Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

ca.pcmag.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 204 posts

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#181

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #101
alexpotato wrote: post #23

Back in 2005-ish era, I helped reboot a college club (I was the coach/advisor). We started out using forum software to co-ordinate what we were doing but eventually (2008-ish) switched to Facebook as the president of the club pointed out "Alex, everyone is already on Facebook and the notifications from us are in the middle of the notifications for when the next party is" etc. Fast forward to today and the club is reb…

There is nothing wrong with the bulletin board at the student center It works It's kinda sad that members of a club have to share their private details with some remote third party focused on surveillance, data collection and targeting ads in order communicate with other members or potential members. Not to mention the possibility of "age verification" When used for public notice, the benefits, if any, of "social med…

Nowhere in the comment is it suggested to "abandon" anything entirely

In fact the suggestion is not to abandon the bulletin board in the student center

As usual, there will be HN replies that adhere to "all-or-nothing", "black and white", etc. thinking, e.g., believing there is an "either-or" choice between use of a computer system and another method

However it's possible to use a bulletin board in the student center and a computer system. This is not an either-or choice, there is no requirement to choose one or the other

For example, getting contact details from the bulletin board then using a smartphone to make a phone call or send a text message, using a laptop to send an email, etc.

Further, there is no suggestion in the comment that one or the other, bulletin board in student center or computer system, is without benefits

In fact, the comment suggests the bulletin board is useful: "It works"

The question raised by the comment is whether the benefits of sending data to a remote third party, namely a "social media" company, outweigh the costs ("hassles")

This is obviously more narrow than "using a computer system". We can use computer systems without involving "social media" companies

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#182

Post by rw_grim »

fragmede wrote: post #109
jjav wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> God I miss the 2000s. Exactly! Having to check 27 different places for messages (also add individual sites like linkedin, etc, where people message), it is completely ridiculous. Just send me email. It's universal, standard, no corporation owns it (thus no corportation can shut me out unlike facebook or all the proprietary solutions).

Pidgin had it so good. Have you tried Beeper? https://www.beeper.com/

Pidgin is still here although I'm behind on the monthly updates... https://discourse.imfreedom.org/tag/state-of-the-bird/1

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#183

Post by ishouldstayaway »

MikeNotThePope wrote: post #150
kimos wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here. I have a WhatsApp account and the app on my phone with zero contacts in it. Nobody here uses it. But every time I leave the country I need it for some service or business or who knows what. It seems like the rest of the world all agreed to use this app and Canada (and I think the US) just said “naw thanks…” and have no common app or method.

What are people using in Canada? SMS?

Apple Messages.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#184

Post by ishouldstayaway »

nradov wrote: post #143
jandrewrogers wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans primarily use iMessage/SMS/RCS. You only need one messaging app and everyone has it pre-installed on both iOS and Android. WhatsApp does not solve any problems for the typical American user. Most Americans don't install WhatsApp unless they spend a lot of time overseas some place where it is required to do anything. Even international group chats seem to be more Discord-based in recent years.

SMS/RCS doesn't work for any group larger than a few people. You always end up with multiple parallel streams going that each include different subsets of the group, and sometimes other random people outside the group.

This hasn't been the case for years.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#186

Post by scoofy »

OhSoHumble wrote: post #141
rickcarlino wrote: post #89

Social media companies became so obsessed about maximizing ROI on short form video content that they stopped being a platform to share with friends and turned into Temu Youtube. You won’t see your friends stuff on any of them because it’s designed to work that way. Group chats are the only way to have a meaningful conversation if you a casual non-technical Internet dweller.

All of that is intentional. There isn't enough money to be made connecting people. Revenue streams are driven by ads attached to media interaction. Connecting people is low engagement. We, as consumers, have rewarded this revenue model by proving that it works. If you don't want to contribute to it then don't use these large platforms.

I suspect there is plenty of money there, just not enough to support a multinational conglomerate.

The natural monopoly of networks is what brought us all to social networks, and I suspect it is why they will fail. Niche networks run by a small team (which is what social networks were when we were the early adopters) seem like they can trivially sustain themselves.

The explosion of podcasting is exactly this, but for nontechnical people.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#187

Post by tanseydavid »

coffeefirst wrote: post #177
alexpotato wrote: post #23

Back in 2005-ish era, I helped reboot a college club (I was the coach/advisor). We started out using forum software to co-ordinate what we were doing but eventually (2008-ish) switched to Facebook as the president of the club pointed out "Alex, everyone is already on Facebook and the notifications from us are in the middle of the notifications for when the next party is" etc. Fast forward to today and the club is reb…

Better yet, maybe a bulletin board and an email list is all you need? I have some extremely useful Discords and Signal group chats, but not everything ought to be an always on chatterbox.

>> but not everything ought to be an always on chatterbox

Nothing deserves to an "always-on-chatterbox" unless the end-user truly chooses it because that is what they want or need.

This is part of the larger problem. How many "always-on-chatterboxes" competing for one's attention before it becomes close-to-impossible to concentrate on anything that requires some actual thinking.

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#188

Post by 4ffad »

rickcarlino wrote: post #89

Social media companies became so obsessed about maximizing ROI on short form video content that they stopped being a platform to share with friends and turned into Temu Youtube. You won’t see your friends stuff on any of them because it’s designed to work that way. Group chats are the only way to have a meaningful conversation if you a casual non-technical Internet dweller.

the business model is to divide and conquer my friend. wakey wakey...

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#189

Post by garethsprice »

rimeice wrote: post #7
halflife wrote: post #4

Back to 2015, I stopped posting on Facebook when I noticed that it’s no longer about connecting with my friends, but a never ending stream of boring posts from groups and people that I don’t know or care to follow. All my “social” life just moved to direct communication in WhatsApp (meta owned as well)

2015 for me too. I wonder if there was some early day over juicing of the attention mechanism that put people off in that year, before they tuned it to reduce churn…

2014-15 was when the news feed switched from static, human-written code to machine learning models optimized to maximize ad revenue[1], the models discovering "user attention time" was a far better metric to optimize for than clicks, likes or shares[2]. And what people spent the most "attention time" on was content that triggered raw moral outrage, fear and tribal hostility[3].

This switch does appear to have put off a lot of smart, thinking people as the newsfeed degenerated into a torrent of dopamine-spiking diarrhea. But those people don't tend to be the ones that click on ads.

[1] https://time.com/collections/the-cloud/3950525/facebook-news... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/15/facebook-... [3] https://www.supersummary.com/the-chaos-machine/summary/ - the whole "Chaos Machine" book is excellent

Re: Death of the Status Update: Why 55% of Americans Stopped Posting on Social Media

#190

Post by butlike »

advisedwang wrote: post #179
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is nothing wrong with the bulletin board at the student center It works It's kinda sad that members of a club have to share their private details with some remote third party focused on surveillance, data collection and targeting ads in order communicate with other members or potential members. Not to mention the possibility of "age verification" When used for public notice, the benefits, if any, of "social med…

Some reasons why a computer system is beneficial: * Can send out updates quickly, e.g. changing rooms when you discover your secretary forgot to book the usual one that week 5 minutes before the club meeting. * Folks can see/post updates without going in to the student center in person. This is particularly helpful if there's any club members who live further away and/or down come by the student center regularly and/…

Email really is the superior choice. You subscribe to the ads you want to see (then unsubscribe from them later). You are your own targeted advertiser with email. No need for a third party to collect my blood type to get me more relevant ads, just have every retailer have a little checkbox "would you like to subscribe to our ads?" at point-of-sale.
Post reply on HN