Well I dont know anything about hacking I've looked up some things lately and that was some of the language that popped up, but I'm not talking about stealing per-se. You could have the best content, and nobody will ever see it, and others could have mediocre content and everyone will see it. It's not a level playing FIELD. I would rather be on a sight were everyone has the same chance to gain popularity based on merit, than a social engineering project. I've seen this play out with a kid Mason I knew. Some of us just seem to hold the keys to instant popularity. We need to take a cue from the Luddites and figure out a better way to spread the messages. Printing physical content will become cool again.
THIS. I agree. I've tried Discord, and Slack, but they always fizzle out. IG keeps the conversation going since sharing a post or reel is just a finger click away. You know, that's truly a great perspective. There were times I would reminisce when IG was just pictures, but I'd say in the past one to two years, I saw an explosion in world content because of reels, especially vlogs from Japan that certainly made my latest trip that much more enjoyable.
@bbb @nicholasfung There was a time when DM’s were a haven for lengthy conversations pertaining to toys and artists, sharing posts and photos, opinions, etc. Fell off quite some time ago and it’s just not somethin’ that’s picked up since! I have seen things like Discord mentioned and suggested, but it’s another app to download, register and have take up my time, and I admittedly don’t have the desire. But it’s also the open and public discourse I miss where the artists and such could see the conversations for themselves, too.
Why not this life? @xSuicide Squadx Skullbrain it is, then. On that note, I’ve spoken to around 5-10 people this year who read the forums weekly, but either have their application languishing somewhere or are too scared to chime in. I agree, Discord and Slack are both private, and archiving valuable discourse would be a nightmare. Maybe a couple of updates to Skullbrain could make it as enticing as IG.
I've heard this issue mentioned over the years. What's up with that? Is it simply that the "moderators" don't log into SB very often? Surely this should be an easy issue to fix.
Spam bots are constantly trying to make accounts here, so unfortunately the applications are ignored until someone pipes up through a third party. When I was a moderator, it was something like a hundred emails a day, maybe more. I am on social media frequently soliciting people who haven't gotten activated yet, and when I am contacted I ask for their username and email address and send it in a PM here to TiredChildren (James). On average, he activates at least one or two accounts a month for me.
That's crazy there's so many daily requests! Okay, nvm - thanks for the background though! Out of curiosity, is it not easy to tell a bot attempt vs a real attempt based on username? I would assume (but probably wrongly!) that bot usernames would stand out.
i do find that skullbrain is great as a public resource. way before i even contemplated being a user, i was able to benefit from admiring a user's mechagodzilla collection as I was building my own. I am decently active in a couple discords, and feel like it's a much better platform for a smaller and more active userbase. the appeal of instagram, as many others have said, is it's much wider, especially globally, and is still accessible to users who are less active. for all of its faults and constant changes, instagram still holds onto the shreds of its original DNA that does keep me coming back. and personally, i do enjoy the stories feature which does make posting and sharing feel less monumental than posting to the grid.
Yeah, I love the stories function for that reason too. It's just so easy to throw an idea out into the ether without having to think too hard about it. On the flip side... One thing I like about SB is that it does attract the people who want to discuss and learn, and tends to filter out the collectors who aren't particularly passionate about anything other than clout chasing or brown nosing who often clog up the feed. I don't need to be spammed with 50+ tributes to the latest Jyankenmark release.
If you see people out on the internet saying they haven't gotten their accounts activated, get their info and send it to James. I'm all for bringing more folks in from the wilderness, especially as social media becomes increasingly balkanized. Timmy sums up my feelings about Instagram perfectly: I loved Flickr, unfortunately it fell by the wayside and Instagram still works very well as a replacement for it. Meta is an awful company, and I already ditched one of their awful products (Facebook), but Instagram is still very usable and the updates they've made to it haven't hindered my ability to share and view pictures of toys. It's still a cheap thrill to tap on a hashtag I included in a recent post and going back ten years to see who else posted toys of that character.
No point in migrating. Any platform is going to eventually hit the monetization phase demanded by their investors and will become the same. On top of that you'll have an endless parade of marketers and developers tinkering with and changing things to keep their salaries. People just have too high an opinion of themselves and what they do, and everyone wants 100,000 followers for no reason. They spam mediocre work and boring content and then complain they have no growth. You can go to a new platform and advertise it on instagram and maybe a few hundred people might refollow you. But that's not growth, that's the opposite of growth. That is a huge loss. People just need to lower their expectations of what they get out of a free platform.
My policy has changed, and thankfully, so has Meta's. You can now delete your Threads account without deleting your Instagram account. Instructions here: https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/11/how-to-delete-facebook-instagram-and-threads/ Still sticking with Instagram. There really isn't a good replacement for it IMO.
