The Last Days Of Social Media | as AI slop and sexbots kill mass social media networks, "a billion little gardens" sprout in their place | NOEMA

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www.noemamag.com/the-last-days-of-social-media

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That was a great read. Let's hope the author is right with most of it, especially the part where they predict an upcoming focus on teaching media/information literacy as a tool of societal resilience.

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Today I learned a new term, bot girl econony

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What an absolutely beautiful headline

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https://www.staygrounded.online/p/future-grandmasters-of-the-attention

Ahead of the news cycle as always

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OP

But someday after that, we’ll reach a point when the phrase “social media is all fake robo-crap” will be as common of knowledge as “cigarettes cause cancer” or “slot machines are a poor investment”. Adults can still smoke and slot, sure. But nobody in the developed world can say they weren’t warned of the risks.

Prescient.

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Maybe today’s major social media platforms will find new ways to hold the gaze of the masses, or maybe they will continue to decline in relevance, lingering like derelict shopping centers or a dying online game, haunted by bots and the echo of once‑human chatter.

Occasionally we may wander back, out of habit or nostalgia, or to converse once more as a crowd, among the ruins. But as social media collapses on itself, the future points to a quieter, more fractured, more human web, something that no longer promises to be everything, everywhere, for everyone.
This is a good thing.

Man, something about this article really hit me.
The internet used to be a playground, and we've all noticed it becoming noisier and nastier of late. But this article points out that it's a legit warzone now, a flesh market, a prison.

We keep coming back like caged monkeys hugging their wire mothers harder and harder the lonelier they feel. Fuck this noise. It's barely habitable for adults, it's absolutely no place for the younger generations to grow up. Idk how we let it get so bad, or what to do, but the entire thing needs cleaning up.

I'm thinking more 'anti competition law' and 'holding social media companies responsible for harms,' as suggested in the article, but in my head I'm imagining some glorious expulsion of Elon Musk, advertisers, and data collectors from the world wide web, like driving the devils from the garden of Eden (which, btw, seems like a trick the Christian God missed).

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