It’s 2023 and there are more open source, decentralized social media options than ever before like Lemmy, Mastodon, and more. However, I still find myself using some big tech platforms like Twitter and Google News fairly often. While federated social networks are compelling, the content curation and discovery on platforms like Twitter seems better for my interests. The echo chambers of Twitter feel preferable to the noise of something like Mastodon. What about you all? Have you moved completely to open source social platforms, or do you still rely on some big tech ones too? I’m curious to hear your perspectives!

  • DeadNinja@lemmy.world
    11·
    2 years ago

    I do watch videos from YouTube because of its massive content, but I tend to use invidious or piped links - because I don’t want to provide YT any more traffic than they need.

    • StijnVVL@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      Could you please explain what piped links do exactly? I see them here all the time but they rarely work for me. I’d like to understand

      • DeadNinja@lemmy.world
        1·
        2 years ago

        I will try to do an ELI5.

        Piped is what is known as a “proxy”, or rather an interface to YouTube.

        There is a very popular piece of code called NewPipeExtractor, which is used to scrape data from the YouTube website.

        Piped utilizes NewPipeExtractor to set up an “intermediary”, a proxy website that looks and feels pretty much like YouTube.

        The good thing about watching videos through the Piped proxy site is that YouTube doesn’t get to know your IP address. Which is why it is very popular among privacy advocates.

        That is it in a nutshell. If interested, you will find more information in their GitHub page.

        https://github.com/TeamPiped/Piped

        Hope this helped.

  • WheatleyInc@lemmy.worldEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    No long form video content platform better than YT yet, I’ll be switching as soon as someone can make something better.

  • Raged_norm@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    reddit because the boardgame discussion on here is dead, boardgamegeek doesn’t do well unless you’re looking at a specific game (and CasualUK is pretty decent)

    Facebook because that’s where the church tech discussion is and I can sell boardgames so fast on there on the main group for my country.

    Both sites main feeds are dead to me though, if Lemmy ever picks up significantly I can see me moving over full time

    Twitter/Instagram/Snapchat/LinkedIn have all never been used or deleted.

  • guyrocket@kbin.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    I’m probably going to over-answer this as I think “out loud” but here goes anyway.
    I’ve never done FB because FB is evil. I did sign up once for just long enough to report some kid for being too young to be on FB but that is all I’ve ever done there. It is pretty tempting to sign up for reals, tho because it would be the best way to reconnect with some people I have lost touch with over the years.

    I did Reddit for a while, signed up during early COVID. I’ve been off Reddit for a while now and I do miss some of the smaller more niche communities. But overall, Reddit has changed recently for the worse. I’ll still browse /all most days and the content has really gone downhill. Slo-mo car wreck in progress there, I think. Reddit can be fun, but reactions seem wildly random. I think that’s due to there just being a whole fucking lot of ppl there so you never know who will respond to any given comment.

    I’ve been on kbin since leaving Reddit and I feel more at home here than on Reddit. More like being in a bar here as opposed to a huge stadium on Reddit. And I’m not in a rush to change that.

  • small44@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    I use facebook for friends, family, running and hip hop groups and also for following artists

  • Ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    2·
    2 years ago

    I have a Facebook account that I log in to to host a weekly video conference, and that’s that. I won’t ever go back to centralised corporate social media as my main social media

  • HipPriest@kbin.social
    1·
    2 years ago

    Still use Google search, but switched out Chrome for Firefox recently and it’s working out well. I do still use their calendar, docs apps but I’ve never been a big one for YouTube. I do have some Google speakers though and use Maps all the time - so I guess out of big tech Google is the one I’m suckered into the most…

    Stopped using Facebook around 2016 and deleted my Twitter account a few years before that, basically when the novelty had long gone and it all seemed to be more toxic.

    In the UK around that time it was just everyone going on about Brexit on Facebook but even before then people weren’t sharing stuff about themselves (with good reason) so it was just low effort memes). Use Facebook once in a blue moon to get in touch with really old friends

    Didn’t miss either, although I recently signed up to Mastodon more just to see how the fediverse worked over there.

    Then Reddit - probably the social media I was most invested in just because it was so granular in it’s There’s A Sub For That ability to cater for virtually all interests. But the utter disdain they held for their own volunteers and the contempt they seem to hold virtually everyone in was a bit of a wake up call. I do go back and check on it but I’m finding that I check on it less. Fedi has less content so I am reading all those eBooks I should have been reading instead!

    My son is 7, I’m interested in how things are looking in 5 year’s time when he’s an early teen. He’s already got bored of watching YouTube videos, tiktok isn’t really a thing with us or anyone we know yet… time will tell I suppose. The main thing will be constant reminders that porn isn’t real and cyber security lectures