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Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

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Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#251

Post by j16sdiz »

rezonant wrote: post #215
anonymars wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Meta not being a particularly trustworthy entity > For people using Facebook via native mobile apps, my recommendation would be to stop and use a browser Related (2025): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115

Thankfully, since then, Chrome and all other major browsers now ask the user for permission before letting websites send requests to localhost or any local IP addresses. Obviously some users may click through that, but it prevents the behavior from being invisible to the user at least, and gives them a way to say no. https://developer.chrome.com/blog/local-network-access PS: I still recommend never installing Meta ap…

Chrome added that _after_ sb discovered meta abusing it.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#252

Post by j16sdiz »

Nevermark wrote: post #181
dhruv3006 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Unless you consider SPAM or junk mail, riding on email and postal "networking" to be a "service".

sb should tell those linkedin folks this.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#253

Post by stevage »

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, that Feeds page is great! Did not know.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#254

Post by dgently7 »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #246
dgently7 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

id say maybe marketing? make a "healthy" social network and frame the other one as really bad for you? I wonder if there is anything to learn from other additive things? like a niccotine gum mode. a social network that starts you off in addictive mode and tapers you down to something better?

I think we're talking fast food rather than nicotine. We know that fast food is bad for us. But fast food companies keep putting the things that we like into it. So a lot of people, when tasting actual, real, good-for-you, food decide that they prefer fast food. Other people are aware that fast food is bad for them and prefer real food. It's a choice that we leave up to the individual. Unfortunately we then allow the…

I think you are right, it's more fast food, or maybe to extend the metaphor its like processed or ultra-processed food. Systematically prepared with lots of ingredients to give you something that is "food" but has been modified to amp up the sugar and salt to levels that make it basically impossible to stop eating. It also loses almost all of its nutritional value and is often cheaper than real food. Just like social media is cheap because its been infused with ads and data tracking sales. A "free range organic" social network would have to cost more.

We do have gov. mechanisms for controlling what can be sold as food so it seems plausible, but those only happened after we went through a period of time where companies would literally put poison into bread as a filler, and the whole rotten meat packing industry thing. Maybe we are in that phase now but even so i dont expect there to be enough of a social movement to control these things (and as you say... how is tricky)

still "real food" might not have the reach of mcdonalds, but it does exit and thrive. maybe there is market for a healthy network? based on the comments here and a lot of anecdotes, I suspect there is some latent demand.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#255

Post by inigyou »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #143
everdrive wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you said so. So many people take the wrong lessons from social media, and just keep trying to rebuild it more-or-less as-is and inherit most of the flaws that made it awful in the first place. What People fail to understand is that in a very narrow sense, it's better to think of social media like alcohol. It feels good to get a buzz and relax, but the next day you're worse off. Drinking a lot of the time mak…

The difference is the "algorithmic" timeline (meaning ads) you get with Facebook, Insta, and co compared to the strictly chronological timeline you get on the Fediverse equivalents (Mastodon, Pixelfed). That it's less addictive, or at least not in the doom scrolling type of way, is more a consequence. Aka the enshitification argument. Masto specifically is also a Twitter not Facebook replacement, with everyone solilo…

[dead]

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#256

Post by knallfrosch »

mmclar wrote: post #80

I'm surprised there's not more discussion here and in general about symmetric- vs. asymmetric-relationship networks. Facebook worked in the beginning because relationships were symmetric and there was no concept of getting "follows" -- friendships are modeled after real life ones, where the friendship is between two people. I can see why the big networks moved away from that: pushing "content" has a lot more friction…

The problem is obvious: People spend much more attention on cat videos from strangers than on their own friends' posts. Ads turn this attention into money.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#257

Post by Skidaddle »

al_borland wrote: post #119
jwr wrote: post #101

Having moved to Mastodon, I also recovered some faith in the Internet (of old). You control your timeline. You are not the consumer being fed stuff, you choose what you want to see. As a side note, I keep hearing people recommend threads, bluesky, or other corporate media machine du jour and I cannot understand how people can't learn a lesson. If you touch a hot stove once, you normally don't touch one again. And yet…

Facebook’s best feature, at its peak, was that everyone was there. My friends and family aren’t on Mastodon, and likely never will be. If the goal of a social network is to connect with people I know in real life, rather than follow various Internet personalities, it fails at this for me. This isn’t Mastodon’s fault, but it’s the reality of the situation. I’m not on Facebook anymore due to what the site has become, b…

I actually find people who are not already my friends to be way more interesting and to say something truly novel for me.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#258

Post by marcus_holmes »

dgently7 wrote: post #254
marcus_holmes wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we're talking fast food rather than nicotine. We know that fast food is bad for us. But fast food companies keep putting the things that we like into it. So a lot of people, when tasting actual, real, good-for-you, food decide that they prefer fast food. Other people are aware that fast food is bad for them and prefer real food. It's a choice that we leave up to the individual. Unfortunately we then allow the…

I think you are right, it's more fast food, or maybe to extend the metaphor its like processed or ultra-processed food. Systematically prepared with lots of ingredients to give you something that is "food" but has been modified to amp up the sugar and salt to levels that make it basically impossible to stop eating. It also loses almost all of its nutritional value and is often cheaper than real food. Just like social…

I'm a Mastodon user, so yes, there is demand for "real food". But I am in no way a representative member of the mass market.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#259

Post by llbbdd »

rsolva wrote: post #128
Aurornis wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is full of in-person events. The only reason I use Facebook lately is to keep up with groups that organize in-person events.

I was thinking about social networks that is not Facebook. The challenge is to make something that can compete in this respect. It would be so nice to have the in-person part, but without the ads, scams, data theft and blackbox algorithms!

The closer you emulate real world interactions, the more of those things you will have.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#260

Post by OneMorePerson »

asim wrote: post #79
OneMorePerson wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say leave behind...do you mean you lose something by not interacting with them, or do you mean that you have some kind of duty to help get them un-addicted? I don't think you are obligated to go hangout at your local bar once a week just because alcoholics exist.

We have a duty to help them..and I don't think society gets this right in other places. We're not proactive about it. In religion and islam there's something called dawah, effectively preaching, but the idea is you're calling people to something with higher purpose and to eliminate all these bad habits. And I think it's the same whether online or offline. We need to help people. First you have to help yourself but th…

I don't know that you can broadly say "religion" I'm not a Buddhist but from my surface level understanding of Buddhism it might be the case that that person needs to save themselves when they have had some negative experiences with social media. (This is overly simplistic I'm not saying its all on the individual but it's hard to summarize this point in only a couple sentences).

I do think there's some people who have fallen into social media bad habits and can fairly easily be helped to correct bad habits, other people seem to go to social media because it actually aligns with who they are. I've met several people (strangers) who seemed like they brought social media behavior into real life in a way that made me think social media gave them a platform for their personality, not the other way around. They were pretty jarring experiences that really stuck with me.

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