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Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

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Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#181

Post by Nevermark »

dhruv3006 wrote: post #35
creamyhorror wrote: post #4

I was always perturbed by the shift from calling them "social networks" to "social media". It signalled a friends-to-famous shift (plus ads) that I didn't particularly want. Why fill my personal feed with stuff I normally get on dedicated discussion/news sites? (Rhetorical; it's obvious why.) They still call it SNS (social networking service) in Japan. We need to keep moving to a new iteration of this - hopefully one…

I guess social networking service is actually a more appropiate name for the thing.

That makes sense in the case where people are mindfully connecting with particular individuals or organizations, and paying for that.

Not for where algorithms select media for you. That's not a "networking service", even if that is one of its hooks. Unless you consider SPAM or junk mail, riding on email and postal "networking" to be a "service".

"Attention media" is more accurate.

But that also describes traditional advertisement based "media". Which earned its keep via attention access, by including unintegrated ads as a recognizable second component.

A description specific to the new form is "surveillance/manipulation media" or "SM media".

Attention-access funded media lacked pervasive unpermissioned surveillance and seamlessly integrated individualized manipulation. Where dossier-leveraged manipulation, not simply attention access, has become the defining product.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#182

Post by b00ty4breakfast »

asim wrote: 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…

The problem is social, not technical. But we've created a subsection of the populace who can only see things through the technical. They go out with their hammers looking for nails.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#183

Post by wiseowise »

jjk166 wrote: post #175
wiseowise wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nonsense. Nobody asked for algorithmic feed pushing schizo agenda on you.

Of course we did. We all switched from early social media sites that didn't employ such algorithms to those that did, and when new social media platforms came around we progressively moved to more algorithmic ones. Hell half the reason I switched from myspace to facebook was the opportunity to do all the facebook quizzes which were just "let's see how much information I can feed the algorithm". We all want a steady s…

> Of course we did. We all

Speak for yourself. I was quite content with the separation of social life and video platforms/engagement media. And don't make it sound like poor Facebook was forced to invent algorithm because of users.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#184

Post by xnx »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #2

"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…

Everyone wants to be TikTok. The generated feed is much better than following "creators"/influencers.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#185

Post by godot »

lukeschlather wrote: post #179

The funny thing about Facebook is that it's got a perfectly good social network in there, I think the only one that exists. In the menu is "Feeds" which is what you want. It only shows friends and followed things. If they made that the default when you go to facebook.com I don't think I'd have any complaints feature-wise, though an ad-free option would be nice. It's a genuine social network. Of course, then there's t…

Wow, I did not know about this Feeds page despite being a daily FB user for 20 years (yes, to the ridicule of most people, I know). Thanks for pointing this out. I wish this was the default homepage or at least a way to set it as default.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#186

Post by rapnie »

Aurornis wrote: post #180
rapnie wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You frequent enough servers and you realise social media has taught people bad habits There is a lot of that, and somehow it is acceptable online, while when you project it to face to face situations it would be really rude behavior. Like in a chat room when you ask someone something with an explicit mention of their handle, only to see the presence indicator pass it by without any response. Not even taking time to…

> Like in a chat room when you ask someone something with an explicit mention of their handle, only to see the presence indicator pass it by without any response. Asking someone a question online does not obligate them to take time to answer it, or even explain why they don’t feel like doing so. You’re not in a conversation with everyone who is online, so the comparison to in person conversations doesn’t hold. > Not…

It depends on the context and situation. You are right for some random public channel. I am talking about for instance chatrooms where a small remote team joins for the express purpose to collaborate closely, and I often find these weird deviations from how you would behave offline in similar setting to be very detrimental for communication and productivity killers. Part of it is about setting expectations and fostering the 'room culture', and that can help improve things. But there is an overall behavior change to the online world. Comparable perhaps (but different in the details) to "road rage", a general behavior shift people have once they step into a car and are insulated from others by their hotrods window screens. And 'commandeering' never works well, btw.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#187

Post by state_less »

fritzo wrote: post #118
bananaflag wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This works on platforms like HN, Less Wrong or niche subreddits, which i) work on the reddit model (submissions + tree of comments on them) ii) are heavily moderated (e.g. no memes but also specific restrictions like on a book series subreddit to not discuss the movie adaptations) Then this vote-based ranking makes cream rise to the top, I agree. In general, your "depending on how best is defined in the given context…

Right, hn is 50% collaborative filtering and 50% dang

HN and other social media sites are closer to 99% free labor, 1% paid labor, like dang. Free labor writing comments, blog posts, voting/moderating, posting videos and so on. Imagine if HN or Youtube had to pay people to generate all that content[1].

I think the only pay most get, is that you get to enjoy the site content. But in the case of Youtube, they slap so many ads in front of it that you often end up paying for this free labor content just to get rid of the ads. HN doesn't do Ad walls, but is more of a sales funnel for YCombinator and harvesting whatever value they can from the data, so not so intrusive.

[1] Youtube does pay some of the more popular content creators

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#189

Post by brianpan »

gradus_ad wrote: post #57

I will admit, one thing the crowd attention model does exceptionally well is surface the best comments on content. Whether it's HN, Instagram, YouTube, etc... the top comments are usually the "best", depending on how best is defined in the given context. On the silly Instagram meme videos my algo serves up, the top comments are invariably hilarious, often funnier than the actual content, and as you scroll it's impres…

This is a way to tell if something is social media or attention media.

"Surfacing the best comments" is only a problem at scale. And attention media demands scale whereas your social circles break down at scale. Commerce sites (like Yelp or Amazon) also demand scale, so they also have a "surfacing the best" mechanism.

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