Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

Social media (facebook and twitter primarily) is the worst thing that happened to people since WW2...

Dozen years or so ago, even before Facebook went public, I told my friends and relatives that it’s a bad platform and does more harm than good. I was made a mockery of it then, and some came around now, and sadly some of them still don’t get it... Oh well...

Musk is a bad dude, and he is at the helm of a bad platform...

BWE is my oasis.

Twitter just needs to make me it’s benevolent dictator, I’ll fix the problem.

I’m not a Twitter guy, and I’m deleting my seldom used Facebook page. Eventually I just want to disappear back into the stardust from whence we came.

I don’t have Fakebook or Twitter accounts. Agree they’ve been major contributors to both polarization and dumbfu**erization.

But say the subject line out loud...doesn't it sound like a dial up modem trying to connect??!!

Tom In DC wrote: ↑Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:37 am But say the subject line out loud...doesn't it sound like a dial up modem trying to connect??!!

Ok, boomer!

DavidG wrote: ↑Sun Nov 20, 2022 11:08 pm David Simon says “Die of Boils, Mr. Sparky Car”

This is great David, thank you.

Tom In DC wrote: ↑Mon Nov 21, 2022 2:37 am But say the subject line out loud...doesn't it sound like a dial up modem trying to connect??!!

Tom

I use Facebook, it was mainly to see who of my friends was having a birthday so I could be polite and say Happy Birthday. Then Facebook decided for me who was and wasn't a real friend and stopped showing me most birthdays. Now I barely open it once a week.

I use Instagram, my grown kids sometimes post photos, it's a way of keeping up with them. Unfortunately, there are so many stupid tik-tok videos on Instagram now, it's turning into a useless platform.

I never used snapchat or tik-tok

I use Twitter though. I never post there. I use it to get news from new sources like Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal, the NYTimes, the Jerusalem Post as well as sports news. I also get updates for weather and traffic in my area. The headlines are short and to the point.

Between the ridiculous amount of clickbait and spam I get on News Aggregators (whose algorithm decided that my interest are mainly Camp Lejeune class action suit and Tom and Gisele's divorce) the only way I have of getting short, semi unbiased headline news is Twitter. I just hope Musk doesn't fuck it up.

The trick with Twitter, is never click on the responses to the news, never engage, never post. Basically never feed the trolls.

How do you guys get your news?

We have online subs to the WP and NYT, supplemented by Google searches linking to other outlets.

Peggy spends time on Twitter and also enjoys criticizing the bozos on CNN and MSNBC. Listening to that video version of clickbait just agitates me.

I use Flipboard for news. You can get different perspectives on the same story from various sources.

I have Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok accounts but rarely use them.

But, I do use Facebook to keep in touch with old friends. Like just last summer when I was at the beach, a friend I hadn't seen since high school (like 45 years ago) posted he and his wife were two blocks down. Got to meet them and then find out he lives near me in Gaithersburg! I don't see many political posts on my feed (except from my nutty cousins who believe every conspiracy theory they see.)

I have so many ways to waste time that I never felt the need for Facebook or Twitter.

My (admittedly negative) take/experience on Facebook was: (1) it usually made me like people less (sometimes a lot) than I liked them in person, and (2) it made it easy for people to find me that I didn't want to find me. So I deleted (or tried to delete, Facebook apparently never really deletes your profile) my account over 15 years ago and haven't missed it once.

Like a good liberal, I get 95% of my news listening to NPR, and reading the NYTimes and links provided on the RealClearPolitics aggregator site (ignoring the rightwing propaganda they leavening the real news with). I also read Paul Krugman's twitter feed.

So I do subscribe to the Bloomberg, the NYTIMES the WSJ, the Post, the Atlantic, and some journos Twitter feeds.
What I wanted is a good aggregator. For 30 years in finance I had a Reuters first and then a Bloomberg terminal with great news feeds. I can't replicate that no matter what.
Both Google news and Msn news have been very disappointing.

I subscribe to NYT online, I gave up my WSJ and Economist subscriptions this year because they’re too expensive. The WSJ news division is excellent and the op Ed’s are usually more substantive than the weak stuff produced over at the NYT, but the publisher editorials are just too right wing to take. I do miss the WSJ though and will probably renew it at some point.

I can’t wait to delete Facebook, I just gotta go through and see what I’m deleting.

I need to find a good space news website, DavidG and my brother Tom are the only people I know who are into the space program.