171–180 of 192 posts
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> An engagement pod is a group (or ‘pod’) of Instagram users who band together to help increase engagement on each other’s content. This can be done through likes, comments, or follows.
You would think it would be trivial for an enterprising network scientist at these social media companies to identify these pods.
Influencer is the 2020s equivalent to the dream job actor/model/dancer. When I see the level of delusions on these most unwelcome tiktok ads I get, I need a moment to calm down from laughing. Stay away from social media as much as you can. I have deleted fb, ig and WhatsApp, life was never better. People get in touch via call or signal, not missing a thing.
What TikTok ads are you referring to? Users often get completely different targeting, but the ads I've seen have been mainstream fast food and then dumb consumer crap like moon lights. Also Old Navy and some car company. TikTok is really the anti-"influencer" platform. It is a very wide, long tail and doesn't seem to concentrate like many other platforms. People seem to be completely ordinary , versus the delusion th…
To me, the point of the article was that the influencers are just a symptom of a deeper malaise stemming from social media of raising everyone's expectations of themselves, the increased isolation as people spend more time online and have less real friends, and the (flawed) assumption that the average person is a good judge of quality.
All the comments just talking about influencers are missing the point.
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Younger audience is more susceptible to aspirational brand messaging - just look at TV ads for youngsters from few decades ago. Old farts are no longer trying to fit in, and in their purchases bring up terms like "lasting value" and "consumer reports". A friend's son, a newly minted teenager a few years back, had a Logan Paul sweatshirt and T-shirt at the top of the birthday wishlist. Never mind that's it's a generic…
Consumption habits are sticky. It's more effective to get a young person to like your product and they'll buy it across their working life than to try and convert someone already loyal to another brand
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Is WhatsApp social media? I use it to talk to my friends. Isn't WhatsApp basically just Signal with less data protection? Does that make iMessage social media?
I think it is in the twilight zone between intrusive app and social media. It is not designed like Instagram, but many people do share quick snapshots/video there. It does not have a like/dislike feature, but it does go beyond a messaging service I would say.
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> An engagement pod is a group (or ‘pod’) of Instagram users who band together to help increase engagement on each other’s content. This can be done through likes, comments, or follows.
You would think it would be trivial for an enterprising network scientist at these social media companies to identify these pods.
Also, I highly doubt any engagement on social media is genuine. Some people go through random profiles and mass like, comment, follow them hoping for reciprocity. There are bots that do that for your from your account. IG frowns upon that. But some bots have gotten sophisticated enough to randomize their likes/comments/etc to look more human. It's all a big game.
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> but plenty of people make the opposite mistake of trusting authorities In almost 40 years, my heuristic of trusting the government and ignoring anything being sold to me as “THEY don’t want you to know this!!” has worked out really well for me.
And as FOIA and declassifications have shown, trusting the government doesn’t work out well for the country. Ignorance is bliss
Wow, the subject influencers in the article were insufferable just to read about. I can't think of any group I have less empathy for than them. The world would be such a better place if the concept of an "influencer" completely ceased to exist.
I kind of had a similar reaction but about the author! It read like he used an auto-thesaurus, or purposefully chooses more esoteric words simply to up the contrast between how he sees himself - the professor writing smart think pieces whilst going for tenure - versus those dumb vapid teenagers.
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I think it is in the twilight zone between intrusive app and social media. It is not designed like Instagram, but many people do share quick snapshots/video there. It does not have a like/dislike feature, but it does go beyond a messaging service I would say.
But would you categorized iMessage and Signal in the same categories then? And if no, why not? Those features, for me at least, are what I would expect out of anything that's not a barebones text message app these days.