Added some photos, updated theme, moved posts around, started working on new post

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 53 deletions

diff --git a/content/posts/deleting-social-media-with-algorithmic-feeds.md b/content/posts/deleting-social-media-with-algorithmic-feeds.md
deleted file mode 100644
index 12d08a9..0000000
--- a/content/posts/deleting-social-media-with-algorithmic-feeds.md
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,53 +0,0 @@
----
-title: "Deleting Social Media with Algorithmic Feeds"
-date: 2020-11-03T06:01:51-05:00
-draft: false
-tags: [personal, social-media, pleroma, activitypub]
-description: "About a month ago I decided to deactivate my Facebook account, and to uninstall Snapchat, Instagram, and Slide for ..."
----
-
-### Algorithmic feeds are designed with a purpose, to make consumers behave in ways that they otherwise wouldn't.
-
-About a month ago I decided to deactivate my Facebook account, and to uninstall
-Snapchat, Instagram, and Slide for Reddit from my phone. I did this because I
-felt like I was not using the internet on my own terms anymore. I felt (and
-still do) that handing the power to curate everything I see over to black boxes
-such as the ones I listed was not healthy for me. As a consumer of algorithmic
-feeds, you are not allowed to view, let alone control the system that decides
-what kind of information you see.
-
-As an example, if you wanted to use Instagram as a way to show you content that
-makes you happy, the most you can do is aggressively suggest to the system that
-it should show you that content, by searching for it and following users who
-regularly post related content. For the last 2 years or so, I have tried to
-exclusively use Instagram for looking up dog photos, videos, and memes, and
-sharing them with a group chat of my friends. Despite this, I still would have
-content in my feed that did not align with my desires, such as political content,
-or other content that would evoke strong emotional responses from me.
-
-As an experiment, I didn't tell anyone that I was deleting the social media apps
-that I listed above before doing it. I wasn't sure what kind of response I would
-get from those around me for doing this, if any. The first person to notice
-anything was my girlfriend, who noticed that she couldn't see my Facebook page.
-I told her that I decided to deactivate my account, and that was that. To be
-fair though, I haven't really been using Facebook for many years, so I figure
-most people haven't noticed my page is missing. Snapchat on the other hand has
-been a little different. I didn't look into seeing if I could deactivate my
-account without deleting it, so my account is still accessible to people. I
-think this may have caused some confusion, since people might be thinking that
-I'm ignoring them. A friend of mine said that he sent something, and I told him
-that I haven't had Snapchat installed for a while now. Again, that has been that
-as far as my life without Snapchat.
-
-There is this idea that you need to have an algorithm to curate content for you,
-or else it will be boring. After using my own Pleroma instance as my primary
-social media platform since July, I can tell you first hand that you do not need
-to have a timeline showing content in any order other than chronological in order
-to have meaningful conversation. In fact, I feel like I have been able to have
-healthier discussions with people of different backgrounds, since I am not being
-artificially confined to my own bubble. I'm also in complete control over the
-content that appears in my feed. If I decide that I don't want to see content
-from someone anymore, if I stop following them, my server won't show me their
-content unless I look for it. My feed on Pleroma is strictly a chronological
-timeline of posts from the people that I follow, and that is great.
-