51–60 of 67 posts
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.
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-educ…
Could you point me to that history, because I can't see it (as I said in another comment). I think Boyd is mostly talking about her personal impressions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
"debies opportunities" - seriously? I think everybody can sign up on MySpace or Facebook. Though I suppose as a researcher you could have some fun by creating fake accounts with different profile pictures and start adding friends randomly.
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,…
Everyone thinks it's cool to live in a neighborhood where your neighbors blast hip-hop all hours of day and night until they have to sleep. Everyone thinks MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or you strain your eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds of some crappy hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on iTunes. Sadly, Facebook isn't dull and steril…
So you are saying that black MySpace users tend to have a bad taste in colors and music, and therefore the white users leave? Whereas surely white users only create tasteful profiles?
Or maybe MySpace in general sucks, and therefore people are leaving irrespective of race.
One thing though: MySpace seems to be the standard site for music and bands, so perhaps "races" who are more preoccupied with music would tend to hang out there more.
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…
First, read the actual article, not this poorly regurgitated bullshit ( http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html ). Second, recognize the fact that Danah Boyd does actual research and generally knows her shit. Third, understand that she specifically says that we wouldn't expect to see the problem because there's no barrier to entry, yet we do anyways, which makes it that much more disturbing.
By the same logic we could say that all the hotmail users live in a "digital ghetto", and all of the white upper class folks got the hell out of dodge and went over to that sweet homogenous GMail service where everyone has a PhD. It's ridiculous.
There's no barrier to entry, but there is a barrier to /exit/.
Isn't the reason behind this obvious? Facebook started out by targeting the Ivy League. Who is more likely to be upper-class and white than those whose social roots are at Harvard University? The restricted registration of Facebook, coupled with the importance of the network effect (making the site valuable only if you are already friends with educated Ivy League students) clearly dictates the direction of the site's…
How networks start out matters.
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…
First, read the actual article, not this poorly regurgitated bullshit ( http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html ). Second, recognize the fact that Danah Boyd does actual research and generally knows her shit. Third, understand that she specifically says that we wouldn't expect to see the problem because there's no barrier to entry, yet we do anyways, which makes it that much more disturbing.
Although most of you call these sites "social networking sites," there's almost no networking going on. People use these sites to connect to the people they know. In other words, even if they could talk across the divide, they might not anyhow.
I'm curious, what about Twitter (which I still don't really understand, but wonder about)? By keeping an eye on trends, it seems that users read comments from everyone, regardless of class, ethnic, or cultural background, or follower status. Or is Twitter's user base too limited to tech early adopters (as all the "most Twitter users post one message and leave" articles suggest), so it makes up a kind of "ghetto" by itself? Alternatively --- even if people use the same system, they just follow their interests and so inherently talk about different things, and therefore do not intersect?
EDIT: Looks like the author discusses this closer to the end, noting that people who followed the Iranian election on Twitter probably do not follow celebrity gossip trends, and vice versa.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, read the actual article, not this poorly regurgitated bullshit ( http://www.danah.org/papers/talks/PDF2009.html ). Second, recognize the fact that Danah Boyd does actual research and generally knows her shit. Third, understand that she specifically says that we wouldn't expect to see the problem because there's no barrier to entry, yet we do anyways, which makes it that much more disturbing.
This quote stands out: Although most of you call these sites "social networking sites," there's almost no networking going on. People use these sites to connect to the people they know. In other words, even if they could talk across the divide, they might not anyhow. I'm curious, what about Twitter (which I still don't really understand, but wonder about)? By keeping an eye on trends, it seems that users read comment…
You assume that people use Twitter to keep an eye on trends. I'm not sure that more casual Twitter users do that. I know a lot of people who use Twitter purely as a status-update mechanism, so they can communicate with their friends, figure out where other people in the office are going for lunch, etc.
I have a strong suspicion that the most-common use case for Twitter is not using it to follow trends or meet new people, and instead is very much like other social "networking" sites -- as an easy way to stay in touch with people the user already knows in real life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone thinks it's cool to live in a neighborhood where your neighbors blast hip-hop all hours of day and night until they have to sleep. Everyone thinks MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or you strain your eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds of some crappy hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on iTunes. Sadly, Facebook isn't dull and steril…
" Everyone thinks MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or you strain your eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds of some crappy hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on iTunes." So you are saying that black MySpace users tend to have a bad taste in colors and music, and therefore the white users leave? Whereas surely white users only create tasteful…
Facebook maintains high quality and a coherent feel by realizing that most people couldn't design their way out of a paper bag, and only giving users very basic, high-level control over their page.
IMO, everything flows from that. MySpace feels like Geocities: total amateur hour. Even if you had the exact same group of people (and I do agree there are demographic differences between MySpace and FB, I just don't think they're that relevant), Facebook would still be easier and more pleasant to use.
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,…
Everyone thinks it's cool to live in a neighborhood where your neighbors blast hip-hop all hours of day and night until they have to sleep. Everyone thinks MySpace is cool until your browser crashes or slows down, or you strain your eyes reading yellow on orange, or you hear the first 3 seconds of some crappy hip hop song that clashes with what you already have playing on iTunes. Sadly, Facebook isn't dull and steril…
To be fair, that's mostly dependent on the sort of company you keep, and you can turn off the notifications for all that sort of stuff anyway - it makes FB actually usable :)