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I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

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Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#121

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

Big part of it, as far as I can tell.

Slight further (and darker) twist: our economic model is dying, but nothing substantive is being done to make appropriate revisions.

Essentially: we have excessive, but still increasing, numbers of people with skills and in economic classes / roles that are "tertiary" and beyond. As processes have been made more efficient over time, and the surplus wealth has been accrued in an ever more concentrated fashion, we increasingly seem to have a sort of "surplus" (oh boy, can it get more Dickensian?) of people in something of a "middle class limbo".

Of course, the very efficiency that has pushed workers out of roles, is efficiency that means we (can) produce plenty for the people presently around. Further, it's basically always the case that people ultimately pushed out of roles contributed in substantial ways, even if just indirectly, to "our" ability to replace them. But, the "tally sheets" we use to divvy up resources, account for contributions and "deductions", etc., are more and more fundamentally broken.

Throwing the so-called "AI" into the mix only makes this worse.

... I'm a bit too tired and pressed for time right now to try to really tie this off nicely, but, hopefully the outline of this (current iteration of this) hypothesis is clear enough. It's an argument (in the sense of dialectical &/ rhetorical debate) that has come up many times. For example, Vonnegut's "Player Piano" springs to mind. But, I do think we're finally at a point where there will need to be some adjustment in economics, culture, etc. Or, we're heading into "French Revolution" territory.

Also, it's not as though humans haven't been through this before - not only at times like during the "Reign of Terror", but also, when people like John D. Rockefeller were in their heyday. At that time, Rockefeller, for example, became quite community-oriented himself. He made substantial contributions to the well-being of society / humanity, in ways that often went beyond simple provision of money for charitable efforts.

No idea which way things go this time...

Edit: correction - when I wrote "produce plenty", I was in a mindset focused on NA / Europe, in particular. Simply the areas I'm most familiar with. Throwing countries like India, China, etc., into the mix, makes the situation more complicated and difficult. Far too much there to touch on right now.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'm 44 and I remember back when politics was more or less left out of hacker news altogether. Noone cared about your libertarian values or my progressive ones, everyone just talked about tech.

> I'm 44 and I remember back when politics was more or less left out of hacker news altogether.

Politics is still more or less left out of hacker news. How many politics-related posts fo you see daily on HN? Zero?

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#123

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) ? Reminds me of Reddit. Can’t post if your karma is too low - of course you start with zero as a new poster.

Do you have a better suggestion for mitigating spam and abuse? Reddit could do what everyone else does and tie your account to a phone number or video selfie, but I'm personally not hot on that idea.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#124
post #56

If you have to put that kind of work into a platform to make it usable, I would suggest putting it into a platform that aligns with your values. I just can't understand why anyone, even "normals", would be so eager to jump into bed with Facebook again after the last decade.

I started onto Threads. I really tried to make Mastodon work for me, but the lack of discoverability killed it. As somebody with trans people in my family, getting away from Musk's Twitter is a priority. But Twitter is where I get a lot of news and entertainment. I would rather have seen Mastodon win, but their product just isn't good enough.

As somebody with humans in my family, staying of democracy subverting Facebook is a priority.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#125
post #90
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm interested in the contrast between the news producers, who want you to pay for content, and the flood of people desperate to attract your attention without anything of value. It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at. Is is because a lot of people j…

> It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth actually looking at. Have thought that this was a problem so have been working on a solution. At some point intend to announce on HN. I'm supposed to do a "Show HN"?

Yep, that's how it's done. Good luck!

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for creating value, the more of their communication goes down to attention seeking and identity pandering.

I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money. The great majority of people continue to need eachother to create value but that is mostly hijacked by venture capital trying to monetize, extract value, etc

> I think attention seeking is either pathological or for making money.

For a few decades we've been bombarded with the idea that our career depends mostly on our visibility instead of our qualifications and experience, that our next job will certainly be dictated by our social graph, and that getting ourselves known is key to have a good career.

Consequently, we see a whole universe of self-promoting loudmouths generating noise just to get themselves out there.

Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#127

Slight twist on dead internet theory. It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have real conversations is more difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for their "brand". Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.

At the risk of sounding mean, Threads really is the dumbest place on the Internet. It’s vapid beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.

> At the risk of sounding mean, Threads really is the dumbest place on the Internet.

Have you met Twitter?

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#128

This is a fools errand. Stop using it for a week. The product is a literal MVP right now and lots of stuff is in the pipeline. You’re spinning your wheels on this when shortly you’ll be able to see a different timeline.

That may be true, but I really don’t think I want to. It’s Instagram in words, and Instagram by and large is an awful, fake and vapid place. Threads might be decent software, but the content is horrible.

What is so bad about Instagram? It's my most used "normie" platform. I don't choose to have fake friends or follow awful creators, so I don't see that on the website.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#129
post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment isn't adding anything. Bizarre or no, they explain their reasoning, so it's worth explaining why you disagree. The "largely voyeurs" effect observed on Reddit is well attested to, and the idea that TikTok targets those is interesting (though I have no idea if the numbers agree).

I think the phrasing is what’s objectionable here. Sure most users are lurkers, but does that mean they’ll never produce anything original? Give me a break. This is just a roundabout way of calling other people “NPCs”

I disagree with their term “mimic”, as if anything mimics would be their own social class (see for instance clickbait/“prank” channels on YT, content creators on TikTok), but the underlying principle is correct.

He is not stating they will never produce anything original ever, that’s simply absurd. However he is saying consistent content creation is few and far between compared to the masses who lurk. And that it’s unreasonable to expect different given that real life obligations such as work sap away a good portion of our energy.

Re: I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding mean, Threads really is the dumbest place on the Internet. It’s vapid beyond anything I’ve ever experienced.

It seems like it's too early to judge it on almost anything

> It seems like it's too early to judge it on almost anything

It's specially too early due to the trainwreck which is Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition. If Musk continues to destroy Twitter, we might see the whole world drop it in favour of Threads.

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