[HN Gopher] Is this the end of social networking? ___________________________________________________________________ Is this the end of social networking? Author : ZacnyLos Score : 194 points Date : 2022-08-11 18:57 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (reb00ted.org) (TXT) w3m dump (reb00ted.org) | Apocryphon wrote: | Non sequitur: was social networking the evolution of reality | television? | renchap wrote: | This is why we are building Notos[1], most of the photo sharing | websites evolved in social networks (or died). | | We chose to not make our user's album public by default, where | most competitors are doing so and benefit from the SEO involved, | but we want to focus on sharing with family and friends, not the | whole world. | | Now the elephant in the room is monetisation and getting people | to pay for their usage, this is not easy but we firmly believe it | can be done but probably not with a trajectory allowing you to | raise VC money. | | [1] https://www.notos.co/ | m3kw9 wrote: | You mean end of classic fb social networking. Social networking | in general is going to be big always | EGreg wrote: | No kidding. Facebook had so much potential, when it was deployed | in universities. But then it became a social network about | everything. Zuck had a lot of potential when he was thinking | about P2P file sharing site Wirehog, but Sean Parker "put a | bullet in that thing" and VCs like Peter "competition is for | losers, build a monopoly" Thiel shaped it into a money making | machine that's less about being social and more about "eyeballs" | and mindless cat meme videos. In the endgame, their algorithm | selected for clickbait outrage that put peopl[e into echo | chambers and tore our society apart. | | _Imagine what social networking could be!! The best days of | social networking are still ahead. Now that the pretenders are | leaving, we can actually start solving the problem. Social | networking is dead. Long live what will emerge from the ashes. It | might not be called social networking, but it will be, just | better._ | | It'll be called "Community". I don't have to imagine. We've been | building the Community Operating System for 10 years. And it's | available now. No, it's not Mastodon. It's Qbix :) | | https://qbix.com/platform | | https://qbix.com/blog/2021/01/15/open-source-communities/ | | Yes, it's open source and you can use it now. It's basically a | Wordpress for Web 2.0 ... keep in mind that Wordpress powers 40% | of the Web 1.0 web. We want to power 40% of the Web 2.0 social | web. | | Back in 2014 my cofounder and I met with Tim Berners-Lee and his | SOLID team. There was a movement underway to decentralize the | web. Today, Jack Dorsey is trying to build "Web5" along the same | lines but with Microsoft ION / Sidetree protocol, rather than | SPARQL (@timbl's obsession) semantic data and JSON-LD. | | It's coming along. It's always been coming along. But it's open | source so many people don't hear about it, until they do. MySQL | took 8 years, NGiNX tooks 10 years but eventually they took over. | Open source always does. | | Watch the video and feel free to spend some time on the weekend | playing with it. https://qbix.com/platform/guide :) | groffee wrote: | Only web 2.0?! We're up to like web 5.0 now! /s | csours wrote: | Users of social media will learn how to deal with righteousness. | Until we do, social media will suck big league. | | Social Media strongly encourages Hot Takes, because those get | clicks. I found myself examining how I comment on reddit, and | what people call "The Hivemind". | | You can't have nuanced discussions on social media, someone will | infer what kind of asshole you exactly are, and that's the end of | the discussion. | | Some poisoned phrases: | | Be Reasonable - "why can't you just be reasonable" | | Both Sides - "there are good people on both sides" | | Some Responsibility - "she bears some responsibility" | | Nuanced Discussion - "you can't have a nuanced discussion on | social media" | | I'm sure there are some poisoned phrases you react instinctively | to. | | I think weak arguments are good, actually. You don't need to move | someone from the swamp to the mountain, you just need them to get | on dry land. | | Now I'm sure someone has inferred exactly what kind of asshole I | am, and they are correct. This is the kind of asshole I am. The | kind that wants reasonable arguments to exist in the real world, | even if I have to make them up. | switchbak wrote: | So what you're saying is ...? :) | | I have often wondered if we can turn gamification on its head, | so we can optimize for engaging discussion instead of outrage? | There's a lot less money in that, so it'll get way less | attention, but I wonder if it's doable? | | Of course you're still playing in a game theoretic landscape, | so it'll be taken advantage of for sure, but it might still be | better than this local minima we're in. | | Something as simple as a like button leads to this cascade of | odd behaviour. HN seems to do ok with its voting scheme. I'd | love to see some folks dive deep in this area. | bckr wrote: | > so we can optimize for engaging discussion instead of | outrage | | The way to do this might be to engage people, who are so | interested, in email threads. But that doesn't drive dopamine | cycles in the same way. | csours wrote: | I think authentic and engaging discussion requires a small | audience. I'm reminded of an essay "Do things that don't | scale" | Minor49er wrote: | Why is a small audience a requirement? | csours wrote: | People interpret nuance differently. As the audience size | increases, contention about nuance interpretation | increases to the point where that overwhelms the original | conversation. | sakex wrote: | When I think about what social medias are left, I can only think | about LinkedIn. Interestingly, there seem to have been a recent | surge of interest for that platform (especially all the cringe | worthy posts that started to pop up). | | After reading this article, I am starting to wonder if people | didn't simply migrate to LinkedIn because of the degradation of | Facebook's quality as a Social Network and as they still feel the | need to share their lives, started sharing those cringe posts. | zelphirkalt wrote: | LinkedIn as a whole is quite cringe though. Even companies | share cringe worthy posts, often merely virtue signaling, while | individuals hopelessly or needlessly exaggerate the greatness | of experiences or other people. Trying to judge any company, I | would completely leave their LI posts or profile out if the | picture, unless it shows things are bad on the inside. And then | all those recruiters not knowing how to do their job properly | and just spamming everyone with unsuitable job offers ... LI is | a strange world in itself and I am not sure it is worth being | on the platform at all. | fnordpiglet wrote: | I keep hearing about this new Facebook, but as an (infrequent) | iOS app user everything looks the same. When does doom hit me? | thenerdhead wrote: | Y'all should read "Amusing ourselves to death" by Neil Postman if | you're interested in how mediums have changed over the years. | | As Huxley hinted, our soma is just technological narcotics. With | each new medium of technology brings in a plethora of problems | that cannot be reformed. | LesZedCB wrote: | yes! thank you. huxley was right about a scary number of | things... | | this debate between will self and adam gopnik on 'brave new | world' vs '1984' is _really_ good if anybody has 1.5 hours to | indulge. | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CcclqEiZw | | just grabbed 'amusing ourselves to death' from libby, thanks | for the recommendation! | thenerdhead wrote: | perhaps that video was inspired by postman's famous | comparison. here's the comic form: | | https://biblioklept.org/2013/06/08/huxley-vs-orwell-the- | webc... | Barrin92 wrote: | private messaging, i.e. telegram/discord seems to be where people | are moving. I'm not surprised that Instagram copies TikTok for | the algorithmically driven content, what I'm more surprised by is | that WhatsApp is still pretty lackluster compared to Telegram | given that Mark himself noticed that private groups seem to be | what's next. Hard to overstate how much better their UX is | compared to anything else. | nbow wrote: | I agree with the conclusions, they will definitely be switching | to a more addictive model. But it seemed like there is an | implication that the previous model was not 'addictive'. Once | Facebook figured out how much mentions were driving engagement, | they added lots of features to try to drive people towards | mentioning their friends in order to send push notifications. | Leading to a sort of "addicted to your friend group" situation. | | I get that tik tok definitely creates another paradigm shift, | likely for the worse, but it's not like social networking is not | without issues ina very similar capacity. | al_be_back wrote: | no - but the context is shifting, from Chat -> Clips -> Streams. | Though it's still mainly a medium to deliver adverts. | | Social networking has pretty much replaced TV & traditional press | - now it too must morph. | | the biggest obstacles though I think to the social network are | the app stores - not necessarily their own decisions but what | politics of the day may impose on the store. | rsweeney21 wrote: | If your stated company mission is not the thing that produces | revenue then it will eventually be sacrificed for the mission | that does produce revenue. | | Examples of mission statements that don't produce revenue: | Google, Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, most news organizations. | | Microsoft's missions in 1980 was "A computer on every desk and in | every home". Their mission produced revenue. There are lots of | examples of mission/revenue alignment. | satyrnein wrote: | Most companies exist for motive X, which they do by providing | value Y, then monetizing it via method Z. X is almost always | "profit" and Z is something boring like selling physical items, | subscriptions, ads, etc, so the mission statement is about Y. | | The following statements are true but not very interesting: | | Microsoft was never about computers on every desk and in every | home, it was really about selling software licenses to make | money! | | The Super Bowl was never about football, it was really about | selling ads to makes money! | | Wal-Mart was never about saving people money so they could live | better, it was really about selling physical items at retail to | make money! | | Facebook was never about connecting people, it was really about | selling ads to make money! | | Is the Facebook one any more insightful because the | monetization strategy is advertising? | shadowgovt wrote: | Unpopular opinion: So it turns out that while bringing the world | closer together is a nice long-term goal, the world isn't ready | to be crammed into one giant bull-pen, which was more Facebook's | style. | | Their utter inability to come up with consistent standards for | policing their walled garden, upon having their hand forced to | need to try, indicates that maybe that's not a good goal in the | first place. Maybe it's okay if not everyone's on your social | media engine. | jschveibinz wrote: | Maybe just the end of social networking as we currently know it. | | There must still be plenty of room and potential value in more | focused social interaction that is more highly aligned with user | interests other than viral videos. | Arrath wrote: | I thought those were pretty well serviced one or two decades | ago by niche hobbyist forums and the like, more recently by | specific subreddits. | | Personally I lament the demise of forums and BBs. | baby wrote: | I think everyone is wrong. We still need something like facebook | to keep track of people we meet, and friends. In the west, to my | knowledge, facebook is still big, along with whatsapp and | instagram, to keep track of friends. | | Tiktok is more like youtube. It's a content platform first. Maybe | the new generation uses tiktok to keep in touch, or maybe they | use something I haven't heard of, but social networks are bigger | than ever. | | I think the future of social networks is still not clear though: | VR? Wechat-like app? Something else? | frozencell wrote: | That's already a dystopia, I wish there were decentralized | social platforms, I'm very tired of having all my SV friends on | apps that track us like Facebook and Messenger. | Aleksdev wrote: | Social network posts are just becoming ads now. | sys_64738 wrote: | Facebook the company will need to buy up all the grassroots | social media platforms that sprout up. That costs money and isn't | possible in China where they can't buy Tik Tok. That's why there | is such a furore by FB backed lobbyist to make Tik Tok a | terrorist platform. Long term FB will eventually die as young | folk will not want to use the platform old folk do and older folk | are less influence by ads on these platforms. It's a slippery | slope for FB but there will always be a new platform that sprouts | that the cool kids all use. | impalallama wrote: | Archive Link for those experiencing the hug of death like me | | https://web.archive.org/web/20220811190332/https://reb00ted.... | throwawaymanbot wrote: | [deleted] | aczerepinski wrote: | I want to see more niche social networks that are only for one | thing. I actually really like Strava which is for workouts only. | There's no way to share pictures of inspirational text. I've | never seen anyone abuse the platform by sharing a run that is | actually 0.1 miles plus a rant about Fox News or anything like | that. | | If I were independently wealthy I'd spend my time building a | newsfeed for musicians to share music things where it's similarly | impossible to post pictures of text or news articles. You'd need | to be vigilant to prevent it from overstepping the way LinkedIn | did. | | The challenge is that if you can share photos or video or links | at all, it becomes terrible. | circuit8 wrote: | Agreed. What I love about Strava is it leverages some of the | same darker parts of the human psyche that traditional social | media does (desire for social status by showing off etc), but | in doing so it encourages its users to actually do something | extremely positive. It makes me think of how I'd like to see a | really well made addictive VR based MMORPG that encouraged its | users to exercise in some way to progress. | pdimitar wrote: | Nah, it's more like the beginning of segregation: people who like | social media will stay there but I'm seeing more and more people | bail out and setup friend clubs (Meetup, Telegram and such). | psi75 wrote: | Probably. We ended up with a completely different internet than | the one we still thought should be possible in 2004. | | For a brief period of time, the internet genuinely subverted the | corporate beetle-men and the gatekeepers who've always owned the | "official" or real world. You could send an email to a well- | known, accomplished person and there was a 75 percent you'd hear | back. There really was a culture of punk equality... of course, | we were quite harsh to people who used the platform to say stupid | things (and, since I was young, I said stupid things a lot), | because that's requisite if you want to stay relatively | meritocratic. The internet was smaller in the 1990s and there | were far fewer ways to make money from it, but it was | legitimately subversive. | | We've lost that, though. Twitter used to be a way for nobodies to | gain a degree of influence. Now it's the opposite--instead, it | measures and ratifies our lack of influence, because every time | you apply for a job, the bosses know that you're no threat if | mistreated--the fact that you only have 3,000 followers, as | opposed to 100,000, proves that. | | The internet and the web didn't fix capitalism; instead, to the | detriment of all of us, it ended up looking like capitalism. The | technology grew up too fast; our moribund economic system hadn't | died yet (and still hasn't). This was bad enough, but if | capitalism is still around when we see AGI (granted, I don't | think that'll actually happen for at least a hundred years) we | are properly and irreversibly facefucked. | [deleted] | throwaway0asd wrote: | Social media cannibalized itself to death in pursuit of ad | revenue via increased _engagement_. The harder they pushed, with | content assumption algorithms, the more toxic it became. The more | toxic it becomes the more it appeals to extreme personalities | while alienating everyone else, a poisonous viper eating itself. | | It's only market lag between the revenue source, media source | agencies, and the realization that better markets for their | business. When that occurs the death spiral hyper accelerates to | rapid finality. | | Like all death spirals this could have been avoided had they | treated their users as a potential revenue source instead of a | product. I was watching a history video yesterday about the | Aztecs who completely alienated the tribes in their empire in | their own death spiral. The empire was already dead before the | Spanish arrived, but the Aztecs just didn't see it yet. | abvdasker wrote: | I genuinely believe that AB testing as practiced by every major | tech company (and the incentives it creates) has caused much of | this. AB testing is a really unsophisticated way of measuring | extremely short-term incremental gains in isolation. That's how | we've ended up with products which have gradually become so | hostile to users, because individually the changes seem like | small wins, but taken together and over the long term they are | deeply destructive to the core product. AB testing doesn't | capture long-term changes to user behavior from the | accumulation of disparate features. The incentive structures | within these companies are all set up to be able to prove these | small wins in dollar values to get a raise or promotion which | has led to a race to the bottom as teams create features nobody | wants to justify their existence. | | Anecdotally I and many people I know have reached a kind of | breaking point where these apps have become so demanding in | terms of attention that we have to stop using them entirely. | Whether it's YouTube's incessant advertisements, TikTok's | infinite scroll or Facebook's insane jumble of a UI/feed these | products are demonstrably inferior to their incarnations 5-7 | years ago. | throwaway0asd wrote: | I was the A/B test engineer for one of the most well known | dot com brands about a decade ago. | | A/B testing media (advertising) is extremely misleading | compared to testing against something transactional. The goal | of a transactional sequence, called a conversion (payment in | exchange for a product or defined service), is a supremely | simple metric. Although the goal is simple to define and | recognize the costs associated are wildly complex. Media is | the inverse of this where the goals and consequences are not | immediately clear or known but both the costs and revenue are | immediately straight forward. | | The reason the financials of conversion are complex is | because you need to account for the expenses to third parties | to pull a user in, the purchasing horizon in time, potential | for cannibalism against other purchasing decisions, and | various other factors that cost the business money. | | The reason metrics associated with media are complex is | because users HATE it. Increased advertising presence drives | traffic away. Shifts in traffic occur over a wide duration | due to a variety of factors so it is almost impossible to | measure just how toxic advertising is to a given product | oriented business in isolation in accordance with a variable | time horizon. Its actually much worse than that for a variety | of technical factors. In the past legitimate ad placements | have been delivery vectors for content and logic of malicious | criminal activity. Advertising logic is frequently poorly | written. Many websites will isolate their advertisements into | iframes in order to protect their website from accidental | defacement of presentation and/or broken logic. | Advertisements come into the page super slowly which | completely pushes out the waterfall for what might have been | a quick loading page. | | When I did A/B testing I would describe the media side of the | business in terms of illegal job deals. I did this because of | so many parallels in the transactions and risks in those | markets, not because they are both filthy evil things. | dont__panic wrote: | > [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably | close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one | can pour down somebody's throat. | | Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime | from: | | 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, | essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted | blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend | update & ad aggregator" 3. Instagram's callback to simple update | sharing (with pictures) and a chronological ad-free news feed 4. | Snap's emphemeral sharing 5. Facebook's slow agglomeration and | bastardization of all of the features that made Instagram and | Snap distinct. 6. TikTok's addictive advertising machine that | barely includes any friend connections at all. | | Initially I was concerned that this would mean the death of real | social media, just like the article initially suggests. But I | really like the conclusion the article ultimately comes to: we | basically don't have social media right now, we have advertising | engines masquerading as social media. Better that Facebook, | Instagram, and Snapchat show their true colors and become | disgusting advertising machines just like TikTok. | | If we're lucky, that means a federated, open, mostly-ad-and- | suggestion-free open source social media experience can fill the | power vacuum for intimate, interpersonal, high-latency | communication over the internet. microblog seems promising, but I | think even mastodon could provide the experience I'm looking for. | moreira wrote: | I think it might just be that that's not needed anymore. | | The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in | touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless | others from back then. Now everyone's online 24/7, and | accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the | time. You don't need social networks to keep in touch with | anyone anymore, their original raison d'etre is gone. | | What's sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded | people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, | and whatnot. People want their bubbles. We're all here on HN | for that exact purpose. | beebmam wrote: | > People want their bubbles. We're all here on HN for that | exact purpose. | | 100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and | tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an | agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new | tech. | guelo wrote: | You want an audience for your disagreements and maybe to | cause a rise in people (trolling). But that's not fun for | the audience which is why a lot of communities become | insular bubbles to keep the annoyers away. | mortenlwk wrote: | Nice way to describe your taste in bubbles. | colinmhayes wrote: | That may be true, but I doubt you're actually too | interested in people with completely different interests. | Just like utilitarians and deontologists might be | interested in finding and talking with each other but not | someone who is wholly uninterested in ethics as a simple | example. | hammyhavoc wrote: | Is HN the digital equivalent of going to a bar looking for | a fight? | labster wrote: | No, it's not. And you better be shut up about it if you | know what's good for you, pardner. | id wrote: | Maybe, but you want to have your disagreements with the | people that typically frequent HN about topics that are | typically discussed on HN. | mulmen wrote: | Bubbles don't need to be harmful. HN is a bubble. There are | ideas that are not allowed here. There are other ideas that | are explicitly promoted. This is the value proposition of | HN. You are free to go elsewhere to get other perspectives | or interactions. This is as it should be. | tmaly wrote: | I try to shake that up from time to time. It is nice to | see the other side of the discussion. Groupthink is not | something to strive for. | [deleted] | themitigating wrote: | It depends on what the bubble is about. If it's for a | specific anime who cares but politics is a bubble whose | influence exits the bubble | walterbell wrote: | _> There are ideas that are not allowed here._ | | It would be more accurate to say that some ideas require | more work here. The reasons why are open to debate. | spoonjim wrote: | There are definitely ideas that are not allowed here. | nemo44x wrote: | I'm not sure there are ideas that aren't allowed so much | as the way you speak, structure, and present them. I've | tested many different ideas on topics here and some have | received far more positive feedback than I'd imagine and | some have been buried too. | | I think so long as you follow guidelines generally and | don't outright attack individuals then you're mainly ok. | The community might downvote your idea to invisible but | that doesn't mean it wasn't allowed - just that not | enough people thought it was good. That's fair. | superturkey650 wrote: | I can't think of any non-rulebreaking comments that would | get you banned just for expressing a distasteful idea. | Can you give some examples? | mulmen wrote: | The ideas that break the rules. | superturkey650 wrote: | There aren't any ideas that break the rules though. Just | structure, tone, and context of comments/posts. | zmgsabst wrote: | I don't think that's true. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32432564 | NERD_ALERT wrote: | "non-rulebreaking" implies that there are rules stating | that certain ideas are not allowed. | superturkey650 wrote: | No it doesn't. The rules can be based around the effort, | structure, and tone of your comments. Not the ideas | expressed within them. I think the only "idea" not | allowed is asking for violence and I've even seen those | allowed. | Retric wrote: | Politics as a subject is strongly discraged on HN. | | It isn't about Republican, Democrat, or Libertarian ideas | it's about their red button talking points. So you can | discuss say taxes or abortion as long as you don't bring | politics into it or get repetitive. | | What most often confuses people is you can get heavily | downvoted or upvoted for expressing the same idea | depending on who shows up to a given discussion about say | Nuclear power, Bitcoin, etc. | spoonjim wrote: | No I can't, because my account would get banned. Probably | under the pretext of the stated rule, "Eschew flamebait. | Avoid unrelated controversies, generic tangents, and | internet tropes." | superturkey650 wrote: | Those seem to be based around the relationship of the | comment to the post it is in rather than any specific | idea in the comment itself. As if any comment flagged for | those reasons could have the same idea expressed in a | relevant post and not be flagged. | codefreeordie wrote: | That is what the text of the rules say, but not how they | actually operate. | codefreeordie wrote: | bawolff wrote: | If someone did a show HN, for their murder for hire app | to connect assains to clients, i imagine it would | (rightly) go over poorly. | | At least i would hope... | zmgsabst wrote: | vorpalhex wrote: | A bubble can be less about topics and more about how we | communicate - if I ask about sources on HN I'll get links | and pdfs in return. If I do that on reddit, I'll get | insults. | | HN has broad tolerance for a lot of ideas - and a lot of | subgroups exist here that don't exist on other platforms. | No matter what you believe, someone on HN holds a counter | view and can probably give you a good debate about it. | shevis wrote: | I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for that | matter, is just here to disagree with other people's ideas. | Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of | disagreement. Who would do such a thing? | | Don't bother answering that question though because you'd | be wrong. | [deleted] | BolexNOLA wrote: | I feel like I'm watching you cosplay what I see 20 times | a day on Reddit and why I've increasingly stopped | browsing it. | HeckFeck wrote: | This isn't an argument, it's just contradiction! | tbossanova wrote: | Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full | half hour? | dmarlow wrote: | You're not wrong. But, you're not right either. | tibanne wrote: | Neither of you aren't not wrong. | coldtea wrote: | They can't be not wrong. | tomrod wrote: | Everyone is wrong, we live in a wonderful world where | everyone can be wrong. | krapp wrote: | > I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for | that matter, is just here to disagree with other people's | ideas. Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of | disagreement. Who would do such a thing? | | You must be new here. | wizofaus wrote: | Either that, or you are, having apparently missed the | obvious irony (mostly in the sentence you didn't | quote)... | wwweston wrote: | > You don't need social networks to keep in touch with anyone | anymore, their original raison d'etre is gone. | | In what sense? The underlying social motivation/interest is | still present. And it's not like fundamental communications | capabilities have actually changed. Chat's been around since | the 90s and SMS is the new email. And social network | applications grew and thrived in those situations because | pull-and-scan-social-feed across multiple circles has some | distinct effort-reward profiles. | | I could see the argument that the algorithmic and advertising | imposition eventually drive out enough of the value that | people opt out, but that's a statement about the business | lifecycle of a social network app, not the underlying reason | people might use / like them. | spdionis wrote: | Chat has not been around since the 90s, not in the form | that is used today. | wwweston wrote: | Now that I think about it, this is correct on at least | one front: I can recall chat systems that existed in the | _80s_. | | What's the feature of today's chat systems makes them | qualitatively different from those that are 30+ years | old? | jeremyjh wrote: | emojis? | subpixel wrote: | I'd go further - it's not just that we don't need a way to | 'connect' with people on a platform today (you can ping them | in myriad ways). | | It's that we don't much want to anymore. | | The novelty of general-purpose social networking was twofold, | in order depending on your circumstances at the time: | | - a new angle to seeking a mate | | - wow, a way to see what someone you don't really know | anymore is up to and say hi | | The former market opportunity is now filled by specialist | apps. | | The latter, while it was fun for a while, and might still | hold some prospect for thrills, is nothing to build a | business around. | thrown_22 wrote: | >What's sought after now is meeting -other-, new, like-minded | people and content. For that we have twitter, Reddit, TikTok, | and whatnot. | | None of those sites are good for that any more. All the | interesting people on reddit have been banned. No one sane | uses twitter. And finding people to talk to on tiktok is | plain impossible. | cookiengineer wrote: | Social networks aren't that important to stay connected. In | countries where there's still load shedding or shitty | internet, people connect via whatsapp and gmail and you'll | see advertising signs and paint on buildings and even cargo | ships that just contain a whatsapp number and a gmail | address. | | That's their form of the internet, because everything else | won't even load with speeds less than 100kBit/s. | | Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how | (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old | phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and | implemented their own clients. | 1337biz wrote: | At least Tiktok doesn't force me to watch their stupid ads like | YouTube does. I am too lazy to install adbockers on my mobile | and tablet. But the force-watching of Youtube ads is one of the | worst ideas in advertising. | robryan wrote: | At least they provide a premium ad free service. | AndrewUnmuted wrote: | mc32 wrote: | Where does classmates fit into the picture? | | I don't think too people actively use them, but some people do. | I'm actually unsure how Classmates actually works --is it a | subscription model, what's it's business model and could it end | up morphing into the TheFB of old but subscription based? Maybe | the draw of advertising money is too strong to resist. | mulmen wrote: | IMHO Social Media is a toxic mutation of the capabilities | offered by the Internet and is the opposite of federated, open | communication. I don't consider blogs, forums, or IRC to be | "Social Media". When you add the idea of followers and audience | and attention seeking (both from participants and the platform) | that's when you get "Social Media". | | We live in the Infinite September. Scale is not conducive to | valuable or fulfilling communication. Decentralization, | variety, and focus are. When I want to read about motorcycles I | have a forum for that. When I want to plan a vacation with the | family we use email. When I have a question about a software | project I get on their IRC channel. At no point is my racist | uncle (or yours!) involved. This is the potential of the | Internet and it is _not_ social media. | | When I want to be depressed by all the things that other people | have better than me I go to Social Media. I can't think of a | single fulfilling experience I ever had on Facebook or any | other social media platform. It's just not possible when you | put everyone in a room. It's like studying philosophy on a bus. | | Social Media is by (my) definition the valueless corruption of | the Internet. In that sense I am glad it is dead, I hope it | stays that way. Facebook and Tik Tok are the inevitable end- | state of "Social Media". There's no "good" social media and | there never was. Anyone who builds a platform for "everyone" is | doomed to die the death of social media. | wincy wrote: | I recently friend requested a bunch of people I went to high | school with who all thought I was a weird loser and I am very | excited that I am doing much better than all of them. It's | made me like my social media feed a lot more seeing the | school bully who loved ICP post about how "he's ready to find | the right girl and settle down (at 35) | | So I guess I use social media for the exact reason you don't | like social media. Nobody's supposed to like that stuff, but | I mean, why else would you care what everyone else is doing | other than to compare status? | pasabagi wrote: | If you come from a wealthy background, you get the really | depressing version: the school bully who loved ICP posts | about how they got a new job with McKinsey, the slimy moron | who used to spread shit about you is the CEO of a up-and- | coming startup, and the guy who was too dumb to understand | how truly dumb he was is now at a senior position in a | thinktank. | Andrex wrote: | That's the disingenuous presupposition. | | A more positive one would be those people actually got | better at their skills and improved as people. I'd like | to think I'm a better person than I was in high school. | | But if you're constantly exposed to their social feeds, | you would have the data and probably know better. :) | Andrex wrote: | I'm not sure continuous exposure to schadenfreude is any | healthier than the more depressing topics, to be honest. | wincy wrote: | I mean I don't actually revel in it, I was being a bit | cheeky. I just wanted to reconnect with high school | people during Covid so I friend requested a ton of | people. | | It's sad seeing a guy who was in the "gifted and talented | program" with me is apparently now a janitor who posts | pictures every day about what concert or sports game he's | at and he's always alone. I was excited for him because | he took a picture with a woman and I thought he'd met | someone but it turned out to be his sister. | throwaway5959 wrote: | Sounds like not much has changed for you since high school. | wincy wrote: | I mean nowadays I get free lunches from recruiters and at | conventions instead of being on the school free lunch | program but I suppose not | allenu wrote: | > If we're lucky, that means a federated, open, mostly-ad-and- | suggestion-free open source social media experience can fill | the power vacuum for intimate, interpersonal, high-latency | communication over the internet. | | I don't have as much hope for such a thing. To me, this trend | is also a reflection of perhaps the societal devaluing of IRL | social connections. | | In a world where encountering "new people" was novel, and | typically done only In Real Life, maintaining that connection | using an online component had value. You may not encounter that | person again, and good connections are rare, so you want to | keep in touch. However, over time, the internet has made it | trivial to encounter new people, even if the encounters | themselves are more trivial than the previous In Real Life | meetings were. Perhaps there was a two-way conversation before. | Well now, you just read their tweets or watch their videos and | click a button to follow. | | Tracking real-life encounters isn't as valuable as it once was, | especially when you can find an online substitute who is | actively creating "content" to keep you engaged. | | The newer connections are also way more transactional than they | used to be. Just about everyone is selling something or trying | to use their channels to promote themselves somehow. | | I think there's an interesting overall trend in here between | the fall of social networks and societal devaluing of real life | connections (as well as a trend of them being more | transactional), but I'm not an academic, so these are all just | hunches. | tepitoperrito wrote: | Look at monica crm https://github.com/monicahq/monica. I've | yet to offer to start hosting it for people, but that could | be a neat conversation piece for changing the tides there. | [deleted] | rphv wrote: | > If we're lucky, that means a federated, open, mostly-ad-and- | suggestion-free open source social media experience can fill | the power vacuum for intimate, interpersonal, high-latency | communication over the internet. | | Worth mentioning is Jimmy Wales' effort in this vein: | https://wt.social/ | swatcoder wrote: | I suspect that that what really ate up _personal_ social | networking was very simple: private group messaging finally got | good enough. | | 15 years ago, we'd lost touch with old friends and | acquaintances because there are a ton of people in our lives | that mean something to us but that don't warrant much 1-to-1 | contact through phone calls or messaging. | | Myspace and early Facebook reinvigorated those relationships | with relaxed, casual networked update blasts, but then | iMessage, What's App, were able to make the same connections | more private, more personally shaped, and more collaborative. | | So social networks drifted towards public feeds and | commercialized feeds, which is what TikTok -- as a well-funded | latecomer -- had the luxury of aiming for directly. | robryan wrote: | Yep. I think it is useful to have a list of people you know | incase you ever need to connect them, which is basically | Facebook Messenger. | | The blasting life updates at everyone know ever knew part of | it though is just so unnatural. It was a novelty for a while | but that stage is well over now. Facebook eventually got | features to allow people to be more granular about updates | but they have never really pushed them. | | At one point I would use Skype with friends which was | terrible. Discord now though is basically everything I could | ever want for group messaging. | bilsbie wrote: | I didn't know I was supposed to be using iMessage like that. | Maybe that's where everyone went. | circuit8 wrote: | I completely agree. In my view group chats on apps like | WhatsApp much more accurately mirror how humans actually | communicate in real life. That is to say it's more like a | spontaneous conversation rather than social media which is | more like a narcissistic advertising board for your life. | fullshark wrote: | Social media for most is your phone's contact list + a group | chat. It's just not broadcast for everyone to see and as of | now, an ad free experience. | patch_cable wrote: | I was just thinking this. | | Personally I've migrated from sharing things with friends and | family on Facebook/Instagram, to a few group chats where | friends and family share photos, life moments, etc. | | Somewhere along the line Facebook and Instagram made me feel | like my personal photos and updates were competing against | ads and other more engaging content in people's feeds, and I | felt like I wasn't communicating with the people that I was | on those platforms to communicate with in the first place. | | Judging by the increase in messages I get through more | private channels with casual update content, I don't feel | alone. | | I would be curious if others have had similar experiences. | hkon wrote: | Discord is becoming huge - just people, chatting. | | Like it was when I started using internet and IRC | timbit42 wrote: | Doesn't everything on Discord go into a black hole? You can't | search it with search engines. | meditativeape wrote: | I like the analysis and optimism in this article, but it does not | answer a key question: who would pay for this social network that | truly "brings the world closer together", if not advertisers? | What is the business model? | m3kw9 wrote: | How come I'm not seeing any tiktok like redesign on my fb app? | rossdavidh wrote: | "And because it was never about "bring[ing] the world closer | together", they drop that mission as if they never cared. (That's | because they didn't. At least MarkZ didn't, and he is the sole, | unaccountable overlord of the Meta empire. A two-class stock | structure gives you that.)" | | Ahahahaha! As if the normal shareholder of FB, or almost any | other company, would tolerate them making less money than they | possibly could. There is plenty wrong with Facebook, but the two- | class stock structure is not the cause, because a single-class | stock structure leads to equally pathological behavior. | gizajob wrote: | Is this the end of reb00ted.org? | jsemrau wrote: | Yes social is changing. The initial value proposition of sites | where we needed platforms to stay-up-to-date, meet new people, | and communicate with each other can now be replicated easily. | | Most social sites have stayed in the UI paradigm of 2003/2004. | Just have a look at how much wasted space there is at LinkedIn. | | Sites like Lunchclub, Clubhouse, and Finclout are sites where the | tools are expanded through social networks (i.e, come for the | tool stay for the community) | thehappypm wrote: | I loved reading this article. TikTok is perhaps the endgame of | all entertainment, from 1920s radio straight to Netflix: monetize | people's willingness to pay for the next bit of entertainment. | saidinesh5 wrote: | I think the "social" part of social networks just moved to group | chats. All my friends share updates of their family events, kids' | stuff etc.. over Whatsapp and Telegram. Strangers gather over | topics that interest them and want to talk about it seem to have | moved to discord, slack etc. | | The whole "broadcast yourself to the world" part of social | networks just moved to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram etc.. I think. | causi wrote: | A development I'm quite thankful for. It's nice being able to | participate to the degree expected of me by the people I | actually know without being a terminally-online internet | personality. | the_cat_kittles wrote: | time is a flat circle, were back to forums. tbh they never | left, forums rule | Gigachad wrote: | Group chats are the last place that is chronologically ordered, | advert free and semi private. | theshrike79 wrote: | Some people are moving back to anonymous communication with | limited audiences. | | Twitter is anonymous, but 100% public. There is no way to limit | your audience to a smaller group. | | FB is not anonymous and mostly public. Private groups do exist, | but you still mostly need to have an actual name on your | account. | | TikTok & Snapchat are mostly for people who show their faces, | not anonymous. | | WhatsApp shows everyone everyone's phone numbers if they are in | the same group, not anonymous. You can also be forcibly added | to a group of hundreds of people you don't know without | permission. | | Telegram and Discord are more like old-school IRC was. Just a | nickname and that's it, no personal info needed. (IRC did have | the hostname, but some networks masked it) | dhosek wrote: | Aside from locking your account so that only followers can | see your tweets, I've been offered the option to restrict the | audience of tweets on twitter (although I'm not sure if that | was a transient experiment or if I've blocked my noticing the | offer of the option or if I've asked it to stop asking). | rrdharan wrote: | That's Twitter Circle: | | https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-circle | f1refly wrote: | Both telegram and discord need phone numbers though - | telegram upfront and discord after your used it for about ten | mimutes. | anigbrowl wrote: | Of course not. Tying such general terms to specific companies is | naive, diagnoses of 'the end of ubiquitous thing' are little more | than clickbait. | egypturnash wrote: | Ending this with "tweet your comment" and "discuss this on | twitter" is amusingly ironic, given that Twitter has always been | a place that's actively hostile to any kind of rich, subtle | discussion, and has pivoted away from "keep up with people you | want to follow" to an official stance of "keep up with the news" | and an actual stance of "here is an endless scroll of engaging | content, mostly things to get angry about, that we can slip ads | into". | hello_newman wrote: | I think that's entirely dependent on who you follow and if | you're not actively utilizing your blocked/muted accounts | and/or muted keywords from your feed. | | The amount of value I've gained from threads on people I follow | on how to do something or learning something is insane and the | "rich, subtle discussion" in those threads on that topic is | sometimes just as good if not better than the thread itself. | | No denying the default Twitter is loud, and just wants to suck | you into mindless scrolling of ads and things to get you angry | about, but you are in charge of how you curate your feed. | egypturnash wrote: | If you're willing to spend a while figuring out how to make | Twitter stop showing you conversations your friends are | having/stuff they're faving/popular posts/etc then it doesn't | suck as much as the default, true, but you're still stuck in | a conversational medium that makes it impossible to emit an | entire paragraph at one go. I run a Mastodon instance whose | post length limit is set to roughly 7k and it's _amazing_ how | much I could feel a part of my mind unclenching after years | of Twitter as I got used to it. | jjdeveloper wrote: | No. "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by | the word no." The sweeping generalization refers to the poor | journalistic practice of writing sensational headlines in the | form of a question in order to compensate for the author's lack | of facts. | swayvil wrote: | I think that the "tree of replies" format, like we have here and | reddit, is pretty much perfect. | | We just need a better way to filter/trollkill. | | What more do we need? | timbit42 wrote: | Kuro5hin.org had the filtering figured out. | matlin wrote: | The approach at my company is to be group chat first. We think | there is a distinction between social media (FB, Instragram, | Twitter) and pure social networking. I think social networks that | are unbounded and broadcast centric actually demonstrate _anti- | network effects_ where the more followers /friends you get the | less value you get from your network unless of course you're | trying to be an influencer. The ideal network always as a | discrete audience anytime you share content or communicate which | is exactly what a group chat or direct message provides. But | unfortunately, Telegram, Whatsapp, iMessage, etc don't provide | the rich interactions that made platforms like FB and Instagram | so fun in the beginning. | | Give us a shot if you want to try to a new form of social | networking: https://www.aspen.cloud/ | simonmorg wrote: | I read something once, that questioned whether social media was | working to make us happy, or were we working to make the AI more | intelligent. | pipeline_peak wrote: | > Imagine what social networking could be!! The best days of | social networking are still ahead. Now that the pretenders are | leaving, we can actually start solving the problem. Social | networking is dead. Long live what will emerge from the ashes. It | might not be called social networking, but it will be, just | better. | | Not to be pessimistic, but this missing the whole point. Just | because social networking is gone doesn't mean it's somehow in | the hands of the people. They will flock to the ML addiction | machines and 20 years from now something even more horribly | grotesque. | | I care about Mastodon, ActivityPub, PeerTube, BlueSky and all | these open standards. But these platforms Are sole dependent on | users and at the moment, they all look like programmer/activist- | centric wastelands. | boomer918 wrote: | "Tweet your comments", oh sweet irony. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | I think it is only the beginning of a new age of maturity and de- | dinosauring of social networks. Just like the dinosaurs, today's | most used social networks kept growing larger and larger until | they were too big to sustain themselves. And just like the | dinosaurs, they will go extinct and be replaced by smaller, more | nimble and competitive social networks, with accessible | maintainers, consensual relationships with their users, and | features and dynamics we are only beginning to dream of today. I | find it very exciting to think about and work on. | | Just imagine a social network that combines all of the good | things invented in the past 25 years: the customizability of | MySpace, the visible social graph of Facebook, the easy sharing | of Twitter, the speed of propagation of Friendster, the | transparency of Web of Trust, the security and user empowerment | of PKI, the distributed and decentralized model of Usenet, the | lack of spam of a private tracker, the long-term discussion | threads of a forum, the solidity of BitTorrent, the ease of | access of AOL, and the compatibility and accessibility of Any | Browser Web... | | Wouldn't you want something like that for yourself and your | communities? | AlexandrB wrote: | Sounds great, but no one is willing to pay for it. And as long | as it has to be ad funded, there will always be pressure to | track, monetize, and increase engagement. | forgotmypw17 wrote: | Once the software exists, I think it can be easily paid out | of pocket by the subscribers. If one focuses on hosting a few | hundred or thousand users, it does not have to cost that | much. | | I agree that it has to be self-funded, not reliant on | "monetizing". But if your goal is a stable utility service, | not growing to make a profit, I think it is realistic. | _dain_ wrote: | the dinosaurs didn't die out though. there are birds. they make | a tweet-tweet-tweet noise. | mgraczyk wrote: | TikTok is winning because it is video first. The more immersive | the media, the more profitable the ads. Facebook is having | trouble pivoting it's products to video. Facebook is betting big | that the next more-immersive medium after video will be VR. | That's basically the whole story. | | Notice I didn't use the word "algorithm" or "social"? These takes | are tired and naive, TikTok isn't addictive in any operationally | useful sense of the word, people just like it and use it. You may | as well write a blog post saying "TV is addictive and it's dying | because of commercials". It's just not an accurate | conceptualization if the landscape. | droopyEyelids wrote: | YouTube is video first. | | I think TikTok is winning because their objective algorithm | optimizes for a different outcome. | | Facebook and YouTube optimize for time spent on the site. | Youtube famously cut ad revenue for content that is watched for | fewer than 10 minutes. They both make decisions based on what | will increase time spent on the site, thinking that's the best | way to sell ads. | | TikTok optimizes for content that people love by giving the | most reach to items that commenters buy gifts for. This has the | side effect of making content that consumers really connect | with get paid the most. There is a big difference between what | people love and what makes people spend a lot of their time. | mgraczyk wrote: | Facebook does not optimize directly for time spent, it's too | hard. I know because I worked on these algorithms. Time spent | is a metric Facebook monitors and works to increase over | time, but basically no work is done to increase time spent | directly. Facebook also tries to give more reach to content | that people like. There are whole teams of people that work | on that, they are just less good at it than TT. | | Tiktok optimizes for similar metrics. There's no difference | there. The main difference is that they are more focused and | have been doing short form video from the ground up. | ok123456 wrote: | 100% this. Everyone else is trying to make a tiktok clone and | bolt it on to a maze of existing, and in some cases very | similar, social media offerings. TikTok works because it's | video only from the ground up. | LesZedCB wrote: | then why didn't vine or snapchat or whatever other video | first platform from yesteryear catch on as big too? | | clearly there's more to it than "it's simply video first" | shaunxcode wrote: | vine did! twitter mothballed it. | mgraczyk wrote: | The fact that it's video first was necessary but not | sufficient | LesZedCB wrote: | yes thanks, that is much more clear | ProfessorLayton wrote: | snap is not video first -- yes it supports video, but it | supports pictures just as well or better since they | integrate into chats. | | vine was literally killed by twitter. | yieldcrv wrote: | vine did | | snapchat isn't the same | | they both had implementation differences and primarily | execution differences that had little to do with their | platform, and more so finances | | its not just video, its video+algorithm, its | video+algorithm+content-subsidies | | a lot of popular content creators on TikTok are still from | the vine days, getting paid a lot more directly by the | platforms now, as well as from whatever they can monetize | on and off the platform. | | Bytedance (TikTok) is willing to throw a lot of money at | this, and they've been extremely high on compensation for | engineers for years before TikTok reached critical mass. | thenerdhead wrote: | While you aren't using the words "algorithm" or "social", | another perspective to see is that the "medium" is not just | video. It is a specific type of short, repeatable, and | trivialized pieces of video content. Created by _mostly_ | individual creators in niche social networks that convey | extreme feelings of pain and pleasure in an infinite feed. | | TikTok is addictive in every category. People are addicted to | it just like people are addicted to other mediums like books, | radio, and tv. Creators are also addicted to creating for it | manipulated by incentives and sponsorship opportunities. It is | a borderline technological narcotic. | | To be human is to be addicted to something. We are addicted to | the many "wants" in our lives being sold through these 15s-3 | minute videos. | | > You may as well write a blog post saying "TV is addictive and | it's dying because of commercials" | | When the going gets tough, the tough goes shopping. | | There's actually a few books on this! i.e. consumerism and | advertising | | Four arguments for the elimination of television by Jerry | Mander | | Amusing ourselves to death by Neil Postman | | The shallows by Nicolas Carr | | And the classic, brave new world by Aldous Huxley | wincy wrote: | My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just | couldn't handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was | watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now | she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old | creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and | stuff, it's just not worth it to stick around when the goal has | become quite clearly to keep you hooked. | eligro91 wrote: | Same here. I completely blocked myself from accessing to | YouTube on my smartphone and MacBook, just because of the | shorts. This stuff is so addictive that I couldn't avoid it | in my free time for dozens of minutes every single time I've | opened youtube. | yreg wrote: | Perhaps too late for you unless you open a new account, but | I seriously recomend everyone here to never ever click on a | YouTube short while logged in. | | YouTube will proceed to show that content down your throat | and if you are like most people you will let it. It will | make your experience miserable though. | ElSinchi wrote: | I've found quite effective blocking channels and actively | informing yt "don't show me more like this" | jacooper wrote: | She can use custom apps for YouTube like Newpipe, which offer | YouTube experiences without ads and Shorts. | jokoon wrote: | I think that the only domain where social networks can be | relevant is in the geoloc domain. Dating apps are quite an | obvious example where it works very well, but dating is a very | limited scope. | | So of course, the single problem of anything geoloc is safety and | privacy, which is not the strong aspect of any social network | right now. Tinder and others work hard to make their users safe, | and it's difficult because users are not aware of it. | | Social networks always should have been used to meet people | OUTSIDE of screens, for discovering other people and things. | | I want to meet people through activities (board games, running, | walking), (loneliness is a huge problem in the west!) and except | bumble BFF, which isn't popular, there is no popular app to do | just that. Of course there is meetup and other things, but those | are too narrow. | | Neighbor apps are nice too, but nobody use them because they're | focused on services, which isn't fun. | | Don't you think it's a huge contradiction that current social | networks don't let people meet? | bluefirebrand wrote: | My experience is that Neighbour apps are exactly as miserable | as Facebook and equally populated only by people my parents | age. | ribosometronome wrote: | I have not found the humans on Nextdoor to be particularly | terrible of late in my portion of the South Bay. There are | occasional bad takes, for sure, but fewer than I would have | expected. Mostly just been discussion of neighborhood cats, | garbage days, people not picking up dog poop, etc. | t_mann wrote: | There's also a need to be filled to let your friends know which | college you're going to, how awesome your last vacation was, | what job you got,... LinkedIn seems to be filling the void left | by Facebook. I don't know if many people who used social media | other than dedicated apps to _find_ dates. | Silverback_VII wrote: | I think for dating/sex people are willing to leave their | comfort zone and meet new people/take some risks. I not so sure | about boardgames and walking... who wants to play a boardgame | with a complete stranger ? | | but hey, why not? someone should try with the hope to become | the new meta in social networking. | germinalphrase wrote: | I would argue that "play dates" for parents of kids 2-5 would | be a (small) niche. | | Parents with young kids may have other friends with similarly | aged children, but many don't. Kids are too young to have | friends from school or activities. Some can strike up | conversation at parks, but many find the inertia too much. | | Good niche to expand into clothes/toys reselling/gifting, | babysitting co-op scheduling, nanny share, etc. which could | all be monetized . | | Probably a good niche for Facebook though I would rather see | someone else do it. | draugadrotten wrote: | Wordfeud was/is very successful and it's a Scrabble type | boardgame played with a stranger. | https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/why-wordfeud-worked- | | Betapet is another example in the same vein. Local | scandinavian community for playing Scrabble online against | strangers, with many stories of people who even got married | to each other. https://www.betapet.se/ | myspy wrote: | The Path app was a good social network in hindsight. Share your | stuff and look at others stuff. All sorted by date. No | algorithms. Which is why it probably failed. | | Facebook sucks and I'd hope that politicians in Germany would | take action against it. Start with the algorithmic timelines. All | content only your friends and interests. Nothing from outside to | addict you further. | janmarsal wrote: | we can only hope | seydor wrote: | This is not the first or second time that humanity has tried | 'social networking'. We used to call it "the mob" and long before | the time of jesus it was considered that people shouting at each | other is no way to run a society. People are dazzled by the shiny | touchscreens of their phones, but shouting behind a glossy screen | is still shouting, and a mob is still a mob. I don't think | 'social networking' will go anywhere, it will be abandoned and | foulmouthed as 'loud crazy old people', in favor of curated | content, possibly algorithmic if that works. The future of media | looks a lot like the media of the past, consolidated , more | professional and polished. | rnd0 wrote: | Dear god no. But wouldn't it be nice if it was? | fumar wrote: | I've been spending more time on Discord. It is replaced forums | and subreddits for many of my interests like synthesizers and | music. I don't like that the information is stored in a chat- | style vs posts. | timbit42 wrote: | I don't like that all the info is locked up and not indexable | and searchable on search engines. | _dain_ wrote: | I like it for precisely that reason. | fleddr wrote: | "What about this time around we build products whose primary | focus is actually the stated mission? Share with friends and | family and the world, to bring it together (not divide it)! | Instead of something unrelated, like making lots of ad revenue! | What a concept!" | | I really liked the article but am perplexed by the naive ending. | | Friends/family and the world are two very distinct use cases. | Most people, young people included, are taking the friends/family | part private, in chat apps. Then they may or may not engage in a | "public square" social network, but probably with a burner | account. | | The public square part has failed in epic ways. The idea that you | can just "build" something that unites people whilst dodging a | laundry list of threats and toxic behavior seems optimistic, to | say the least. | | And yeah, let's not run ads. Ok, fine. But how will you monetize | instead? These seem pretty important questions to me. | inasmuch wrote: | I yearn for the old days of what I think of as pull (vs. push) | social networking. When one would "get on" or "hang out on" | MySpace or early Facebook, approaching the experience actively, | rather than receiving and occasionally, interruptively, | responding to notifications. | | The feed of each of these platforms, if it existed at all, was | usually a side feature you might interact with (eg: MySpace | bulletins) after getting bored doing what you had gotten on to do | in the first place: see if anyone had consciously, deliberately | reached out to you specifically by commenting on your | meticulously composed profile or pictures, or privately by | sending you a direct message. And then reach out to someone | yourself. | | Short of spam, everything waiting for you when you signed on was | signal. No noise. Don't like someone but feel obligated to accept | her friend request? No biggie--just don't go to check out her | profile. You'd never have to take on the indirect stress of | learning your friend's roommate takes pride in being shitty to | fast food cashiers. You'd probably harbor less resentment and be | more optimistic about prospective social interactions with anyone | you meet. | | And, most importantly (to me, someone who made most of his best | friends online in the '90s and '00s), the pull approach | encouraged exploration and discovery of new people, communities, | perspectives, hobbies, whatever. You couldn't rely on a feed to | keep you busy--you had to seek out new interactions. New drama. | Whatever. Find good things, find bad things. At least it was your | choice to go find them, rather than having them shoved in your | face. | | I also think most people have lost track of the distinction | between social networking and social media. Where the former is | focused on socialization around networking (meeting new people, | forming communities, etc.), the latter is focused on | socialization around media (liking images, commenting on videos, | etc.). It sounds obvious when stated, but I think the conflation | of these terms has made it more difficult to discuss the | differences between what I see as two fundamentally different | social experiences, each with their strengths and weaknesses. In | some respect, these must coexist, but platform design can favor | either direction. Social networking, I feel, is conducive to | conversation; dialogue. Social media, by contrast, is conducive | to parallel monologues. | | I suspect most people would agree that it's better to talk to | each other than over each other. | t_mann wrote: | Do I get this right? Meta is turning Facebook into a TikTok clone | just after rolling back a similar change to Instagram? What on | earth is their strategy? | mrkramer wrote: | I never used TikTok but from what I heard and saw it is | essentially a Vine with better UI and UX e.g. you scroll | vertically for new videos and it has very good recommendation | system. | | P.S. I never used Vine too but then again I read and heard about | it. | | TikTok won because like other guy said; videos are the most | immersive media and I claim that people having short attention | span made them hungry for short form of entertainment like short | videos. | | From time to time I watch compilation of TikTok videos on YouTube | and I think "compilation" as a media form is another interesting | thing that somebody should experiment with. | | Speaking of social networking; my understanding of social | networking/media landscape is that Facebook sort of generalized | social networking and social networking features and now apps | like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok are specializing in photos, | ephemeral sharing and short videos respectively plus WhatsApp | specialized in messaging but Zuck did a great job of making | Facebook Messenger a standalone app and then specializing it | according to demands of messaging crowd. And yea Zuck acquired | Instagram and WhatsApp along the way so competing apps don't hurt | Facebook and its family of apps. | spicymaki wrote: | > This new advertising machine is powered not by friends and | family, but by an addiction algorithm | | This is like the crack epidemic when I was growing up. China is | hitting the west back hard for the Opium wars. First fentanyl and | now TicTok addiction algorithms. We are doomed. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-11 23:00 UTC)