Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats • Hacker News Board

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#31

Post by ben_w » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:52 AM UTC

quchen wrote: post #15

c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

How is this not the same? It sounds exactly like I understand enshittification. Literally: > First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. (Source: https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/ ) Do you mean that the context here i…

My understanding is that enshittification is much more general (though perhaps this is just linguistic drift); an organisation that has done a hard thing, but now has to justify its continuing existence and expense coming up with things nobody needs and which add zero or negative value.

This can be rent extraction (literal or metaphorical, no matter where on that spectrum advertising goes); and also it can be feature creep, mission creep, scope creep, bureaucratic bloat.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#32

Post by piva00 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC

azangru wrote: post #3

> no one is posting on social media anymore "Nobody comes here anymore, its too crowded".

I feel this misses just one adjective: "nobody interesting comes here anymore, it's too crowded". A similar feeling I get from overtouristed places, initially they are interesting because of some attraction: the nightlife, the art scene, the food scene, or any combination of these (and other factors I'm too lazy to list) with some quirkiness that attracts people who are interested in the twist. Over time it becomes attractive to more people because they hear about it from others who experienced it, then it goes downhill where people will flock to a place but nothing that made it initially interesting is there anymore, it just becomes a self-perpetuating meme.

It feels it's a pattern that develops in social media, tourism, products, etc., something fresh appears which gets overextended and bores us out in the end, the laggards missed the magic. Rinse and repeat.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#33

Post by pxmpxm » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:53 AM UTC

agent008t wrote: post #26

bluetomcat wrote: post #5

It's not social media anymore. In their feed, people are bombarded with ads, news, jokes as regular "content creation" and group posts where strangers with a narrow interest in, say, collectible figurines are posting pictures of their new purchase.

It all went to shit the moment 'timeline' became 'feed'.

This. All people want is to be able to see pics of their friends and kids from whatever vacation they're on, preferably in chronological order.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#34

Post by dutchCourage » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

Social networks put engagement before everything else and alienate their products. I moved away from Facebook to Instagram when it stopped being about my friends, and did the same when Instagram tried too hard to be TikTok.

And I like these services independently. I watch short content, I like following what my friends do and I follow(ed) strangers on Twitter. But the moment everything is crammed into one app the experience becomes dull.

I wish they'd spin up new apps instead of adding more and more layers to the existing ones.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#35

Post by zirgs » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:55 AM UTC

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #22

c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

Yes Early Digg was pretty good. Early Reddit had a lot of good help guides and interesting perspectives. Now on HN. And crossing fingers. (Slashdot seemed to go through the cycle, bottom out, and is ok again?)

Most niche subreddits are still good. Just avoid big/default subs and anything related to politics and culture wars.

That's what disappointed me when I tried reddit alternatives. Politics and culture wars were there too, but niche subs were nowhere to be found. They don't seem to understand what made reddit worse in the first place.

So I went back to reddit.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#36

Post by nottorp » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:56 AM UTC

Hmm the article title implies they're talking about all social media but most of it is about Instagram.

Also, it smells of a marketer's perspective. Of course if most posts are fake people will stop being interested in the platform.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#37

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:56 AM UTC

wodenokoto wrote: post #20

c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

It’s not advertisers that keeps users from posting. Plenty of people doom scroll on Facebook and instagram. ads hasn’t scared users away all that much. It’s that the platforms have been invaded by professionals coupled with an expanded “suggested for you” posts with a little bit of platforms pushing users to grow their graphs endlessly. This creates a combination where posting isn’t really for your friends, it’s for…

It is not just that. At this point, most people know that their online presence is scoured by entities that may be unfriendly for one reason or another, or maybe is gathering information about you ( say HR people looking at your recent Linkedin posts ).

Honestly, if that is true ( and I have no real way of knowing ), I think that is a good thing. People are finally adjusting.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#38

Post by layer8 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:58 AM UTC

c4mpute wrote: post #12

I think this is an eternal cycle. Maybe related to what has been called "enshittification", but not the same: Users will flock to a platform, make it their own. The platform will grow. Then the advertisers, professionals, and hucksters will swoop in, do their thing, and slowly overshadow the old "normal" users. Then old users will leave, leaving a wasteland of ads and glossy shiny. I'd like to call it "glossification…

The problem is engagement-driven algorithmic feeds. Without them, none of that would happen. Enshittification doesn’t happen with traditional web forums. It’s entirely a function of how the platforms are set up.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#39

Post by pmontra » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:58 AM UTC

I've been using WhatsApp groups for sharing with my friends and some Telegram groups too. Everybody has WhatsApp and actively uses it here anyway, so there is no extra app to install. No need to use Instagram, Discord, TikTok or whatever. It crosses all age groups.

Re: Social media decline: Users are shifting to messaging apps and group chats

#40

Post by buro9 » Thu, Aug 31, 2023, 10:59 AM UTC

It might not be for everyone, but I'm posting more on social media than ever and seeing more engagement than ever... it's on the fediverse where smaller and safer communities are leading to much higher valuable engagement.

I'm also finding it a lot more common for people to have multiple profiles / personas... the social one, the work one, the furry one, whatever is how you want to present yourself and to whom, without needing to try and contort yourself to be everything to everyone.