Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020) • Hacker News Board

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#171

Post by burnished » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 12:37 PM UTC

tcmart14 wrote: post #169

mdp2021 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would we want it to be? Do we want to live in a sophisticated democracy as opposed to a naïve democracy? Some would. Would you like to be part of an information exchange and debate platform using sophisticated systems as opposed to an open billboard? Some would. It is very doable. It was done in history and it can be done technically in many ways. Take for example HN: before you can downvote, you must have consolid…

Interesting, I did not know that one had to be a 'developed' user to be able to down vote. I may have to look more into the history of this and see some examples of implementations. Thanks for the info!

It happens at 500 karma, and even then there are times you can't I think, such as direct responses to you.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#172

Post by winternett » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:03 PM UTC

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #20

crdrost wrote: post #7

Related to this, there is an intimacy of small community which makes you feel valued and a proper contributor, that social networks really seem to oppose: they want to make the network bigger, you are part of the biggest world context, everybody on TikTok is eating a habanero while watching Bob Ross, so only if I do the same nonsense do I have a chance of 100 people noticing and liking the video and maybe opting to s…

Could you imagine if hypothetically, HN suddenly became the world's most popular social network? It would be unusable for it's current purpose and no amount of moderating could ever fix that. This sounds harsh but not everyone deserves to be heard all of the time- myself included.

The bell of death tolls whenever a site gets flooded with reposts from TikTok... Reddit reached that point this year.

Engagement stats and views are the wrong KPIs to focus on for social media aites and most of us know it yet Product Managers are just trying to stay n their jobs and collect checks.

If you want to really succeed in creating a community like HN that lasts much longer than a cheap start up like ClubHouse, the key is to stay local, dedicated to a niche, keep ads controlled carefully, and be happy with smaller-scale operations rather than trying to dominate the world. Dominating the world is a very risky and high overhead venture meant only for those who can ask for a small million dollar loan from their father.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#173

Post by chasedehan » Mon, Sep 13, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

mikro2nd wrote: post #141

peakaboo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name is awful. I certainly don't want to spread the word about "scuttlebutt". So I guess that's a good thing, keeps it small and cosy.

What is so awful about "scuttlebutt"? In the old days, when ships were wooden, real sailors were pressed, etc., etc., every ship had a water container available to the sailors -- a water butt -- bigger than a puncheon but smaller than a tun. So sailors would share gossip (probably about how misguided their management was) -- scuttle -- around the water butt, hence "scuttlebutt". Where's the "awful"? eta: Exactly what…

In the US military “scuttlebutt” refers to gossip. So that’s my first reaction to this name.

Re: Social Networks: It's worse than you think (2020)

#174

Post by RNCTX » Wed, Sep 15, 2021, 4:24 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #62

RNCTX wrote: post #57

Perhaps we really are in the (clickbait) matrix. An blog post about a pointless research project aimed at drawing a conclusion that could be drawn from common sense without any research at all. All of which is a somewhat circular exercise in bad content announcing itself to the world in an ontological sense.

this is actually something that's been bothering me heavily, lately. i've noticed a lot of content is created in these convoluted and grandiose borderline word vomit. honestly, a lot of the stuff frequently makes me feel a bit dumb as a reader. by the time i get through it, i realize that the main thesis is actually extremely simple but surrounded by flowery words. furthermore, i'm also noticing at my workplace many…

I would argue the reason is because no one rewards silence, there's still a need for people to distinguish themselves from a crowd, but as the technological age starts to wane, we are at a point where less people have something worthwhile to say.

You can see the same thing in the humanities, which went through all of this before there was a tech world. There's only so much you're going to find digging through Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer, and Ovid for the 10,000,000th time.

So people create new discourses, new fields of study, and new languages to describe them that aren't really new at all, but rather just a roundabout saying that the author didn't know what else to say.