Is this the end of social networking? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#311

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:53 AM UTC

nlh wrote: post #285

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…

I would say that the golden years ended by 2012 (depending on age of course).

Facebook was essentially a way to connect to people outside your inner circle, and before 2012 it was a way for younger people to connect to other younger people outside school/college/university. It was similar to what Instagram does now except for the new friends feature.

Facebook works in a social environment where everyone knows your personal details and you maintain a casual-formal image (school, university...) but is useless in most other contexts. Instagram provides flexibility in who you can add, but is bad as a tool for socializing.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#312

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:55 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #12

Ending this with "tweet your comment" and "discuss this on twitter" is amusingly ironic, given that Twitter has always been a place that's actively hostile to any kind of rich, subtle discussion, and has pivoted away from "keep up with people you want to follow" to an official stance of "keep up with the news" and an actual stance of "here is an endless scroll of engaging content, mostly things to get angry about, th…

Twitter is still the only major social media network where alternative views may be tolerated, and hence Musk was trying to buy it. Reddit is probably a better fit for your complaint.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#313

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 3:58 AM UTC

csours wrote: post #14

Users of social media will learn how to deal with righteousness. Until we do, social media will suck big league. Social Media strongly encourages Hot Takes, because those get clicks. I found myself examining how I comment on reddit, and what people call "The Hivemind". You can't have nuanced discussions on social media, someone will infer what kind of asshole you exactly are, and that's the end of the discussion. Som…

Reddit is horrific because the moderation on the website is so heavily biased towards the current mantra of the US Democrats, regardless of topic and country involved. Why so many of the public ditched forums, where replying to an older comment can continue a conversation for new people to see, with Reddit is a mystery to me as well. Reddit has become a slur in the Indian diaspora for example.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#314

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:01 AM UTC

t_mann wrote: post #165

jokoon wrote: post #13

I think that the only domain where social networks can be relevant is in the geoloc domain. Dating apps are quite an obvious example where it works very well, but dating is a very limited scope. So of course, the single problem of anything geoloc is safety and privacy, which is not the strong aspect of any social network right now. Tinder and others work hard to make their users safe, and it's difficult because users…

There's also a need to be filled to let your friends know which college you're going to, how awesome your last vacation was, what job you got,... LinkedIn seems to be filling the void left by Facebook. I don't know if many people who used social media other than dedicated apps to find dates.

Facebook fails with the segregation of social groups most humans have. In some countries a person does not make true friends at work, and friends are a personal casual thing. For some cultures a friend can be made in a few days, in other cultures it takes several months or years

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#315

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

sakex wrote: post #140

When I think about what social medias are left, I can only think about LinkedIn. Interestingly, there seem to have been a recent surge of interest for that platform (especially all the cringe worthy posts that started to pop up). After reading this article, I am starting to wonder if people didn't simply migrate to LinkedIn because of the degradation of Facebook's quality as a Social Network and as they still feel th…

LinkenIn is probably a long term social network because a lot of people want to be able to maintain a "professional side" to them in public, but want to be able to keep the personal lives private. Facebook was aimed at college students so was able to be somewhere in the middle.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#316

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

aczerepinski wrote: post #156

I want to see more niche social networks that are only for one thing. I actually really like Strava which is for workouts only. There’s no way to share pictures of inspirational text. I’ve never seen anyone abuse the platform by sharing a run that is actually 0.1 miles plus a rant about Fox News or anything like that. If I were independently wealthy I’d spend my time building a newsfeed for musicians to share music t…

Reddit has destroyed the forum culture that basically owned this concept. The internet was a far less politized place before Reddit came along, and you could have a conversation on a forum between wildly different political opponents without knowing they were political opponents.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#317

Post by yalogin » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

A very correct observation. Social networking actually feels archaic at this point. The one thing that survived everything is messaging and email. Messaging will be the tool that brings friends together and email remains the one true tool for professional communication.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#318

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

300bps wrote: post #279

sytelus wrote: post #276

I really don’t get what is this panic about TikTok. When I used it for the first time, it just kept throwing soft porn videos. I see how people would get “addicted” but I don’t see it becoming any more mainstream than many similar websites. It’s recommendation system left a lot to desire as it simply ignored my preferences and kept throwing at me more of juvenile videos. So far Social media has strived to be just con…

it simply ignored my preferences and kept throwing at me more of juvenile videos. I did not have a similar experience at all. I’d be a little concerned if I had. As others have said I think most people’s experience is that TikTok is absolutely phenomenal at discerning what people want to watch - even if they are not aware of their preference themselves.

It's better than what Instagram does, and way better than what Twitter does, but it may also be a sign of the biases and politics engineered into algorithms in Instagram and Twitter.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#319

Post by michaelchisari » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:08 AM UTC

coffee_beqn wrote: post #231

throwaway0asd wrote: post #49

Social media cannibalized itself to death in pursuit of ad revenue via increased engagement . The harder they pushed, with content assumption algorithms, the more toxic it became. The more toxic it becomes the more it appeals to extreme personalities while alienating everyone else, a poisonous viper eating itself. It’s only market lag between the revenue source, media source agencies, and the realization that better…

Ugh I do still remember the chronological feed where posts didn’t get ranked. I enjoyed that product. Feels like every efficiency improvement they did removed a few percentage of users until now when there’s just a few weirdos left posting

Chronological feeds is how they lure us in to the circus. Engagement algorithms is how they turn is into donkeys.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#320

Post by woweoe » Fri, Aug 12, 2022, 4:11 AM UTC

pier25 wrote: post #299

Aren't forums and websites like HN and Reddit also social media?

HN is probably the closest to what the old pre-reddit forum culture was like, but obviously structured in the horrible reddit manner. Reddit is probably an unsocial media.