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Stop trying to make social networks succeed

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Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#21

Post by marginalia_nu »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #9

I 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?

I don't think the problem is user retention so much as upkeep. That the web is an extremely adversarial environment.

Popular forums are high value targets as they both tend to be central in the PageRank graph (so link spam has historically paid off very well as black hat SEO); while also sitting on large user databases with associated emails.

So there are non-stop intrusion attempts and ceaseless bot spam. Operating a forum is a lot of thankless maintenance. It's not made better by the fact that a lot of the older forum software had nightmarish upgrade procedures.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#22

Post by lapcat »

jrm4 wrote: post #17
evrimoztamur wrote: post #9

I 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?

Not to us, but there are other folks out there. As I've implied elsewhere, I like little geek communities too, but the big easy networks can and have fulfilled an important purpose of essentially being a better world "town square" than, e.g. network news. They're incredibly far from perfect, but they've done a LOT of good, and are likely to continue to be necessary.

> they've done a LOT of good

And a LOT of bad.

Overall, do the costs of global social networks outweigh the benefits? I'm skeptical.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#23

Post by tourmalinetaco »

izzydata wrote: post #16
dgb23 wrote: post #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'…

Even a lot of regular people these days are caught up in the addiction of getting the maximum amount of engagement out of everything they post online. They don't want to talk to people. They want thousands of strangers to praise them. So the bigger the network the more likely they can accomplish this. I'd wager for some individuals something might not even be worth doing if they can't be seen by thousands of stranger…

> I'd wager for some individuals something might not even be worth doing if they can't be seen by thousands of strangers doing it.

“Prank” channels come to my mind at this. Like the one that got shot semi-recently for messing with people, who then said it was “worth it”.

It’s a shame how hard people can hyperfocus on fake Internet points and even let it hurt their actual relationships. I had a friend who was intensely upset over a comment suggesting a new camera angle because it “made their channel look bad” to be constructively criticized.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#24

Post by lapcat »

jrm4 wrote: post #15

Couldn't disagree more. Big "winners" in this space can be dangerous, but they can also be an important tool/unfortunate necessity when it comes to national or global "news." Which is to say, yes, I want a good replacement for Twitter because social media more-or-less succeeded where "the Rodney King story" failed.

> I want a good replacement for Twitter because social media more-or-less succeeded where "the Rodney King story" failed.

Could you please explain this? I know what the Rodney King story is, but I don't understand the relevance here.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#25

Post by lapcat »

gochi wrote: post #7

I 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 mov…

> I agree with most of what was said except one tiny piece, I don't think we should give up on a universal social network.

That wasn't one tiny piece. The central thesis of the article was against the idea of a universal social network. Literally: "stop dreaming of a universal network."

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#26

Post by lapcat »

wunderland wrote: post #3

Incredibly 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.

> Incredibly reductionist argument. Success is impossible to define therefore all social networks are failures?

Incredibly reductionist interpretation of the article.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#28

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

dgb23 wrote: post #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'…

I'm of two minds on certain kinds of complaints. A lot of content creators talk about getting throttled or having their reach restricted.

While I do think content creators should be treated fairly by platforms to make the game fair... This doesn't really affect me and it often feels like that's all certain content creators will fixate upon, rather than making quality content.

I think it's sometimes a strategy of deception, to make it seem like the speaker is so much more important or dangerous that they need to be suppressed by the powerful.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#29

Post by colesantiago »

lapcat wrote: post #27
colesantiago wrote: post #14

This is like saying stop trying to make humans communicate with each other.

No, it's not. "Try to achieve small and local successes instead of pursuing an imaginary universal one."

We know in this world that isn't possible anymore unless you're, you know, actually their friends.

Again, today's social networks want to grow in users, so it is not up to the author to say that we should stop making social networks succeed.

Re: Stop trying to make social networks succeed

#30

Post by dspillett »

lapcat wrote: post #24
jrm4 wrote: post #15

Couldn't disagree more. Big "winners" in this space can be dangerous, but they can also be an important tool/unfortunate necessity when it comes to national or global "news." Which is to say, yes, I want a good replacement for Twitter because social media more-or-less succeeded where "the Rodney King story" failed.

> I want a good replacement for Twitter because social media more-or-less succeeded where "the Rodney King story" failed. Could you please explain this? I know what the Rodney King story is, but I don't understand the relevance here.

I read that as “the Rodney King story” being the story in the traditional news or later documentary format. Without the social media explosion, the situation might not have got the attention it needed meaning the story fizzled out (or, more cynically, the police would have been able to control the narrative long enough for the general public not to pay attention because something else was happened elsewhere to take over the news coverage).
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