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Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

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161–170 of 283 posts

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#161
>It feels closer to how social networks used to work originally. I hope it stays that way.

Is there something about it (it's architecture or the company behind it) that is fundamentally different than other social networks? If not, it is doomed to follow them all eventually.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#162
post #144

"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…

Twitter followed the same way ad well. All political rubbish now

It’s the worse. The algo will feed anything that makes you cheer or infuriates you. No middle ground. And God forbid if you dig to some disunion and you “like” something or stop scrolling in the “wrong” tweet… you’ll be getting similar content for months.

It’s crazy how bad it has become.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#163
I’m quite literally experiencing a physical reaction whenever I need to browse some algorithmic timeline. Even YouTube, what used to be a couple of related videos is now a wall full of “recommendations” - the unskippable ads on every video are more relevant than the actual videos…

Mastodon and related (for me Loops mainly) are a breath of fresh air and I wish more people can (re)learn to enjoy that.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Keeping in touch with friends is the primary use case of the platform. I think unfortunately for IG in particular, it evolved for a segment of people into a status flexing game more than genuinely keeping in touch.

> it evolved for a segment of people Every social media platform has a lot of different segments of people using it for different reasons. If one of your follows is posting content you don’t like, it’s so easy to unfollow them. If you feel obligated to follow for social reasons, Instagram even has convenient features to hide their posts so you can maintain the follow without seeing their content. I’m not a heavy Inst…

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Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#165

>It feels closer to how social networks used to work originally. I hope it stays that way. Is there something about it (it's architecture or the company behind it) that is fundamentally different than other social networks? If not, it is doomed to follow them all eventually.

I think the fact that there is no one company behind it helps a great deal. Monetising user attention is simply incompatible with the architecture of the fediverse - even Meta couldn’t twist it into that and eventually decided to give up.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want greater reach for your work, Instagram unfortunately is still the only option. Wasn't people wanting reach what supposedly ruined Instagram in the first place? Seems like wanting it both ways if you want reach for yourself, but not for "influencers"

There was a time on Instagram when artists could grow their reach organically, on the merit of their work alone, but I don’t think that’s possible today without engaging in reels and positioning yourself as an influencer, which most artists I would imagine find abhorrent.

That feature has been monetized, you now have to pay to spam other users with sponsored content or something like that.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#167
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…

> What's the alternative? I don't know. Real world connection and a strong foundation of core friends, perhaps?

We still need a way to meet people with similar niche interests. This isn't served well IRL.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#168
post #104
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 would like to see social networks that facilitates real life, face-to-face encounters to a much larger extent that the current state of affairs. The Fediverse has the pieces to this puzzle, but I do not know of one project that combines them in the right way yet. We do have Mobilizon for events, we have Mastodon and all the other similar projects for sharing and commenting, but we need something that puts the piece…

VR/Group voice chat/Group messaging is fine too. For centuries, people have created and maintained meaningful relationships while physically and geographically separated. The circumstances of life do not always allow people to meet face-to-face. One of the worst sins of the post-pandemic "return to normalcy" was the wholesale firebombing of remote options for connecting with people.

The problem isn't whether the meeting is digital or not, it's whether the platform (a physical space or an app) facilitates high-fidelity person-to-person and small group communication consistently over time (the norm for healthy human community), or if it's set up to encourage unnatural para-social relationships and dysfunctional, anti-social communication styles.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#169

IMHO, any social network that offers an "explore" section (i.e. a feed of strangers' posts) is doomed, independently of whether it is algorithmically filtered or chronologically. I ultimately dropped Mastodon because the "dumb" feed from my instance was already enough to waste my time. To prove this, just use Instagram or Facebook from your browser with the proper extensions and they'll stop being absolute worthless…

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Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#170

IMHO, any social network that offers an "explore" section (i.e. a feed of strangers' posts) is doomed, independently of whether it is algorithmically filtered or chronologically. I ultimately dropped Mastodon because the "dumb" feed from my instance was already enough to waste my time. To prove this, just use Instagram or Facebook from your browser with the proper extensions and they'll stop being absolute worthless…

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