I remember Last.FM before it got ruined with its redesign, now it is an useless platform, I just use it as a database, but the site is really ruined. Nowadays everybody uses Facebook, Twitter and Instagram... 

However, I am happy that such sites like ProgArchives still exist and that the forums are like the old types of forums. Social media is for everyone... and sometimes you don't wanna be around everyone ha ha. 

What do you think? Did the invention called "social media" kill the Internet?

I wouldn't say it killed the internet so much as sanitized and homogenized "group" interactions in a social sense.

I am not with my real name either. Call it introversion  . Don't wanna use it but no one is using any other chat platform. 

If anything damaged the internet it is what is referred to as the Google Gestapo which includes Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Amazon and several others which have lucritive CIA contracts to spread information, engage in censorship and construct a massive global surveillance state.

You may find this article interesting as it applies to the modern state of things.

http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/1947-year-everything-changed/" rel="nofollow - http://freedom-articles.toolsforfreedom.com/1947-year-everything-changed/

vivoactive has a valid point though. This forum as well as others where I was or am active lose members and activity to Facebook and co., and as the TO I'm still a good old forums guy and Facebook etc. are not for me.

Though PA quite actively contributed to its own downfall with the Captcha disaster; one thing Facebook cannot be blamed for for sure.

I can see the point of commercialization of the internet since everyone is forced to streamline their content for advertisement friendly content. This has definately changed things however the internet has expanded greatly and things have merely migrated to other places. 

The internet suffers from unbridled capitalism like everything else. Until we have more open source technolgoies available to all then we will continue to see a few billionaires control every aspect of reality. This is a universal problem not limited to the internet.

Never before has this been on display so openly and massively as it is with today's social media platforms. I am truly baffled by what people spew online using their own names as if there are zero consequences.   

Yeah, I'm focused on the negatives. There is a lot of positives to social media too but I wonder if we'd have been better off without it. 

I feel like traditional message boards, like this one and many others, have been grandfathered into the umbrella of "social media" and in some cases don't really fit. Reddit, sure because it's so huge, but prog archives? Not so much. 

Matter of fact, any floppy drive smaller than 8" - where you don't have to find track 0 using a screwdriver - obviously contains evil spirits. Really, something went out of computers when we stopped using amplifiers to pass sound waves down long tubes of mercury and stopped wrapping wires around ferrite toroids. 

Personally I agree! I have taken myself off all social media recently due to toxicity. People are so false on social media and there is so much pressure (particularly on females) to look good and promote an amazing lifestyle.

My life is so much better now I am done with all of that. The friends I make and meet on the internet are good friends who i will be friends with for many years to come. I do not miss my old life.

I'm not sure that Captcha is the problem itself ... the bad call there is that some "admins" decided to put this on, BEFORE they even played with it, to realize that it had massive errors and would not respond honestly and truthfully to the clicks you made, and changed its completeness of each "page" on the fly, which made it harder to get it right ... for you to get a post in, or whatever the situation.

We had this before at the ISP I did technical support for, when there was a "new thing" that they put on the mail server to help with spams, and specially the viagra's and the ones from Africa spoofs, and a week later they had a massive backlog with businesses and customers complaining about the slowness of the mail server, and "admins" going around saying how safe it was and that those baddies were not getting through ... actually they were, but not as many ... the product had not been tested properly and it was "assumed" that it would do the job ... and the end result was a whole bunch of businesses quit and went somewhere else, and other folks got DSL to tell the ISP to get lost, because it was behaving like an amateur that did not know its butt from its doodle!

But I would think that there are other more pressing issues than Captcha that are a problem, and having to rely on volunteers to help keep things together is not a great way to do business ... and the information and databasse stuff will remain just that ... a database of letters, words and numbers ... and what they say, is likely to be forgotten and lost since no one can organize it, or help look for a proper and clean definition that makes sense MUSICALLY, instead of saying that it has to have a bass, a this and a that, and sound like Genesis or ELP ... which is the least musical of all suggestions, and the least educated option of all!

It's possible that folks that are "less educated" would not like this place if it were too smart and clever and all that, but in the end, you don't see the trolling around on classical music and the older materials, which kinda tells you that the majority of posting folks are just BORED and feel like they have to say something, be it important or not, or at least try to find out who their favorite guitarist is, and they have not heard more than 5 of them!

However, social media is not all kids and uneducated folks ... there are a lot of very interesting and great folks there, with the only concern (twitter is an example) of folks creating 10 different Marlon Brando sites with nearly the same name, and ... I would prefer that they locked that down, and kill the copykats, instead of believing that "freedom of speech" means you can create @marlonbrandon as an example!

My feeling is that too many of these sites are run by folks that are not "artists" as would be the case for PA, and as such, their appreciation and desire to have something is likely to be based on their favorites, since they don't know "art" from a "tomato" picture in your kitchen ... or better yet ... an Andi Warhol picture of a soup can! If you don't get the irony, then you know what I am talking about!

Lastly ... PA is OK and has been fine, and there are a lot of great folks here. We're just way too weird and stupid to know how to have a cup of tea or a beer at the local bar ... well here in Portland we have those funny beers ... supposedly they are healthier than that water crap!

 

yup, and these stupid f**kwits started abounding when they could sign up to an asocial network and prove that they have some kind of real life...

 

In French, one usually refers to fessebouc (which means goat's buttocks)

a bird tweets gently , but a dumb idiot twitts like a twàt.

 

Yeah, but well before Craptcha, PA had lost dozens if not hundreds of cool collabs and progheads for many different reasons (including internal fighting). Sure Craptha certainly did some damage, but I suspect that some will come back with time. I think most leavers will be one day remainers and are still lurking.

 

 

 

florahope35 wrote: Well, I don't think so. Facebook is Facebook. I even don't use it at all. I prefer niche forums and communities like this)

I personally think that the so-called social media practically killed off the once very useful and popular one-to-one messaging apps such as Windows Live Messenger (aka MSN Messenger), AIM, YIM, ICQ etc (or at the very least contributed to a sharp downturn in their popularity).

I actually like Twitter but keep my account locked so avoiding most of the idiots on there. I am  very choosy as to who I let follow me unless I know you.  I tolerate Facebook, but only really use it for keeping in touch with remote family.

But otherwise forums are still the place to go for specialised/niche interests.

A small point but both my twenty somethings Nephew and Niece left social media. They dared to become Vegans and therefore earnt the right be trolled by a load of sad types who feel the need to big themselves up. In this day and age we need an outlet it seems.

Broadly the internet is always going to be a double edged sword. It can't be policed but in can be ignored if you switch your phone off. I feel so grateful to have grown in a world that didn't have it or mobile phones. My god how just did we cope at all!!

One of the things that the "internet" did was hurt the LOCAL communication that you had with your friends and such. All of a sudden you have friends and other folks to talk to, and because you haven't met them they seem more interesting and not the same as your now old friends.

Same thing happened in business ... remember the Barenaked Ladies song about why walk when you can take a limo? (... something like that ... ) ... well, guess what ... all the local stores only have the cheapest crap clothing and this and that, and you can get what you want, AND THE RIGHT SIZE, over the Internet.

That's a good thing. 

The bad? Well ... Hemingway used to say that dirt belongs under his feet ... and I tend to agree! And (really!) that is how I think of a lot of the social media websites!

Thank you for that very informative post.

It seemed to kill message boards (not all, but most) and a lot of other things. It put a lot of sites out of business, forcing many to join that sh*t, but I've never had a single conversation on "social" media than I have on this site, or others like this.

They killed chat rooms, but there are a couple left, but I missed having a lot of choices.

Spam.

-------------
let's just stay above the moral melee
prefer the sink to the gutter
keep our sand-castle virtues
content to be a doer
as well as a thinker,
prefer lifting our pen
rather than un-sheath our sword

Hi,

I'm not sure that this is fair at all.

While I have no issue with the very American thing about "free speech", in the end, when that phrase was discussed and culled, it did not have the "media" to deal with or know and understand. THUS, THE MEANING OF THE EXPRESSION WAS DEVISED FOR PERSONAL OPINIONS AND SPEECH, and not necessarily designed for a public orientation or discussion.

The internet, has pretty much made fun of these "personal" freedoms and are using the excuse to say things that otherwise would not be said other than to your friends. And this presents a problem ... it's sort of a message in a bottle delivered 300 years later with a suggestion that would no longer apply within a situation where all the public is involved. In those days, THE PUBLIC WASN'T INVOLVED.

I came from a country that was run by a Fascist ruler, and there, and Spain, many artists and folks with antigovernmental sentiment and artistic views (you don't know about the attempts to hide American and other European films and critics! Even kisses were cut from films!!! See Cinema Paradiso for an idea!) ... I have a good opinion on opposing thoughts and ideas, but as DE has on occasion corrected me (and rightly so!), the passing of false information for the sake of publicity is not desired and for people to be blindly following a false idea and philosophy ... when, will you, or them, come to grips that things got messed up instead?

I find that the false idolatry and ideals are not cool, and personally, you and I would not want them in power knowing darn well that all decisions would be haphazard and off the wall and not exactly well thought out and the political system corrupted to allow for these intrusions!

What is even more difficult, even though at the time in some countries it was confusing as heck with so many opinions, is the fact that America is two sided (left or right (so to speak) and there are no alternative views that any of the newspapers of media will show or discuss ... thus to everyone's dissatisfaction, a lot of these social media things end up becoming that alternative ... but one thing is not true ... that anything is better than what we have. There is no criteria possible to determine that, and I find some of the things done/said on social media as really sad, and pathetic attempts at getting their 15 minutes of fame and response.

The internet will survive and many of these things (including social media) will come and go ... and then on to something else, but it speaks volumes to the bunch of folks that have nothing better to say, than nothing!