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Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

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Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#111

Post by Xiol »

BorisMelnik wrote: post #36
PaulKeeble wrote: post #2

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I w…

hey you know there is a feed on mobile, built into the app that only shows you your friends feed? not a fb employee or defending them just relaying info.

The amount of shady stuff Facebook has tried with their app over the years has resulted in it, and other Meta apps, being banned from my devices.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#112

Post by Aurornis »

steveBK123 wrote: post #54
PaulKeeble wrote: post #2

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I w…

Instagram followed a similar trajectory for me. For a while, as a photography hobbyist, it was a far more "active" social community for photography enthusiasts than whatever came before (Flickr, Smugmug, photo.net, various niche forums). I made photography friends thru it that I met in person even when traveling overseas. This lasted maybe 2 years. Then all the "normies" got on it and my feed started to just be casua…

> Then all the "normies" got on it and my feed started to just be casual snaps by people I knew in real life... which rapidly lead to its final form

Most people who use social media want to see photos and updates from their friends they know in real life. This is the core value proposition.

If seeing casual photos from your real life friends you call “normies” is disappointing to you, Instagram is probably not what you want. Keeping in touch with friends is the primary use case of the platform.

However, you likely could get the experience you want by maintaining two separate accounts. One for your friends and one for photography. The app makes it easy to switch between the two.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#113

Post by burkaman »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #51
ericmay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Who is left on Facebook besides dopamine junkies and bots?” “I only use it in this limited circumstance” You are on Facebook. That’s who. It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. Sure you’re not an addict (probably) but you still drink.

> It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/20110... > Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described "vege…

I wonder what the breakdown between meat/poultry and fish was. I know it isn't the dictionary definition, but I think the common definition of "vegetarian" in the US includes people who only eat fish. I don't know anyone that uses "pescatarian" in conversation or identifies as that, even if it's accurate.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#114

Post by Aurornis »

keyraycheck wrote: post #5
PaulKeeble wrote: post #2

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I w…

While number of active users still grows, one have to ask a question, who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots. The only reason why I didn’t delete facebook is messenger, where I chat with old folks.

The cognitive dissonance in some of these posts is strange.

> one have to ask a question, who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots.

> The only reason why I didn’t delete facebook is messenger, where I chat with old folks.

How are you confused about who still uses Facebook in one sentence and then immediately in the next sentence you describe yourself as a user and explain why it’s useful to you and the people you know.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#115

Post by Aurornis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #51
ericmay wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Who is left on Facebook besides dopamine junkies and bots?” “I only use it in this limited circumstance” You are on Facebook. That’s who. It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. Sure you’re not an addict (probably) but you still drink.

> It’s like saying you’re not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in a while. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-us/20110... > Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000 Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60% of the self-described "vege…

> Six percent of the individuals surveyed said they considered themselves vegetarian

In any casual poll like this, every number has a large margin of error. When 6% of respondents select an answer, some of those were mis-clicks, people who misread the answers, or people who were just clicking through randomly. The latter happens a lot when bad UX means the only way to see the results is to take the poll.

So the more likely explanation is not that people were calling themselves vegetarian but also eating meat recently, it’s that around half of those reporting vegetarians were either mis-clicks or people blindly clicking things. It happens a lot in online polls.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#116

Post by Trickery5837 »

The final transition happened with the death of online forums. I still miss those dearly. I've met extremely interesting and competent people with a true desire to interact with passionate peers. They thought me how to ask for and give advice, how to express opinions in public, the value of growing a community around common interest, and the joy of laughing and getting angry on the OT section.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#117

Post by Zak »

steveBK123 wrote: post #54
PaulKeeble wrote: post #2

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I w…

Instagram followed a similar trajectory for me. For a while, as a photography hobbyist, it was a far more "active" social community for photography enthusiasts than whatever came before (Flickr, Smugmug, photo.net, various niche forums). I made photography friends thru it that I met in person even when traveling overseas. This lasted maybe 2 years. Then all the "normies" got on it and my feed started to just be casua…

I never saw Instagram as appealing to photography hobbyists. Instead, I saw it as deliberately nerfing things where hobbyists have advantages (image quality, choice of aspect ratios, posting from desktop PCs), likely to increase participation by making it less intimidating to share snapshots taken on phone cameras.

It's probably impossible to make something that's good for any kind of enthusiast that's also effective at maximizing usage regardless of audience.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#118

Post by fritzo »

bananaflag wrote: post #59
gradus_ad wrote: post #57

I will admit, one thing the crowd attention model does exceptionally well is surface the best comments on content. Whether it's HN, Instagram, YouTube, etc... the top comments are usually the "best", depending on how best is defined in the given context. On the silly Instagram meme videos my algo serves up, the top comments are invariably hilarious, often funnier than the actual content, and as you scroll it's impres…

This works on platforms like HN, Less Wrong or niche subreddits, which i) work on the reddit model (submissions + tree of comments on them) ii) are heavily moderated (e.g. no memes but also specific restrictions like on a book series subreddit to not discuss the movie adaptations) Then this vote-based ranking makes cream rise to the top, I agree. In general, your "depending on how best is defined in the given context…

Right, hn is 50% collaborative filtering and 50% dang

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#119

Post by al_borland »

jwr wrote: post #101

Having moved to Mastodon, I also recovered some faith in the Internet (of old). You control your timeline. You are not the consumer being fed stuff, you choose what you want to see. As a side note, I keep hearing people recommend threads, bluesky, or other corporate media machine du jour and I cannot understand how people can't learn a lesson. If you touch a hot stove once, you normally don't touch one again. And yet…

Facebook’s best feature, at its peak, was that everyone was there. My friends and family aren’t on Mastodon, and likely never will be. If the goal of a social network is to connect with people I know in real life, rather than follow various Internet personalities, it fails at this for me.

This isn’t Mastodon’s fault, but it’s the reality of the situation.

I’m not on Facebook anymore due to what the site has become, but I found the same emptiness on Mastodon, as my friends aren’t there. I’m not influential enough to get everyone to move to a new platform just for me.

When I joined Mastodon, I ended up following a bunch of developers, but ultimately felt like a fly on the wall to a friend group I wasn’t part of, as a lot of these people had been real-life friends or co-workers. I guess if your friend group is all geeky enough to join Mastodon, it can work. I have very few real-life connections that fall into that bucket, which I think is the case for most people.

The people I know who still use social media seem more than happy with Meta’s products. The others just stopped using these things all together and don’t seem to care about finding an alternative.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#120

Post by neom »

asim wrote: post #22

Mastodon really isn't the answer. You frequent enough servers and you realise social media has taught people bad habits..not everything needs to be expressed online. Genuinely I think people need something else. The format fails. What's the alternative? I don't know. But I'm trying to figure it out. Why? Because walking away from it all isn't the right answer. Why? Because we leave behind all those people addicted to…

I've been thinking about this for a long time, and started to poke around with implementing something, I have more ideas but a bit of a chicken and egg problem, if people use it I'll keep working on it and trying to improve it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46672734 - the end goal is very very very little/specific discoverability on the platform, even narrower than I have implemented today.
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