Break Away from the Smartphone
This month, for my birthday, I decided to make some decisions on my social footprint. I’ve been out of the Meta socials and X for years, and I’m quite happy with the fediverse. Lots of people see this decentralization as a positive step back from Web2.0 to move towards the good ol’ Web1.0, and I agree.
I want more, though.
The iPhone was announced in early 2007. Before that, in my opinion, life was simpler — and therefore, better. The introduction of a smart phone, with which we could do basically anything, made emerge some critical points.
Don’t misread these words: I love smartphones and their capabilities. I just don’t like the way the social networks turned into their main purpose.
Maybe it was Twitter’s fault. And yeah, in general, Facebook worsened the situation. It seems cool to read anyone’s thoughts in real time, on the train or in the bathroom, but… is it really?
I agree that everyone should have their opinion on this matter, and I’m glad I might have found the right tools built for my taste. After a couple of years spent on Mastodon, enjoying its feeling, but not at all the experience with the mobile clients, I think I got some kind of epiphany.
I love the freedom that the fediverse offers, but I need to live it just in front of the computer.
Probably it’s a consequence of the decentralized/federated structure of the actual platforms that use the Activity Pub protocol, but it is quite a pain to follow accounts from multiple instances. And, if we would go back to only one, huge instance or social, the old problems would emerge again.
But it is thanks to this “defect” that I started to appreciate (again) the way I can follow/comment/stay up to date with the people I want:
- Web browser, for social networks
- RSS reader, for news and blogs Just those two.
That’s why I am enjoying my new OMG.lol’s account: it provides “basic” (but healthy) features for this philosophy.
And now, the hardest part: I want to try to uninstall all the social media apps from the smartphones. I’ll start with deactivating immediately the notifications, then we’ll see.
Browse like it’s 2005.
Bonus: on Thursday, we took a break, and we went to down the river at ~20 minutes from home. It was beautiful, mostly because there was no one around.
Will we succeed to go there more often, this year?
This month, for my birthday, I decided to make some decisions on my social footprint. I’ve been out of the Meta socials and X for years, and I’m quite happy with the fediverse. Lots of people see this decentralization as a positive step back from Web2.0 to move towards the good ol’ Web1.0, and I agree.
I want more, though.
The iPhone was announced in early 2007. Before that, in my opinion, life was simpler — and therefore, better. The introduction of a smart phone, with which we could do basically anything, made emerge some critical points.