Social networks are no longer social • Hacker News Board

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#131

Post by FirinMyLazr » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 9:37 PM UTC

shams93 wrote: post #125

reaperducer wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions of days when you were anonymous It's funny how in the early days of the internet, everyone was so open and honest about who they are that it was very common for their e-mail messages, Usenet posts, finger plans, etc... to have their real names, home and/or work addresses, and home and/or work phone numbers. Then the scammers discovered the internet, and everyone had to dummy up about who they are…

The next move already happened which was the massive Equifax leak. The government has effectively sheltered them from liability, there was no penalty for their actions. So the next development is really having your life forcibly exposed to scammers and potentially having your identity stolen but you have no means to protect the data. In the past it was like if you were careless you could be violated. Now you're at th…

Absolutely and horrifyingly true. Let’s continue to bring up Equifax’s failure as much as possible because it seems like it’s not a big issue anymore Which is crazy.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#132

Post by analyst74 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 9:40 PM UTC

Paperweight wrote: post #116

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.

When everyone's anonymous, anyone can speak their mind without worrying about offending anyone. When everyone's identified, only the crazies and extremists truly speak their mind - they don't care about offending anyone. You might end up with a mix of crazies and extremist "thought leaders" with packs of quiet followers - a suppression of the moderates and deep thinkers.

I never thought about it this way, but it makes a lot of sense.

Although to your last point, I don't think following thought leaders is such a bad thing. I mean, we have been following crazies for as long as humans have history.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#133

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 9:42 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. I do miss those early days.

I use Facebook for this 75-80% of the time. A few IRL friends communicate with my account but it's mostly about common interests with people spread across the world. I did this in various web boards before Facebook but Facebook is better, more people with my common interests are gathered in one place, better debate happens, discovery is easier and so-forth.

But that's how I've systematically worked to use Facebook. I run a group where I enforce civility ruthlessly, banning all trolls in an otherwise troll-heavy part of the site.

Facebook is a factor because it allows better interest-discovery than other sites and it's easier to compete with admins who allowing trolling just by creating a group and being better (where starting a competing web-board was hard).

This might not be how most people experience FB but remember, the board users were only a small fraction of the population also.

Edit: Hot tip, Facebook doesn't make much of an effort to enforce real names. A little, certainly but not much. Most people today don't get the value or need for anonymous accounts. That was true before Facebook too but then the majority simply hesitated to get online at all. I'm not sure if this is a matter of education or psychology, whether this will ever change or not.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#134

Post by clubm8 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 9:54 PM UTC

barbs wrote: post #128

Has anyone else noticed that Facebook notifications seem intentionally broken? So many times I've noticed that the number of new notifications go out of sync between FB on my desktop browser, mobile browser and messenger app. Even viewing the notifications on the desktop and navigating somewhere else seems to make some notifications new again. Anything to make that red dot appear again to get you clicking and engaged…

I've noticed a larger trend where notifications used to be notifications of something a human sent, but now it means "$SOCIALNETWORK wants your attention"

For example if I don't tweet for a few days Twitter will give me a "notification" that several high follower count accounts I follow have tweeted.

That's not a "notification". I'm well aware frequent posters post frequently.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#135

Post by joe_the_user » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 9:57 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #51

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 It's funny how in the early days of the internet, everyone was so open and honest about who they are that it was very common for their e-mail messages, Usenet posts, finger plans, etc... to have their real names, home and/or work addresses, and home and/or work phone numbers. Then the scammers discovered the internet, and everyone had to dummy up about who they are…

It's funny how in the early days of the internet, everyone was so open and honest about who they are that it was very common for their e-mail messages, Usenet posts, finger plans, etc... to have their real names, home and/or work addresses, and home and/or work phone numbers.

It was a mixed bag then and a mixed bag now. In usenet, some people were very open and some were already anonymous. On webboards, anonymity was more common but plenty of folks still put out their real name.

One of Facebook's selling point, how it got a significant fraction of the US population online at all, was presenting the (false) impression that you could safely use your real ID online.

And talking about this stuff, it's important to realize that until say 2008-2010, you had a process of more of the population getting online, so those online in the 90s were by definition outliers and didn't have "typical for everyone" experiences.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#136

Post by zby » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 10:17 PM UTC

OK - so now everybody feels that there is something wrong with Facebook and maybe other big social networking sites. There is the widespread feeling that there were better online times. This article did nothing to further my understanding of this subject - it is just repeating stuff we already know.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#137

Post by evrydayhustling » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 10:18 PM UTC

_greim_ wrote: post #73

evrydayhustling wrote: post #5

I love this take. When we can get past the breathless danger of social networks (which, to some, spells "opportunity"), we can treat their failure modes for what they are: systems acting as boorish neighbors. The most scalable defenses against exploitation of social networks will be distributed cultural notions of etiquette, self determination and even hygiene - not instantly-out-of-date regulation or even technologi…

> [...] notions of etiquette, self determination and even hygiene [...] will find it kind of gross and embarrassing to be caught up in somebody's disinformation. This reminds me of the CGP Grey video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

Quality video! I hadn't heard the points about mutation of ideas and forming complementary controversies.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#138

Post by IronWolve » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 10:32 PM UTC

Usenet newsgroups use to have moderated lists to stop the offtopic and flame wars. When perl moved to the web, that was the last time I used newsgroups as a daily discussion. (mostly...)

I can't even enjoy tech without the invasion of politics, use to like a bunch of sites that I found out are gawker writer staffed like jalopnik. Every 10 or so car articles is an anti-trump article. They can't even leave politics out, social media is 100x worse.

I remember the days, I could read linux news and not once would politics be mentioned, that is no more.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#139

Post by pseudalopex » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 10:38 PM UTC

scarecrowbob wrote: post #29

cgriswald wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be fair, that's why some people leave small towns.

Re: Social networks are no longer social

#140

Post by soundwave106 » Mon, Dec 24, 2018, 11:01 PM UTC

fgandiya wrote: post #50

I'm not sure how to feel about this. From social media I've been able to connect with old friends, enjoy good memes and keep up with current affairs. It's also been useful at times where I've found people willing to put in a good word for a job, mentor me and there are a few people who are really good at providing a fruitful environment for discussion (even controversial topics) that makes me sad to leave. Unfortunat…

From my perspective the "extra" came about when commercial interests started targetting the web, using base emotional tactics to get clicks and likes. Social media outside of the big networks (and thus less targeted by commercial interests) largely still feels social to me (eg small forums or groups),

The world of Usenet, BBSs, forums, blogs, etc. Had their dramas and trolls and whatnot. What they had much less of was the clickbait, post order manipulation, and spammy notifications. Whether major social media can become less "extra" probably depends on whether an alternate commercial model can be found, I guess.