Big Tech doesn’t run social media. It runs algorithmic advertising platforms.

The majority of people using algorithmic advertising platforms are not content creators, they’re consumers (if you’re reading this, you’re probably not in the majority). They have no interest is active participation in “social media”. They’re in it for the entertainment, the distraction, the memes, the algorithm telling them what they should care about. You can’t remove this feature and expect these users to find content for themselves.

You can argue the pros and cons all you want, your reasoning may be factual and altruistic, but you will not get a substantial portion of content consumers to migrate to platforms that require more effort. They know what they’re signing up for. They have no interest in “reclaiming social media”.

Bluesky and Mastodon are fantastic platforms that, in my opinion, revive some of the core tenants of social microblogging. But this is like comparing a bulletin board system (BBS) to the Yahoo! homepage. Some people want to be involved, some people want to be told.

One of these platforms offers a greater profit making opportunity than the other. If one allows people to make money and another does not, what’s the motivation for the most influential of creators to embrace the latter? And then what’s the motivation of the consumers to embrace a platform that lacks the most influential creators? (Again, if you’re reading this, you likely aren’t a member of the majority.)

This is not Microsoft. I haven’t updated my plex software in over six months and it runs fine. Still, yes, I would expect updates to any software I purchase as new patches are needed for OS updates, etc. That shouldn’t be more than two updates a year for a given OS - if at all.

Selling a product, generating revenue, using revenue to improve products or create new products is how we used to run businesses.

If they’re unable to maintain software updates with the revenue they get, then they should discontinue support of less popular products.

As I’ve stated on the plex forum, plex is no longer a media management and consumption platform. It’s a video on demand service. That’s their prerogative and that’s fine. The issue is that they’re discontinuing a product that people have purchased and use on a regular basis. I paid money for a product and that product can no longer be used if I change the device I use that product on. They should have left the existing product alone and released something wholly new.

I bought a media management and consumption platform running on my own server using my own clients. For what reason do I need a relay service to watch content in my house on my server?

So what is the move for them?

Plex has a two-pronged VOD service. They have ad-supported “live television” and they have content to rent.

I don’t know if that’s enough to sustain them but I don’t really care. I’ve been a PlexPass owner for over ten years. I have only asked that they resolve bugs and made requests for things like proper organization of classical music (which they’ve explicitly stated they will not consider).

You do bring to light something I hadn’t considered; that they see Plex as a business model. From my perspective, I want to buy a fully developed product with the expectation of bug fixes and security patches etc over time. I genuinely can not think of a single thing the developers have added to the service that I’ve used in the past ten years.

So, what kind of business model charges money to do things that don’t have an apparent impact on the user experience?

Plex has been one of my most used applications in the past decade. However, it has its limitations and they are actively imposing more limitations on the experience in favor of “a sustainable business model”.

The issue is that their sustainable business model is interrupting the users’ sustained use of a platform they’ve already paid for. I’ve had to go through all of my devices and disable all auto-updates to ensure I do not get the “New Plex Experience”.

What we should be asking is why “selling a product” is no longer a business model.

Another longtime user here. If you haven’t already, you might want to disable autoupdates on all your devices. The “new experience” is not without its controversies.

Because, contrary to what you may think you’ve observed over the past ten+ years, copying and republishing anyone’s content without their permission is a US copyright infringement.

So yeah; if you want to get their permission, ensure all their links and such are migrated over, and do all the work for them to mirror content they’ve created without the benefit of making any money on it, have at it.

I think you bring up a good point about college and high school classmates. I don’t personally care about this but I imagine millions of others do. IMO, these groups should maintain their own social platforms. If you want to keep in touch with your classmates from Harvard, Harvard (or a private student counsel board) should maintain a forum for you.

Right - you want to post a picture of your kid for family, classmates, friends, coworkers to see all at once. Well, that’s (supposedly) where the fediverse comes in.

The fediverse, of what I know of it, is still lacking a lot of these tools that would be useful to people. People are pushing it really hard but it is not ready for the masses.

Personally, as someone who hasn’t had a FB account for well over five years, it’s super weird to me that you need it to “keep up with family and friends”. You’re using a data harvesting, advertising, and propaganda platform to conduct personal communications. There was a time when this was done using nothing more than the United States Post Office and the telephone. So, we probably have the technology to keep in touch today while excluding Facebook.

In response to your concern with privacy controls: it’s not federated and I can only assume they’re being honest about privacy, you might consider looking at Vero. It has up-front tools to control who sees what.

Still, I would encourage people to minimize their reliance on any platform owned by someone else to maintain relationships. At someone point, something will break, will be hacked, will go out of business. Do you think Facebook will exist for 25 to 50 years from now? When it goes, all your photos and videos and conversations go with it. When someone dies, all the memories they’ve captured are gone. Hashtag: bring back photo albums.

I’ll admit, the buzz around FB Marketplace has tempted me to sign up again. Mostly because ebay fees are insane. I’ve resorted to either putting things out for free pickup or using hobby-specific websites with buy/sell forums. Plus the occasional sidewalk sale. Life existed before Facebook. It was a slower life. So, just have to be more patient sometimes.

There’s absolutely a need for a public space for friends, businesses, venues, city halls, journalists, et al to congregate. It used to be a literal town hall, radio, newspapers, and weekly periodicals. And then AOL, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. All of these need some sort of funding to operate efficiently - either by tax payers, subscriptions, or advertising. This need for funding is what screws everything up.

There also used to be a time when Instagram was relevant. Then they introduced the algorithmic timeline, which meant I wouldn’t see event announcements for days after they occurred. Advertisers want results so engagement is more important than informing the public. If someone finds what they want at the top of their feed and clicks out of the app, that’s less opportunity to show ads.

Twitter used to be the best way to find out what was happening in real time in my immediate vicinity. Places stopped posting on there, the algorithm took over, then you know who took over. I’m hopeful about Bluesky but I’m not sure how they’re paying the bills.

This might not cover all the venues but you might be able to find booking agents with newsletters you can subscribe to. Promoting concerts should be one of those things where venues are desperate to use all sorts of platforms to get people in the door. Local radio stations are usually pretty good at promoting smaller shows on their websites too. My local newspaper is actually one of my best resources for discovering new venues and pop ups.

One of my local breweries was publishing an rss calendar feed for their weekly events. This was awesome until their “subscription” expired at the end of the year (not sure why they don’t just have a google calendar). I should speak with the owner to see what her reasoning was. My suspicion is that they want to track engagement on Instagram and the newsletters.

On the other hand, we have the essentially donation-funded fediverse. I’ve been wanting to see servers pop up to host certain things. For example, something like montreal-gov.social and montreal-shows.social where there’s dedicated federated instances for public congregation. I’m not sure if there’s a calendar function in the fediverse but it would seem reasonable to invest effort in. I’m really hoping this is the direction we’re going in. It just makes a lot of sense.

The problem is that Facebook isn’t just about keeping up with your friends and family. It’s an engagement platform designed to keep your attention by showing you memes and “news” and videos and ads that it knows you like. Most people have become addicted to this slow and steady stream of dopamine. You’re not going to get people off their crack addiction by substituting it with marijuana.

As these social platforms become more powerful, it’s up to each of us to personally find the strength to wean ourselves away from these platforms that once promised socialization but have quickly become little more than propaganda and influencing and ad-serving machines.

It’s great we’re seeing some alternatives but, aside from a small cohort, most people are not going to find the likes of Bluesky, Mastodon, or Lemmy engaging enough to give them that hit that they’re used to.

All hail the algorithm.

Personally, I used to be the early adopter who was on all these platforms well before most of the public heard about them. In recent years, I’ve either deleted or stopped using my social accounts (or have chosen to use less engaging ones, like Lemmy). This has given me more time to live a life.

Boredom is something I embrace. Rather than turning to a screen to occupy me; I’ll take a nap, make some tea, journal, go for a walk, do some cleaning, build something, practice something, read a book or comic. It’s not as dynamic, for sure, but I get to experience and learn more about myself instead of needlessly observing the lives of others. Boredom offers a renewed sense of self and humanity. Frankly, I’m afraid younger generations won’t know what benefits and beauty boredom has to offer.

I haven’t really been using it but I wanted to throw a shoutout to https://spacehey.com/