Oh, and if you want to make people stop following you on Instagram, make your account private, then you can delete followers, and then you can go back to public if you want. I've gotten rid of a few strange followers that way.
All my social media is curated by me within an inch of its life. I will mute, block, remove, unfriend and unfollow as I see fit since it's my social media feed. I have no idea why anyone would allow social media to be in control to the level it is. I'm not talking about professional or personal accounts being doxxed/harassed/threatened and so on. I'm talking about the general user.
This is what I did.
Curating. That's a good way to describe it.
I wish I knew more about it, I get a certain sense at the moment that the whole ad game is carried out in a manner in which they are trying to dupe people or engaging in some sort of clever trickery, instead I think it'd be cool if there was some sort of conscious engagement with people for marketing and ads purposes, for making connections.
I've thought about this before when using Amazon and experiencing their predictive recommendations and stuff, which I would always think about, how they recommend fast moving consumer goods or consumer durables I couldnt use because I did not have the necessary platforms or precursory tech. I used to think it'd be cool if I could provide them with some sort of indepth survey rather than them engage in data mining and guess work on the back of the same.
Its something I've gotten more aware of on other social media platforms over the last couple of days. Like if I knew the algorithms I think I could use them instead of how they behave at the moment. Although maybe if I knew more about them they would not work, like a placebo drug. I do wonder about that.
Do any of you engage in regular unfollowing or purges of social media accounts?
For a few days I've been unfollowing and changing things to see how it works and it really does transform things. So I wondered if anyone else does this?
I don't use social media, outside of a Linkedin account that is strictly limited to work contacts. I don't purge that, since my network changes mostly with the addition of new contacts. As for the Amazon suggestions you referenced in another post, I don't want merchant websites to suggest products to me. I don't want anyone or anything to track my online activity and take note of what I like, use, or purchase, for marketing or any other purpose. I block ads on all sites, so it is irrelevant whether they match my interests or not. I won't see them. I run a host of privacy browser extensions, and make transactions as a guest whenever possible. I don't have a Google account, and don't login to sites like Youtube, so any suggestions come solely from what I have watched in a given browser session. Even with all this, it probably doesn't block all tracking, but it seems to catch most of it and is certainly better than the alternative. Whenever I hear people complain about the nature of ads targeted at them, or the fact that they must endure ads on platforms like Youtube at all, I realize that it does in fact help. I tend to be paranoid, though, especially online.Do any of you engage in regular unfollowing or purges of social media accounts? I'm not thinking of people to be honest, a lot of the settings allow people to connect to others without them ever actually seeing each others content or accessing it, its just a connection and often an easier means to contact someone via a messenger app.
I'm thinking about all the passtimes, hobby or interests accounts, I figure that you can actually see updates from about four at most, with the ads and updates from friends accounts that you do follow, but you may be liking, following or adding more since the time you originally followed those accounts.
For a few days I've been unfollowing and changing things to see how it works and it really does transform things. So I wondered if anyone else does this?
I even know someone who has told me they do this about once every two or three months. This is quite apart from the whole paranoia about the exploits or hacks or tracking of personal disclosures or paranoia about profiling (profilers are more interested in people who have no social media than those that do presently). Even if you like the idea of tailored content etc. the way it can be changed with random likes and shares is pretty surprising.
I do the same - save the links rather than sign into anything, and stay as anonymous as possible when searching. Perhaps it is because I am older, but I have not been subject to too much peer pressure to join social media or create online accounts. The few people I know who communicate primarily via facebook know to reach me by email or text. If younger folks are figuring out that social media are not all they were cracked up to be, so much the better.There was peer pressure and so many requests to 'create X account' and follow and whatever back at school, and I'm glad I'm at an age where my peers seem to have aged out of that kind of badgering.
Hobby accounts? I barely follow anyone, too. I bookmark / save the link to the profile or just do searches, and in incognito. (This is also why I completely forget to actually shoot people friend requests when I want to, it's out of habit.)
I do the same - save the links rather than sign into anything, and stay as anonymous as possible when searching. Perhaps it is because I am older, but I have not been subject to too much peer pressure to join social media or create online accounts. The few people I know who communicate primarily via facebook know to reach me by email or text.
If younger folks are figuring out that social media are not all they were cracked up to be, so much the better.
Keeping up with the Joneses is overrated, in RL or online. Each generation of school students has had their list of what peers need to do to be "cool". I was no more responsive to such pressure regarding the criteria when I was in school than you seem to have been. I got involved in what made sense to me, and as you say, attracting the attention of slews of people didn't. I was more interested in quality than quantity. Even in my Linkedin page, I connect with people only when I actually interact with them professionally, or have an interest in their work.I think this is something about the younger generation, yes. I notice that when older folks don't have social media (especially more 'trendy' things like instagram, snapchat, twitter, etc) they're seen as a lost cause and won't really be asked to make any, but when you're young and in school you're 'not cool' unless you have a bajillion accounts with hundreds of followers (nothing I had ever cared for, and if not having them helped keep people off of me, the better).
From my POV, it's like keeping up with the Joneses in digital form and at the click of a button. What a headache. People advertise themselves and talk about getting you more friends (contacts) for your account as if that's a good thing. No thanks. I doubt people are able to personally invest in hundreds of people and the aggregate of thousands of posts they make daily, so I can only wonder what the appeal is for people who do this other than the obvious social flashiness.
LinkedIn has even increasingly felt more like Facebook clone in recent years. Quite frustrating because I think it’s one of the only useful forms of social media and the only one I use regularly.
I have a profile there and I keep it mostly updated but I don't go there anymore to connect with anyone because it's just FB with job postings now. Which is too bad because it started out as a really useful professional tool.