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Free vs. common
2018.07.05 20:58:11 CEST
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I've spent the majority of the previous weeks on vacation and
consequently offline most of the time. This meant being away from
the little social network presence I still keep and the IM apps I
use (Telegram, Wire, Slack, Whatsapp etc.).
When I came back, I spent some time catching up with recent topics.
Because I'm attending Gophercon in Brazil, I also got notification
for messages in my almost defunct Twitter account - so I checked
Twitter out (after many months).
This little contact I had with the "social" internet opened my eyes
to how anti-social it really is. People are talking at or over each
other. Almost no conversations, just posturing and virtue signaling.
When people do appear to agree on a controversial topic, the
positive feedback virtue signaling is obvious. When they disagree,
cursing and personal attacks.
I am a free speech extremist - I believe very little, almost no
restriction should be imposed on speech. But I do think it
should be valued and well planned. By giving everyone a podium,
public speech became common and it's value diminished.
All this antisocial behavior made me less prone to go back and
use these products again. Am I missing something? Are there valuable
and/or intelligent posts? Sure. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's
worth the cost anymore.