Thord D. Hedengren

ℹ️ This is an archived legacy site for link purposes only.

Tag: social media

  • Growing up online without knowing it

    From an older (February, 20190) piece in The Atlantic, about kids finding out that their parents has been sharing their life on social media since their inception:

    For several months, Cara has been working up the courage to approach her mom about what she saw on Instagram. Not long ago, the 11-year-old—who, like all the other kids in this story, is referred to by a pseudonym—discovered that her mom had been posting photos of her, without prior approval, for much of her life. “I’ve wanted to bring it up. It’s weird seeing myself up there, and sometimes there’s pics I don’t like of myself,” she said.

    Every parent I know does this. They do it out of pride of their child, family, or just because they want to share their life (mostly the good parts) on social media, just like everyone else. It’s just as fake as most other things that go up there, filtered by choice and design, but it leaves a mark for a human being that’s not yet a person, and hasn’t made the choice. That’s a tricky disposition, if you ask me. By all means share, but do it privately, in groups through secure channels.

  • Twitter vs. Facebook

    There’s a real difference between Twitter and Facebook, and I don’t mean in features, but in morals. Twitter, the smaller by far of the two, has (finally) applied its fact checking and terms-abiding features to the likes of US President Donald Trump, making him throw both a tantrum and an executive order (here dissected by The Verge). Facebook on the other hand doesn’t want to censor anything, which sounds nice but feels shady, especially since Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says:

    We believe that if a post incites violence, it should be removed regardless of whether it is newsworthy, even if it comes from a politician.

    That sort of clashes with Trump’s way of saying and doing things, and how his loyal fans have a tendency to harass and threaten. Facebook is in the wrong here, but Twitter is dangerously close to falling off their high horse. While it’s good to fact check and enforce policies on the US President, that now has to go for the whole platform. It’s unlikely any of this will end well.

    ⚡️ See also: My Socia Needia essay, and Services I’m Quitting.

  • Social Needia

    Social Needia

    All arguments over and done, we stand on different sides of the barricades. Either you believe the claims of corporations making money selling your data – words, photos, videos, dreams – or you don’t.

    I don’t.

    It all boils down to trust and you pick who you choose to believe. Just don’t tell me you haven’t been bothered by the ads you see on Facebook and Instagram, that everything doesn’t feel a tad uncanny. Because it is uncanny, weird, and – dare I say – plain wrong.

    We’ve been had, and we don’t want to see it, because we need it. Now more than ever.

    (more…)

  • Nobody Meant Social Distancing

    Nobody Meant Social Distancing

    The WHO has changed “social distancing” to “physical distancing” and know-it-alls all over social media are patting their backs. Yes, it was a clumsy choice of words to begin with, but honestly, did you think that “social distancing” was about not talking to anyone? Not texting, twittering, facebooking, whatsapping, communicating?

    No, of course not, that would be stupid.

    (more…)

  • Services I’m Quitting

    Services I’m Quitting

    Social networks gobble up your time like a hungry duck, while also taking all your thoughts, your photos, your insights, and your personal information, and selling it. That’s disgusting, isn’t it? It’s not just what you and I write either, it’s people, places and companies we mention, which means you get targeted by association too.

    (more…)

  • Twitter DMs are dead

    Twitter DMs are dead

    It’s no secret that I prefer Twitter (say hi to @tdh if you like) out of the social media offerings available. The short form format is something special, in my opinion. I don’t belong to the crowd that thinks adding more characters per tweet is necessarily a good idea. 140 characters might be a bit arbitrary, a relic from texting days, but there are other issues with the platform that are more pressing.

    Like direct messages, or DMs. From being all but ignored by the product leads, to trying to take on proper messaging apps, DMs are the forgotten stepchild of whatever sort of dysfunctional family this is supposed to be. Don’t get me wrong, I actually preferred Twitter DMs to other messaging options for a long time, and while the character limit can be a good thing for public tweets, lifting said limit for private talk made DMs brilliant to use.

    Side note: Twitter is much like Facebook in their DM strategy. From keeping everything public and making it hard to do anything in private, to trying to enable private conversation on the platform with group DMs and the lifted character limit. This is the same as Facebook moving from “post everything public” to “start private groups” to build your local communities. It all boils down to us, the users, not wanting to be entirely as open as these social media behemoths initially thought, or perhaps hoped. Privacy is a thing, so they need to lure you into feeling that you are indeed in control of your content and persona on social media.

    Back to DMs and how they’re dead. It wasn’t Twitter’s changes that killed them for me, it’s all those bloody auto-DMs. For some reason, social media professionals and the services they want you to use all recommend you to set up an auto DM when someone follows you. And you know what, why not do follow-ups on that to make sure that your new follower absolutely retweets your pinned tweet or buys your book.

    Hi!

    Thanks for following me. I know your time is precious so let me just get right to the point and tell you about myself. I’m an author from somewhere who’s got a brand new book out, called XYZ OR WHATEVER. I worked so hard on it! You can read more about it and buy it on Amazon.

    Amazon link: YEP THAT GOES HERE

    Please visit my homepage for more about myself.

    Home page: URL THAT’S ALREADY IN THE BIO

    Oh and could you do me a favor? Please retweet my pinned tweet. I’d love to return the favor if you do that. Just let me know.

    Have a great day! Looking forward to the convesation.

    Sent with UnfollowspyCrowdfireWhatever. (Want this? Sign up for UnfollowspyCrowdfireWhatever for free!)

    Yeah, I’m not going to do any of that. While the above is an adapted version of several auto DMs, because I’m not going to point any fingers here, they’re all about the same. It looks like a parody of social media marketing, doesn’t it?

    There are so many things wrong with these auto DMs.

    1. Why are you introducing yourself with something that’s probably already on your Twitter bio?
    2. Speaking of the bio, I bet your URL is there. I don’t need that in my DMs.
    3. I just followed you and you want me to retweet your pinned tweet, just like that? And you’ll return the favor, will you? What if I believe in space monkeys hiding in plain sight as the rulers of the world? Oh and they’re nazi clowns and hungry hippos too. Wait, that sort of makes sense, but you get my drift. I bet you won’t retweet that just because I pinned it.
    4. So you wrote a book or created a product, and you want me to buy it? I get that, but maybe not just throw a clumsy ad my way first thing.

    There was a time when I just plain unfollowed anyone who sent me an auto DM, but that just doesn’t work anymore. It’s too common, and it didn’t really change anything in terms of the DM inbox.

    The big problem with auto DMs is that they bury the real DMs. I’ve missed a ton of those the past year, people who actually want to converse, not bots and scripts trying to trick me into doing things.

    So yeah, good job social media professionals. Way to go killing DMs for the rest of us.

  • Write in silence, fellow authors

    Delilah S. Dawson, being wise again, this time about authors and hawking books on social media:

    And that’s what a lot of social media by authors is starting to look like, to feel like: being smacked in the face, repeatedly, by hundreds of fish. Being pushed. Being assaulted and yelled at and chased. Being manipulated and prodded and possibly tricked.

    That’s not how you earn readers and friends. Literature is not a #teamfollowback sport.

  • Internet, meet common sense

    This should be common sense, but looking at my Facebook feed, it clearly isn’t…

    So what can you do about it? If you see a headline about someone dying young or in a shocking way, check and double-check it before you share it. If you see a headline claiming that a high-profile death is a hoax, check and double-check it before you share it.

  • Fuck Your Likes And Hearts

    Warren Ellis, in his newsletter Orbital Operation (which is great):

    Fuck Your Likes And Hearts should be a mantra for anyone doing personal writing online.

  • Anil Dash's Twitter followers

    Anil Dash has a lot of followers on Twitter, unmerited he thinks. I’m not sure what to make of his piece on Medium’s The Message, but this was interesting, about sharing links:

    Worst of all: Nobody clicks. Well, not nobody, but out of about 550,000 followers on Twitter, it’s very common for fewer than 400 of them to click on a link I share. (That’s .07%!) And yet dudes (yes, it’s always dudes) feel like they’re doing me a favor by asking. I cofounded a company that helps people understand their behavior on social networks, and looking at some of my most popular content that I’ve shared shows about 1700 people clicking on a link, in total.

  • Instagram is now bigger than Twitter

    Instagram passes Twitter:

    Instagram now has a bigger active user base than Twitter, according to a blog post written today by CEO Kevin Systrom. The photo and video sharing platform has over 300 million active users, more than Twitter’s 284 million but a far cry behind parent company Facebook’s 1.3 billion.

    This is, obviously, the service Twitter should’ve bought.

  • Should you leave venture capital backed Ello?

    Ello, the hyped ad free social network, are getting a lot of press. Aral Balkan thinks we should all leave Ello behind though, because it’s backed by venture capital.

    Sorry, Paul, but by taking venture capital you have made a crucial mistake that is incompatible with the goals you set out in your manifesto and I will not support yet another venture-capital funded network only to be disappointed at the time of the inevitable exit.

    He might have a point there, if you want to be all idealistic about these things. The notion that Ello was independently built is shattered, do with that what you will. I’m still on there, for the time being.

  • The Power That Is Possibilities

    In my hands is a portable machine that lets me create just about anything. Maybe I’ll refine it, maybe I’ll tweak it, maybe I’ll trash it, but the possibilities are there.

    So are the distractions and hence I’m thinking a lot about what all the noise is giving me. Do I need to be this available online get the most out of Twitter and Facebook? Can I disconnect for a week/month/year and still live on?

    Of course I can, and so can you.

    Through sweat and wine, these last days if the year 2012, I ponder the future of social media and online sharing, and what it means in terms of investment. Communication is always the center of anything, but it should be on our individual terms and not some predestined This Is How You Do It ruleset. I wonder if that’s how I’m living today. Am I communicating, playing around for fun, or am I just procrastinating because it is too hard to get real work done all the time? And if that is true, is it good or bad that I’m doing what I’m doing?

    I’m not sure, I have an inkling, but I’m not sure just yet.

    What about you? What are you doing with the power that is Possibilities today? It is worth considering.

  • Social media diet

    I was pointed to Per Håkanssons post about his social media diet by Mikael Pawlo, and I found it interesting. Per is quitting a bunch of services, such as Instagram, Google+ and Linkedin, to focus on more important matters. This quote pretty much sums up why he’s taking this somewhat drastic approach:

    I miss the days when you could go out and eat with a bunch of friends and focus on the conversation and not the latest pings, notifications and checkins on your mobile device.

    I see this a lot, people who feel that social media is interfering with their conversations and relationships in the physical world. But here’s the thing: Quitting social media won’t change this.

    (more…)

  • Gratis Twitter-policy

    Nätcasinot Mr. Green (vars reklam med meloner i slaskgrön färg min fru verkligen avskyr) visar att man hajar det där med sociala medier och publicerar därför sin Twitter-policy fritt för alla att se. Smart.