Live data from Hacker News

The End of Social Media

miikavonbell.com

101–110 of 120 posts

Re: The End of Social Media

#101
post #83
post #79

One of the best features of a jailbroken iPhone is the ability to hide all ads on YouTube / Spotify / Instagram / Twitter / TikTok. I feel impervious to social media advertising & you can too if you just go through the effort.

Is there an untethered jailbreak these days?

jailbreaks are currently described as semi-tethered.

meaning a jailbreak app must be ran after a phone has booted. your phone stays jailbroken as long as it does not power down.

it is functionally untethered. as the app that jailbreaks the phone persists through reboots.

there are firmware restrictions where these methods work however.

Re: The End of Social Media

#102

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

Maybe at one point social networks were actually social networks, but that isn't what they are any more. They're poorly-moderated, poorly-curated entertainment distribution platforms. People who own data centers and URLs figured out you can cut out the middlemen of studios, editors, publishers, et al, and the quality of content may go way down, but the quantity will go way up and cost to produce will go way down, in…

I want the original version back. 2000's Facebook was actually pretty great while it lasted.

Re: The End of Social Media

#103
I don't fully understand the point of the article, but there's my take anyway. ;-)

I pay for YouTube Premium so I don't get any ads on YouTube. And I don't really care about the (crappy) algorithm because I only watch what I subscribe to.

I hope Twitter's utility will similarly increase as they pivot to (a) premium paid services, and (b) open protocols via BlueSky.

Glass is a new social media photography app for iOS that feels a lot like early Instagram, but it's a paid service with no ads.

So yeah, perhaps it's the end of social media as we knew it…but that's fine because new and existing services will adapt to provide people premium experiences (for a fee of course).

Remember, we are the internet. If we don't like what it is, we can build something better.

Re: The End of Social Media

#104
post #86

I believe blogging will have a Renaissance since it has all the benefits from "social networks" but excluding the ads, the unnecessary "likes", and focus on the fundamentals which are sharing and discussing, just like forums, but blogs will be about individuals mainly.

The issue is that its not 2005 anymore. An organic blog that doesn't play the SEO game will just be buried by the millions of junk websites that play that game, and won't get traction like they did in the era where searching for a topic on the internet brought up relevent nonspam results.

Someone just needs to make a niche search engine that caters specifically to blogs. Preferably as a labor of love instead of a get rich quick scheme.

Re: The End of Social Media

#105

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

Maybe at one point social networks were actually social networks, but that isn't what they are any more. They're poorly-moderated, poorly-curated entertainment distribution platforms. People who own data centers and URLs figured out you can cut out the middlemen of studios, editors, publishers, et al, and the quality of content may go way down, but the quantity will go way up and cost to produce will go way down, in…

> figure out the exact rate at which the content of frame N leads them to continue watching at frame N + n.

I really hope they're not.

Between my habit of leaving youtube playing in the background with the sound off before randomly coming back and closing the tab, and my toddler figuring out touch interfaces for the first time on their app, they're not going to get anything actually actionable...

Re: The End of Social Media

#106
post #5

YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

I have firefox default to private sessions, use an adblocker, and never log in to YouTube and it's a much better experience. The algorithm has nothing to work with, so you see the stock entries on the first page. Then when you search for something you get only things related to that search as suggestions, which is actually useful. It's bliss for about an hour, then the algorithm knows enough about you to start trying to make your life miserable again and it's time to close the tab and start over. Discovery is more difficult, since you have to come up with what rabbit hole you want to go down, though.

Re: The End of Social Media

#107

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

Yes, I fully agree with you. However, just connecting people that already know each other doesn't earn as much money as force-feeding them content made by "influencers" and such. Being merely a tool isn't nearly as profitable as being a manipulative villain.

Re: The End of Social Media

#108
post #80
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The full speech[1] for those interested. [1] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm

I was expecting a lot more damning points about TV but this legitimately reads like the man is a luddite rather than someone thinking about maybe the value of deep thinking. His cited evils on TV: "You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence,…

The Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978) offers a more succinct critique [1][2]. There is a big anti-TV rabbit hole you can go down from Marshal McLuhan to David Foster Wallace essays. Given that images are so alluring I place the subject in the asceticism category more than the Luddite/curmudgeon space.

[1] https://youtu.be/m3NBEurnIqY [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Arguments_for_the_Elimina...

Re: The End of Social Media

#109
post #57

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something with a high production value or live their dream by earning money while doing the things they love. Veratasium or VSauce, for example, are a great channels, but they would've never gotten where they are now if they wouldn't have been able to earn money with it. A similar topic comes up in music all the time, too: People accuse their favorite band o…

> Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something

That’s great and I’m happy for them... but it’s not social media. It’s just regular impersonal broadcast media, with a lower barrier to entry.

Re: The End of Social Media

#110
post #94

Most instagram ads are more entertaining and insightful than this article. Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. Sometimes you come across an ad that helps you or even changes your life. Things like new games, books or ideas. This article has nothing to do with the end of social media.

> Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. They try to make consumer to buy the product in all means. Which means, that this education is often very far away from facts in the most of the cases.

This is like saying "most products don't work". It's totally subjective. Blatant lies usually aren't tolerated in ad networks. I'm talking about "it's the hottest summer on record, therefore you may consider a pool" not "you will lose 10 pounds" which is strictly not allowed.
Post reply on HN