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   Tristan Harward (trisweb@m.trisweb.com)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Feb-2025 10:28:58 JST Tristan Harward

   in reply to

   Elephant in the room: #Mastodon and the #Fediverse are certainly less addictive, less time sucking, less attention seeking, and more wholesome and social than corporate socials.

   But they are not perfect. The drug is still the same, and we should be very careful to not just replace one form of time suck with another.

   Especially as we design open social experiences, this should be a paramount consideration and a design goal. Non-addictive and life-affirming social media should be a design goal for the Fediverse and the future of social media in general.

   • Embed this notice
     Tristan Harward (trisweb@m.trisweb.com)'s status on Tuesday, 25-Feb-2025 10:28:59 JST Tristan Harward

     We (or really, I, personally, but I think you also) should think of #SocialMedia primarily as a brain-rotting time suck that genuinely significantly ruins our lives, rather than a small inconvenience or leisure activity.

     Corporate social media saps us of our time, attention, focus, sense of reality, self-confidence, and self-determination. It is a net negative for almost every single person I’ve talked to about it. It steals our life from us.

     I know when I’m older, I will not care about how much Reddit karma I have, or how many upvotes I got on witty comments. I won’t care how much time I spent endlessly watching video loops, or what influencers I saw. It’s all meaningless time theft.

     Treat it more like a hard drug in your mind, not a harmless little thing. Act and decide accordingly.

     Mr. Bill repeated this.