#social-media-networking

[nando161mando]

Disabling features to make money

[icewindandboringhorror]

On average, what is the total MONTHLY amount that you spend on dining out*?

*(This doesn't only count going out to restaurants, but also stuff like picking up fast food to bring home, getting a coffee on the way to work, getting a premade sandwich from a grocery store deli during lunch, buying a quick snack from a convenience store or food cart whilst walking somewhere, ordering a pizza or any other food to be delivered to your home, etc.)

*(If you often dine out in groups/as a household: calculate and divide the costs so that you get a Per Person average. This is for YOU individually, NOT the total household/group costs)

(I'm sure polls similar to this have been made before (very common topic), I just haven't personally seen one that I can remember, so, I was curious to do my own! I was discussing this with a group of people today and it was very interesting to see how widely the number varied between individuals. :0c )

(Reblog for bigger sample size if you can, and feel free to explain your answer in tags if there's anything extra to add!)

[conceived-angel]

heyyy @/fx networks... got anything you want to share with the class?

[reasonsforhope]

"Is social media designed to reward people for acting badly?

The answer is clearly yes, given that the reward structure on social media platforms relies on popularity, as indicated by the number of responses – likes and comments – a post receives from other users. Black-box algorithms then further amplify the spread of posts that have attracted attention.

Sharing widely read content, by itself, isn’t a problem. But it becomes a problem when attention-getting, controversial content is prioritized by design. Given the design of social media sites, users form habits to automatically share the most engaging information regardless of its accuracy and potential harm. Offensive statements, attacks on out groups and false news are amplified, and misinformation often spreads further and faster than the truth.

We are two social psychologists and a marketing scholar. Our research, presented at the 2023 Nobel Prize Summit, shows that social media actually has the ability to create user habits to share high-quality content. After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based...

Re-targeting rewards

To investigate the effect of a new reward structure, we gave financial rewards to some users for sharing accurate content and not sharing misinformation. These financial rewards simulated the positive social feedback, such as likes, that users typically receive when they share content on platforms. In essence, we created a new reward structure based on accuracy instead of attention.

As on popular social media platforms, participants in our research learned what got rewarded by sharing information and observing the outcome, without being explicitly informed of the rewards beforehand. This means that the intervention did not change the users’ goals, just their online experiences. After the change in reward structure, participants shared significantly more content that was accurate. More remarkably, users continued to share accurate content even after we removed rewards for accuracy in a subsequent round of testing. These results show that users can be given incentives to share accurate information as a matter of habit.

A different group of users received rewards for sharing misinformation and for not sharing accurate content. Surprisingly, their sharing most resembled that of users who shared news as they normally would, without any financial reward. The striking similarity between these groups reveals that social media platforms encourage users to share attention-getting content that engages others at the expense of accuracy and safety...

Doing right and doing well

Our approach, using the existing rewards on social media to create incentives for accuracy, tackles misinformation spread without significantly disrupting the sites’ business model. This has the additional advantage of altering rewards instead of introducing content restrictions, which are often controversial and costly in financial and human terms.

Implementing our proposed reward system for news sharing carries minimal costs and can be easily integrated into existing platforms. The key idea is to provide users with rewards in the form of social recognition when they share accurate news content. This can be achieved by introducing response buttons to indicate trust and accuracy. By incorporating social recognition for accurate content, algorithms that amplify popular content can leverage crowdsourcing to identify and amplify truthful information.

Both sides of the political aisle now agree that social media has challenges, and our data pinpoints the root of the problem: the design of social media platforms."

And here's the video of one of the scientsts presenting this research at the Nobel Prize Summit!

-Article via The Conversation, August 1, 2023. Video via the Nobel Prize's official Youtube channel, Nobel Prize, posted May 31, 2023.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Social Quitting

In “Social Quitting,” my latest Locus Magazine column, I advance a theory to explain the precipitous vibe shift in how many of us view the once-dominant social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter, and how it is that we have so quickly gone asking what we can do to get these services out of our lives to where we should go now that we’re all ready to leave them:

https://locusmag.com/2023/01/commentary-cory-doctorow-social-quitting/

The core of the argument revolves around surpluses — that is, the value that exists in the service. For a user, surpluses are things like “being able to converse with your friends” and “being able to plan activities with your friends.” For advertisers, surpluses are things like “being able to target ads based on the extraction and processing of private user data” and “being able to force users to look at ads before they can talk to one another.”

For the platforms, surpluses are things like, “Being able to force advertisers and business customers to monetize their offerings through the platform, blocking rivals like Onlyfans, Patreon, Netflix, Amazon, etc” and things like “Being able to charge more for ads” and “being able to clone your business customers’ products and then switch your users to the in-house version.”

Platforms control most of the surplus-allocating options. They can tune your feed so that it mostly consists of media and text from people you explicitly chose to follow, or so that it consists of ads, sponsored posts, or posts they think will “boost engagement” by sinking you into a dismal clickhole. They can made ads skippable or unskippable. They can block posts with links to rival sites to force their business customers to transact within their platform, so they can skim fat commissions every time money changes hands and so that they can glean market intelligence about which of their business customers’ products they should clone and displace.

But platforms can’t just allocate surpluses will-ye or nill-ye. No one would join a brand-new platform whose sales-pitch was, “No matter who you follow, we’ll show you other stuff; there will be lots of ads that you can’t skip; we will spy on you a lot.” Likewise, no one would sign up to advertise or sell services on a platform whose pitch was “Our ads are really expensive. Any business you transact has to go through us, and we’ll take all your profits in junk fees. This also lets us clone you and put you out of business.”

Instead, platforms have to carefully shift their surpluses around: first they have to lure in users, who will attract business customers, who will generate the fat cash surpluses that can be creamed off for the platforms’ investors. All of this has to be orchestrated to lock in each group, so that they won’t go elsewhere when the service is enshittified as it processes through its life-cycle.

This is where network effects and switching costs come into play. A service has “network effects” if it gets more valuable as users join it. You joined Twitter to talk to the people who were already using it, and then other people joined so they could talk to you.

“Switching costs” are what you have to give up when you leave a service: if a service is siloed — if it blocks interoperability with rivals — then quitting that service means giving up access to the people whom you left behind. This is the single most important difference between ActivityPub-based Fediverse services like Mastodon and the silos like Twitter and Facebook — you can quit a Fediverse server and set up somewhere else, and still maintain your follows and followers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/23/semipermeable-membranes/#free-as-in-puppies

In the absence of interoperability, network effects impose their own switching cost: the “collective action problem” of deciding when to leave and where to go. If you depend on the people you follow and who follow you — for emotional support, for your livelihood, for community — then the extreme difficulty of convincing everyone to leave at the same time and go somewhere else means that you can be enticed into staying on a service that you no longer enjoy. The platforms can shift the surpluses away from you, provided that doing so makes you less miserable than abandoning your friends or fans or customers would. This is the Fiddler On the Roof problem: everyone stays put in the shtetl even though the cossacks ride through on the reg and beat the shit out of them, because they can’t all agree on where to go if they leave:

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-to-leave-dying-social-media-platforms-9fc550fe5abf

So the first stage of the platform lifecycle is luring in users by allocating lots of surplus to them — making the service fun and great and satisfying to use. Few or no ads, little or no overt data-collection, feeds that emphasize the people you want to hear from, not the people willing to pay to reach you.

This continues until the service attains a critical mass: once it becomes impossible to, say, enroll your kid in a little-league baseball team without having a Facebook account, then Facebook can start shifting its surpluses to advertisers and other business-users of the platform, who will pay Facebook to interpose themselves in your use of the platform. You’ll hate it, but you won’t leave. Junior loves little-league.

Facebook can enshittify its user experience because the users are now locked in, holding each other hostage. If Facebook can use the courts and technological countermeasures to block interoperable services, it can increase its users’ switching costs, producing more opportunities for lucrative enshittification without the risk of losing the users that make Facebook valuable to advertisers. That’s why Facebook pioneered so many legal tactics for criminalizing interoperability:

https://www.eff.org/cases/facebook-v-power-ventures

This is the second phase of the toxic platform life-cycle: luring in business customers by shifting surpluses from users to advertisers, sellers, etc. This is the moment when the platforms offer cheap and easy monetization, low transaction fees, few barriers to off-platform monetization, etc. This is when, for example, a news organization can tease an article on its website with an off-platform link, luring users to click through and see the ads it controls.

Because Facebook has locked in its users through mutual hostage-taking, it can pollute their feeds with lots of these posts to news organizations’ sites, bumping down the messages from its users’ friends, and that means that Facebook can selectively tune how much traffic it gives to different kinds of business customers. If Facebook wants to lure in sports sites, it can cram those sites’ posts into millions of users’ feeds and send floods of traffic to sports outlets.

Outlets that don’t participate in Facebook lose out, and so they join Facebook, start shoveling their content into it, hiring SEO Kremlinologists to help them figure out how to please The Algorithm, in hopes of gaining a permanent, durable source of readers (and thus revenue) for their site.

But ironically, once a critical mass of sports sites are on Facebook, Facebook no longer needs to prioritize sports sites in its users’ feeds. Now that the sports sites all believe that a Facebook presence is a competitive necessity, they will hold each other hostage there, egging each other on to put more things on Facebook, even as the traffic dwindles.

Once sports sites have taken each other hostage, Facebook can claw back the surplus it allocated to them and use it to rope in another sector — health sites, casual games, employment seekers, financial advisors, etc etc. Each group is ensnared by a similar dynamic to the one that locks in the users.

But there is a difference between users’ surpluses and business’s surpluses. A user’s surplus is attention, and there is no such thing as an “attention economy.” You can’t use attention to pay for data-centers, or executive bonuses, or to lobby Congress. Attention is not a currency in the same way that cryptos are not currency — it is not a store of value, nor a unit of exchange, nor or a unit of account.

Turning attention into money requires the same tactics as turning crypto into money — you have to lure in people who have real, actual money and convince them to swap it for attention. With crypto, this involved paying Larry David, Matt Damon, Spike Lee and LeBron James to lie about crypto’s future in order to rope in suckers who would swap their perfectly cromulent “fiat” money for unspendable crypto tokens.

With platforms, you need to bring in business customers who get paid in actual cash and convince them to give you that cash in exchange for ethereal, fast-evaporating, inconstant, unmeasurable “attention.” This works like any Ponzi scheme (that is, it works like cryptos): you can use your shareholders’ cash to pay short-term returns to business customers, losing a little money as a convincer that brings in more trade.

That’s what Facebook did when it sent enormous amounts of traffic to a select few news-sites that fell for the pivot to video fraud, in order to convince their competitors to borrow billions of dollars to finance Facebook’s bid to compete with Youtube:

https://doctorow.medium.com/metaverse-means-pivot-to-video-adbe09319038

This convincer strategy is found in every con. If you go to the county fair, you’ll see some poor bastard walking around all day with a giant teddy bear that he “won” by throwing three balls into a peach-basket. The carny who operated that midway game let him win the teddy precisely so that he would walk around all day, advertising the game, which is rigged so that no one else wins the giant teddy-bear:

https://boingboing.net/2006/08/27/rigged-carny-game.html

Social media platforms can allocate giant teddy-bears to business-customers, and it can also withdraw them at will. Careful allocations mean that the platform can rope in a critical mass of business customers and then begin the final phase of its life-cycle: allocating surpluses to its shareholders.

We know what this looks like.

Rigged ad-markets:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_Blue

Understaffed content moderation departments:

https://www.dw.com/en/twitters-sacking-of-content-moderators-will-backfire-experts-warn/a-63778330

Knock-off products:

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/08/twitter-is-the-latest-platform-to-test-a-tiktok-copycat-feature/

Nuking “trust and safety”:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-dissolves-trust-safety-council-2022-12-13/

Hiding posts that have links to rival services:

https://www.makeuseof.com/content-types-facebook-hides-why/

Or blocking posts that link to rival services:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/19/better-failure/#let-my-tweeters-go

Or worse, terminating accounts for linking to rival services:

https://blog.joinmastodon.org/2022/12/twitter-suspends-mastodon-account-prevents-sharing-links/

That is, once a platform has its users locked in, and has its business customers locked in, it can enshittify its service to the point of near uselessness without losing either, allocating all the useful surplus in the business to its shareholders.

But this strategy has a problem: users and business customers don’t like to be locked in! They will constantly try to find ways to de-enshittify your service and/or leave for greener pastures. And being at war with your users and business customers means that your reputation continuously declines, because every time a user or business customer figures out a way to claw back some surplus, you have to visibly, obviously enshittify your service wrestle it back.

Every time a service makes headlines for blocking an ad-blocker, or increasing its transaction fees, or screwing over its users or business customers in some other way, it makes the case that the price you pay for using the service is not worth the value it delivers.

In other words, the platforms try to establish an equilibrium where they only leave business customers and users with the absolute bare minimum needed to keep them on the service, and extract the rest for their shareholders. But this is a very brittle equilibrium, because the prices that platforms impose on their users and business customers can change very quickly, even if the platforms don’t do anything differently.

Users and business customers can revalue the privacy costs, or the risks of staying on the platform based on exogenous factors. Privacy scandals and other ruptures can make the cost you’ve been paying for years seem higher than you realized and no longer worth it.

This problem isn’t unique to social media platforms, either. It’s endemic to end-stage capitalism, where companies can go on for years paying their workers just barely enough to survive (or even less, expecting them to get public assistance and/or a side-hustle), and those workers can tolerate it, and tolerate it, and tolerate it — until one day, they stop.

The Great Resignation, Quiet Quitting, the mass desertions from the gig economy — they all prove the Stein’s Law: “Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.”

Same for long, brittle supply-chains, where all the surplus has been squeezed out: concentrating all the microchip production in China and Taiwan, all the medical saline in Puerto Rico, all the shipping into three cartels… This strategy works well, and can be perfectly tuned with mathematical models that cut right to the joint, and they work and they work.

Until they stop. Until covid. Or war. Or wildfires. Or floods. Or interest rate hikes. Or revolution. All this stuff works great until you wake up and discover that the delicate balance between paying for guard labor and paying for a fair society has tilted, and now there’s a mob building a guillotine outside the gates of your luxury compound.

This is the force underpinning collapse: “slow at first, then all at once.” A steady erosion of the failsafes, flensing all the slack out of the system, extracting all the surpluses until there’s nothing left in the reservoir, no reason to stay.

It’s what caused the near-collapse of Barnes and Noble, and while there are plenty of ways to describe James Daunt’s successful turnaround, the most general characterization is, “He has reallocated the company’s surpluses to workers, readers, writers and publishers”:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/what-can-we-learn-from-barnes-and

A system can never truly stabilize. This is why utopias are nonsense: even if you design the most perfect society in which everything works brilliantly, it will still have to cope with war and meteors and pandemics and other factors beyond your control. A system can’t just work well, it has to fail well.

This is why I object so strenuously to people who characterize my 2017 novel Walkaway as a “dystopian novel.” Yes, the protagonists are eking out survival amidst a climate emergency and a failing state, but they aren’t giving up, they’re building something new:

https://locusmag.com/2017/06/bruce-sterling-reviews-cory-doctorow/

“Dystopia” isn’t when things go wrong. Assuming nothing will go wrong doesn’t make you an optimist, it makes you an asshole. A dangerous asshole. Assuming nothing will go wrong is why they didn’t put enough lifeboats on the Titanic. Dystopia isn’t where things go wrong. Dystopia is when things go wrong, and nothing can be done about it.

Anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop. The social media barons who reeled users and business customers into a mutual hostage-taking were confident that their self-licking ice-cream cone — in which we all continued to energetically produce surpluses for them to harvest, because we couldn’t afford to leave — would last forever.

They were wrong. The important thing about the Fediverse isn’t that it’s noncommercial or decentralized — it’s that its design impedes surplus harvesting. The Fediverse is designed to keep switching costs as low as possible, by enshrining the Right Of Exit into the technical architecture of the system. The ability to leave a service without paying a price is the best defense we have against the scourge of enshittification.

(Thanks to Tim Harford for inspiring this column via an offhand remark in his kitchen a couple months ago!)

[Image ID: The Phillip Medhurst Picture Torah 397. The Israelites collect manna. Exodus cap 16 v 14. Luyken and son.]

[lilacstro]

Electional astrology: chart of your social media account

lol let's go with another post. Phew!! this post tested my fingers fr, it took me a long time to tie all of this down.

Electional astrology, also known as event astrology, is a branch found in most traditions of astrology according to which a practitioner decides the most appropriate time for an event based on the astrological auspiciousness of that time(source: Wikipedia)

i seriously don't remember whose post I saw here a few weeks ago regarding this topic, if you tell me, I will immediately credit you for the inspiration behind this post. That post was more than 4 years ago i remember.

Ok so today we will talk about a non serious but making-sense kind of topic yet again. Let's go, the chart of your social media

Hence, you can go on astro seek and look for a favorable planetary alignment in your calendar if you wish to start a new account in a particular niche with whatever knowledge I am sharing with you below. I tested this with my account (I have my exact account time lmao) and other social media platforms:))

✰Chart preparation

This chart can simply be prepared using the time and place and date of when you started your social media, just like how we prepare natal charts. You can use either of astro-seek or astro.com as you please

For some people, I have a tip! if you started your account recently or even a few weeks/months ago on a laptop/computer, go into your search history and search for your account name. Then, find the entry that is earlies and then right click on time that appears and see click inspect, you should be able to see the exact time of your account. I will show how.

press ctrl+H

search for your account name

3. go for the date thats earliest

4. now right click on the date and click inspect

5. you should be able to see the date and time. The full timestamp with the user timezone is displayed inside title field

Now, even if you don't have the exact time, its ABSOLUETELY fine. You can use any nearest time to your memory or maybe, only the date works too, but we would just be able to see your sun and moon sign.

✰INTERPRETING YOUR CHART

cool, now that you have your chart, we will first look at the rising, sun, moon sign. then we will look at your 10th house and other notes will be mentioned below.

⭐combination of sun, rising sign and MC: how your account looks, how you act on your account, your followers engage and stuff like that

⭐moon sign: you main central theme of what your account is about and what your content feels like.

⭐take the sun, rising sign and MC from below, and find common grounds:

1.aries: your account could be come off as opinionated or polarising, people might find your account overwhelming at times or maybe a have an overwhelming feeling about it, however, if you aim to create an account with this motive, maybe a sport/war-related/martian entertainment kinda account, this is pretty cool

2.Taurus: your account might actually look very aesthetically pleasing, if you post to get noticed for your fashion sense or jwellery aesthetic or pintresty-things like that, you will be noticed. you might actually post in a healthy manner and consistently. for some reasons makes me think you should like posting videos on this account maybe? also good for starting music related things aswell. you can post finance related stuff or actually earn through your account people would be willing to trust you w their money

3.Gemini : your account actually can see people commenting a lot, or even sharing their opinions and causing some kind of debate in the comment section lol. Basically if you are looking for people engagement, its very possible here. you might actually like to explain/ teach or talk about things? like tutorials or observation kind of things too.. you might like posting long captions/memes or things like so. edit:twitter has a gemini moon

4.Cancer: sweet and cute kinda account, people might find your account very sweet and welcoming at sorts, so your followers should be that kind of people, you should see sucess if you post heartwarming content like for kids or new moms etc. you might also have a lot of attachment to your account here, and might post a lot of personal thoughts, personal poetry, song covers or things here. you can get very hurt if someone says something upsetting and be super protective of your account. your account should make people super comfortable and make them act on how they feel tbh

[lol edit 4, twitter is a cancer]

5.Leo: YOU CAN NEVER GO WRONG HERE, if your account gets a leo rising, you should see a good public following regardless of the content you post. account engagement and reach should get better with time.

6.Virgo: other people/you yourself might get really critical of your account, paying attention to the smallest details and things like that(GOOGLE IS LITERALLY A SEARCH ENGINE LMAO). You might constantly struggle and go between deleting your account or something too (i can second this one tbh) but on a good note or maybe bad note idk you decide, you will be hyper vigilant of what you post and how do people think of it. But since its a mercury ruled sign, you should expect it to do good on the internet and the web related arena in general.

EDIT3

7.Libra: Another bomber for social media placements, people would love what you show, expect a ton of people to interact with your posts, or at least like them. Beautiful, eye pleasing account aesthetic. You can post things about fashion, jwellery and if you post yourself, these things should come to notice.

LOL EDIT:

8.Scorpio: this fr gives your account so much intensity, now depends on your sun/moon and other planetary placements on how this actually goes cos it can actually make your account seem isolated and off putting kinda, people might get a little skeptical to follow you maybe??? thats why i say, what kind of intensity is important, it may actually be like that your account has no posts at all or even if you do, it somehow doesnt reach the audience so yeahhhh.... it can also be that you guys post a lot of dark/black and white aesthetic things or be into sad poetry or things like that. seen a lot of withcraft/spell and manifestation accounts w this one

9.Sagittarius: You would be so chill w your account, post what you like, say what you like, your real self comes out unapologetically lmao. This is good for people who are very self critical of the things they post, like art accounts or things like that. People should find your account very authentic and representing you as a person so that would be cool, whoever follows you/likes your content, is actually a real fan of your work i must say. your account actually might look very distinctive and unconventional too. it is also very possible you gain following from all over the world, even if small.

EDIT: guess who we have with this placement, upon my research it was December or late November

10.Capricorn: Your account might actually give strict vibes, i mean it could be that you follow certain type of people only, only post certain type of content and dont go beyond it? irdk it seems so to me. It could also be you guys are very careful of who you follow, what you post and who follows you back too. Very protective and secured of your account I must say. Your account might actually look very clean and organised too.

11.Aquarius: this gives me the SUPER TUMBLR vibes lol, quirky, very self expressive, and people would actually find your account. might use multiple colors. welcoming and relatable, to be themselves while interacting with it. You guys might not be afraid to post anything without second thought lol. This is pretty cool placement for making apps and websites and things that has to do with the web in general. Your account should infact see growth with time. People might find it easy to talk on your account???? comment??? or maybe you could receive a lot of dms or things like that. People might even make friends through your account maybe so its cool if you wanna start something sorts of brotherhood, or feminism or support groups. you could be first of a kind to do something too.

EDIT: lol tumblr is aquarius most probably and facebook and yt too

12. Pisces: People might find your account very charming and appealing in some sorts, addictive for some. There is something about your account that could feel very otherworldly, something that offers an escape for people. You could be into posting ethereal arts, pictures and other enchanting stuff, even crystals and spirituality. Some of them may idealize your account take inspirations from you, some of them might find it too good to be true at sorts. You might make people wanting to wait for your posts or something lol

edit 6: pintrest

✰Moon sign

this can determine what you account contents or topics could be or seem like, basically, your niche. Infact, a stellium of planets could give some same effect

⭐Aries: Action, Adventure, Competitive Sports

⭐Taurus: Lifestyle, Home Decor, Culinary, food vlogging, plants, fashion, music, healing sounds, asmr

⭐Gemini: Comedy, Short Films, News, debates, tutorials (even for astrology, spiritual sciences, academical subjects etc), memes, something that instills thoughts and causes some kind of discussion even if its with one self.

⭐Cancer: writing, poetry, history, kids content, new mother/motherly content, feminine things, home decor, emotional management, Personal stories, family moments, relationship advice, emotional well-being etc

⭐Leo: all forms of arts (music/theater/dance etc), Reality TV, Celebrity News, anything that seizes attention, influencers

⭐Virgo: Documentaries, Health, Educational Content, fitness and nutrition, writing, journalism, crafts, pets

⭐Libra: styling, hair & makeup, music, interior design, photography, Romance, Arts, Social Commentary, Fashion, art, relationship advice, social justice, collaborations, jewelery, influencers

⭐Scorpio: Mystery, Thriller, Investigative Journalism, Deep dives, psychological insights, transformation stories, mysteries, taboo topics, the occult, anything witchy

⭐Sagittarius: Travel, Adventure, Philosophy, Arts, honest Reaction/opinion videos, astrology, spirituality, poems, comedy, entertainment, sports, creative things, DIYs

⭐Capricorn: Business, Biographies, Historical Dramas, Career advice, business tips, success stories, structured routines.

⭐Aquarius: Science Fiction, Tech, Social Innovation, Technology trends, futuristic concepts, social innovation, quirky ideas, gadget reviews, coding help, humanitarianism, unconventional things LGBTQIA+, unconventional fashion etc

⭐Pisces: Fantasy, Spirituality, Music, Inspirational quotes, fantasy art, music, spirituality, meditative practices, crystals, healing, astrology

✰Planetary alignments

Having sun in 1st and 10th house is extremely good

Having saturn in public/extroverted houses isnt much cool. If in 10th, it could mean its a slow and steady wins the race but in 1st it can make you super conscious and restrictive of how you post

Similarly, having chiron in extroverted houses may make you insecure, and very hyper aware of the things you post and if they are "matching the rules/aesthetics" or even making you feel insecure about posting in general and making you people conscious. You may even wanna delete it constantly or feel unsatisfied.

Having mars in 1st/10th/extroverted houses could mean you would post a lot

Having Venus or Jupiter in 2nd/10th or even extroverted houses could be a sign you can earn money through your account or people would be willing to give you money

Jupiter in 1st or 10th would expand your public image and give you a balanced-well liked view, you would be well liked

Uranus in public houses could mean you like to post sporadically or unexpected things

Neptune in public houses could actually make you look "too good to be true" and some people might actually get obsessed with your account, but some can find you superficial as well. Also beware about losing your passwords/online fraud/hacking kinda stuff

Similarly, if your mars conjuncts Uranus (esp in a public house) could mean you don't post often but when you do its a lott

Vertex or PoF in extroverted houses is again very lucky, you can expect big opportunities or luck coming in through your account

Moon in public houses could mean people connect to your posts and they are well liked/shared

--⭐-----⭐------⭐------⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐---

✰EXTRAS:

I would suggest not starting on new moons, as they signify endings.

Dont start when a LOT of planets are in retrograde

If possible, check moon-venus, mercury-venus, moon-mercury aspects

Dont start if Jupiter or Venus are in harsh aspects.

--⭐-----⭐------⭐------⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐-----⭐---

paid readings are open<33

support me on ko-fi :)

this for me is the best post I have ever made until on this acc haha, tell me what was the best post you have seen on my account and why, I would love to know

xoxo

[aewon]

yang jungwon- ache for you

jw x f!reader ☯︎ fluff, angst ☯︎ cursing, suggestive ☯︎ wc 842 ☯︎ not proofread

You considered Jungwon one of your close friends, having grown up next to each other and your families being close.

Where you were, he was.

And you hate to admit it, but over time, you grew to have a crush on him.

You can’t help it! He’s grown to be such a good person, not to mention handsome.

You’re certainly not the only one either.

It’s almost everyday you hear one girl or another talking about Jungwon.

You know they envy you for being close to him, but even so, you think he only sees you as a friend.

So, you’ve kept your feelings secret.

There have been numerous times where you’ve wanted to confess, but chickened out every time.

You can’t help but swoon whenever Jungwon talks about you to others, which is why when you hear him mention your name, you can’t help but listen around the corner of the hallway.

“She’s so fucking annoying. I get we’ve been friends since we were kids but it’s like I can never escape her. She’s always there, always clinging to me somehow, I wish she’d just back off.”

You feel your heart crack as you take in his words.

Is this how he’s felt about you all along? Or was this a recent feeling?

Either way, tears prick your eyes as you take a step back.

Without warning, someone turns the corner, coming into direct contact with you.

You look up and see Jungwon, a confused look on his face.

He sees the tears in your eyes and knows.

“Y/N…I-”

You put a hand up, telling him to stop.

Turning around, you begin walking away.

“Y/N, wait!”

His hand makes contact with your shoulder, but you shrug it off.

Making your way into the girls bathroom, somewhere he can’t follow you, you sit on the sink and let the tears flow, trying not to make any noise.

Jungwon stands outside the bathroom, trying to coax you to come out and talk to him.

Only when the bell rings do you hear footsteps leaving the area.

You freshen yourself up, splashing some cold water on your face before heading to class.

You spend the next few days completely avoiding Jungwon who is still attempting to talk to you.

Why? You’re giving him what he wanted.

He even came to your house, asking to see you but you told your parents you didn’t want to see him, to their surprise.

They begged you to tell them what happened but you refused.

Despite everything, you don’t want Jungwon getting into trouble.

Jungwon feels like his world is crashing down.

He knows that what he said was true, he did feel suffocated by you, but he didn’t go about it the right way.

He only started feeling this way recently, wanting space from you for a while.

No, he doesn’t hate you, he just wanted to spend some time apart.

Now he feels terrible for what he’s done.

He didn’t miss the side eye your parents gave him, wanting to know why their daughter refused to see him. He wanted to confess, tell the truth but he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

As he lays in bed after another unsuccessful day of trying to talk to you, he thinks about the past 18 years of his life.

You’ve always been there, by his side through everything.

And now, he’s possibly ruined everything.

Jungwon reevaluates everything.

Why did he say what he said?

Because he felt suffocated by your presence.

But why?

He’d never had a problem until recently.

As he scrolls through your instagram, he looks at your most recent post.

You’re beautiful, you always have been.

Even at a young age, Jungwon thought you were pretty.

You’ve grown into an amazing, beautiful young woman.

He feels an ache in his heart at the thought of losing you.

He thinks about you, about your smile, your laugh.

Without realizing, he’s begun to ache somewhere other than his heart.

Looking down, he groans.

Now he has to go take a cold shower.

The next morning, you make your way to school, headphones in not hearing the footsteps behind you.

Jungwon throws himself in front of you, grabbing your shoulders so you stop.

Looking up at him, you try not to lean into his touch that you’ve missed so much.

“What,” you say, giving him a cold stare.

“I realized why I said what I said. It’s because I’m so infatuated with you, that I thought pushing you away would push my feelings away. I love you and I’m sorry.”

You freeze up under Jungwon’s hold, processing his confession.

“What?”

“I. Love. You.”

You feel tears begin to cascade down your cheeks, yet this time they’re not sad tears.

“Jungwon, you idiot.”

“I know,” he pulls you into a hug.

Wrapping your arms around him, you squeeze him tightly.

He pulls away, cupping your face and kissing you gently.

You kiss back, sighing in content.

When you walk into school, hands intertwined, you feel revived.

sorry for not posting for so long, hehe

tagging @pshbites cause she wanted me to ☺️

[sreegs]

gonna start this post upfront by saying tumblr's fuckin up bad with moderation right now, regarding the wave of trans people being targeted. but i'm not here to discuss that issue, i'm going to talk about the nature of large and small social spaces on the internet

as this post rightly points out, examining our existing social network structure reveals the crux of the problem: we are tenants on someone else's service. extrapolating from that, we're the source of revenue for someone's business. under that model, there is no incentive whatsoever for a social network to apply a "fair" or "just" moderation scheme. their goal is to maximize the number of people using the service and minimize blowback from advertisers regarding "what goes on" on the site

there will not be an alternative social network that gets this right at scale, unless it meets the following criteria:

1. Has ample moderators to thoughtfully deal with user moderation cases

2. Has terms of service that you agree with

3. Has a moderation team that understands how to apply moderation according to the terms of service, and amends it when necessary

4. Does not rely on external income source to pay for the site

Number 1: An ideal social network is one that has numerous, well-treated moderators who are adept at resolving conflict. Under capitalism, this is a non-starter, as moderation is seen as a money sink that just needs to be barely enough to make the site usable.

Number 2: An ideal social network has terms of service you agree with. Unfortunately there's no set of rules everyone will find fair. While this is not a problem for the people who want to use the site, it will inevitably create an outgroup who are pushed away from the site. The obvious bad actors (nazis, terfs, etc) are pretty straightforward, but there are groups that do things you might find "unpleasant" even if you support their right to do it. Inevitably this turns into lines drawn in the sand about how visible should that content be.

Number 3: An ideal social network has moderators who have internalized the terms of service and consistently make decisions based on the TOS. If a situation comes up where there's no clear ruling in the TOS, but users need a moderation decision regarding it, the moderation team must choose how to act and then, potentially, amend the TOS if the case warrants it. Humans, though, are not robots, and no, AI is not the solution here jesus christ. There will always be variance in moderation decisions. And when it comes to amending the TOS, who's the decision maker? The sites' owners? The moderation team? Users as a whole?

Number 4: An ideal social network does not rely on an external income source to pay for the site. The site pays for itself, and its income flow covers the costs necessary with reserves for unexpected situations. Again, under capitalism this is a no-go, because a corporate social network's only goal is to maximize money. Infinite growth, not stasis. A private social network paid by members requires enough paying members to be sustainable, and costs will generally go up over time, not down. A social network that has some lump sum of cash just generating wealth is also unreliable because, first you need a large lump sum to begin with, and that mechanism is tied to the whims of the investment market. And, again, costs of the site will go up, not down.

As you've read through these you're probably reaching the conclusion: making a large-scale social network that is fair and sustainable is very, very difficult, if not impossible with our current culture and economic systems. There might be a scale where you can reach "almost fair" and "barely sustainable", but then you have to cap its growth.

So the "town square" social network is rife with problems and we need to abandon it's model as the ideal network. Should we go small instead? We have a model already for that with message boards and forums. Though they weren't without their problems, they didn't have the scale that exacerbated those problems to crisis levels. Most of the time.

If you're thinking maybe you need a small network like this, free from a corporate owner (like Discord), the tools are out there for you to accomplish it. However, before you try, keep the above points in mind. Even if you're not out to create a large-scale social network, an open network will run away from you. And all of those points above are guidelines for a good online community.

You and your network of 50 friends and friends of friends might all get along together, but every single person you add increases the risk of creating moderation problems. People also change, or simply have episodes of irrational behavior. You need a dedicated team of moderators who are acting coherently for and agreeably to the community.

And you absolutely must keep this in mind: inevitably, as you add more people, someone will do vile shit. CSAM and violence type shit. You have to be prepared to encounter it. You have to have a plan to see and handle that, and the moderators who are part of your moderation team must be prepared to see and handle it too.

There's been a steady trickle of new alternative social networks (or social media networks) popping up, but you cannot expect those to be perfect havens. Tumblr was once the haven for weirdos on the internet. Now it's hostile to its core members. This is not trying to rationalize staying here because "hey, it could be worse". This is just trying to warn you to temper your expectations, especially because new networks that suddenly get a huge influx of new members hit a critical point where many falter, change, or fail.

Examine who's running those networks closely. Think critically about what they're touting as the benefits of those networks. And if you decide to join them, do not, under any case, expect those new homes to be permanent.

[dollypopup]

look, y'all can all gleeful cancel me for this #unpopular opinion if you want, but even IF Nicola wasn't nominated for the comedy section and it was her and Luke head to head in best drama?

I'd still vote for him

because I genuinely and truly think his acting is INCREDIBLE. and I think he's one of the better actors on Bridgerton full stop. I love the nuance he brings to Colin as a character, I love how he so fully embodies him as a character and that Colin has similarities to him, but is fully different at the same time. Colin does not talk like Luke, walk like Luke, even fidget like Luke. He has his own character beats and yes, sometimes parts of Luke bleed into him, such as with the head tilt, but the voice is different, softer, the movements of Colin as a character are distinct to me, he delivers humor well ('you'd already be dead?') and his decisions for Colin as a character are ICONIC (I'm never forgetting that dress adjustment with specific fingers was all him). Colin had a harder go of it than a lot of leads because his story isn't as loud- he doesn't get a lot of big, dramatic moments to have big dramatic acting, and honestly the show didn't give him a lot of screentime in the first place. But when he does have poignant emotional moments? They feel REAL. He isn't given as much time with the audience as other characters are and he doesn't go for the broad strokes with his acting, so sometimes I think he can get lost in some of the louder acting, but that doesn't negate the fact that he's GOOD. He's a good ass actor. He plays Colin like Colin is an actual person.

And for me? For me, that hits home. Even with truncated time on his own season (yeah, I'm still bitter), he delivers every single time. Anger, betrayal, longing, heartache, silly awkward humor, heat- and he does all of those emotions BELIEVABLY. I watched Luke Newton depict Colin falling in love so beautifully and so realistically, I HAVE NO CHOICE but to give him his flowers. Just because he's not as heavy in the hustle as other actors are (please remember this is a neurodivergent actor with anxiety and dyslexia, mental health is important and it's good he took a break ) doesn't mean he's not a fantastic actor. And if you've ever seen his depiction in The Shape of Things? The man is excellent.

I think Bridgerton has a lot of 'big moves' actors. And that's fine. Many people prefer that. But I prefer the nuanced moments and the softer beats of it all, and I think if the camera had allowed us as an audience a longer glimpse into moments with Colin, we'd all be even more floored. I can watch gifs of his scenes over and over and over again and find something new every time.

So y'all can sit there and accuse others of a 'pity vote' but idgaf. Luke Newton is one of the best actors on that show. And I stand by that. Eat me.

[nando161mando]

[mysharona1987]

This will be an awkward name change.

[patetic-club]

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀ʷᵉˡᶜᵒᵐᵉ, ᵗʰⁱˢ ⁱˢ ᵗʰᵉ ʷᵒʳˡᵈ ⁿᵒʷ🖱

⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀ ⠀⠀

[selfhealingmoments]

[quotidian-oblivion]

How did i only just realize that I sound like a teenage boy in audios????????????

That's not how i sound???

[luvsturniolo]

— ★ !! absence

pairing : matt sturniolo x fem! reader

synopsis : after a huge misunderstanding, you decide to go ghost on social media for some time to yourself…

a/n : about two years ago, i was obsessed with tumblr and my favorite thing to write were smaus because that what was cool back in my day 👴 i'm rlly hoping these types of stories are still relevant because i love reading and writing them. they're so quick and easy yet so funny and lighthearted. anywayyy i'm hoping that you guys will enjoy this as much as i did when i was a youngen

wc : n/a

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