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Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

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Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#161

Post by thatoneuser »

jjoonathan wrote: post #67
iamben wrote: post #4

This rings very true. I'm down using Facebook/Twitter for work, or checking every 2 or 3 days if I'm bored, desperate or looking for something in particular. Instagram is about a 50% mix of pretty things and friends, but the pretty things post way more often, so the split is heavily in that direction. I'd say approximately a third of the friends I chat to regularly (late 30s ish) have left or don't use Facebook - but…

Suddenly google circles don't seem so silly after all.

Ideas are easy to be good. Implementation and upkeep is where Google usually struggles.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#162

Post by zrobotics »

messo wrote: post #121
fullshark wrote: post #106

It turns out being connected with good friends/family is a lot more enjoyable than being connected with every random person you had a university course with once. Facebook is going to be your rolodex (A "facebook" even! good name for it) and then there's going to be a heavily segmented private social network for your friends / families to connect and share photos. Figuring out how to make that happen with limited / m…

I set up my personal rolodex as an alternative to Facebook. It's called Monica, and can be self-hosted: https://www.monicahq.com/

From your TOS: "You must only use the site to do things that are widely accepted as morally good." [0]

I'm sorry, but WTF does this even mean? That's so incredibly vague that I tend to read it as "essentially, nearly anything could be a TOS violation". For instance, if I log a call with "He was in a bitchy mood and was being an asshole", that is a TOS violation, since calling someone an asshole is widely considered unkind.

[0] https://www.monicahq.com/terms

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#163

Post by astrobe_ »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #154
ve55 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's likely being downvoted because he's discussing that he's happy with an open protocol being deprecated in favor of a centralized service that is the opposite, logging all of your private messages, forcing you to use their own client, etc. Granted, they increased usability significantly by doing this, but it comes at a large cost for people that value freedom and privacy.

People have a right not to care about their own privacy. You've just described the entire target market for discord. Why HN thinks this is a moral failing and downvotes accordingly is, in my opinion, their own ignorance, not anyone else's.

> People have a right not to care about their own privacy

Would you say that about freedom of speech, thought or movement? I'm asking because all of them are human rights. Do you think you have the moral right to give up on human rights?

https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ind...

Preamble:

"Now, Therefore THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY proclaims THIS UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction."

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#164

Post by TeMPOraL »

Reedx wrote: post #111
alexgmcm wrote: post #10

30 years later and we have reinvented IRC, but worse as you can't use your own client, the protocol may not be public and it's harder to discover channels.

This is a common meme on HN, but it's reductionist to the point of being meaningless. You could also say Google reinvented Altavista.

Google is an improvement on Altavista. Slack is a downgrade on IRC in everything except the lowest common denominator UX and pushing ops to someone else.

The new SaaS companies integrate what used to be two (three) separate things - the client and the protocol (and the server). The way they do this forces everyone to use the common client that's not optimized for power users. Which is kind of nasty, because it's the power users that have to suffer the interface the most, as we use it day in, day out at our dayjobs.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#165

Post by TeMPOraL »

zrobotics wrote: post #162
messo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I set up my personal rolodex as an alternative to Facebook. It's called Monica, and can be self-hosted: https://www.monicahq.com/

From your TOS: "You must only use the site to do things that are widely accepted as morally good." [0] I'm sorry, but WTF does this even mean? That's so incredibly vague that I tend to read it as "essentially, nearly anything could be a TOS violation". For instance, if I log a call with "He was in a bitchy mood and was being an asshole", that is a TOS violation, since calling someone an asshole is widely considered u…

I don't think surface kindness done or not done privately qualifies as a moral concern.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#166

Post by CM30 »

egypturnash wrote: post #151
m-i-l wrote: post #108

The article doesn't cover this, but how do people discover these group chats? All the Discord servers I've joined I've essentially found by word-of-mouth, which doesn't seem very high tech. In the old days you'd find the interesting online forums by "surfing the web".

I feel there is an argument that this is one of the reasons people are gravitating to private chats. They’re invitation only. You’re not running the risk of your offhand snark about something with political ramifications getting besieged by bots and drones the way you are on Twitter. You have to be someone who people want to connect with. And if you stop being that kind of person you run the risk of getting kicked ou…

Also not at risk of it becoming an online controversy with articles in the media and the potential of your employer firing you to save their own reputation.

Sites like Reddit, Facebook and especially Twitter have a bad reputation for taking people who said something slightly controversial and making them online pariahs.

These more private systems are safe from both drama fanatics and people looking for controversies, and from journalists looking for controversial communities to infiltrate and profile.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#167

Post by jslabovitz »

I'll probably regret stirring the pot here, but I've never understood or been comfortable with group chats. I grew up in the era of Usenet groups and email (and later, forums & blogs), where conversations were slow and threaded. In the rare event I happen into a group chat today (whether IRC, Discord, SMS, FB, etc.), it feels incredibly stressful and overwhelming.

Sometimes I think of Vernor Vinge's book _True Names,_ where one of the characters is called the Mailman, and only deals with the world through email. That might be me by now...

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#168

Post by afiori »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #164
Reedx wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a common meme on HN, but it's reductionist to the point of being meaningless. You could also say Google reinvented Altavista.

Google is an improvement on Altavista. Slack is a downgrade on IRC in everything except the lowest common denominator UX and pushing ops to someone else. The new SaaS companies integrate what used to be two (three) separate things - the client and the protocol (and the server). The way they do this forces everyone to use the common client that's not optimized for power users. Which is kind of nasty, because it's the…

But power users are a very small minority also, nobody argues that IRC should disappear but is still not a replacement for most other messaging platforms.

I too would have liked an open protocol in principle, but looking at emails I am not sure it would have been a good thing. (As in eternal backwards compatibility and unchangeable architectural choices that might not suit a very different future use)

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#169

Post by afiori »

ggggtez wrote: post #120
alexgmcm wrote: post #10

30 years later and we have reinvented IRC, but worse as you can't use your own client, the protocol may not be public and it's harder to discover channels.

I'm not actually convinced any of those things legitimately make internet communication better. Difficulty of finding channels is sort of the point isn't it? Exclusivity and tightly knit communities?

Most other platforms have private groups. Or even private groups with moderation support.

Re: Group Chats Are Making the Internet Fun Again

#170

Post by ulisesrmzroche »

DanTheManPR wrote: post #89
ulisesrmzroche wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ever been to a bar?

Serious question: how do you meet people at a bar? It has never been clear to me how that actually works.

I second the others advice. It's good. This is what I do:

I just find a bar or dance club I like, then I keep going by myself, or with friends. Doesn't matter. Make it a habit to get a drink, spend a little time there. Do whatever you want. Have fun.

If you're by yourself, people will usually talk to you first.

After a few times you go there, the regulars will know your face, you'll know them too, and conversation will flow quite easily.

"Hey I've seen you before. What's your name?" That's all it takes.

Another thing you can do, especially for travelers, is just pick up smoking. Marijuana, nicotine, doesn't matter. Go outside, find a spot where other people are smoking, ask if you can sit there. Say hi and ask everybodys name.

If its lack of confidence, just remember that we all act like idiots all the time, no one is perfect, and everyone is drunk. People like to meet people.

I have weirder ideas about this. I believe all conversation is telephatic. When we walk into a room, we sort of just know who is going to become a friend, who isn't, all that. If you feel someone is cool, just say hi. That person likely feels the exact same way even if they don't know why.

When we walk into a bar, we sort of just know we are going to go back. That it's going to become our place.

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