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Quit Social Media (2016)

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Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#21

Post by mingus88 »

ClassyJacket wrote: post #11
benjaminwootton wrote: post #5

Isn’t it on the decline yet? Facebook is for boomers. Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend time falling out on there. Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth. LinkedIn is a parody of itself. Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media. TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren’t really social media. It’s just time wasting junk. All in all, social…

I don't know how you can possibly say TikTok isn't social media. That seems like a rather absurd claim. What's your justification?

TikTok is 100% social media

Although the line can get interesting. When I was active on Reddit I would argue that Reddit was not SM. From my perspective, Reddit was end stage web forum technology and link aggregators

All the bespoke forums of the late 90s and early 2000s died for the most part and there is now a subreddit for every niche hobby that used to have a forum

This stuff all predates Facebook, MySpace, Friendster, livejournal, that I would argue were new paradigms and the start of what we know as social media

However to anyone not online during those times, Reddit is just another site where people post details of their own lives. Reddit responded by adding profiles and followers and all kinds of pseudo SM features

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#22

Post by nimbius »

solomonb wrote: post #12

He states: > What the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable. > what the market dismisses are activities that are easy to replicate and produce a small amount of value. Well social media use is the epitome of an easy to replicate activity that does not produce a lot of value [...] by definition the market is not going to give those activieis a lot of value [...]." Yet in the yea…

perhaps a decade or more ago? not now.

you will never become a streaming millionaire. talking heads like beast and pewdiepie employ literal armies of Hollywood editors and writers. For every organically grown insufferable content monster created on Youtube, ten more are vat-grown by a billion dollar industry designed to shepherd you into a fantasy consumerist lifestyle.

These powerhouses of industry control the flow of capital at a level you will never be able to. they secure rights to music and video clips at rates you could never get, have tie-ins to major brands media and celebrities on day one, and are programmed with an endless firestorm of bots and preferential algorithmic treatment on every FAANG product in order to guarantee their success.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#23

Post by dang »

Related:

Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38720087 - Dec 2023 (1 comment)

Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16697004 - March 2018 (262 comments)

Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714509 - Feb 2017 (1 comment)

Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998698 - Nov 2016 (548 comments)

The NYT piece those were about is https://web.archive.org/web/20171114021224/https://www.nytim.... Not the same as OP but same topic, author, year.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#24

Post by redundantly »

solomonb wrote: post #12

He states: > What the market values is the ability to produce things that are rare and are valuable. > what the market dismisses are activities that are easy to replicate and produce a small amount of value. Well social media use is the epitome of an easy to replicate activity that does not produce a lot of value [...] by definition the market is not going to give those activieis a lot of value [...]." Yet in the yea…

> ... we have seen the rise of influencer and streamer celebrities who have gained an immense amount of wealth and power.

For most influencers, they're not the ones with the wealth and power. Many of them are barely getting by. They rent content houses, clothing, cars, and other things they need to put on their facade.

Pretty much all of the wealth and power is in the hands of the people that employ the influencers.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#25

Post by seanw444 »

SimianSci wrote: post #16
jjordan wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.

There is a marked difference between "Breaking new developments" and misinformation being spread to juice engagement. Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate information travels at light speed. It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.

> It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.

I don't think you wrote that the way you meant to.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#26

Post by decasia »

freediver wrote: post #6

I would rephrase it to “quit ad-based social media”. The incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the business model and there is an intermediary between the user and information/community they want to participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-based, social media. Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier to entry. In life we do not let everyo…

I would love to pay for social software on a coop model (like a food coop, etc) — we would be "members" and, theoretically, we pay a small monthly fee that covers the costs of hosting and platform development. I've tried to think about what I would want that to look like — spoiler, something different than the model of "posting + reactions" that is so familiar from twitter+fb — but then when I think about the barriers to entry for a project like that, even though the technological part might not be that difficult (assuming it was Less Than Web Scale), I just give up hoping for it.

I've been following a lot of the bluesky + mastodon stuff but I don't like that their basic model of social interaction is just a clone of Twitter.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#27

Post by immibis »

Kye wrote: post #9

(2016) Especially important because most of his commentary focuses on the dominant social media paradigm of the time. Mastodon barely existed when this post went live, Mike Masnick was years from writing the paper that inspired Bluesky[0], and it would be strange if someone whose whole thing is getting away from social media kept up on new developments. This post is an interesting historical artifact, but shouldn't b…

Isn't Bluesky just a copy of Twitter from that era, anyway?

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#28

Post by hyggetrold »

decasia wrote: post #26
freediver wrote: post #6

I would rephrase it to “quit ad-based social media”. The incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the business model and there is an intermediary between the user and information/community they want to participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-based, social media. Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier to entry. In life we do not let everyo…

I would love to pay for social software on a coop model (like a food coop, etc) — we would be "members" and, theoretically, we pay a small monthly fee that covers the costs of hosting and platform development. I've tried to think about what I would want that to look like — spoiler, something different than the model of "posting + reactions" that is so familiar from twitter+fb — but then when I think about the barrier…

I can't remember the name of it, but over a decade ago I saw something like this - it was a single Linux server shared by (I think) hundreds of people. Really trying to do the multi-user paradigm. They advertised it as a private kind of social network, it was invite-only and I think you had to pay to help keep the server lights on.

Hopefully by posting something incorrect, A Person On The Internet Who Knows Better will come along and provide the correct details. :)

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#29

Post by seqizz »

freediver wrote: post #6

I would rephrase it to “quit ad-based social media”. The incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of interest in the business model and there is an intermediary between the user and information/community they want to participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-based, social media. Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier to entry. In life we do not let everyo…

We also do not let people into the friend circle just because they have money (I hope). IMHO healthiest "social media" I could think is interest groups. They eventually need some kind of donation from one or more people, but with no or minimal barriers.

Re: Quit Social Media (2016)

#30

Post by swatcoder »

jjordan wrote: post #8
benjaminwootton wrote: post #5

Isn’t it on the decline yet? Facebook is for boomers. Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend time falling out on there. Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth. LinkedIn is a parody of itself. Reddit feels like it’s growing but I think that avoids the worst of social media. TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren’t really social media. It’s just time wasting junk. All in all, social…

Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during the first assassination attempt you would find new details on there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours later. It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help filter out the noise and politics.

Unless it's regarding immediate local emergency that you might need to respond to, breaking news has zero value besides a brain tickle and something to talk about.

If you feel you have any kind of mood or attention challenges, as many now do, you might want to double check if it's something you should be optimizing for.

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