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Slow social media

herman.bearblog.dev

11–20 of 148 posts

Re: Slow social media

#11
Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats?

(Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

Re: Slow social media

#12
I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage.

Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would that legislation look like? My main idea is to simply outlaw ML-based recommendation algorithms, but obviously that is not as simple as it sounds and is mostly based on looking fondly on the earlier days of social media, when I felt like it was making my life better instead of worse.

Re: Slow social media

#13

Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats? (Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

What you've re-invented is XMPP.

The original Facebook Messenger and Google Talk both used XMPP, it has support for encryption and push notifications.... For a brief period, you could actually chat across ecosystems.

And it died, everyone closed up their ecosystem.

We do have matrix now, but it's still largely irrelevant, and doesn't really feel fully baked yet.

At this point, all the major companies have a huge vested interest in keeping things closed.

Without blue bubble lock-in, I, and quite a few people I know, would ditch increasingly mediocre iPhones for Android, so apple has to keep building iMessage exclusive features and has to avoid ever releasing an iMessage android app (most recently, Apple Invites, which integrates with iMessage cleanly and is impossible for third-party apps to integrate so neatly).

I expect Apple to continue to leverage "Apple Intelligence" as a feature that only integrates well with iMessage so that they can continue to lock users in, and keep the conversation as far away from open chat protocols as they can.

In the AI age, unencrypted textual conversations are a new source of training data, so Instagram, Twitter, and Google want to keep their own messaging systems to themselves.

Re: Slow social media

#14

Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats? (Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

https://dsnp.org/dsnp_whitepaper.pdf

Re: Slow social media

#15

Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats? (Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

https://dsnp.org/dsnp_whitepaper.pdf

Begone blockchain whitepaper.

... Really though, if you've got a whitepaper from 2020 about "building a protocol", and 6 years later you've got exactly 0 users actually using the protocol, it's maybe not even worth linking.

Writing a vague hand-wavy paper that says "We need a distributed graph, we'll use blockchain, there are IDs" is very easy.

Getting enough users that people can talk to each other, that's hard, and real usable applications help with that, while whitepapers do not.

Re: Slow social media

#17
post #13

Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats? (Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

What you've re-invented is XMPP. The original Facebook Messenger and Google Talk both used XMPP, it has support for encryption and push notifications.... For a brief period, you could actually chat across ecosystems. And it died, everyone closed up their ecosystem. We do have matrix now, but it's still largely irrelevant, and doesn't really feel fully baked yet. At this point, all the major companies have a huge vest…

> And it died, everyone closed up their ecosystem.

I think this is more accurately

> And it was killed, everyone closed up their ecosystem.

Not to say there were not problems with XMPP or Matrix, "innovation" always feels slow because its federated, committee, opensource, etc.

Re: Slow social media

#18
post #8

What are people using now instead of Facebook (for broastcast and interaction with friends/family)? Chat groups in WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc fulfills part of it but that's only a subset since people in one chat groups know each other to a certain degree.

That's all I use now for REAL social media. My family is in one Signal chat, and my in-laws in a other one. All the social media I need. School groups are unfortunately on Facebook Messenger groups.

Re: Slow social media

#19
post #8

What are people using now instead of Facebook (for broastcast and interaction with friends/family)? Chat groups in WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram etc fulfills part of it but that's only a subset since people in one chat groups know each other to a certain degree.

Whatsapp updates, you can see the updates of your contacts, then you can react or send them a message

Re: Slow social media

#20
Now I have been using Whatsapp as my only "social media app" basically as stated in another comment: Whatsapp updates, you can see the updates of your contacts, then you can react or send them a message. And these updates only contain the people who you have as a contact and they have you as a contact, so you only receive the updates of the people you care about and if there is someone you don't want to see their updates you can turn off updates for them.

I hope meta doesn't ruin this feature.

It's Also available in signal I think

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