Social networks are no longer social • Hacker News Board

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#21

Post by rrebelo » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:24 PM UTC

> Watching distant cousins fight about politics

I've long been cautious to step into the WhatsApp hysteria going on here in Brazil. But the last (disgraceful) election here was the last straw. The level of stupidity in the memes from both sides was far beyond repulsive.

A solution that is working so far: automatic regulation. I created a Telegram group with a bot that censors the most common names and expressions on Brazilian partisan politics, using regular expressions. It is surprisingly effective, in a "no broken windows way": if you block the small infractions people don't come close to big infractions.

Breaking rules is a second national pastime in Brazil. Therefore, at the beginning people found it amusing to try to cheat the censoring regular expressions (e.g.: B0150N4R0, etc) After a while the trick only sharpened these expressions and now they just don't mention politics in the most partisan terms. We do see postings about issues (e.g.: education, fiscal crisis, etc) but not the stupid partisan dogfight. Politics is mostly a tribal thing, not an ideological one.

EDIT: I'd like to stress the "automatic" aspect of it. When you make the regulation/moderation algorithmic you gain 2 big psychological benefits:

* A fast feedback loop: because the post is immediately removed the association between cause and effect is much stronger. People understand much more that they are breaking a rule when the consequences of it are certain and immediate.

* Algorithmic solutions are "rules based" for most people that don't understand them. They perceive it as "the way things are" instead of an arbitrary decision by the person that wrote the algorithm.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#22

Post by microtonal » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:25 PM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #4

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use their real identity, and that became the norm.

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas.

Heck, I wrote a Dutch online book about Slackware with a guy I didn't really know the name of until after a couple of years when he told me he just used a pseudonym.

For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window

To me it is the introduction of likes (which are really a hack to make people more addicted through social confirmation) destroyed social networks. Shallower posts (party pictures, family announcements, memes) to get more likes, so people post them more and more. Genuinely interesting posts are buried by algorithms. Since comments can be liked as well, people write comments to conform with group biases (and are more likely to be upvoted) rather than to be useful.

tl;dr: to increase engagement, social networks have turned into popularity contests. As with other popularity contests, they are usually vain.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#23

Post by cgriswald » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:29 PM UTC

pcurve wrote: post #4

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use their real identity, and that became the norm.

Imagine going to a bar and having your name, relationship status, political orientation, and a list of your big mistakes floating above your head. Good times. Good times.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#24

Post by evrydayhustling » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #16

PavlovsCat wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/ > Right now the social networking sites occupy a similar position to CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL in the mid 90's. At that time each company was trying to figure out how to become a mass-market gateway to the Internet. Looking back now, their early attempts look ridiculous and doomed to failure, for we have seen the Web, and we have tasted of the blogro…

> some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online. Let me introduce you to The Private Group Chat where 90% of online social activity happens between people under 30. It’s rrally quite fascinating. It’s everything Google+ wanted to be, but totally organic, apread over dozens of chat apps and services, and without the big brother oversight.

This is a really good point and something an over-30 like yours truly would have an easy time missing even as it happened around us (my most meaningful groups are now distributed over WhatsApp, Slack, and good 'ol email). Happen to know any sources quantifying this phenomenon?

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#25

Post by Liriel » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:35 PM UTC

I think that developers can safely migrate to communities such as Hashnode instead of wasting their time scrolling through numerous groups on Facebook. All the features are already there without the tracking system in place.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#26

Post by gnomodromo » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

wybiral wrote: post #18

I vote we return to the age of late Geocities, forums, and early blogs. Less conformity in design, less "social" by modern definition, but more people who just liked one topic enough to build something about it and communities forming around them.

I have a free chat function on my site where the comments disappear after a while, but I'm still experimenting with it http://www.uptopnews.com/comments/992yhc3u0bg/?t=breaking

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#27

Post by mtgx » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #11

This article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such links and asks you to agree to their dubious handling of personal information and preferences. The social aspect of the Internet used to be about people communicating with people. Today it's about large corporations deciding how you interact, who gets to know abou…

Rejoice, Verizon's content acquisitions have turned into complete and utter disasters and Verizon announced that it will exit the content business (A Reuters article I can't seem to find now said so):

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-y...

The funny thing is Marissa Mayer made more from the deal than Yahoo is now worth for Verizon:

https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may...

And she got a severance paycheck that's also worth 10% of Verizon's content business now.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#28

Post by jiveturkey » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

lazyjones wrote: post #11

This article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such links and asks you to agree to their dubious handling of personal information and preferences. The social aspect of the Internet used to be about people communicating with people. Today it's about large corporations deciding how you interact, who gets to know abou…

yeah, i use adblocker so i have never supported them (except in viewer counts) but as of a few months ago i stopped reading them altogether. thanks for the reminder why.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#29

Post by scarecrowbob » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:42 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #23

pcurve wrote: post #4

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use their real identity, and that became the norm.

Imagine going to a bar and having your name, relationship status, political orientation, and a list of your big mistakes floating above your head. Good times. Good times.

To be fair, that's what it is like to go anywhere in a small town you've lived in for a long time. :D

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#30

Post by mancerayder » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 3:43 PM UTC

cgriswald wrote: post #23

pcurve wrote: post #4

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use their real identity, and that became the norm.

Imagine going to a bar and having your name, relationship status, political orientation, and a list of your big mistakes floating above your head. Good times. Good times.

I've been reading this strange but fun sci-fi book by this Russian author Dan Sugralinov, about a man who's a loser/game addict who then wakes up with a mysterious implant in his brain that lets him see "stats" of people, and connects him to some mysterious network of information. "Restart" is the name of the first book. Not only does he see people's stats and standing in the world in the form of social level, but he becomes obsessed with upgrading his own stats, as if he were living an RPG game itself.