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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

#271

Post by hot_gril »

brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

The non-friend posts on social media are the root of all problems here. Once your engagement is with people you don't know IRL, bad things like ragebait and bots tend to win the global popularity contests. The simple "algorithms = bad, chronological = good" mentality was right all along. Explicit sharing is fine too.

How'd we get here, well the inflection point was removing the timeline and putting algo feed instead, which was probably a response to dipping engagement as social media became less cool. The cool places nowadays are group chats.

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

#272

Post by dahwolf »

kelseyfrog wrote: post #217
brap wrote: post #215

My Facebook feed is about 40% sponsored posts, 30% suggested posts, 30% group posts (usually from very large groups), and then maybe 1% actual friends (and it’s usually just something that they’ve shared or commented on, almost never actual content). If we could go back to the days when 80% of the stuff you see is from friends with the remaining being ads, I would happily use FB more frequently and I’m sure most of m…

My mastodon feed is 100% actual friends. That reality exists; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

It is. On Facebook you can sort your feed that way and also on Twitter. Not sure about Instagram.

In my opinion, people are bored out of their mind also on a chronological feed from their friends. Not because they dislike their friends, it's just all very repetitive and time-consuming with very little to show for it.

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

#273

Post by dahwolf »

mancerayder wrote: post #154

I've been observing a pattern that I've been trying to articulate here and I can best describe as a framework where stuff 'comes to you' whereas the Internet for a long time was an enabler of 'you go to stuff'. The pendulum swung back, thanks to ad tech, and centralization, that have or are trying to orchestrate a culture shift. Okay, here are some concrete examples. 1. Television/cable (absent a TiVo type device), t…

The article touches upon this. You can phrase it as social media becoming just "media" again. A small group of heavy posters is responsible for the content backed by an algorithm that broadcasts it.

I think the cognitive effects are already visible. We become lazy, addicted, complacent, distracted and anxious.

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

#274

Post by soerxpso »

markjonsona989 wrote: post #245
r00fus wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HN is way the driest and most soulless. Well if you are looking for memes and catposts, yeah, the S/N ratio here is quite low. Honestly I think of those things as noise, so I see S/N of HN as much higher. I can always go elsewhere for the vibes.

My instinct was to agree with the comment above, but after giving it a few minutes I think I'd rather have a moderated "soulless" HN. It seems to me that there is a fine line between innocent jokes and full-blown juvenile behaviour. The amount of effort you would need to invest into sustaining such a place is not worth it, best to just not allow it at all. There are plenty of places where you can get your dose of jok…

I prefer it this way. I would love to see original jokes on HN, but the issue is that if you allow "jokes" in general, there's a flood of low-effort repetition of popular phrases or comments where the only "comedic" value is that they've forced something into a cliche sentence structure. That feels more soulless than the way HN is, because comments get so samey. You see the same effect sort of start to creep in on certain political posts, where people feel that they can achieve a cheap sense of attention and comradery for expressing a trite idea instead of a joke (comments that mostly amount to "Elon Musk is a mean man! Who else agrees???")

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

#275

Post by [deleted] »

dahwolf wrote: post #272
kelseyfrog wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mastodon feed is 100% actual friends. That reality exists; it's just not evenly distributed yet.

It is. On Facebook you can sort your feed that way and also on Twitter. Not sure about Instagram. In my opinion, people are bored out of their mind also on a chronological feed from their friends. Not because they dislike their friends, it's just all very repetitive and time-consuming with very little to show for it.

[deleted]

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

#277

Post by [deleted] »

nitwit005 wrote: post #212

If social media means a way to communicate with friends, family, and extended community online, it's pretty clear Meta and Tiktok don't want their products to be that. They've made sure you can't get a feed of just your friends. It's natural the people who want that sort of thing will go elsewhere.

[deleted]

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

#278

Post by hot_gril »

nitwit005 wrote: post #212

If social media means a way to communicate with friends, family, and extended community online, it's pretty clear Meta and Tiktok don't want their products to be that. They've made sure you can't get a feed of just your friends. It's natural the people who want that sort of thing will go elsewhere.

I think they saw engagement dipping as people got bored with it, so they started filling it with algo stuff instead. If they went back to pure friends, I'll bet it wouldn't work.

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

#279

Post by Tarsul »

chromakode wrote: post #109
nicbou wrote: post #49

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 McDonal…

This is often termed a "Third Place" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place

Thank you for posting this. Now I finally understand the PlayStation 3 (?) marketing... :)

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

#280

Post by dahwolf »

delfinom wrote: post #152
tfgg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was remarkable is how Facebook's Threads app jumped straight to being full of advertisers and hucksters - they didn't think that maybe the right way to bootstrap a social network would be to make it full of authentic conversations, at least to start with.

Lol, I think their plan is to still federate with Mastodon specifically to pad out their vapid platform with content. They were just too much of a self imposed rush to capitalize on Musk and his stupidity, to do it before launch.

Facebook doesn't care about the tiny amount of content on Mastodon. And it's the wrong type of content anyway. Mastodon is for misfits, nerds, anarchists, Tumblr-style far-left politics, doomers, weirdos and very bad artists.

Instagram and Threads couldn't be more different. It's commerce. Beautiful people. Beautiful places. Shopping. Mainstream pop idols. Grifting influencers. Celebrity gossip. Lifestyle. Fashion. Interior design.

Facebook prefers the latter group as this is where advertisers thrive. The typical Mastodon user would have an anxiety attack when they see an ad.

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