I have two Twitter pages. One is for news and politics, where I follow a wide variety of people and organizations with different views – Twitter: https://twitter.com/yeomalt
The other page is for getting away from news/politics and American culture – Twitter: https://twitter.com/AwayfromtheTV
I always liked the idea of being able to choose (follow) the pages that will post to my feed, and that’s how I thought it used to be. If I am a church person and only want to see posts from my church, or other churches I follow- that’s it.
If I am only interested in Volleyball, I can see posts in my feed that are only about volleyball.
Today, Twitter is sending posts to the feed from accounts you do not follow:
Mar 9 2023 9to5mac.com
Twitter users complain about seeing tweets from accounts they don’t follow
I had my @AwayfromtheTV account small and very nicely cleaned up in terms of who I was following. Now I am seeing random posts from others I do not follow.
I left Facebook several years ago, after using it a lot.
I used to like the old version of YouTube. If an account had posted hundreds of videos, you could flip the stack and see the oldest ones first. That feature looks to be eliminated now.
I never did use social media for social purposes. Did not come in contact with a raft of friends because of what I was posting. Whatever I cared about was not popular. Sometimes, I look at what is popular in American culture and I am proud not to be connected with that.
20 years ago, Google was a clean and simple search engine. AOL was there for those who were OK with the convenience of more central control. AOL steered you to use their internet connection, browser, email, their version of searching to find AOL sports, shopping, entertainment, finance, news, travel, etc. Every move you made on the web could happen under the AOL regime.
Today, Google wants you to create a user name and password. Register, sign in, and hand over your cell phone number for security in case you need to update your password. Google wants you to use your Google ID to sign in to an expanding number of sites on the web. If you are away from home and logging in on a different device, they might think you are a scammer/spammer and may take you into a tortuous process to verify who you are. What was the house number across the street from where your best childhood friend grew up?
I quit. No more logging in to Google.
A search engine I like: DuckDuckGo
Random thoughts:
The internet has been in our homes for 25 years. Any changes that took place should have been for the purpose of making it more simple, faster, quicker and easier to use.
More here:
Internet was better 20 years ago
Something Positive
When I am not bitching about the web, I am posting some positive images here: Coastal Favorites
Don’t miss our companion blog-found here: Old Man Blog
The original Old Man Blog
Thoughts on changes in American culture relating to those born roughly in the late 50s & early 60s is no longer being updated.
We will carry on here.
I stopped posting to the blog above a while back because WordPress changed the blog user interface from something that was easy to use and understand to something that became super complicated.
I did not leave WP entirely, but paid extra to keep using this blog. Maybe paying extra means I could easily post to the old blog, but I have not taken time to fuss with it.
More here:
Goodbye Spammy WordPress Likes