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Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

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Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#111

I created Timelines - a social network that allows people to own their data. Timelines stores your data in a specific folder on your Google Drive which is sandboxed from all your other data on Google drive. Check it out! https://www.timelines.co

A few suggestions:

- The target market will probably want details: does the data go through your servers unencrypted? Is it store unencrypted? People who care where the data is stored usually have common worries, you should answer them.

- Who are you? If you're asking me to put my life on your site, the least you can do is tell me who you are. Maybe you can use it as a showcase of your product, if you can make a public Timeline as a sort of bio.

- Signing up is annoying and people won't do it if they aren't hooked by your introduction. Show them how it works - screenshots and videos are okay, a demo with fake data is better.

- If I need a Google account anyway, why do I have to come up with a password? Just let me signup with Google. You can let people add other login mechanisms later, if they wish.

- I don't want to sign up now, but I may be interested in how it evolves. Give me some way of following it: newsletter, RSS feed, Twitter account, etc.

--

Good luck!

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#112
What is social media!

I'm sure many class this very forum as their social outlet media wise. For some, wiki itself has become a social media outlet.

But strikes upon social media which will involve less than 1% of users will gain no traction, hardly a blip.

Wouldn't it of been better than instead of a strike that they had a statement with a hashtag that all those striking people posted that day and that was all. That would get traction. The fawning lazy news media who slurp up hashtags as a metric and source for news would pick up upon it. It would grow like a snowball down a snowy hill. The strike approach, given how few in relation to the social media user-base that this will appeal. Would be like a snowball rolling down a hot summer mountain. Nobody will know, apart from those who was there at the start, no traction, no momentum and more so. No sign that it ever happened upon those social media platforms in a noticeable way at all.

Hence, I totally appreciate the sentiment, just mindful that the message will be lost with this approach, as it has been lost previously by such actions upon the likes of facebook, twitter and ....that's it as far as the World media counts for its news.

FWIW, I don't do twitter anymore, never done facebook and Google+ striked all its users. Hence for me and many others, creating a social media account just to take part by not posting, would play against the intent and into social media hands. But I certainly wish them luck. Though equally, I would not be supprised if a decentralised social media platform suddenly sprung up from wiki origins. But then, the inner cynic in me is very strong in today's digital world.

EDIT ADD Had a quick look for `related` interests and see that he is CIO of Everipedia, which is decentralizing encyclopedia writing from an article in March: https://www.wired.com/story/larry-sanger-declaration-of-digi... But I'd not cry foul even if they did produce their own decentralised social media platform; Kinda hope they do actually. Competition does have its upsides.

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#113
post #35

Is HN a form of social media?

Yes. HN is a form of social media -- it's a social media exemplar -- the exception that proves it's possible to have an open system for high-quality public discourse, even if such a system is hard to establish and even harder to maintain. Paul Graham has said, "he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community" [1]. Hacker News launched 12 years ag…

And what's open about HN?

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#114
For decentralized social media to happen, there needs to be sufficient motive to leave centralized platforms collectively within a cohesive network of individuals, so that if a tipping point is met to overcome activation costs, most of the network will move over so the new decentralized platform has similar value to the old centralized platform that the network was previously on. A few incentivized individuals in a wider network of apathetics won't work -- it needs to be a cohesive network all switching together in order for the value to remain competitive with the old platform, due to Metcalfe's law. And since we're talking about decentralization, the network transitioning will ideally be incentivized to choose a decentralized network to migrate to, vs another centralized one (even though the usability and quality of experience on the decentralized one is likely to be inferior.) This combination of factors is what makes it so difficult to bootstrap these networks.

Here's the thing: there is such an opportunity now, if anyone is willing to take it. Conservatives in the US are outraged against perceived censorship and de-platforming by centralized social media platforms. Regardless of the validity, there's a deep seated hatred of these platforms forming and an incredible sense of urgency to move elsewhere. Since the motivation for leaving is overcoming centralized control, this audience is particularly attracted to accepting decentralized platforms. Given that approximately half of the US aligns partially with the views of some of these voices, this is a large potential network. The catch is that we are also living in an era where if someone develops and delivers such a solution for this market, they're going to be under vicious attack and be labelled as sympathizers to the extremist, minority voices of that audience. Most likely their careers will be destroyed by choosing to build for such an audience, regardless of how much the extremist voices are actually present on the decentralized platform.

I predict that if we are ever going to see a decentralized social media platform emerge for any of these services, it will begin with a critical mass of marginalized voices who have been censored and de-platformed, and their audience, moving to it. Instead of beginning as a "toy", it will begin as a "place for undesirables." Today that could mean conservative voices in the US, tomorrow it could mean something else. If the network is able to garner sufficient growth, over time, as it always goes, the nature of the "average user" will be diluted away so the network is no longer perceived as a community of like-minded individuals but instead as a general, global platform. (Similar how most mainstream global social network sites today began in a similar way: Twitter was for techies, Facebook was for college kids, etc.)

Look out for these leading edge behaviors, and don't just dismiss them if the early adopter audience has the perception of being unsavory to you. It seems somewhat inductive that, given the current existence of the global centralized platforms, any long-run successful decentralized platform likely could not start any other way than with groups of people who both want to leave collectively, and who will get no benefit from staying (in other words, the people on centralized platforms will all want them to leave too.)

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#116
post #104
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you getting your definition for social media? Wikipedia defines social media as [1]: Social media are interactive computer-mediated technologies that facilitate the creation and sharing of information, ideas, career interests and other forms of expression via virtual communities and networks. I don't know if there's an "official" agreed upon definition somewhere, but I do know this: The definition of what s…

By this definition, the internet itself is a social media?

Do you mean the World Wide Web? The Internet also consists of devices like routers.

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#117
This will have zero effect. If you take any kind of public transportation, even glancing across peoples' screens as you sit down (and ~everyone'll be looking at a screen), 95% will be on fb or instagram.

I wish it were different, but by now these apps, and all social media, are extremely good at feeding their users' addictions.

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#118
post #113
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. HN is a form of social media -- it's a social media exemplar -- the exception that proves it's possible to have an open system for high-quality public discourse, even if such a system is hard to establish and even harder to maintain. Paul Graham has said, "he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community" [1]. Hacker News launched 12 years ag…

And what's open about HN?

HN is open in almost every sense, and it exists within an open market...

[1] Open vs Closed System (social science) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_and_closed_systems_in_soc...

[2] Open System (systems theory) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_system_(systems_theory)

[3] Open System (computing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_system_(computing)

[4] Open API https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_API

[5] Open Market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_market

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#119
post #110
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't jump from nothing to a global network. You host tangentially-related communities in the middle. The more of them you host, the bigger your overall numbers are. Instagram succeeded for that same reason: profiles set to private, no real name policy, people can't look you up in a search bar. It was easier to group up in small communities. The less that's the case, the crappier the content. Instagram was ruined…

To me, Discord is just a partial implementation of Slack. What does it have that Slack doesn’t?

Feature-wise, pretty much nothing, it's just targeting a different set of users. Slack started as a solution for companies and pretty much stayed there, Discord started as a solution for gamers and expanded from there.

Slack is Discord for adults, but adults are never the ones who make or break social media. It's younger people who tend to be more invested in the platform they use. It's not a rational choice (nor was Facebook for my generation), but it got kickstarted out of necessity (as a substitute to the limited chat options within games) and right now, it's the convenience that drives it further. Why switch over when, unlike Facebook or Slack, everyone you know is already using Discord?

Re: Tell HN: Social media strike proposed for July 4-5 by Wikipedia co-founder

#120
post #60
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. HN is a form of social media -- it's a social media exemplar -- the exception that proves it's possible to have an open system for high-quality public discourse, even if such a system is hard to establish and even harder to maintain. Paul Graham has said, "he hopes to avoid the Eternal September that results in the general decline of intelligent discourse within a community" [1]. Hacker News launched 12 years ag…

Strong disagree. HN is not a social media. Because we do not use it for social purposes. This site has no concept of user relationships, and it does not encourage you to use real/identifying information about yourself to use it. It is centred on topics and discussion - sites like this, Reddit, and other forums can develop social networks, but this is a byproduct and not the intent, which I think is the single most im…

Moreover, it's impossible to use HN to keep in touch with friends in meaningful ways - you can't send private messages on HN. There are people I've otherwise lost touch with, who turn up on HN from time to time. What am I gonna do, hijack a thread to say hi?
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