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The End of Social Media

miikavonbell.com

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Re: The End of Social Media

#111

Post by ssss11 »

donretag wrote: post #54

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.…

Yep agreed. Early fb would be fine for what I’d like to have to keep in touch with friends. Because of the ‘media’ machine it’s become - the curated feed, videos everywhere, ads and creepy-level tracking I don’t use it any more.

Re: The End of Social Media

#112

Post by peakaboo »

simmanian wrote: post #69
donretag wrote: post #54

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.…

I feel it's not useful to separate out the content creators from the network itself. Most of the "bad" things we see in today's social media are byproducts of how these networks behave as a whole. Put differently, how Youtube functions today is the result of the interactions between Youtube's algorithm to maximize profit for Google, content creators' drive to get more views, and consumers' desire to find more addicti…

> I find this to be very hopeful, because it means we can design and form networks that elevate people, not lower them into mindless zombie states.

That's the interesting part about humanity though. We could live on a paradise planet together, with complete freedom, using high tech inventions to live anywhere with power and water.

But instead we are building a prison planet.

Re: The End of Social Media

#113

Post by rnd0 »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #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…

>Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate.

No, actually, we can't. By "we", of course, I mean garden-variety consumers.

The legal, financial, and social barriers to entry are far too high.

Anyone attempting to make the next youtube would be priced out of existance, anyone trying to make another reddit would be reduced to a smouldering crater by the time the lawsuits hit them, assuming that paypal doesn't force them to do an onlyfans first.

It's not 2003 (when 4chan started) any more. The internet game is fixed, rigged and it will only become more restrictive, not less.

Fuckerberg pulled the ladder up after him; there's not gonna be another movement -at least not coming from the internet.

Re: The End of Social Media

#114

Post by ikr678 »

cvwright wrote: post #102
nonameiguess wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

All I want is a chronolocial feed of all friends' posts (with ads interspersed since that appears a necessary evil).

I frequently miss life updates from people I'm in low contact with, and instead get endless suggested paid nonsense that I've tried very hard to curate personal preferences away from.

Re: The End of Social Media

#115

Post by TFYS »

lsalvatore wrote: post #74

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

This is so obviously false. If education was the goal of advertising, ads would inform about the negative sides of the products as well. I've never seen that. The goal of advertising is to make people buy more using any psychological trick you can come up with.

If you want to educate people, you need to do actual education. Bombarding people with propaganda is not education.

Re: The End of Social Media

#116

Post by miikavonbell »

OP Here.

Wasn't really expecting this much discussion and attention for my article, but I am quite happy to see so much people having similar thoughts like I have, which I wrote in my article.

I wrote a follow up post to my blog to share some of my afterthoughts: https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/

Re: The End of Social Media

#117

Post by z336 »

goatkey wrote: post #31
ramesh31 wrote: 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.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoy YouTube Premium. It’s nice to have the option to pay for an ad free experience, which is particularly useful on iOS mobile as uBlock origin doesn’t work. Having the ability to easily download videos for offline viewing and turn off auto play (which I think is also available without premium) is nice, too. I am sure they are still hoovering up all my data but I hope…

Lately I have found myself more willing to pay for certain apps and subscriptions in exchange for ad free experiences. I feel like it’s a more honest transaction. That said, I can’t afford to pay for everything I use online in a given day, so it’s not necessarily a macro solution. Also, I’d like to be able to expect that paying for a subscription would also mean a service stops tracking me to oblivion, but like you said that’s still happening.

Re: The End of Social Media

#118

Post by mikewarot »

ikr678 wrote: post #114
cvwright wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

All I want is a chronolocial feed of all friends' posts (with ads interspersed since that appears a necessary evil). I frequently miss life updates from people I'm in low contact with, and instead get endless suggested paid nonsense that I've tried very hard to curate personal preferences away from.

I use reverse chronological feed of my FB friends every day, it's https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr

I also use ad block plus. I read until stuff looks familiar, then I'm done for the day.

Re: The End of Social Media

#119

Post by asdff »

moate wrote: post #97
asdff wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how well we are able to maintain focus relative to years past, what with the mental damage of consuming content in thirty second or so intervals for long chunks of time for years and years. My internet addiction as a teenager 15 years ago was bad enough, if I grew up with fast paced junk like TikTok I feel like I would probably develop ADD just from the rewiring process that happens while growing up coupled…

Adult with ADHD here: You would not develop ADD from media. That's not how this works. The fact that devs have found ways to design sites that mimic patterns for addiction doesn't mean it's the people. It's the things. If you suddenly found yourself removed from the stimuli, you'd be fine, no longer the exposure period. I will not. Since our jumping off point was "people are getting dumber"(they aren't) I just want t…

Maybe you wouldn't get canonical ADD but you'd definitely have an attention deficit disorder of some sort. Drink alcohol every day and you become addicted to that dopamine hit. Gamble every day you are addicted to gambling. Play video games every day and you are addicted to video games. These things infect your mind because they work just like crack cocaine, luring you in with a hit of dopamine and you end up sacrificing showering at best, interpersonal relationships and other aspects of life at worst. There is science showing these rewiring events happening due to drinking, gambling, and other addictive or compulsive repeated behaviors. I'm not sure why repeated daily consumption of 30 seconds of viral content would be any different and wouldn't predispose you towards seeking your dopamine hit thirty seconds at a time, and make you de facto have a disorder holding attention on something for longer than 30 seconds.

Re: The End of Social Media

#120

Post by asdff »

input_sh wrote: post #100
asdff wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RSS works well for this. I follow youtube channels and other media on RSS and its chronological, all in one place, and I can group or filter them however I like.

I'm gonna be honest, I do use RSS, but I dread it due to a) not every website supporting it, b) random sites having feeds that are way too noisy, c) liking one category of posts or one author and failing to extract those posts only, or d) random people I like publishing on multiple websites. Now I can get around it with a ton of effort, but it will break sooner or later, which is why why I find Twitter/Mastodon lists…

It's not too much effort to be honest considering all the services around RSS these days. You have services that can turn a website that doesn't support RSS into an RSS feed. Services that can filter feeds however much for certain keywords of interest or whatever and cut out the noise. You can even consume twitter via RSS these days.
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