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Is this the end of social networking?

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Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#281

Post by heywoodlh »

midoridensha wrote: post #240
dcow wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I've just stopped using social media because there's no reason to have the type of reach it gives you unless you're, well, advertising (whether that's yourself and/or personal brand, a product, a political position, etc.). However, even though rare, every once in a few years I really do need to reach out to someone I don't regularly talk to digitally or get in touch with someone I was much more connected t…

>I think there's truly a place for a hyper pared down "global phone book" type of application. We have this: Facebook. At least that's what I use it for. I keep a list of most of my friends there, and use it to chat with many of them, including video chat. I don't post anything, ever, and almost never look at anyone else's posts. It's just a glorified "friend phone book and chat app".

I don't have a problem with people using Facebook this way -- that's cool if it fills this function for you!

It is unfortunate though that as "a glorified phone book" Facebook engages in so many practices that are creepy and intrusive. I think that if Facebook did just provide phonebook-like functionality I would be so interested in using it. Instead, it feels more like an application(s) built to serve ads that happens to provide some phonebook functionality.

But, ultimately Meta's business model won't change for users like me -- and I don't blame them. And they don't necessarily need to change because although everyone seems to dislike the practices they engage in, nobody really quits Facebook.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#282

Post by gibsonf1 »

dont__panic wrote: post #17

> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…

https://solidproject.org/

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#283

Post by khyryk »

rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote: post #262
dcow wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I've just stopped using social media because there's no reason to have the type of reach it gives you unless you're, well, advertising (whether that's yourself and/or personal brand, a product, a political position, etc.). However, even though rare, every once in a few years I really do need to reach out to someone I don't regularly talk to digitally or get in touch with someone I was much more connected t…

I had a difficult time trying to understand your writing, but in the end it seems that you’re actually proving the point of the person that you’re disagreeing with? Your example of having 1600 friends and then most people being content with ~10 friends is exactly what the commenter meant with devaluing social connections.

I dunno, it made sense to me. The simplified thesis (perhaps with my own slight spin on it) is that a huge number of connections never really existed, and what's observed as a devaluation of things with inherent value is really more like a realization that the things in question had little to no real value, and a calculus that does assign them great value (without significantly diluting the word "friend") is flawed.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#284

Post by dyogenez »

renchap wrote: post #100

This is why we are building Notos[1], most of the photo sharing websites evolved in social networks (or died). We chose to not make our user's album public by default, where most competitors are doing so and benefit from the SEO involved, but we want to focus on sharing with family and friends, not the whole world. Now the elephant in the room is monetisation and getting people to pay for their usage, this is not eas…

Love the video explaining how it works.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#285

Post by nlh »

I was just chatting about the “golden years” of Facebook with a friend today. I think it was about 10 years ago. Maybe we’re over-glamorizing the past, but at least the way we recall it:

Around 2012-2014, the newsfeed mostly was just updates from your friends with some ads sprinkled in. Everyone was on Facebook, so if you were hosting a social event, you could just invite everyone on Facebook and they’d hear about it. Birthdays were great because everyone would wish you happy birthday and you would do the same for them. There was a location-based search feature, where you could travel to basically any city and search your friends list to see who was there.

I felt closer to a lot of old friends from growing up than almost any other time, because suddenly everyone was on Facebook and it was super easy to catch up with someone I hadn’t talked to in years.

That’s all vanished these days, sadly. Social events are organized by email again (which is fine but less convenient). I’ve lost touch with old high school friends again because nobody uses Facebook anymore except for a few die hard holdouts.

I really remember thinking “Man, Facebook is just so dominant, I don’t see how they could blow it.”

Turns out, if you keep feeding the growth monster in search of more and more “engagement” (enragement?), eventually the growth monster destroys you.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#286

Post by tenpies »

f1refly wrote: post #46
theshrike79 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people are moving back to anonymous communication with limited audiences. Twitter is anonymous, but 100% public. There is no way to limit your audience to a smaller group. FB is not anonymous and mostly public. Private groups do exist, but you still mostly need to have an actual name on your account. TikTok & Snapchat are mostly for people who show their faces, not anonymous. WhatsApp shows everyone everyone's p…

Both telegram and discord need phone numbers though - telegram upfront and discord after your used it for about ten mimutes.

Unless it has changed, the phone number verification is server-based. If an admin sets the verification level to Highest you will be prompted if you attempt to join their server:

https://support.discord.com/hc/en-us/articles/216679607

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#287

Post by bombcar »

salmo wrote: post #273
allenu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If we're lucky, that means a federated, open, mostly-ad-and-suggestion-free open source social media experience can fill the power vacuum for intimate, interpersonal, high-latency communication over the internet. I don't have as much hope for such a thing. To me, this trend is also a reflection of perhaps the societal devaluing of IRL social connections. In a world where encountering "new people" was novel, and typ…

This isn’t fundamentally different than urbanization. And this has been bemoaned as far back as we have history. I’m older. I used PCs without modems. I didn’t have access to the internet until I was 15, and I was ahead of the curve. So I didn’t grow up with social media. But I was a heavy user. Now this an a relatively anonymous Twitter account are all I have left. Every time one evolves past me being able to have c…

The lie of social media was that you can replace your social circle entirely with exact copies of yourself. But that’s highly boring as hell.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#288

Post by fariszr »

mulmen wrote: post #32
dont__panic wrote: post #17

> [TikTok]'s addiction-based advertising machine is probably close to the theoretical maximum of how many advertisements one can pour down somebody’s throat. Well put. It's interesting that we pivoted in my adult lifetime from: 1. Myspace's emphasis on sharing things on your own webpage, essentially a hosted blog 2. Facebook's evolution from "hosted blog" to "friend update aggregator" to "chat client" to "friend upda…

IMHO Social Media is a toxic mutation of the capabilities offered by the Internet and is the opposite of federated, open communication. I don't consider blogs, forums, or IRC to be "Social Media". When you add the idea of followers and audience and attention seeking (both from participants and the platform) that's when you get "Social Media". We live in the Infinite September. Scale is not conducive to valuable or fu…

> When I want to plan a vacation with the family we use email. When I have a question about a software project I get on their IRC channel.

I think matrix.org would be more fitting, especially for your holiday planning.

Modern and secure, but still federated, also you can talk to people across platforms using bridges!

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#289

Post by bombcar »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #212
lubesGordi wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my view this shift is happening because of social media. The social media short cut to having friends turned out to not really work, and now people are trying to figure out how to have friends again. It's the same with dating.

Yeah, it seems like people are doubling down on a losing strategy. The real solution is usually involves going outside your front door and meet people. The same is true with dating.

And meeting people unlike yourself in at least some ways - social media is designed to help you find identical clones of yourself.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#290

Post by joejerryronnie »

Idk, this article seems hopelessly naive. So, the author would essentially like to go back in time to a less morally ambiguous internet when people (i.e. techies and nerds) had engaging, thoughtful, and respectful conversations where each emerged a better person. Not gonna happen. The future of social networking looks a lot more like Twitter (but meaner) than it does to the halcyon days of IRC.
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