Social networks are no longer social

Wow.

>The biggest benefit of social media over forums or email lists is ML-based ranking.

That's what Jaron Lanier calls 'behavior modification networks' and control of that stuff is intensely valuable to whoever wants to behavior modify, valuable in myriad VERY practical ways. Machine learning? My ass. The machines can learn all they want; application is going to be controlled by management, when it's that profitable.

>The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be

Not designed to be, my ass. Next you'll tell me mobile games aren't designed to be addictive? This is a science by now, and we're seeing the results. Like hell they aren't designed to be. You could say (from a certain viewpoint) that it's a breach of fiduciary duty if they are NOT designed to be addictive.

>Algorithms do the curation for you

Control of that is more valuable than any previous form of advertising or marketing. The social media revolution as you describe it has meant you can define people's experiential bubbles, orthogonally to what their wishes might be. You can expose 'em to whatever you need them to believe in. They don't even experience what you want to exclude. All for a price.

This ain't the Singularity. Algorithms give big data to the people who really make decisions on who gets to influence, and you know neither the influencers nor the decision makers. Something like youtube 'Elsa videos' for kids are not an AI deciding kids need more creepy in their lives, there are people trying to manipulate the system and other people who see it happening and go 'heh' and probably make notes and study what happens. The algorithms are just not sophisticated enough to be directive in the way you allude to.

It's not going away, which is WHY to attend to the negative side. If you're cynical, you don't have to see it as 'scare' so much as yet another banality of evil. Which we don't casually accept, even though it has been with us since the days of cavemen.

I have moved off of social media to find myself in these kind of channels much more and other semi-private communities to find and grow social connections. It is so much more fulfilling and refreshing to not be all about capturing my attention to keep me hooked and make ad revenue. Thank you all for being there and spending your most valuable resource - your attention - on this smaller and more connected community.

Those days still exist.

There are many great forums, and Reddit is still reasonable despite the trouble.

Some sites, Quora, Facebook, et al. are using real name policies with mixed results.

Facebook is mostly a negative for me, though I do enjoy a few private groups.

Quora, of the real names experiments, has actually been a reasonable experience. 8 was early to the platform and many of us early on made strong efforts to set good norms around real names. A lot of that worked well.

It is working a little less well at big scale, though like I said, not bad. Sometimes more authoritarian than I prefer. The new spaces feature is a big test. Could be real names Reddit. Hmmm...

Having tried all extremes, I frankly still prefer pseudonyms. Handling trolls and such is not too big of a deal, and minor league for me personally.

The number one thing one can do to innoculate a community against trolling is to educate members on agency in dialog and model strong norms as to how that can work.

(People have more options than the usual righteous indignation and when they use them, trolling becomes largely ineffective as does "bitings" of varioys kinds)

Avoiding the bigger venues leaves one with mostly the same basic experiences that have always had value.

Typed on mobile, plz forgive typos

I've noticed this in a lot of smaller subs and I agree that there is a much better sense of community, and in general, a much better experience. With the smaller community tends to be higher quality content and less of a propensity for small, minute details to launch a vitriolic argument.

However, being attached to the larger reddit "network" can easily ruin those communities. All it takes is a single front page r/AskReddit thread where a top comment says "check out r/[small_community_here], it's great!" and that pretty much spells the end of that small, tight-knit community.

It's the age old problem that's not at all unique to online communities: everyone wants to be part of the cool, fun communities/bars/neighborhoods. But if everyone crowds in, that community/bar/neighborhood isn't as cool or fun anymore.