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Slow social media

herman.bearblog.dev

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Re: Slow social media

#31

Post by tayo42 »

bkettle wrote: post #12

I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage. Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would tha…

I think banning algorithm based feeds is a start

Getting rid of any non personal accounts also. So no companies, brands, or meme accounts, and accounts that exist for non personal content only.

Re: Slow social media

#33

Post by WastedCucumber »

danboarder wrote: post #26

A lot of his ideas remind me of the BeReal app, it limits posts per day and is geared toward 'friends in real life' and with just a few friends on it I've stayed engaged. But it's sparse for me and can be a ghost town much of the time, but that may be just because my friend group isn't using it much. There needs to be sufficient network effect to maintain and grow it's reach as a network, which may be antithetical to…

That's been my experience with BeReal as well. I seldom see posts from people I'm close with, and so I post less as well, and presumably that contributes to a similar feeling for other friends of mine.

In fact, these days, I only post in it so that I can record the moment, to add it to the record of fotos which are convenient and fun to look back through.

Re: Slow social media

#35

Post by qweiopqweiop »

I also dream for this. Personally I would remove likes/reactions though. As we've seen with Instagram it's too easy to chase that dopamine rush/compare number of likes. Comments are enough in my opinion.

Re: Slow social media

#37

Post by emseetech »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #35

I also dream for this. Personally I would remove likes/reactions though. As we've seen with Instagram it's too easy to chase that dopamine rush/compare number of likes. Comments are enough in my opinion.

Likes/reactions should be hidden to everyone else except the poster, and not used for any kind of ranking.

And comments should be disabled by default. Users should have to take the extra step to enable comments ("I would like feedback") and if they're off by default, it won't feel strange or negative to the viewer.

Re: Slow social media

#39

Post by rhubarbtree »

bkettle wrote: post #12

I think modern social media is a huge problem but don’t see we can fix it without regulation. It’s clear that all the current incentives point companies towards engagement and rage bait and away from anything actually “social”, and I think it’s unlikely that any new social network that tries to fix these issues would achieve widespread usage. Have any countries proposed legislation to help reign it in? What would tha…

It’s a tricky one, but something that I repeatedly come back to is that publishers are regulated, but social media is a free for all. A newspaper can’t just make up something without consequences (in the UK), for example they may be sued for libel.

Social media companies, by contrast, can publish posts from their anonymised users that contain almost anything, and it is permitted. It can be racism. It can state that £300M a week could be spent on the NHS if only the UK would leave the EU. And those posts can be sent to millions of people without regard to truth or the damage they can do.

The classic response to this is “well, you can’t expect us to police such a large amount of content, it’s impractical” - a fair response - but then there’s a bit of sleight of hand from Meta et al: they conclude that they should therefore be allowed to broadcast anything a user shares. But an alternative conclusion is _well, then perhaps you shouldn’t be broadcasting inflammatory nonsense from any person/bot who posts_ and you have to find a new operating model.

It’s tricky because free speech is important, but I think we’ve seen enough times how dangerous, divisive, and destructive social media is. If there’s no way to prevent people and states from abusing it, then it probably shouldn’t exist. When the retrospective is written on the fall of America and the west, social media will be one of the key explanatory factors, along with hypercapitalism.

Re: Slow social media

#40

Post by pflenker »

I don’t want to be limited to „meaningful connections!“ I stay in close contact with those who are dear to me outside of social media. I want to stay connected to some random coworker I enjoyed working with in 2011, because I enjoy watching them from a distance, getting married, settling down, that kind of stuff, and occasionally comment on these things. This used to be a strength of social media before algorithms came in and decided that because I am not liking every post of that person it follows that I am not interested.
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