Social Media

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And other Hyperbolic click baity headlines.

Two articles today.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/mastodon-becomes-nonprofit-to-make-sure-its-never-ruined-by-billionaire-ceo/

And

https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unprecedented-growth-Facebook-blocks-links-to-Instagram-alternative-Pixelfed-10237928.html

Basically, Mastodon, the Federated Open Source client for microblogging is shifting itself to be a not for profit company. John Mastodon os no longer in control. Or, he won’t be. These things apparently take a few months to do. Tangentially related, its picture centric counterpart Pixelfed, has experienced unprecedented growth. I saw one post where a Pixelfed instance was no longer allowing Instagram importing and Facebook is apparently blocking links to Pixelfed.

Both of these moves are very good for the internet as a whole, but they also feel very much sparked by Facebook’s recently policy changes. Basically, as part of its push to bown down to the incoming administration, Zuck has shown his true colors and rolled out a new policy that fact checking is no longer a thing on Facebook. Instead it will rely on “user notes.” At the same time, and more maliciously, they also changed their policies around hate speech, with specific exceptions around calling out LGBTQ people as being mentally disabled. Basically, you can’t get banned anymore for hate speech against the LGBTQ crowd.

This pretty much aligns with the plans of the incoming administration to start stripping away people’s rights as rapidly as possible, starting with transgender folks, probably pushing through on gay marriage and gay rights, and eventually layering on top a good helping of removing women’s autonomy from US society.

With the destruction facts and reality on Twitter, and now Facebook, basically, propaganda and lies are set to take over. We already saw it on Twitter.

This change isn’t the only anti-LBGTQ thing happening on Facebook. They renamed (one report said removed, one renamed) some of the Pride themes on Messenger to be more generic (Example, I want to say the lesbian pride was now “rustic sunrise” or something). I also saw some people suggest they had had various pride based badging removed from their username and profiles.

I do feel like its a bit more though, than just the new policies. But I am sure that is a lot of it. I don’t use Instagram really anymore, the algorithm has destroyed my interest in that platform, but I follow the Instagram subreddit. In the past few months, there have been a massive influx of accounts and people being randomly banned from the platform by the new AI based moderation system. It doesn’t really tell why either. Just the vague, “violation of site policy.”

So, it does seem there are still ways to get banned, but just not for LGBTQ hate speech.

Not to be overtaken by Twitter and Facebook, WordPress, has also been making a huge stink for its users lately. Its much less in the came of hate speech, but more in the area of, “Their CEO is just being a weird, petty whiney bully.” There is some sort of feud going on between WordPress and something called WPEngine, which is apparently a popular WP host, but I had never heard of it before this recent events. Like I said, it all seems very petty. Like the log in form for WordPress had a checkbox that said, “I am not affiliated with WPEngine for a bit. When people complained it was changed to “Pineapple on Pizza is good.” There have been other similar incidents.

I have been mostly ignoring it from apathy, but lately, it feels like WP just wants to bring in and potentially monetize the shit out of everything, and its got me seriously considering changing my blog platform, despite that I am hosting the software on my own VPS. I have been looking at doing some sort of static site system for a while, its starting to really feel like its time to be serious.

Windows

Windows 10 End of Life

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I got a notice today on my secondary Desktop about Windows 10 going out of support later this year. Microsoft really wants people to upgrade to Windows 11.

Like, a lot.

I mean, I get it, and I have no problem with updating. I use Windows 11 at work, I use it on my main desktop. Aside from the annoyance that the Task Bar can’t be docked on the side or top, I don’t really notice.

But I can’t, not on this PC, due to…. Reasons…? Windows 11 is essentially just, Windows 10 under the hood, it seems really weird that I can’t update this machine. Its most likely due to age. But this kind of leads me to another point.

This PC works just fine.

Its just my previous desktop, off to the side. It does everything I need it to do, just fine. It could even do more than I need it to do, just fine. I mostly use it to run Docker Containers and to host files. I occasionally use it to run a second Fortnite instance to play Bot Matches. It has gobs of memory for doing whatever task I throw at it, I have considered getting a better GPU for it to do AI stuff with it (it already has a very nice GPU, just not, AI nice).

Probably, at some point, I will just blow it out and load Ubuntu on it. I will lose my Fortnite ability probably, but I am kind of done with that anyway. I have already been slowly winding down my use needs that are Windows dependant there. I need to figure out the process of transferring my Docker containers over first. I may test things out using my Laptop first, which already runs Linux.

Which is another set of contention here. I went ahead and just replaced Windows 10 on my 10 year old Laptop. It still, ran just fine. I primarily use it for writing and coding, but I do play some games on it too. Thankfully, Steam has made great strides in getting Linux support in the gaming world.

But its not just my laptop. All 3 of my kids and my wife have laptops. My son has a desktop as well. Only one of these laptops is Windows 11 compatible. I have no idea on my son’s desktop. But all of these PCs work plenty fine.

I know I keep pushing this, “It works fine” point, but part of that is because the Windows 11 “requirements” really feel like a weird appeasement to PC makers to try to “encourage people to upgrade hardware.” I feel like these people are greatly overestimating just how often people buy new hardware. I had a neighbor at my old place with a Windows XP machine he would ask me to work on sometimes. The reality is, an XP machine would work just fine for what he needed.

PC power basically just, plateaued in usefulness a decade or so ago. It kind of feels like why there is such a big push for AI crap as well. “Get the new PC with an NPU! Get AI locally somit can make stuff up without the cloud!”

I could put Linux on some of these machines, but I already get grief over having to occasionally fix things on my family’s laptops as it is, I don’t really need that extra layer of grief AND a learning curve. I know its all much easier now, but like the upgrade cycle, its a “regular people” thing. Its a “Why doesn’t this scanner software work” thing, or a “why can’t Install my SIMS game” thing.

Though I will say this, for my case. Linux Mint runs 1000x better than Windows 10 did. I do get occasional weird lock ups though, which is annoying. Seems to be some sort of memory issue with Firefox because it happens if I get too ambitious with tabs, which I very often do. Its fine fine, then suddenly, the shole system is unresponsive.

But it also helps that I know how to use Linux already. I have been using it on some level now for like 25 years. I failed to install it the first time while at college in the early 2000s. But I have used it since. And prefer it.

Opinion/Editorial/Life

A Project a Year in the Making

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Ok, calling it a project is a bit of a stretch. Its something I have been doing for the past year, that really worked out well. Its not even something I can show off, quite the contrary.

I have been cleaning up my old Facebook posts.

Its something I have tried to do a few times, except Facebook does not really provide a good interface for browsing old posts. Its there, but its clunky and prone to “refresh and start over.”

A lot of my early posts were thing like, Friendfeed and Social Media shares or even just straight Tweets posted to Facebook. They don’t serve any purpose. Not that anyone is scrolling way back to see all that garbage.

I wanted to delete it though, for a variety of reasons, then even moreso with all this AI crap feeding from everyone’s data.

So last year, I had a bit of a revelation. Facebook, has a daily “Memories” page, that shows all your old posts from that day, to encourage you to reshare your old posts as memories. Each post on this page, has the standard Facebook menu on it, which includes a delete option.

So I simply, made a point, of once a day, deleting everything.

Not everything, but a lot.

One thing I learned was that my current trend of “not really using Facebook”, has been my “always trend.”

This just goes back to a large desire to just, being everything back to my own control and my own blog. Its always kind of been that way, but lately I have been actively pursuing it. Even though I post to Bluesky and Mastodon, everything feeds back here in hidden categories, so in the future, I don’t have to sort it out and archive it. I already have the archive.

Another Facebook related one is Instagram. I have always kind of disliked Instagram because unless you use the platform a lot, it doesn’t show your stuff to anyone. If no one is going to see my stuff, I may as well just post it to my own blog. I have been doing that some here already with my “Snaps” posts. Just, posts with single photos. I am going to set up something similar over on Lameazoid with Toys stuff, and maybe game screen shots. I have a ton of toy photos to schedule put for daily posts. I also have a ton of random game screen shots. It would not even be the first time I made a website around random screen shots, I had a Geocities site for that back in the days of dial up.

Anyway, I am kind of happy I managed to keep up with my Daily Facebook deletions all year. It really shows now because my “Memories” pages are suddenly very barren.

Opinion/Editorial/Life

The Dead Internet Reality

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Facebook and Instagram introduce AI bot ‘user’ accounts

Hey Facebook, you ok there?

Meta plans to roll out generative AI (genAI) characters on Facebook and Instagram this year in an effort to boost user engagement.

Also, they apparently also deleted these accounts after the backlash, with some excuse about it being a “test product” and that it was run by humans on the backend. You know it will come back though. These companies have wasted too much time and money on this AI garbage to turn back now.

But one, I don’t know why they need to do this, these platforms are already overrun with AI “influencers”. And those influencers are already posting what they know will drive traffic, AI ladies with boobs and skimpy clothing. Not boring AI soccer moms.

Two, and, less jokingly, if they want to drive user engagement, then maybe they could try promoting… engagement with… users?

I can only speak to how I use Facebook, but I have heard plenty of people say they don’t really use it anymore because it never shows them what they want. Same for Instagram. I have no idea about Threads, for the “Microblogging Wars” I have already given up on Threads. My OpenVibe app crossposts to it, when I remember to use it instead of the native clients, but at this point, I am just, Bluesky and Mastodon. Bluesky for “what’s hip and current and meme-able”, Mastodon as the underlying pulse of the old-school nerdy internet.

But I am not here to discuss other platforms, just Facebook’s various platforms. I’ve established I don’t use Threads. I really don’t use Instagram either. Insteagram is like 90% videos now, which I absolutely LOATHE. I want photos, I use Instagram for PHOTOS. If I wanted videos I would use TikTok or Youtube, but I don’t really want videos ever. I check on TikTok like once a month to catch up on the 3 accounts I actually care about.

Instagram is also way too inundated with ads every other post. And yes, I am including “you might like this” in ads. I want to see posts from people I followed, I followed them for a reason, because I found their posts interesting, or in some cases because they were not “amazing” but I want to feel encouraging. Because I know I am in that latter group. Because I don’t need to ONLY see perfect, edited, amazing 10,000 likes photos, I want to see the 2-likes mediocre ones too.

But instead, it just keeps suggesting things to me, or showing ads.

Facebook has a similar problem. They want users to interact and comment and treat their groups like little forums. But then when I join a group, or like a page, it never actually shows me that content. Just, more suggestions. I don’t need to join 10 Aurora fan groups and a dozen Retro Gaming groups, show me content from the ones I am already in damn it.

And I definitely don’t need these spaces filled with AI garbage. Because these fake “influencers” are only going to be used to promote more ads. When I look for suggestions from people, I want real people who have actually used this crap, not some AI trained on an ad read.

Speaking of broken and dead internet, when pulling a quote, for context, from another website, it copied and pasted an additional hidden section as well…

Like, thats not how this work, that’s not how any of this works. The internet is made for sharing. I don’t think Financial Times would sue me or anything for removing their stupid blub, but instead, I just changed the quote and linked news article. So now you get nothing FT.

Bravo. Now the marketer website can get the zero click-throughs I generated by linking it.

Language

2024 Duolingo Wrap-Up

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Hola,

Soy Ramen. Pero no la comida, se llama Ramen, en el internet. Apredio Espanol por michos anos ahora. Probablemente is muy mala, pero intentando.

Esta entrada del blog es mi “2024 Duolingo Wrap Up.” Donde escribo sobre mi progreso usando Duolingo por el ano passado. Senti que una buena idea escribir en español. Pero no estoy tan seguro.

Solamente hago mejor si intento. Mi estilo de escribo es no muy bueno por traducer en espanol. Esta demaciado …. rambling.

I don’t know what rambling is in Spanish… I could translate it, and I have been sort of using a translator, but I kind of want to stick to works I know that I have learned and know already. Oh look, another rambling long run on sentence.

Anyway, maybe I should start making some actual written notes to help drive the learning in a bit more.

Does that metaphor even work in Spanish? “Conducir esta en mas” says it translates to “Driving is on the rise”. Not quite the same meaning as “Driving it in more”.

Mandar en mas? Maybe? It doesn’t need the “esta”, I don’t know why I though ot needed an “esta.”

Idiomas son difíciles.

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