71–80 of 108 posts
> If you post something to social media, it will be simultaneously visible to your boss, your parents, your ex, and total strangers Isn't that what G Wave/ G+ trying to solve? I think a better option would be: don't tie your IRL identity for online communications.
Google had a platform called circles once that had a really neat solution to this. If course it being Google, it got cancelled before it had a chance to catch on.
There are some of us (late generation-X / early millennial) who saw this coming and still maintain a variety of separate identities across many domains. I don't know why someone would want to have the same identity in the workplace as on internet forums, for example. Social media appears to have given many people the idea that they ought to cultivate their public identity from an early age as preparation for internet…
Some of the late gen-x/millennials who saw this coming may have been inspired to read Endor's Game after seeing the movie
I've been watching both the corporate media, and social media, rot completely over the past 30 years. A large part of that was that early adopters tended to be more educated, played nicely, and were not involved in attention-seeking, sychophancy, and often, escapism. Another factor is the bright colors, moving videos and other eye candy, and psychological hacks like the emojis for "liking" and gaining "followers" whi…
A third factor addressing 21st century media rot is the absolute dependence on advertising, and the demonitisation of earlier ad-supported formats (print newspapers, print magazines, radio, television, and increasingly non-social-media online platforms) as ads transferred first to "new media" (itself an old story, though dating somewhat more recently to the origins of mass-advertising in the mid-19th century), and ultimately to "adtech", with highly-personalised, highly-targeted advertising.
That latter both led advertisers to abandon non-targetable media (including generic online banner ads), and the increasing pandering of online media (especially Search and Social) to advertiser interests. This both killed ads-as-financial-foundation of other online media, and increasingly turned Search and Social into ad-delivery rather than information-delivery / community-connection platforms.
It's the odd standouts which have independent funding which are still relatively immune to this. HN is one of those, some sites such as Metafilter and the Metaverse are others online. Public media would be another notable exception, though of course it is being increasingly targeted as well, largely for political reasons, notably in the US (NPR, PBS, and the late CPB), and UK (BBC). It's healthier elsewhere, notably in my experience, Germany.
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From what I’ve observed, people are increasingly checking out of social media (or turning their profiles private), because it’s just unappealing unless you’re actively promoting something.
The numbers just don't support this, though? Social media remains at an all time high in engagement numbers. And climbing. What is also growing is the number of people signaling that they are out of it. This is extra pernicious because the people that are staying in control of these environments are maintaining a large amount of leverage over everyone.
Note that that survey asks what social media U.S. adults ever use. Time on site, trending over years, would be more interesting to see, but I'm having trouble finding any recent research.
I have seen indications that Twitter is actively shedding both readers and time-on-site, and that Facebook/Meta numbers are strongly buoyed by purchases (WhatsApp, Instagram). Others I'm not so familiar with.
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> Yes a plumber can be more easily outed as anti-gay and fired Why would I care if I don't notice? I'm paying them to fix my literal plumbing, not to proverbially suck my dick. If they do the job I pay them for, and they're not giving me shit for who I am, why would I want to get them fired? This uni-context feels like a very silly idea in practice.
If Hitler would fix your plumbing would you give him money, or would you look for another plumber because giving money to Hitler is bad? Now scale that principle down.
That article proposes that, soon, it will be possible to connect any online identity to its owner's other identities by analyzing stylistic details in their writing. So even niche online communities will have these problems.
If Agnes Callard tried to read Heidegger, her head would explode.
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If you keep them distinct unification is a weapon to be used against you. You're writing your own blackmail someone just has to call you on it. With prose fingerprinting, sophisticated tracking, now your identities are only separate by rapidly eroding social convention. Intentionally merging them allows you to have control over the process, and helps you maintain discipline about what you reveal where. If you don't d…
Prose fingerprinting is indeed worrisome, but it's a solvable problem once you are aware it exists. For example, if you contribute here anonymously, but don't contribute elsewhere, there is no corpus that can produce an accurate match. Many people communicate differently in different contexts. It's common to try and match the style of the community in which you participate. I am not convinced that having your identit…
Someone makes money identifying you and selling that data to advertisers.
If your pseudonym is famous/infamous someone makes money / cultivates attention if they identify you.
There is a basic instinct to uncover the unknown.
Unless the above systems are disabled then the drive to unify identity will be ceaseless.
They cite "context collapse" and say this "uni-context" is deeper, but I still don't see how this "uni-context" is all that different than "context collapse", extensively studied since the 2000s. And which Goffman in the 1960s was writing about in the context of big mixed social gatherings like weddings, that bring together people who know you in quite different contexts.
"Context collapse is a claim about informational contexts, and my claim is a claim about normative context."