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Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

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Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#31

Post by microtonal »

Insanity wrote: post #2

Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.

For a window, it was really social, early to late 2000s (anyone in NL remember Hyves?). It was a great way for keeping up with friends as you went to different schools, when they were traveling, etc.

There were a bunch of things that destroyed it: Ajax [1], async tech made it possible to continuously push new dopamine shots when viewing a page; the rise of smartphones, since before smartphones you could only check social media when you were behind a computer, which was not true for most people most of the day; and the realization that dopamine shots + ads can bring in a lot of money.

Even though we had cell phones in the early 2000s, in most countries it was just for calling and some SMS (which was expensive outside the US). You would only go to Hyves, Myspace, or whatever when you had some time in the evening. I am sure some people got addicted, but it was much harder than having a device that tries to entice you all day to look.

That said, I still find social networks like Mastodon very useful. Not so much as a replacement for keeping up with friends/family, but it makes it very easy to discover what people who are in niches I'm interested in are up to. And since it does not have an algorithmic feed or ads, the addiction factor is much lower.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#32

Post by titzer »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

Ads became the default business model of the web. When people started to get sick of blaring in-your-face blinking banners, it mutated into search ads and placement. The same thing happened to mobile apps and games, YouTube, Facebook, instagram, even Tik Tok. When it becomes too blatant then it embeds itself one level deeper as placements and endorsements.

It will never stop because the parasitic ads are the only thing holding up the edifice anymore. It's crazy to me because ultimately what holds up the economy is money changing hands for services, and ads aren't that. So ads are fundamentally driving people to spend money elsewhere. I just don't understand how the system holds up a multi-hundred billion dollar advertising parasite...everything would be cheaper if there were no ads.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#33

Post by andix »

I used to browse through my instagram feed a few times per month. Just to keep updated about those friends who often posted there. Now it's mostly crappy shorts and I can't even find the "friend feed" anymore. No idea if it's just well hidden or completely gone. Now I don't use it anymore at all.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#34

Post by austin-cheney »

estearum wrote: post #16
Insanity wrote: post #2

Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.

Curious how old you are? There was definitely a sweet spot if you were in highschool or college in like 2004 - 2010 (so born something like 1986 - 1994?) where online social media was almost painstakingly manicured to mirror real-life social dynamics. Many people remember the drama of deciding who your "top friends" were on MySpace.

I was in college at that time and I did not get this feeling in any possible way.

Instead I can remember online topic focused forum boards, of which some I had numerous daily interactions with the same people over years. These online forums made no pretense about replacing real life social dynamics and yet they were still so much better for real social experiences than the social media that replaced them at that time.

To me social media has always felt artificial for people who shout into a vortex hoping for attention.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#35

Post by titzer »

armchairhacker wrote: post #27

HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate). (But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the…

You don't see pictures and videos directly on the site. It's text links and text comments and discussions. In the minimal sense of the word, even printed text is media, so it's technically true that HN is social media, but I think it's more like a news aggregator and discussion forum.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#36

Post by everdrive »

armchairhacker wrote: post #27

HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate). (But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the…

[flagged]

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#37

Post by keybored »

I deleted my FB when they gave us the Your Data Or Your Subscription ultimatum. I don’t scroll TikTok, Instagram, or any other video “content”. I do watch some YouTube shorts but only while sitting at a personal computer type laptop or the ones which are connected to external monitors.

I read this site. But lately it’s been more difficult since the AI “content” stresses me out. Maybe social media always did that. But it’s come to the point where I cannot kid myself. Many times it just makes me more wound-up than it winds me down. So then what’s the point? Then I intentionally search for specific topics. When I’m out of those I can stare out the window. Which is a nice change.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#38

Post by close04 »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

> And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.

For an arbitrary definition of "normal"? The last remark is unwarranted and can only have a chilling effect on the conversation. Or outrage bait, a typical sign on social media.

Why is it not social media? It exhibits the same signs as seen on any social media platform. Can you define social media so we can all follow the same play sheet?

I see the same opinions here as I see on Reddit, Facebook, LinkedIn, or X even from the same people here as there. The topics that reach the front page are the most popular, or divisive, or "addictive". A lot of people post for the karma, there's a lot of pandering to popular opinion. There's an opaque algorithm that decides which topic stays on the front page and for how long, which comment stays on top and for how long, when a post or comment gets flagged or reappears, etc. that dictates how the conversation can be carried and on which topics. There are a lot of political topics where some voices or opinions are buried while others are pinned to the top. Some people spend hours and days posting here. There's a lot of astroturfing. The parallels can go on. The main difference is scale and at this small scale it can maintain a higher level of quality... most times. But quality isn't what defines social media, is it?

Many on HN see themselves as better than the "simpletons" who fall for "normal" social media, and any view that challenges that is tiresome. But your dismissal of whether HN is social media holds water like a sieve.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#39

Post by skydhash »

bluGill wrote: post #22
skydhash wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone that was raised in a small town, the feed was very shallow compared to my actual interactions with friends. It was great for status updates (especially for friends in foreign countries), but messenger was way more popular than the feed.

Close friends are better. However I want to know how my now very distant old friends (ie from high school) and relatives are doing. I want to know when they have babies, see a couple pictures of their kids dance reticle - it gives me something to talk about when our next reunion comes around. My life is worse because instead of see the above I see only fads. Now that I only check my feed once a month I see less fads…

> I want to know how my now very distant old friends (ie from high school) and relatives are doing

YMMV, but I got all of these through words of mouth (and WhatsApp status updates). I think it’s ok to be estranged from a friend or a relative. The next time, we meet, I can ask them how everything is going and what has happened. And if they want they can show me pictures then.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#40

Post by PcChip »

I think I'm on an A/B test on the Facebook app, now whenever I open the app it goes straight to reels and starts playing videos with sound enabled. I looked through all settings to try to disable this but couldn't, so I finally just gave up and uninstalled it

I open the app to keep up with what my friends are doing, and also check the dating portion of the app for new matches. I purposely always avoid reels on any app, because I hate them and what they do to people. So when I open the app and it immediately starts playing reels with sound on and no way to disable it, it feels like a slap in the face

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