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Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

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Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#111

Post by rTX5CMRXIfFG »

AndrewDucker wrote: post #40
kalehmann wrote: post #2

Not sure if I see a bad thing in this. I'd like too know what old friends are currently up to and checking their social media has been a way to do so during the golden age of facebook. Lately I feel more value in connecting with them personally, talking and letting them now, that I am still interested in what's going on for them.

That's great if you're cultivating a very small group of friends who are local. Social media is how I keep vaguely aware of what's going on with my friends who now live scattered across the planet and get to see in person once per decade or so.

I’m gonna break it to you bud, the people you see only once a decade or so aren’t your friends. Those are shallow acquaintances that you’re letting drag on for too long. They’re not a part of your life and you’re not a part of theirs.

At most, you can call them professional contacts whom you hope to get some value out of in the future, and in that sense I’d agree — social media makes it possible to keep in touch with people whom you have a transactional relationship with.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#112

Post by fragmede »

CamelCaseName wrote: post #61
tayo42 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instagram stories seems to be dieing too, except for the professional and business accounts I follow

The bar is just so high, everywhere. I want to fire off a quick quip and have a conversation. Reddit is probably the only place where this works any more, but you have to be prompted by the right thread and early. So people throw up their hands and go, "why bother?"

Reddit is so negative though. There was an event I went to, and according to Reddit it was a shit show, but checking my Facebook, everyone that went had a wonderful time!

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#113

Post by alex1138 »

yason wrote: post #104

Social media as it was born touched a novel point of contact that didn't quite exist before. It was a powerful shift from what we had before. Social media allowed you to be in touch with people in a way that wasn't possible with phone calls, text messages, instant messaging, email, or domain-specific forums. What I could do in Facebook in 2010 was stay "friends" with selected acquaintances such as old classmates with…

I consider Facebook to be the worst of all worlds. Frankly

They don't show you what your friends actually post. Someone saying "hey - I'm in the parking lot at some place, I need help moving this thing" 5 minutes ago? You might see it on your feed in a week

They engage in reputational decay https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1775182 (see also, photo tagging)

They've cut off access to your friends https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4151433

It's a company involved in lots of OTHER things which don't make it a good netizen https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10791198 (oh and their own cryptocurrency in Libra, that's fun)

"Dumb fucks" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122

Edit: You get banned at any time while the obviously horrible thing you report doesn't get taken down. That's not sustainable. It's not a thing where you can actually physically keep in touch with people, either nominally strangers or the best of friends

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#114

Post by WhyNotHugo »

wiether wrote: post #71
1659447091 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not group emails? There's a guy that runs multiple sports teams at a local recreation center, in multiple adult divisions (wide age/culture rage), and he has been using email to great effect for over a decade that I have known him. I get 2-3 weekly emails about teams that need a sub for a game and those spots continue to fill up quickly. He probably has the majority of regulars (in the hundreds) at that sports ce…

I've never seen "group emails" working, even when amongst technical people. Part of it is just how emails work, part of it is how each clients work, part of it is people not knowing/caring. You'll have: - the guy that don't use the group email address as recipient, but personal email address - the guy that change the subject which starts a new thread/discussion - the guy that include all previous emails in their answ…

I move into a neighbourhood of new houses in 2007. One of the guys there worked IT at a university and set up a mailing list of the neighbourhood. It was used successfully for all sorts of coordination, neighbourhood watch, internal news, etc.

There's always someone mis-using it, and the same applies to every other platform. There's always someone hijacking forum threads, or asking questions in comments instead of starting a new topic. None of this is exclusive to email.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#116

Post by fragmede »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #111
AndrewDucker wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's great if you're cultivating a very small group of friends who are local. Social media is how I keep vaguely aware of what's going on with my friends who now live scattered across the planet and get to see in person once per decade or so.

I’m gonna break it to you bud, the people you see only once a decade or so aren’t your friends. Those are shallow acquaintances that you’re letting drag on for too long. They’re not a part of your life and you’re not a part of theirs. At most, you can call them professional contacts whom you hope to get some value out of in the future, and in that sense I’d agree — social media makes it possible to keep in touch with…

"Drag on for too long" Who are you to dictate how other people connect. The word friend is not well defined, but a person I know from my past that I'm able to keep in contact with, thanks to the magic of technology, that I want to have some communication with, is a something.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#117

Post by weberer »

rimeice wrote: post #7
halflife wrote: post #4

Back to 2015, I stopped posting on Facebook when I noticed that it’s no longer about connecting with my friends, but a never ending stream of boring posts from groups and people that I don’t know or care to follow. All my “social” life just moved to direct communication in WhatsApp (meta owned as well)

2015 for me too. I wonder if there was some early day over juicing of the attention mechanism that put people off in that year, before they tuned it to reduce churn…

I remember I left around that time too because they started aggressively trying to defeat adbockers. I'd rather just leave the platform completely than see a single ad.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#118

Post by sumolessons »

yason wrote: post #104

Social media as it was born touched a novel point of contact that didn't quite exist before. It was a powerful shift from what we had before. Social media allowed you to be in touch with people in a way that wasn't possible with phone calls, text messages, instant messaging, email, or domain-specific forums. What I could do in Facebook in 2010 was stay "friends" with selected acquaintances such as old classmates with…

I think this is really well said. Instagram is probably the closest for me though I use it far less.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#120

Post by [deleted] »

0x53 wrote: post #93
rickcarlino wrote: post #89

Social media companies became so obsessed about maximizing ROI on short form video content that they stopped being a platform to share with friends and turned into Temu Youtube. You won’t see your friends stuff on any of them because it’s designed to work that way. Group chats are the only way to have a meaningful conversation if you a casual non-technical Internet dweller.

This is so sadly true. I nostalgically remember early social media with the linear feed of things directly from friends as being a fun and positive place.

[deleted]
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