Stop trying to make social networks succeed
1–10 of 226 posts
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#2I agree that the fates of social networks can develop and evolve intrinsically over time, and that there's maybe too much effort placed on advocating for their use with an immediate horizon as the goal.
However, it's pretty clear that network effects matter in social networks and other forms of IT. In some sense this is precisely why some people feel burned at the moment, in part.
In that regard, I don't really blame people for selling a social network or manipulating uptake, even if I don't like the network itself. It's how these things proceed in part.
I also agree with the author that it's ok if a community is small. I've come to the opinion that sometimes having a smaller community can be a good thing.
On the other hand, some platforms — the web, email — are pretty dominant, and we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers. Part of what Mastodon, Bluesky, and Lemmy are trying to do is be that platform.
I also think it's normal for developers to want to make as many users of their products happy. So to the extent they make lots of users happy, they're happier?
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#3Incredibly reductionist argument. Success is impossible to define therefore all social networks are failures?
There are clearly properties of a social network that users would like to see: ease of use, reach, quality of content and moderation while also allowing for openness and free speech. Working toward a future where something like this exists at scale is worthwhile and a workable-enough definition of success.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#4I agree that the fates of social networks can develop and evolve intrinsically over time, and that there's maybe too much effort placed on advocating for their use with an immediate horizon as the goal. However, it's pretty clear that network effects matter in social networks and other forms of IT. In some sense this is precisely why some people feel burned at the moment, in part. In that regard, I don't really blame…
> we've lacked an open social network platform that solves the problem of putting content distribution directly in the hands of content producers
I don't know about "open", but YouTube does this pretty well IMO. Search results aren't based on your profile, and it all seems pretty un-"managed", in a Twitter Files sense. I know it does do demonetization if people complain, but while it's not perfect, it's not unreasonable.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#5> Like every human endeavour, every social network is there for a limited duration and will be useful to a limited niche of people
On a grand enough scale, sure. If we expand the scope of "social network" very slightly to consider things like the web and email, this fact becomes less clear. I am fairly young, and I suspect at least email will be used for the rest of my life. The difference between the modern landscape for new protocols and the landscape when the early internet protocols were made is that there was little struggle for power. People made things they wanted, and they took off if other people wanted the same thing.
Now we have a bunch of competition for what is essentially the same experience. Does that mean there will never be one dominant protocol (or shudders, one application) for social media? I wouldn't bet on that claim. I think it will just take longer to reach somewhere that we land on as a common denominator.
It seems to be that a protocol must be flexible enough to support the division of communities and migration of users, like the article says is human nature. Protocols can support that though - email is one such protocol that does. ActivityPub is another, seems to be the route that we are headed towards right now.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#6If more emphasis was placed on social groups than networks I think it would be better all around. Hands-down the best online group of which I'm a member is a Mastodon group who are fans of the same podcast. There are similar groups of fans of this podcast on Facebook, Twitter, and elsewhere but their Mastodon server is orders of magnitude more active because we're there for the same reason.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#7I agree with most of what was said except one tiny piece, I don't think we should give up on a universal social network. We have some of the pieces, but the puzzle still isn't solved and I like seeing people challenge that.
The rest is definitely true though, all social networks are doomed for the same result: disappear into the void or become riddled with ads and so many additional services that the core network moves on. We'll keep repeating this cycle until the universal social network is actually achieved. I'm ok with that, having made several transitions already it's nothing new.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#8I think social media is a large feed stock for training AI and for selling advertisements. People will throw money endlessly at it for this reason.
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#9I am from a generation which grew up with phpBB forums of various kinds, and I loved the format.
I still struggle with understanding why we can't remain within decentralised forums. Was it such a hassle to check like four URLs a day to see what was happening in the threads you participated in? Are centralised feeds such a core necessity to us?
Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed
#10> There’s no metric of success for non-commercial ones. They simply exist as long as at least two users are using them to communicate.
This is something I didn't really understand when I was younger.
In every online community that has had some amount of hype surrounding it, there are prominent figures either hyping it up further or spreading doom and gloom when the metrics don't match their expectations.
What I didn't get when I was younger was that this doesn't need to affect me at all. Unlike the people mentioned above, my financial or reputational interests don't align with the size of the online communities I participate in. For me it comes down to "do I enjoy participating".
If you aren't an advertiser, streamer, content creator or anything of the sort, you don't really benefit from hype, growth or any of those things. So don't let these things affect your enjoyment of talking to people online or playing video games with them etc.