Replied to Boycotting the attention economy in December by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)
Last year, on a whim, I left social media on Thanksgiving, and didn't return until January 1st. It led to massive improvements in my mental and physical health, overall happiness, attention span, and engagement with the world. This year I've been with my mother while she spent months in the hospital...
Thanks for the nudge Ben.

I’ve been thinking about this since last night and am half-tempted just to give it up all together and go full indie, but I would be cutting out far too many people that I really like and get a lot out of. However, I’ve been slowly moving further and further away from the toxicity of corporate platforms in any case, so, like Ben, I’ll declare myself all-in on boycotting the attention economy in December.

In my case, this primarily means giving up Twitter since I’ve long since jettisoned Facebook (and really don’t miss it) and it’s been ages since I’ve scrolled through my heavily pared down Instagram account which I now only access through a feed reader to cut out ads. So as to not cut myself off completely, I’ll still interact with others online with my own IndieWeb website and through a small handful of excellent feed readers where I have complete control over what I see and when.

I’ll start to prep for the cleanse today by removing the Twitter app from my phone.

Read Subscriptions are attention, but what about blogrolls? by Leslie Michael OrchardLeslie Michael Orchard (decafbad.com)
Ah hah. Here's a use case where I agree OPML has undeniably become king: Exporting and importing feed aggregator subscriptions. Because Radio UserLand was the first aggregator to really take off—and because OPML is Radio's lingua franca, any new aggregators have needed to speak OPML to facilitate migration. It grew from there, with nearly every aggregator supporting some basic form of OPML import/export for subscription lists. OPML has won the "feed subscription list format war" before there was ever a notion that there might be such a war.
Read Boycotting the attention economy in December by Ben WerdmüllerBen Werdmüller (Ben Werdmüller)
Last year, on a whim, I left social media on Thanksgiving, and didn't return until January 1st. It led to massive improvements in my mental and physical health, overall happiness, attention span, and engagement with the world. This year I've been with my mother while she spent months in the hospital...
Definitely worth serious consideration.

📑 YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant

Annotated YouTube Executives Ignored Warnings, Letting Toxic Videos Run Rampant by Mark Bergen (Bloomberg)
YouTube doesn’t give an exact recipe for virality. But in the race to one billion hours, a formula emerged: Outrage equals attention.  
Talk radio has had this formula for years and they’ve almost had to use it to drive any listenership as people left radio for television and other media.

I can still remember the different “loudness” level of talk between Bill O’Reilly’s primetime show on Fox News and the louder level on his radio show.

👓 Podcasts keep getting better | Nieman Journalism Lab

Read Podcasts keep getting better by John BiewenJohn Biewen (Nieman Lab)
"It turns out that people — well, lots of people, anyway — are hungry for substance. Our attention spans are quite intact, ready, and willing."

📑 Three things about Readers during IndieWebCamp Nürnberg | Seblog

Annotated Three things about Readers during IndieWebCamp Nürnberg by Sebastiaan AndewegSebastiaan Andeweg (seblog.nl)
I have a problem with algorithms that sort my posts by parameters I don’t know about, made by people who want to sell my attention to others.  

👓 Farewell Social Media | James Shelley

Read Farewell Social Media by James ShelleyJames Shelley (jamesshelley.com)
I recently purged the data from my Facebook account. This effort was shockingly labour intensive: it took a browser script all weekend to crunch, and still many aspects of the process required manual execution. Torching years and years of old Facebook activity felt so liberating that I found another...
A short, but solid piece on why James has left social media and consciously moved to his own blog and feed reader. I’m curious what his thoughts are a bit on into his experience. He’s definitely worth a follow.

📺 How to speak so that people want to listen | Julian Treasure | TED via YouTube

Watched How to speak so that people want to listen by Julian Treasure from TED via YouTube

Have you ever felt like you're talking, but nobody is listening? Here's Julian Treasure to help you fix that. As the sound expert demonstrates some useful vocal exercises and shares tips on how to speak with empathy, he offers his vision for a sonorous world of listening and understanding.