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

businessinsider.com

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

#41

Post by john-radio »

ben_w wrote: post #31
quchen wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I used to call enshittification "Black and Deckering".

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

#42

Post by meroes »

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…

Also some stack exchanges I frequent were absolutely bombarded with ChatGPT for a few weeks.

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

#43

Post by navaati »

matsemann wrote: post #29

I posted a lot on facebook in high school. Had maybe 50 friends there, like my classmates, soccer team etc. Posted at least once a day what I was doing, same did everyone else, and we discussed in during lunch next day. Or I would post a general "going to the soccer field, just join in", and we'll be a group there. Then joining university and getting new groups of friends, it didn't feel relevant to "spam" everyone w…

Why not remove these persons you don’t feel close to from your friends list ? When I was using facebook, after I moved in life, say going from highschool to university and my list grew with my new university acquaintances there, I pruned it from the acquaintances of the past life, high school people I knew didn’t matter so much to me once they were not part of my life anymore.

So my friend list organically went through cycles of growth and shrink and probably stayed roughly constant, with the only long term growth being people that "sticked around" in my life.

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

#44

Post by everdrive »

c4mpute wrote: post #21
falcor84 wrote: post #7

I wonder whether Google+ and its Circles would have seen better success if it was launched now.

Circles was a great idea. But not really good enough. I'd have liked an "ignore" circle, like banning users on other platforms, just quietly, like the shadowbans some implement on a personal feed level. Also, Circles was the only good thing about Google+. The rest was average to bad, and the forced integration into all kinds of Google services, the forced realnames, and the lack of third-party integrations killed any…

I think what people sometimes miss is that circles was a good feature for users, but a bad feature for the platform. They interrupt vitality and outrage, since all messages are potentially more contained.

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

#45

Post by romusha »

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…

Would this be like gentrification?

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

#46

Post by jack_riminton »

john-radio wrote: post #41
ben_w wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Yeah, I used to call enshittification "Black and Deckering".

Interesting comparison, do you mean this because B&D now come up with things people don't need?

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

#47

Post by rpastuszak »

0. It's been 15 years and I still don't know how to use Twitter.

1. Most of my online social interactions come from people interacting with my work (writing, code, drawings) through:

- my say hi calls (https://sonnet.io/posts/hi) - Mastodon

Quality > quantity ("the Internet is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly hugely mindboggingly big it is.", i.e. small niches are big enough)

Not every company needs to be a unicorn, and you don't get closer to people with 10000s of followers vs. 100s who genuinely care.

2. When I started moving my content from instagram to potato.horse I noticed that suddenly content selection and adding captions to images became so much easier. It's so hard to escape the performative/"screaming into the void" frame of mind when using algo driven social media. Now, I still syndicate to IG and Reddit, but I have templates with comments redirecting users to potato.horse, where I can do whatever the f*ck I want with my content.

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

#48

Post by meroes »

dzonga wrote: post #2

that's why tik-tok has grown. there's a sense of authenticity with it. no fake posturing. disclaimer - i'm not on tik-tok. just based on videos I see shared and posted everyn now and then

If you watch any food videos you’ll see the advertising soon enough though, usually in the form of rage bait or similar. Like using fast food as ingredients to recipes or way too much Velveeta in their recipe.

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

#49

Post by nicbou »

An online community should feel like an online pub. It should have a vibe, some regulars, inside jokes, and a decorum that is somewhat well enforced. They're cosy places where a sense of belonging encourages participation and good behaviour.

HN is like that. Small subreddits are like that. Group chats are like that.

But now every social media website became like that one pedestrian street with the H&M and the McDonalds: a generic commercial space built around spending money. It has no personality, it's not safe, and no one feels at home there. Why would you invest yourself in a space like that?

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

#50

Post by anonzzzies »

buro9 wrote: post #40

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, witho…

Where are you posting? I find so little quality content.
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