For me it feels important to maintain faith that, deep inside, people are good, or at least are born innocent, and that it’s mainly our institutions, philosophies, and cultural norms that turn us against each other and harm our souls with toxic stuff. And that through seeking local community and connection we can reconnect with the natural tendency towards compassion that exists within us all even as so many of our leaders fail to show those qualities.

There’s a big moment in SOMA that really stuck with me. Not gonna spoil it. Mostly it’s a horror game but it engages with some pretty intense ethical questions and does so in a way that feels very personal.

Is it sad that I wouldn’t be surprised if Spez suddenly rolls back reddit’s restrictions on hate speech, taking after Musk to pander to the alt right? Given that spez has already expressed admiraton for Musk, and seems to have alt right leanings, I wouldn’t be surprised.

yes, social media keeps proving why a profit-driven society really doesn’t have the interests of individuals in mind, companies will just do whatever they can get away with to extract as much money as possible from ordinary people.

I wouldn’t mind as much if half the websites out there didn’t have the trashiest ads I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve got an ad blocker on my desktop but not on my phone. Amazing that supposedly “professional” businesses are filling their sites with sleazy ads that look like they’ll lead you directly to installing a bunch of viruses.

One quote that jumps out: “It’s difficult to say with certainty what the causes are, but Facebook has made no secret about its intention to deprioritize news on its platform and give greater precedence to video content, which by nature results in less clickthrough traffic."

It does feel like my Facebook “algorithm” is constantly trying to push “shorts” on me…annoying little videos clearly meant to imitate, I assume, Youtube Shorts, Tiktok, Instagram short videos, etc…

Broadly speaking, with all that’s happening in the social media world, it feels like some sort of reckoning or change is coming, but where exactly things are heading is hard to say…

Thank you for listening and your kind comments!

Sure yeah, happy to share, thanks! Here’s a link to a string quartet I uploaded last year (“performed” by digital instruments on my computer). If you make music too I’d be happy to take a listen as well! https://soundcloud.com/walkingears/sets/string-quartet-concordant

i like Soundcloud, have an account for my own music on there, but I also listen to music by others. Gotta appreciate how the internet can help DIY artists put some work out into the world. Listening to a composer on Soundcloud now named Andy Feldman. https://soundcloud.com/feldya/tracks

Love the idea of smaller “indie” social media communities without any profit incentive, just purely spaces to socialize and hang out. Also appreciate that there’s solid moderation against hate speech etc. Otherwise it’s still clear that it’s a new and growing thing and perhaps there’s some uncertainty about what the day-to-day realities of it will look like, but it’s interesting to be exploring it at such an early time.