# Improve Your Social Media Experience with these Four Weird Tricks!

August 19, 2017 ยท 4 minute read

Posted in:  computing social



Based on about six months away from Facebook and on [Mastodon][mst], I've had
some thoughts on improving your social media experience. There are a lot of
common pieces of advice (turn off notifications, disable Facebook timeline with
a browser extension) which I am not going to repeat. I hope the advice I'm
offering is more novel (if not totally).

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1. **Curate** your social media experience by unfriending, unfollowing,
   blocking, and muting people. Different platforms offer more tools, some more
   than others. A negative social media interaction can spoil your mood for the
   whole day and affect your productivity and health. But on the whole, social
   media is not very important. So the benefits of blocking are high, and the
   costs are low. You should feel free to block anyone for any reason, or no
   reason, and not feel bad about it, or feel like you have to explain it to
   anyone.

   Basically, your *minimum* goal is to not see their content on your timeline.
   If you have a negative interaction with a stranger or acquaintance, you might
   want to block them, so that they cannot interact with them at all, or at a
   minimum *unfriend* them (Facebook) so that you do not see them on your
   timeline, and they cannot see your friends-only posts. For a friend or family
   member, you may wish to *unfollow* (Facebook) or *mute* (Mastodon), so that
   their posts do not appear on your timeline, but they don't get any indication
   that you are avoiding them.

2. **Separate** your different social identities. You may not want everyone to
   see your political posts, or your party posts, or your religious posts, for
   example. (Note! This is for the convenience and pleasure of your readers,
   *not* for privacy. See following item.) Different platforms offer different
   ways to do this.

   On Twitter or Mastodon, the best way is to have multiple accounts for
   different purposes. On Mastodon, those accounts may even be on different
   servers. Then when you post or share something, choose which account you want
   to post from. This is helped by having a multi-account client like
   [Twidere][tw] or [Subway Tooter][st].

   There are a couple-three ways on Facebook. You're not supposed to have
   multiple accounts, as they'll delete fake name accounts, but you can probably
   get away with it. Another way is to use the list feature to choose who can
   see each post. This way probably has the best outcome, but is hard to
   remember to use consistently. And the final way is to make a page. This is
   good because it provides some level of pseudonymity, but then you also have
   to try to get all of your friends that you want to see it to like it, which
   is hard.

3. **Remember** that everything is public. Yes, even private things are public.

   All of the major social platforms have various privacy settings, but you
   should not depend on them.

   On any of the main platforms, *at least* the site administrators (employees
   of the company, for Facebook and Twitter; your instance admin and possibly
   moderators for Mastodon) can read anything you post, no matter what the
   privacy settings. And every platform also has other potentials for leaks.
   Notably, Facebook changes its privacy settings in unpredictable ways every
   year or two, privacy in Twitter is a second-class feature, and Mastodon may
   strip privacy metadata when federating with older GNU Social or StatusNet
   instances.

   And, finally, there is always the "analog hole". Put simply, even if someone
   cannot share something you've written, or cannot share it in a way that
   other people can see, they *can* take a screenshot and share that. And
   there's basically no way to prevent this.

   If you have something to discuss that's really private, you need [end-to-end
   encryption][e2e]. Mostly, this is not something you will find in social
   platforms. Currently, it is mainly in secure messaging apps like
   [Signal][sn], [Wire][wire], or [Conversations][csv]. And it is also
   appearing in group chatroom apps like [Riot][riot]. There are experimental
   social media apps like [Patchwork][pw], but they are not really ready for
   ordiary users.

   Basically, you should follow the advice of Depeche Mode: [You had someething
   to hide; should have hidden it, shouldn't you.][dpm] Tell what you have to
   tell, and hide what you have to hide.

   <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/M2VBmHOYpV8?ecver=1" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

4. **Own** your content. Post things on a site you own (typically a blog), then
   share it to Facebook, Twitter, or wherever. This has advantages for both you
   and the health of the Internet. But the main advantage for you is that the
   content *you* created is not trapped in some corporate silo. If Twitter goes
   out of business, or bans you for not using your deadname, you still have
   everything you posted. This principle is called [POSSE][posse]: Post (on
   your) Own Site; Syndicate Elsewhere. It's not really easy enough for
   everyone to do yet, but we're making it easier! For now, if you can't run
   your own blog, think about what small steps you can make in this direction.

And that's it! I hope you find these ideas useful and helpful.


[mst]: https://joinmastodon.org/
[posse]: http://indieweb.org/POSSE
[tw]:https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mariotaku.twidere
[st]: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jp.juggler.subwaytooter
[e2e]: https://www.wired.com/2014/11/hacker-lexicon-end-to-end-encryption/
[sn]: https://whispersystems.org/
[wire]:https://wire.com/
[csv]: https://conversations.im/
[riot]: https://riot.im/
[pw]: https://www.scuttlebutt.nz/
[dpm]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2VBmHOYpV8