Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 511 posts

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

#61

Post by trollbridge »

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.

Yeah - MySpace accurately mirrored high school circa 2004, and Facebook accurately mirrored college circa 2007 (complete with it being elitist where it was hard to get into when it first launched, just like real colleges).

But that was 20 years ago.

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

#62

Post by liotier »

dust-jacket wrote: post #54
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…

see IMO it isn't. HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. I don't think they were social media really - they're online spaces that form around a shared interest, where Facebook etc were originally online spaces that augmented a real world community. But we're a long way from that now.

> HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were.

That is the very definition of social media.

"Social media I like" vs. "Social media I don't like" isn't valid categorization.

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

#63

Post by Towaway69 »

keybored wrote: post #37

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…

I've started visiting quiet rooms[1], just to hear myself think again. The world and the internet has become so loud that some quietness is refreshing. Luckily for me there are several where I live so I've even got a choice.

Strangely these rooms are quite different to being silent at home or somewhere else private. For me it seems to be that these spaces are public, you are being silent in public spaces - a different setting and experience than in places that are private. Being silent together can be disconcerting!

It's also different to using noise cancellation or listening to music or other forms of "silence", truly unique in many aspects.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_room

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

#65

Post by defmetrix »

The only social media I really use is linkedin and X. I find linkedin useful for following companies and colleagues, and im pretty picky about who I accept or request as a friend. I also find X to be insightful, but I only use it to follow people for stock research.

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

#66

Post by jmye »

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.

That it's less destructive than Meta doesn't make it less "social media" - and I'd argue that it's style (links fall off the page quickly and discussion becomes impossible after a relatively short period of time, solely to foster a sense of "missing out") is part of what defines current "social media".

It's a noisy attention sink, whatever high-mindedness people want to pretend it has.

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

#67

Post by wussboy »

kiicia wrote: post #56
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…

HN is public forum (one of the last), it's a bit different thing

Calling this out as the primary reason HN is not social media. Forums existed for years before social media was ever a thing. HN is indistinguishable from a forum in the early 2000s.

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

#68

Post by dust-jacket »

liotier wrote: post #62
dust-jacket wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

see IMO it isn't. HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. I don't think they were social media really - they're online spaces that form around a shared interest, where Facebook etc were originally online spaces that augmented a real world community. But we're a long way from that now.

> HN is an online community. Same as forums, and BBSs were. That is the very definition of social media. "Social media I like" vs. "Social media I don't like" isn't valid categorization.

if you think social media just means any space online with multiple people in it, then I guess we just disagree on what social media is.

Is the linux kernel mailing list social media? was usenet?

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

#69

Post by zbikowski »

andix wrote: post #33

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.

It is so well-hidden, in fact, that there is no visual indicator that it exists at all, so you cannot be blamed for thinking it is gone. On the homepage (house icon) tap the Instagram logo and select "Following." It will present you with a chronological feed of posts from only those you follow.

Again, there is NO ARROW or any UI to indicate this is possible. You used to be able to set it as the default view, but that has been eradicated it seems.

Post reply on HN