I don't think it's just nostalgia, something is off about current social media, even compared to only two or three years ago. And I for a life can not tell what exactly are off with them! It annoys me.

This is as much as a note to myself as it is a note to others:

If you are still planning to use social media, I suggest to curate your feeds very strictly. I don't wanna generalize social media recommendation system (also known as the Algorithm) as objectively bad, but they definitely feel like a bottom feeder in terms of quality of contents. They're not always bad, sometimes I find high-quality videos in YouTube's home page, but even then they're getting rarer nowadays.

Prefer using social media that still have customizable feed. Meaning: if the social media's feed home menu is an Algorithmic feed instead of reverse-chronological feed AND you cannot change it, avoid it or don't use it at all. I don't recommend Instagram or anything else by Meta, since the main feed aren't really customizable as far as I'm aware, I forgot if they still have chronological feed or not.

I recommend Bluesky as well, since the main feed is highly customizable. Their built-in "Discover" feed is trash but you can replace it with "Following" feed which shows you reverse-chronological feed of posts from users you follow. Or if you still want Algorithm/posts recommendation I suggest using this feed: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:3guzzweuqraryl3rdkimjamk/feed/for-you.

For reddit-like alternatives I suggest PieFed, since it's built to have a decent quality discussion with features like word blocklist or reputation system[^1]. The UI desperately needs an upgrade though.

Oh another thing: One thing in common between the apps I recommend above are, they have word block list feature. As much as you can block/filter out words related to the topic you are not interested in.

Please adblocker. It's a necessity nowadays, similar to how antivirus software are a necessity 10 years ago.

If you don't wanna use social media, I think I can recommend RSS. The disadvantage of this for me is it's harder to find content using RSS since there are no centralized place to find new feed to follow, as far as I'm aware at least. Even without it, usually with RSS the main body content is not included, so you have to open the original page. I'm fine with this with websites like personal blog, but with YouTube, it's too distracting.

Oh, another advice, specifically for Discord: join as few servers as you can. And prefer joining smaller (members count below 1000) server. Way less distraction and you can in my experience smaller servers are actually more high-quality. It's even easier to make friends in smaller server too!

If I can summarize it in one sentence: Heavily curate your feed. Emphasis on the heavily

Don't be ashamed of being nitpicky. Don't feel bad blocking someone. Nothin' personal, mate.

Also notice how I didn't recommend you to stop using social media entirely. Of course, I won't stop you from quitting social media completely, but I don't think it's bad to keep using social media. It's still a decent way to keep informed. You can still learn new things from social media.

If your friends are in Instagram and you still feel like connecting with them, feel free to do so. If you're an artist still relying on Twitter, I won't judge you. Just be mindful of the drawbacks and limit the usage.

After all it's a human instinct to connect with others right?

I don't think any social media is perfect, not even the Fediverse, ATProto/Bluesky, or other sites that claims to "fix" social media.

[1]: I feel like this system could be heavily abused, but so far it works great, surprisingly.