Slow social media • Hacker News Board

Re: Slow social media

#131

Post by anthk » Wed, Sep 17, 2025, 10:49 PM UTC

TheDong wrote: post #13

albert_e wrote: post #11

Should internet based chat platforms develop a common protocol (like SMS for mobile networks) so that people don't all need to use the same app (Whatsapp and the like) to be able to have 1:1 or group chats? (Before someone says I have rediscoered email -- I know email exists for a similar reason but not for instant messaging for a smartphone weilding generation)

What you've re-invented is XMPP. The original Facebook Messenger and Google Talk both used XMPP, it has support for encryption and push notifications.... For a brief period, you could actually chat across ecosystems. And it died, everyone closed up their ecosystem. We do have matrix now, but it's still largely irrelevant, and doesn't really feel fully baked yet. At this point, all the major companies have a huge vest…

XMPP it's still alive.

Re: Slow social media

#132

Post by baubino » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 1:31 AM UTC

mklyons wrote: post #89

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I’ve been running a 3h daily time boxed social media site for the past 6 months and even though traffic is now a crawl compared to the initial burst of activity when I started it, there are users who check in daily and it ends up being a lovely experience I think. I am working on mobile apps and redesigning and reengineering a lot of the site and I love your thoughts on a blog…

I like the concept though having the limited time would make more sense if the site was structured around a specific topic or interest. Otherwise, I don’t get the appeal of having a fixed time to social media with random people over nothing in particular. But if you told me that there’d me a gathering of > for three hour block each evening (or even just a couple times per week), I’d be excited to check it out.

Re: Slow social media

#133

Post by allenu » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 2:20 AM UTC

baubino wrote: post #132

mklyons wrote: post #89

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I’ve been running a 3h daily time boxed social media site for the past 6 months and even though traffic is now a crawl compared to the initial burst of activity when I started it, there are users who check in daily and it ends up being a lovely experience I think. I am working on mobile apps and redesigning and reengineering a lot of the site and I love your thoughts on a blog…

I like the concept though having the limited time would make more sense if the site was structured around a specific topic or interest. Otherwise, I don’t get the appeal of having a fixed time to social media with random people over nothing in particular. But if you told me that there’d me a gathering of > for three hour block each evening (or even just a couple times per week), I’d be excited to check it out.

That's an interesting idea. If, for instance, there was a window of time for people interested in a show to come together to discuss the latest episode (assuming the episodes aren't just dropped all at once), then I think it would be an interesting place to visit since everyone is there for the very same reason and there's something of interest that happened recently that would focus the discussion.

I will say I did visit the site months ago and found that just hanging out with random people wasn't that compelling to me. In the early days, it was fun because it was new and there was a lot of energy, but after that, you really do need something to bring you back day to day.

Re: Slow social media

#134

Post by bkettle » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 7:05 AM UTC

ismyrnow wrote: post #111

bkettle wrote: post #12

I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage. Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would tha…

China already has such legislation. They have placed restrictions on social media and internet use for children, and they censor content on these platforms. Personally, I'm against government intervention for this sort of thing. I prefer government to be constrained to securing my liberties, rather than restricting my behavior "for my own good". As a parent, I talk to my kids about social media like I talk to them ab…

Is it possible that the current form of social media is actually contributing to the erosion of your liberties because it is so widely used in society and is likely contributing to polarization and antisocial behavior?

I see this (and, honestly, most problems) as much more than a personal responsibility issue. To me, it’s an issue of misaligned incentives and unpriced downside costs. It’s clear that market forces push companies to build an addictive service that produces long term misery. It’s also clear that social media has a cost on its users (producing long term misery, reducing acute productivity) But this cost is not paid by the social media company.

I’d argue that widespread use of the social media that today’s market incentives create is bad for society as a whole, not only for any one individual. Correcting market incentives that don’t align with social good is, in my opinion, one of the most essential purposes of legislation.

Re: Slow social media

#135

Post by bkettle » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 7:11 AM UTC

duxup wrote: post #78

bkettle wrote: post #12

I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage. Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would tha…

I agree that regulation is likely the only option. With the caveat that it is very clear people want this horrible social media we have. They consume outrageous content, they pass it on, they create it for these platforms. A lot of proposed regulation frames it as big bad tech companies making people do things like they're victims. But without people participating there would be nothing on there and in reality the hu…

Hm. To me it is indeed the big bad tech companies at fault for implementing _obviously_ user-hostile functionality (mandatory suggested posts, for example) that exploit human nature to keep people engaged, even if people prefer not to. The existence and widespread use of screen time limits on phones seems like strong evidence that tech companies have built something nefarious here. And to me, it’s clear that they have done so intentionally to drive profit.

Re: Slow social media

#136

Post by icar » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 7:44 AM UTC

mklyons wrote: post #89

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I’ve been running a 3h daily time boxed social media site for the past 6 months and even though traffic is now a crawl compared to the initial burst of activity when I started it, there are users who check in daily and it ends up being a lovely experience I think. I am working on mobile apps and redesigning and reengineering a lot of the site and I love your thoughts on a blog…

You could segregate by regions. Your evening is not my evening.

Re: Slow social media

#137

Post by pflenker » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 9:51 AM UTC

baubino wrote: post #68

pflenker wrote: post #40

I don’t want to be limited to „meaningful connections!“ I stay in close contact with those who are dear to me outside of social media. I want to stay connected to some random coworker I enjoyed working with in 2011, because I enjoy watching them from a distance, getting married, settling down, that kind of stuff, and occasionally comment on these things. This used to be a strength of social media before algorithms ca…

This desire to follow people’s lives from a distance without necessarily interacting with them in the world is the root of the very unhealthy parasocial tendencies driving social media. It seems quite innocent and benign on the scale of one person just wanting to keep up with the life of a cool coworker from the past, but it quickly adds up to a bunch of people passively following other people with very little actual…

I've never heard of anyone thinking that they are keeping up a relationship with someone by watching them via social media from a distance. This sounds like a made-up concern to me. There is no difference to asking someone how someone else is doing, a phenomenon as old as humankind, probably.

Re: Slow social media

#138

Post by nemo8551 » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 10:51 AM UTC

mklyons wrote: post #89

I agree with a lot of what you say here. I’ve been running a 3h daily time boxed social media site for the past 6 months and even though traffic is now a crawl compared to the initial burst of activity when I started it, there are users who check in daily and it ends up being a lovely experience I think. I am working on mobile apps and redesigning and reengineering a lot of the site and I love your thoughts on a blog…

Due to the time difference, I only login when I’m out for a night out or staying up late. But it’s still an enjoyable experience when I get to log in.

Re: Slow social media

#139

Post by xenobeb » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 11:26 AM UTC

vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #108

emseetech wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likes/reactions should be hidden to everyone else except the poster, and not used for any kind of ranking. And comments should be disabled by default. Users should have to take the extra step to enable comments ("I would like feedback") and if they're off by default, it won't feel strange or negative to the viewer.

Likes shouldn’t be visible to the poster either. Once you see the number of likes you quickly see that radical posts get the most likes and start posting more of it. The best online discussions I have seen where at simple forums where the posts were listed in chronological order without likes or anything.

I completely agree but most people aren't that interested in some kind of socratic online dialogue.

I don't expect to learn much at all from internet discussion at this point. It serves a minimal socialization purpose and then my actual learning is from books and language models.

Re: Slow social media

#140

Post by heisnotanalien » Thu, Sep 18, 2025, 11:36 AM UTC

This is how LiveJournal was back in the day. I have some really fond memories of people just honestly writing about their life. It seemed more pure and less performative. Then of course the whole Six Apart thing happened but I know many Russians for whom LJ still serves the same purpose.