Although I'm no longer quite a teenager, I feel the same way as many of the opinions expressed in this article. Social media is just tiring. Coupled with the privacy concerns, pointless drama, and...
Although I'm no longer quite a teenager, I feel the same way as many of the opinions expressed in this article. Social media is just tiring. Coupled with the privacy concerns, pointless drama, and slot-machine-esque addictions it enforces, I feel much better off not engaging in most of it.
Sure, I still have a facebook account. I make a post maybe once a year, however. Still have Twitter, too. But I trimmed my tweets from over 1000 down to ~70 a few months ago. Snapchat? Deleted it last week.
My biggest social media platform is now IRC, believe it or not.
I'm surprised. As I understand PIA is only of the only VPNs which is legally proven to not collect logs. Multiple subpoenas from this year have shown that they can't provide any details on their...
I'm surprised. As I understand PIA is only of the only VPNs which is legally proven to not collect logs. Multiple subpoenas from this year have shown that they can't provide any details on their subscribers. They're the only VPN I'd recommend right now.
The whole "fourteen eyes" thing is such utter nonsense though. At best it is a red herring. If I was the CIA/NSA, this is exactly the sort of rumor I'd promote to drive people away from...
The whole "fourteen eyes" thing is such utter nonsense though. At best it is a red herring. If I was the CIA/NSA, this is exactly the sort of rumor I'd promote to drive people away from established names which are run by knowledgeable engineers and professionals in the developed world, before starting up my own VPN honeypots in fucking Kazakhstan and Bulgaria.
I'm not going to recommend any specific VPN, but I will say that if the fourteen eyes folks wants to see what you are doing over a VPN, they are either going to compromise your terminal, or they are going to honeypot you, or they are going to MITM your key swap. A VPN is not, and should never be assumed as an effective tool against government actors or sufficiently motivated organized crime.
I don't use a VPN regularly, but I've been using Mullvad for the last while and have been really happy with it. About the only complaint I had was that it was a bit annoying to set up on my phone...
I don't use a VPN regularly, but I've been using Mullvad for the last while and have been really happy with it. About the only complaint I had was that it was a bit annoying to set up on my phone (and more difficult to switch servers), but it still wasn't really that bad.
Please do not use NordVPN, just because they have the shadiest, most misleading ads. I hate how they try to scare people into being afraid that their ISP is spying on them, and then imply that...
Please do not use NordVPN, just because they have the shadiest, most misleading ads. I hate how they try to scare people into being afraid that their ISP is spying on them, and then imply that using the VPN doesn't just shift that same privacy concern from the gateway ISP to NordVPN.
I thought for sure the internet nerd community would jump on them for these commercials, but I've been seeing the name pop up all over reddit and on relatively trusted youtube channels without even a mention of this.
See, of the ones you mentioned, snapchat is really the only one I like, specifically because it solves a lot of the issues with social media fatigue IMO. It makes no pretense about identity...
See, of the ones you mentioned, snapchat is really the only one I like, specifically because it solves a lot of the issues with social media fatigue IMO. It makes no pretense about identity verification and doesn't herd you towards global visibility like facebook and twitter try so hard to do.
Like, for my part, the ideal social media platform would be a properly encrypted version of snapchat which would allow you to establish a secure connection with someone by exchanging public keys in person (like, tap to connect) or a slightly less secure connection by exchanging keys through a trusted middle node (someone you have met, who has met person C).
I have been kicking it around for two or three years at this point and have started the prototype three different times before life gets in the way. It's brilliant because it facilitates what I'd...
I have been kicking it around for two or three years at this point and have started the prototype three different times before life gets in the way.
It's brilliant because it facilitates what I'd consider to be a framework for a truly secure, distributed, private social network which moves social networking into local meatspace, rather than allowing us to isolate ourselves at a distance. But it also potentially pushes all the right social networking buttons - "I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Taylor Swift!"
More than anything though, it helps solve the critical problem with strong encryption - how do you get the unwashed masses to bother with it? This implements it in a way which gives the masses what they want - an entirely new way to be vain with cell phones. To the plebs, it's "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" in app form. To nerds, it's secure comms which doesn't paint you as a target.
My biggest problems so far:
My knowledge of low level crypto implementation is like maybe a 6-7 out of 10 - not quite the level of expertise I'd consider sufficient to make the claim of "strong crypto."
The key storage problem. This has two sides:
2.1 - How do you let people recover their keys after they inevitably lose their devices? Or do they just lose everything when that happens? People are not going to make local backups, and cloud backups would break the chain of custody.
2.2 - The biggest weakness to any PKI setup is always terminal security. Cell phones are basically the least secure terminals there are, and there's a thousand different ways to side-channel them. To really do this right, the secure channel would need a secure container at the application layer as well.
Peer to peer networking on cell phones is a huge headache. Running servers to link clients is fine since all the payload encryption is e2e, but that's just another thing I don't have time to do.
1). Yeah, the problem there is crypto nerds still will give you grief even if you're 15/10. 2.1). How about a password encrypted backup. Something like boxcrypter? 2.1). Have you taken a look at...
1). Yeah, the problem there is crypto nerds still will give you grief even if you're 15/10.
2.1). How about a password encrypted backup. Something like boxcrypter?
2.1). Have you taken a look at the crypto model Signal uses? I seem to remember them using nested crypto.
3). IDK man, maybe some sort of WireGuard VPN protocol where each device is a server and client? Probably won't work with people moving around. Maybe it just needs to be a custom integration and front-end for a Riot implementation?
Yeah, password encrypted backups on the cloud is probably "good enough," but without a 2FA token it's still vulnerable to phishing and password re-use. And token/authenticator 2FA is high friction...
Yeah, password encrypted backups on the cloud is probably "good enough," but without a 2FA token it's still vulnerable to phishing and password re-use. And token/authenticator 2FA is high friction in terms of mass adoption.
One other thing I am exploring is Neural Cryptography, which offers an interesting possibility for small-scale trust propagation without the explicit need to maintain certificates and key archives. Your password defines a NN template and trust is established through something called "bidirectional learning" to synchronize network weights to produce keys. Even if someone gets your password they don't actually have your keys, just what is essentially half of a generator function, which still then requires many rounds of challenge/response to synchronize with a peer. Since this is an active process, it needs to be approved by all endpoints involved, meaning it is very strong with proper opsec (eg, people actually taking the time to verify re-sync requests), and one compromised node does not necessarily break trust across the entire network.
The major problem is that the synchronization process is computationally intensive, but these new "neural processors" which are making it into more and more phones might help with that.
Smart kid. Its one thing to recognize a toxic pattern, or at least be made aware of one -- and its another to act on it. Pretty bold for someone at an age where 'fitting in' is typically the...
“You start doing things that are dishonest,” says Amanuel, who quit social media aged 16. “Like Instagram: I was presenting this dishonest version of myself, on a platform where most people were presenting dishonest versions of themselves.”
Smart kid.
Its one thing to recognize a toxic pattern, or at least be made aware of one -- and its another to act on it. Pretty bold for someone at an age where 'fitting in' is typically the primary goal.
I'm in my late 30s, and for me and my social circle, social media is nearly dead. The few that do post only post either baby photos or special photos (trips, etc.)
That being said, those with accounts still uses facebook for events.
Looking back, all of these sentiments I have now echo those in my circle who refused to get into social media in the first place. I admire people who have the foresight or whatever to see a technology for what it is.
Slightly related, it's interesting to see how social media, and even newer technology affects older people. I'm talking about my peers (I'm 27, so I guess anybody 20-30, and older). If this trend...
Slightly related, it's interesting to see how social media, and even newer technology affects older people. I'm talking about my peers (I'm 27, so I guess anybody 20-30, and older). If this trend keeps building, it'll be interesting to see what happens in terms of older generations who got hooked on these innovations, and younger generations who grew up with it, adapted to it, and are somewhat resistant, I guess, to the influences of technology, especially where it's engineered to be addictive.
They're resistant almost certainly because they aren't (yet) the target of the same things. Compare the success of companies making games for kids like Crossy Road - in that they are squarely the...
They're resistant almost certainly because they aren't (yet) the target of the same things. Compare the success of companies making games for kids like Crossy Road - in that they are squarely the target demographic, and they get taken hook line and sinker.
Facebook targets an older demo (25-35) than say Instagram/Snapchat (15-25), and they're all very successful at what they do. So far to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a single social media platform of any kind able to simultaneously retain their ageing users and accept in their original age group. And even them most of them age with their users until they die off, that sticking with an age group as a sort of user pipeline (an actually sustainable model) I've only seen in things like 4chan.
The major, MAJOR reason for this is the combination of who has the money to target, and who is making the platforms. What will almost certainly happen is somewhere out there is a ~12 year old with an idea that will appeal to all his fellow 10-14 year olds, and when he hits ~20 he will build it, get muscled out of it by what is now a more tech-savvy VC/incubator environment which will go on to be the next big hit with that younger group.
It really is interesting -- one gets the feeling that a significant portion of the success of a lot of these platforms comes though an ability to exploit those with a lower degree of media...
It really is interesting -- one gets the feeling that a significant portion of the success of a lot of these platforms comes though an ability to exploit those with a lower degree of media literacy, so it makes sense that younger groups are a bit more resistant, having been sort of steeped in it. As an older person (30) it's kind of heartening.
This is interesting to me, I didn't realise I fit in to this grouping and unlike the headline it implies that it's not just teenagers. I have a facebook account that only exists so I can use...
According to a study by US marketing firm Hill Holliday of Generation Z – people born after 1995 – half of those surveyed stated they had quit or were considering quitting at least one social media platform. When it comes to Gen Z’s relationship to social media, “significant cracks are beginning to show”, says the firm’s Lesley Bielby.
This is interesting to me, I didn't realise I fit in to this grouping and unlike the headline it implies that it's not just teenagers. I have a facebook account that only exists so I can use messenger for group chats (as a student this comes up a lot) and to check my course year's facebook page for the occasional update.
My main social media is a non-personal twitter account that I occasionally use for gamedev related tweets once every few months, as keeping up with that community is such a pain in the ass (especially when people mix their social and game tweets under the same account)
Bielby agrees that young people are becoming more aware of the amount of time they waste online. Of the young people Hill Holliday surveyed who had quit or considered quitting social media, 44% did so, she says, in order to “use time in more valuable ways”.
Although link aggregators like reddit aren't often associated with "social media", the effect tends to be the same. I spend a very large amount of time on reddit (and now tildes), mostly lurking but sometimes commenting, and frequently feeling the need to check those comments to see how many updoots I have.
In that sense I can't claim to be using my time any more effectively than standard social media users, though I focus less on personal connections and the lack of direct extrinsic rewards and associated egotistical behaviour (look at me on holiday everyone! #sun) which I find to be quite toxic.
(kinda long?) Things that i dislike about social media: It's dumb (if you really want to share something with your "friends" why not joining with them IRL and tell them whatever you did) Lack of...
(kinda long?)
Things that i dislike about social media:
It's dumb (if you really want to share something with your "friends" why not joining with them IRL and tell them whatever you did)
Lack of privacy (I deleted my facebook account 3/4 years ago, so i don't really know the default privacy settings, but IIRC the defaults were sharing to friends of friends, which is quite big, considering that you might be giving "private" information only for your "friends"; Also, you have to trust that the social network manager will keep it's mouth shut about your info; on reddit and tildes everything is public, so you should think before posting, although likely someone is using a random username, which will not identify it's owner)
It's driven by photos (At least from a peak i took at instagram and snapchat, most of those social networks rely on photos, why would anyone want to share personal photos? even if the username is not linked with it's owner, the photos might be)
It incentives ISPs to do zero rating plans (as social media are addictive and teenagers are like "Oh, gr8 they even offer traffic for snapchat and facebook" they don't really care a thing about net neutrality, of course this is really bad for the future of the internet)
Social networks don't care about the age minimum (If you go to like[yes, that is a social network], likely you will see that 80% of the videos/images are from girls in their 8's doing awkward dances to some awkward music, IIRC correctly the terms of service for like say 16 years minimum)
Thing i kinda like about social networks:
It allows you to connect with your friends, send them stuff and receive likes in return (likes/shares/etc seem to be the online money for teenagers), but... wouldn't emails and SMS do the same thing (considering i don't care with privacy, which most social networks users don't), or even PGP/GPG encrypted emails and encrypted SMS (with Silence app, just for SMS)?
Anyway, I'm still a teen, i created a facebook account when i was 12/13 but deleted it when i was 15/16 for the simple reason of forcing the messenger app and totally changing the design (i'm looking at you reddit)
Although I'm no longer quite a teenager, I feel the same way as many of the opinions expressed in this article. Social media is just tiring. Coupled with the privacy concerns, pointless drama, and slot-machine-esque addictions it enforces, I feel much better off not engaging in most of it.
Sure, I still have a facebook account. I make a post maybe once a year, however. Still have Twitter, too. But I trimmed my tweets from over 1000 down to ~70 a few months ago. Snapchat? Deleted it last week.
My biggest social media platform is now IRC, believe it or not.
You and me both.
Well you and he should join #tildes @ FreeNode!
Sadly freenode blocks all Tor users unless you first register over clearnet. I prefer OFTC which is a bit more privacy-friendly.
Why not use a privacy-respecting VPN? Should be faster and less problematic than Tor.
I'm surprised. As I understand PIA is only of the only VPNs which is legally proven to not collect logs. Multiple subpoenas from this year have shown that they can't provide any details on their subscribers. They're the only VPN I'd recommend right now.
The whole "fourteen eyes" thing is such utter nonsense though. At best it is a red herring. If I was the CIA/NSA, this is exactly the sort of rumor I'd promote to drive people away from established names which are run by knowledgeable engineers and professionals in the developed world, before starting up my own VPN honeypots in fucking Kazakhstan and Bulgaria.
I'm not going to recommend any specific VPN, but I will say that if the fourteen eyes folks wants to see what you are doing over a VPN, they are either going to compromise your terminal, or they are going to honeypot you, or they are going to MITM your key swap. A VPN is not, and should never be assumed as an effective tool against government actors or sufficiently motivated organized crime.
I don't use a VPN regularly, but I've been using Mullvad for the last while and have been really happy with it. About the only complaint I had was that it was a bit annoying to set up on my phone (and more difficult to switch servers), but it still wasn't really that bad.
I like that they accept crypto.
And even cash, you can just mail it in with your account number.
Amazing!
Please do not use NordVPN, just because they have the shadiest, most misleading ads. I hate how they try to scare people into being afraid that their ISP is spying on them, and then imply that using the VPN doesn't just shift that same privacy concern from the gateway ISP to NordVPN.
I thought for sure the internet nerd community would jump on them for these commercials, but I've been seeing the name pop up all over reddit and on relatively trusted youtube channels without even a mention of this.
Is the spam attack over? I mainly go on the node to talk about FLOSS stuff, but I've been staying out with all the spam
It should be over. For now, at least. The past week has been quiet again.
Oh hey, cool! I just joined. Seems like this could be publicized more.
See, of the ones you mentioned, snapchat is really the only one I like, specifically because it solves a lot of the issues with social media fatigue IMO. It makes no pretense about identity verification and doesn't herd you towards global visibility like facebook and twitter try so hard to do.
Like, for my part, the ideal social media platform would be a properly encrypted version of snapchat which would allow you to establish a secure connection with someone by exchanging public keys in person (like, tap to connect) or a slightly less secure connection by exchanging keys through a trusted middle node (someone you have met, who has met person C).
If it doesn't exist yet we should absolutely create it! It sounds like a fun project regardless of whether it succeeds or not
I have been kicking it around for two or three years at this point and have started the prototype three different times before life gets in the way.
It's brilliant because it facilitates what I'd consider to be a framework for a truly secure, distributed, private social network which moves social networking into local meatspace, rather than allowing us to isolate ourselves at a distance. But it also potentially pushes all the right social networking buttons - "I know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Taylor Swift!"
More than anything though, it helps solve the critical problem with strong encryption - how do you get the unwashed masses to bother with it? This implements it in a way which gives the masses what they want - an entirely new way to be vain with cell phones. To the plebs, it's "six degrees of Kevin Bacon" in app form. To nerds, it's secure comms which doesn't paint you as a target.
My biggest problems so far:
2.1 - How do you let people recover their keys after they inevitably lose their devices? Or do they just lose everything when that happens? People are not going to make local backups, and cloud backups would break the chain of custody.
2.2 - The biggest weakness to any PKI setup is always terminal security. Cell phones are basically the least secure terminals there are, and there's a thousand different ways to side-channel them. To really do this right, the secure channel would need a secure container at the application layer as well.
1). Yeah, the problem there is crypto nerds still will give you grief even if you're 15/10.
2.1). How about a password encrypted backup. Something like boxcrypter?
2.1). Have you taken a look at the crypto model Signal uses? I seem to remember them using nested crypto.
3). IDK man, maybe some sort of WireGuard VPN protocol where each device is a server and client? Probably won't work with people moving around. Maybe it just needs to be a custom integration and front-end for a Riot implementation?
Yeah, password encrypted backups on the cloud is probably "good enough," but without a 2FA token it's still vulnerable to phishing and password re-use. And token/authenticator 2FA is high friction in terms of mass adoption.
One other thing I am exploring is Neural Cryptography, which offers an interesting possibility for small-scale trust propagation without the explicit need to maintain certificates and key archives. Your password defines a NN template and trust is established through something called "bidirectional learning" to synchronize network weights to produce keys. Even if someone gets your password they don't actually have your keys, just what is essentially half of a generator function, which still then requires many rounds of challenge/response to synchronize with a peer. Since this is an active process, it needs to be approved by all endpoints involved, meaning it is very strong with proper opsec (eg, people actually taking the time to verify re-sync requests), and one compromised node does not necessarily break trust across the entire network.
The major problem is that the synchronization process is computationally intensive, but these new "neural processors" which are making it into more and more phones might help with that.
Smart kid.
Its one thing to recognize a toxic pattern, or at least be made aware of one -- and its another to act on it. Pretty bold for someone at an age where 'fitting in' is typically the primary goal.
I'm in my late 30s, and for me and my social circle, social media is nearly dead. The few that do post only post either baby photos or special photos (trips, etc.)
That being said, those with accounts still uses facebook for events.
Looking back, all of these sentiments I have now echo those in my circle who refused to get into social media in the first place. I admire people who have the foresight or whatever to see a technology for what it is.
Slightly related, it's interesting to see how social media, and even newer technology affects older people. I'm talking about my peers (I'm 27, so I guess anybody 20-30, and older). If this trend keeps building, it'll be interesting to see what happens in terms of older generations who got hooked on these innovations, and younger generations who grew up with it, adapted to it, and are somewhat resistant, I guess, to the influences of technology, especially where it's engineered to be addictive.
They're resistant almost certainly because they aren't (yet) the target of the same things. Compare the success of companies making games for kids like Crossy Road - in that they are squarely the target demographic, and they get taken hook line and sinker.
Facebook targets an older demo (25-35) than say Instagram/Snapchat (15-25), and they're all very successful at what they do. So far to the best of my knowledge, there has not been a single social media platform of any kind able to simultaneously retain their ageing users and accept in their original age group. And even them most of them age with their users until they die off, that sticking with an age group as a sort of user pipeline (an actually sustainable model) I've only seen in things like 4chan.
The major, MAJOR reason for this is the combination of who has the money to target, and who is making the platforms. What will almost certainly happen is somewhere out there is a ~12 year old with an idea that will appeal to all his fellow 10-14 year olds, and when he hits ~20 he will build it, get muscled out of it by what is now a more tech-savvy VC/incubator environment which will go on to be the next big hit with that younger group.
It really is interesting -- one gets the feeling that a significant portion of the success of a lot of these platforms comes though an ability to exploit those with a lower degree of media literacy, so it makes sense that younger groups are a bit more resistant, having been sort of steeped in it. As an older person (30) it's kind of heartening.
This is interesting to me, I didn't realise I fit in to this grouping and unlike the headline it implies that it's not just teenagers. I have a facebook account that only exists so I can use messenger for group chats (as a student this comes up a lot) and to check my course year's facebook page for the occasional update.
My main social media is a non-personal twitter account that I occasionally use for gamedev related tweets once every few months, as keeping up with that community is such a pain in the ass (especially when people mix their social and game tweets under the same account)
Although link aggregators like reddit aren't often associated with "social media", the effect tends to be the same. I spend a very large amount of time on reddit (and now tildes), mostly lurking but sometimes commenting, and frequently feeling the need to check those comments to see how many updoots I have.
In that sense I can't claim to be using my time any more effectively than standard social media users, though I focus less on personal connections and the lack of direct extrinsic rewards and associated egotistical behaviour (look at me on holiday everyone! #sun) which I find to be quite toxic.
Sensible of them. I miss non-technical discussion lists, though.
(kinda long?)
Things that i dislike about social media:
It's dumb (if you really want to share something with your "friends" why not joining with them IRL and tell them whatever you did)
Lack of privacy (I deleted my facebook account 3/4 years ago, so i don't really know the default privacy settings, but IIRC the defaults were sharing to friends of friends, which is quite big, considering that you might be giving "private" information only for your "friends"; Also, you have to trust that the social network manager will keep it's mouth shut about your info; on reddit and tildes everything is public, so you should think before posting, although likely someone is using a random username, which will not identify it's owner)
It's driven by photos (At least from a peak i took at instagram and snapchat, most of those social networks rely on photos, why would anyone want to share personal photos? even if the username is not linked with it's owner, the photos might be)
It incentives ISPs to do zero rating plans (as social media are addictive and teenagers are like "Oh, gr8 they even offer traffic for snapchat and facebook" they don't really care a thing about net neutrality, of course this is really bad for the future of the internet)
Social networks don't care about the age minimum (If you go to like[yes, that is a social network], likely you will see that 80% of the videos/images are from girls in their 8's doing awkward dances to some awkward music, IIRC correctly the terms of service for like say 16 years minimum)
Thing i kinda like about social networks:
It allows you to connect with your friends, send them stuff and receive likes in return (likes/shares/etc seem to be the online money for teenagers), but... wouldn't emails and SMS do the same thing (considering i don't care with privacy, which most social networks users don't), or even PGP/GPG encrypted emails and encrypted SMS (with Silence app, just for SMS)?
Anyway, I'm still a teen, i created a facebook account when i was 12/13 but deleted it when i was 15/16 for the simple reason of forcing the messenger app and totally changing the design (i'm looking at you reddit)