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Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

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Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#101

Post by supertroop »

exabrial wrote: post #41

A new game: determine when you meet someone if they use tik-tok or not without asking them. People's opinions are groomed and programmed. It's pretty hilarious how small minded people are.

You’re just learning how small minded people are? In the US there was an attempted insurrection filmed live. We elected the guy who led it who then pardoned 1600 jailed criminals. Now he is trying to creat a slush fund to give them millions as reparations. 33% of the country is delighted by this. These are Plank sized brains.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#102

Post by walthamstow »

armchairhacker wrote: post #60
kiicia wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is public forum (one of the last), it's a bit different thing

Reddit is a forum, is it not social media?

IMO, the old reddit UI wasn't, but the new one is, since they started the algo home page and showing stuff outside of your subreddits.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#103

Post by airstrike »

stickfigure wrote: post #80
close04 wrote: post #70

Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.

Because the people who say this like HN and dislike Facebook and their post-hoc rationalizations are transparent.

HN and Facebook are entirely different beasts. I have no idea who you are, stickfigure. I can't remember usernames from HN, I can't follow people, I can't curate my feed

not every user submitted feed with upvotes is the same

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#104

Post by dust-jacket »

close04 wrote: post #82
dust-jacket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think social media just means any space online with multiple people in it, then I guess we just disagree on what social media is. Is the linux kernel mailing list social media? was usenet?

> if you think What do you think social media is? What are the clear criteria that make something social media, or make it not social media? If you know HN is not social media that you have a clear demarcation of what is.

I said so above. I think originally they were "online spaces that augmented a real world community". Even twitter, you mostly started by following people you knew or had heard of.

I get that this isn't at all where we are any more. And y'know, everyone's gonna use terms to mean whatever they want. I'm fine with that. I guess I just think its pointless if "social media" means "anything online where people can write messages"

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#105

Post by stickfigure »

everdrive wrote: post #78
close04 wrote: post #70

Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.

In my case, I don't think most people who claim HN is social media are making a serious argument. They are taking two different things which have a few points of inter-comparison and using that as a basis to claim those two things are actually equivalent. This is done as a retort (eg, "you say you hate social media, but you're on social media _right now_") rather than in service of a larger argument.

I'm making it as a very serious argument.

HN is social, it has an algorithmic feed, people upvote and downvote your content, hell it has a social credit score. The idea that HN somehow isn't "social media" is hard to take serious. This is Reddit for a niche audience.

The main difference is that HN has a small and relatively high quality community, plus the traffic is low enough that it gets a fair amount of manual moderation. It's still social media and if there were enough people here, we'd eventually read stories of kids who offed themselves over downvotes. But we're thousands, not billions, so the law of large numbers doesn't apply.

If your FB feed or Youtube feed is garbage, spend some time curating it. HN is mostly curated for you, which appears to be creating unrealistic expectations of the broader world.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#106

Post by Ldorigo »

mr_mitm wrote: post #84
armchairhacker wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is a forum, is it not social media?

This comes up often, particularly on Reddit, and I don't think we're doing us any favors by counting it as social media. It has a few substantial differences to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, et al: - The focus isn't on connecting. It has a "friends" feature (I believe?), but the social graph is extremely weak. - You are not expected to use your real name. On the contrary, it comes off as weird unless you're a…

Reddit absolutely has algorithmic feeds since it ipo'ed (maybe earlier but I used third party apps so I wasn't subjected to them). 90% of my home page is bullshit I didn't ask for.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#107

Post by grvdrm »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

HN has plenty of social media components.

Think a better version is: HN is not an advertising-controlled social media website. That specific version makes most sense to me.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#108

Post by Kiro »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

It's not tiresome. It's spot on. Nothing is as addictive as HN.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#109

Post by chownie »

close04 wrote: post #82
dust-jacket wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you think social media just means any space online with multiple people in it, then I guess we just disagree on what social media is. Is the linux kernel mailing list social media? was usenet?

> if you think What do you think social media is? What are the clear criteria that make something social media, or make it not social media? If you know HN is not social media that you have a clear demarcation of what is.

Not that user but I don't think this is as difficult as you're making it out to be?

On Reddit, Instagram, Tiktok et al I can create a community on that platform. I can get find other people into Booktok, I can join the Rowing subreddit, I can get into Knittinggram or whatever. Posters expect roughly their micro-community to see their posts, users expect to see their micro-community's posts.

On hacker news I see the same community everyone else does. If HN was a vBulletin forum with threads posted for links it would function almost 1:1 the same, I guess all you'd need to change is a modification for making threads bump on vote behaviour instead of latest-post.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#110

Post by KellyCriterion »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

- And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. -

Thats right in that sense - but in a sense of doom scrolling, it is for me: Very often Im clicking through dozends auf pages, fortunately I have to activly do a click to get to the next site, so this dampens a little bit :-D

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