MySpace now a “digital ghetto” • Hacker News Board

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#31

Post by petercooper » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 12:54 AM UTC

When Facebook first started becoming really popular (as in, internationally) I was very pro-Myspace exactly because of its "ghetto"-ness (not in the racial sense, but in terms of atmosphere). Facebook was dull and sterile, whereas MySpace had music, you could look at profiles of people who hadn't friended you, you could put crazy layouts on your profile, and.. well.. MySpace was just 101x more interesting.

Thing is, it's still true. Facebook is dull and sterile, MySpace is still fertile and full of musicians.. and yet now I'm on Facebook and never use MySpace. Go figure!

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#32

Post by prodigal_erik » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 12:57 AM UTC

From the notes of the talk which others have cited: "If you don't know people who are different than you, you don't trust them. Think about this in the context of the politics around gay rights. The #1 predictor for how someone will side in issues of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is gay."

Even if causality works in that direction, and you could eventually make bigots into better people by hanging around with them, who would want to spend their time that way?

We spend time with people we like and respect. If you regard that as a problem, what's the solution?

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#33

Post by _cbsz » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 1:38 AM UTC

from original article: > The #1 predictor for how someone will side in issues of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is gay.

Why couldn't one conclude that the #1 predictor for whether or not someone will meet someone who is gay is how they side in issues of gay rights?

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#34

Post by look_lookatme » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 1:44 AM UTC

diN0bot wrote: post #6

sharpn wrote: post #2

Utter nonsense. Overlaying a racist agenda onto the shift from Myspace to Facebook is ridiculous. Neither have any barier to entry. Abandoning Yahoo! for Google might also shadow the population changes the author alludes to, but does that make google users racist? No. EDIT: the new original link provides more reasoned context - but even then, the data appears very, very weak [~4 anecdotal data points, all 17-year-old…

i think you misunderstand homophilia. ok, voted down, maybe for not explaining. alli can bring myself to do is say: the point is not barrier to entry but self-segregation. starting a comment with "Utter nonsense. is rediculous" is entertaining but poor form (in my books). i think there are real issues here that are being belittled simply because sociology and media studies do not fall into the IT/web realm you are co…

"i think you misunderstand homophilia."

I'm pretty sure that doesn't make any sense in this context. Did you mean something else?

[edit]

I see where you were coming from in the OP: "homophily".

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#35

Post by pj » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 2:18 AM UTC

_cbsz wrote: post #33

from original article: > The #1 predictor for how someone will side in issues of gay rights is whether or not they know someone who is gay. Why couldn't one conclude that the #1 predictor for whether or not someone will meet someone who is gay is how they side in issues of gay rights?

People meet each other before their thoughts on gay rights, or really any thoughts are known. I would say physical location would be more of an indicator of whether or not you'll meet someone gay. If you go to the Castro for example, it's much more likely you'll meet someone gay than if you are ... well, I dunno, somewhere there aren't a lot of gay people.

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#36

Post by kragen » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 2:49 AM UTC

jhickner wrote: post #29

Why do we pretend that it's some sort of virtue to be unconcerned with those we surround ourselves with? It's no virtue. After all, why are we here on HN instead of Digg or Reddit? I'm sure a demographic analysis of that switchover would yield similar results.

Well, because class stratification denies opportunities to people who are born to the wrong parents, drastically reducing the pool of innate talent that can actually be applied to solving society's problems, maybe. Or because lack of interchange between social groups brings those groups to misunderstand and fear one another, leading to violence between them (Japanese internment camps being an example inside the US in living memory). Or because groupthink results in intellectual stagnation and collective delusions.

It's true that there are a disproportionate number of upper-class twits on HN, while the twits on Reddit are mostly lower-class. But I don't hang out here because of the upper-class twits. I hang out here because it's a little less vulnerable to, among other things, delusional groupthink than Digg or Reddit.

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#37

Post by kragen » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 2:50 AM UTC

redorb wrote: post #16

tpowell wrote: post #11

I graduated HS in '02, and everyone that went to college (.edu email address) was eventually on Facebook, everyone else was on MySpace. That (huge) demographic difference coupled with the poor and unpredictable interface for MySpace signaled their fate a long time ago in my opinion. This paper from a couple of years ago tackles the issue of class division between the two: http://bit.ly/classdivisions

I agree; facebook at first had to have similar differences being a 'college' only community - but since it has opened up I bet it has came back to a similar balance to any other site.

No.

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#38

Post by ubernostrum » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 4:51 AM UTC

dtf wrote: post #14

I've always suspected Facebook was run by fascist white supremacists. How come you're not allowed to change your background colour from the prescribed white?! Seriously though, nobody leaves a social networking site because "it's overcrowded with blacks". You wouldn't even leave such a site if it was overcrowded with trolls and racists. It's not a forum or some shared community resource - you only ever interact with…

"Seriously though, nobody leaves a social networking site because "it's overcrowded with blacks". You wouldn't even leave such a site if it was overcrowded with trolls and racists. It's not a forum or some shared community resource - you only ever interact with your friends, and there's no such thing as overcrowding (as long as the servers keep up). The fail is strong in this report."

Sigh. How do allegedly well-educated, intelligent, open-minded people end up jumping to conclusions like this?

Read the original talk and the history of the research behind it. There are racial and class-based divides on social-networking sites, but the implication is not that anyone's (necessarily) a racist or a fascist or whatever convenient strawman you'd like to set up instead of actually using your brain.

I'm honestly not sure there is an implication, aside from pointing out the obvious fact that access to the Internet is not a panacea for existing social divisions. People online seek out and interact with people like themselves, just like people offline.

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#39

Post by enjo » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 5:01 AM UTC

calambrac wrote: post #18

wayt wrote: post #3

I'm old enough to remember white flight. To make an analogy with MySpace migration to Facebook is absurd.

Why? The only difference was that white flight had a quantifiable cost barrier preventing minorities from leaving decaying inner cities as well. She's saying that this is disturbing because it's still happening, even without that financial barrier.

What if I reject the premise? I've yet to see a compelling argument as to why this type of self-selection is truly harmful. Why is it a problem if folks of similar culture choose to utilize the same tools? This idea that we should all live in close exposure to diverse opinion is nice, but goes against my basic instinct. I don't want to spend my time defending my cultural choices to folks who disagree. I don't need my life to look like an internet message board.

Re: MySpace now a “digital ghetto”

#40

Post by Tichy » Fri, Jul 03, 2009, 5:36 AM UTC

Somehow I never get to read real numbers from Dana Boyd. The only number is "... who has spent so and so many years of studying kids on social networks".

I think she hit on one thesis that makes for good "linkbaity" newspaper articles and now she is milking it. In other words, it is marketing, not research.