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Social Quitting

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Re: Social Quitting

#81

Post by midoridensha »

ako wrote: post #58
esperent wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I disagree. I always want to like Doctorow. In theory we have similar political views and I love that there's a famous writer who espouses them. But then I read his work and pretty much always find it lacking. For example, this post. It starts with a very clear point: huge numbers of users are leaving Facebook and Twitter, to the point where these companies are in serious trouble and will soon go the wa…

Trends can be observed without the actual data. The fact that he doesn’t have the data to proof it, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’ve observed the same trend, hardly anybody I know still uses Facebook, same for Twitter. WhatsApp however is an essential communication tool: sportclubs, schools, all use WhatsApp for last minute info. Not sure if Facebook/meta is in trouble, as instagram and WhatsApp seem to pretty popular.

>Not sure if Facebook/meta is in trouble, as instagram and WhatsApp seem to pretty popular.

Realistically, how profitable is WhatsApp? Facebook itself obviously has profit potential because it can bombard you with ads. WhatsApp, not so much. I feel like some of these services (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, etc.) may not be very profitable by themselves, but only serve to keep people on the site/ecosystem. But if they're ignoring the profitable part of the system, then the whole thing might not be sustainable.

Re: Social Quitting

#82

Post by andirk »

esperent wrote: post #43
nuc1e0n wrote: post #6

Doctorow continues to be as wise as ever.

Unfortunately I disagree. I always want to like Doctorow. In theory we have similar political views and I love that there's a famous writer who espouses them. But then I read his work and pretty much always find it lacking. For example, this post. It starts with a very clear point: huge numbers of users are leaving Facebook and Twitter, to the point where these companies are in serious trouble and will soon go the wa…

I too align with his critique of capitalism, but why does every article start with a picture of his head?

Re: Social Quitting

#83

Post by andirk »

midoridensha wrote: post #81
ako wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trends can be observed without the actual data. The fact that he doesn’t have the data to proof it, doesn’t mean he’s wrong. I’ve observed the same trend, hardly anybody I know still uses Facebook, same for Twitter. WhatsApp however is an essential communication tool: sportclubs, schools, all use WhatsApp for last minute info. Not sure if Facebook/meta is in trouble, as instagram and WhatsApp seem to pretty popular.

>Not sure if Facebook/meta is in trouble, as instagram and WhatsApp seem to pretty popular. Realistically, how profitable is WhatsApp? Facebook itself obviously has profit potential because it can bombard you with ads. WhatsApp, not so much. I feel like some of these services (WhatsApp, FB Messenger, etc.) may not be very profitable by themselves, but only serve to keep people on the site/ecosystem. But if they're ig…

Enter stage left: some weird email I got from Facebook about the messages will be melded with Instagram or some horrible idea like that. I'm sure bookface has plenty of good uses, but it has become the least interesting of all of the social media sites and is mostly just for logging in to other websites.

Btw, that data they get from any tiny snippet of facebook Javascript code on any website is probably invaluable. They see all. That's why we gotta use Ghostery, Brave browser, etc. as defaults.

Re: Social Quitting

#84

Post by dibt »

onion2k wrote: post #78
dibt wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You picked the most extreme example of any account. I'd bet Elon gets a lot of hate-follows. They won't like his tweets. You can see many real people replying to his tweets, so you can tell he gets plenty of engagement. For others without much engagement (retweets/replies), like Cory, all we have to go off of is likes, views, followers. I don't disagree that we can come up with a more accurate formula. Also, I gave p…

I'm pretty sure you could pick literally any account and get similar numbers. The point is that Cory isn't an outlier or unpopular or anything. All twitter users are like this.

> I'm pretty sure you could pick literally any account...

> All twitter users are like this.

That's the point. Cory isn't like all users. He has 480k followers.

The reality is very few of his followers engage with the tweets. He previously had engagement, he no longer has that engagement, and thinks Twitter is dying. It didn't help that he told his followers to go to mastodon.

I really think he doesn't play to the platform's strengths: succinct commentary. His whole career has been about long-form writing.

Re: Social Quitting

#85

Post by assimpleaspossi »

travisgriggs wrote: post #37

There’s that old saying “God gave you two ears and one mouth, please use in that proportion.” So much of the social aspect of the internet has been about “giving more people a voice”, and we’ve chased that desire at the blogging, milli-blogging, micro-blogging level. I’m undecided, but I have a hunch that the increase in “speaking” via the internet has not increased at the same level as encouraging people to “listen.…

The best thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice.

The worst thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice.

Re: Social Quitting

#86

Post by onion2k »

dibt wrote: post #84
onion2k wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure you could pick literally any account and get similar numbers. The point is that Cory isn't an outlier or unpopular or anything. All twitter users are like this.

> I'm pretty sure you could pick literally any account... > All twitter users are like this. That's the point. Cory isn't like all users. He has 480k followers. The reality is very few of his followers engage with the tweets. He previously had engagement, he no longer has that engagement, and thinks Twitter is dying. It didn't help that he told his followers to go to mastodon. I really think he doesn't play to the pl…

So the argument here is that if you have few followers or loads of followers then the ratio of views to likes don't matter, or 1% is fine, but if you're in the middle with 480k it's very important and shows that you're out of touch if you only get 1%?

That doesn't seem particularly reasonable. If only 1% of users at any level are really engaging with the platform then its fair to say the platform has a problem.

Re: Social Quitting

#87

Post by sph »

ipaddr wrote: post #49
travisgriggs wrote: post #37

There’s that old saying “God gave you two ears and one mouth, please use in that proportion.” So much of the social aspect of the internet has been about “giving more people a voice”, and we’ve chased that desire at the blogging, milli-blogging, micro-blogging level. I’m undecided, but I have a hunch that the increase in “speaking” via the internet has not increased at the same level as encouraging people to “listen.…

I want to agree with your ideals but there are 1,000x more people who read and rarely share. The viewed stat on a top rate hn submission is probably 50,000 views on average where comments are measured in the hundreds.

The problem is who are you listening to.

If you talk about anything in a public place, say in a pub, it won't take long to hear a differing opinion.

We've worked so hard to create closed communities on the Internet, that you're not exposed to opposite ideas unless you work hard at looking outside your bubble. Social media with its very smart recommendation algos will try to keep you firmly in your echo chamber.

Yeah, you can listen on the Internet too, but you often only hear the choir.

Re: Social Quitting

#88

Post by int_19h »

Endy wrote: post #66
subpixel wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook is still a thriving host of non-technical communities and classifieds. The features and experience across both of those use cases are constantly being degraded and are user-hostile, but FB is still winning. Something in the vein of Discord will eventually replace FB groups, I think. Classified is probably the service best protected by the most of FB’s network effect.

Nextdoor also has a local ads / classified ads section. I expect that would be the next destination for the FB Marketplace users (since they mostly fled Craigslist previously).

The problem for Nextdoor is that its active membership is even more skewed towards older folk than Facebook.

Re: Social Quitting

#89

Post by sph »

assimpleaspossi wrote: post #85
travisgriggs wrote: post #37

There’s that old saying “God gave you two ears and one mouth, please use in that proportion.” So much of the social aspect of the internet has been about “giving more people a voice”, and we’ve chased that desire at the blogging, milli-blogging, micro-blogging level. I’m undecided, but I have a hunch that the increase in “speaking” via the internet has not increased at the same level as encouraging people to “listen.…

The best thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice. The worst thing about the internet is it gives everyone a voice.

Everyone has a voice outside the internet too, but your spoken word carries social and physical consequences, which tends to teach one pretty quickly not to run their mouth.

Social media won't improve until there is a button I can click to slap the person who wrote it, paraphrasing that famous bash.org quote.

Mind you, I'm not talking about government laws. In the real world, moderation is highly distributed: anyone that has to listen to you can "moderate" you.

Re: Social Quitting

#90

Post by bredren »

throwaway82388 wrote: post #57
Swizec wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a vibe shift. The hard numbers may not be there (yet?), but the early signs are. Facebook has been dead for years, unless you count instagram. Twitter never actually caught on with the normies. Gen Z is on TikTok. In my friend groups everything that used to happen on Facebook now happens on private WhatsApp, iMessage, and Slack groups.

Vibe shift is just another term for a change in elite aspirant opinion. The vibe is localized to highly trend conscious social and professional milieus. These scenes are often regarded as a cultural vanguard, but are in fact often detached from the majority of the population, and are less harbingers of broad shifts in public opinion, and more simple reporters on their own microclimates. That is all to say, the hard n…

Even if a vibe shift is recognized it isn’t necessarily described so.

Looking at the earliest comments that include “tiktok” on this site, the product wove its way into mentions before some article blew it up.

That said if you were on the service when the boss walk was just breaking, and experienced the product’s progression (as a user) to Old Town Road, it was obvious something big was going on—before the numbers were there.

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