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

Is this the end of social networking?

reb00ted.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 503 posts

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#341

Post by awa »

jacooper wrote: post #131
wincy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife deleted TikTok after a few weeks because she just couldn’t handle how addictive it was. All she wanted to do was watch TikTok. Then she started getting Shorts on YouTube now she wants to completely stop watching YouTube even if the old creators she enjoyed are still making philosophy videos and stuff, it’s just not worth it to stick around when the goal has become quite clearly to keep you hooked.

She can use custom apps for YouTube like Newpipe, which offer YouTube experiences without ads and Shorts.

I hadn't heard of newpipe before so just installed it and found that it had much more intrusive ads than regular YouTube.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#343

Post by napolux »

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…

> 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. microblog seems promising, but I think even mastodon could provide the experience I'm looking for.

might be true for people like us. the other 7 billions out there won’t care

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#344

Post by satyrnein »

dgfitz wrote: post #308
satyrnein wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most companies exist for motive X, which they do by providing value Y, then monetizing it via method Z. X is almost always "profit" and Z is something boring like selling physical items, subscriptions, ads, etc, so the mission statement is about Y. The following statements are true but not very interesting: Microsoft was never about computers on every desk and in every home, it was really about selling software licen…

> Microsoft was never about computers on every desk and in every home, it was really about selling software licenses to make money! And how would they have made money without lots of computers on lots of desks paying subscriptions? All companies exist to make money, that’s the point. X === make money. Y === sell something to make money. Z === make money. I’m really struggling to understand your point.

The comment I replied (and the article itself) seem to imply that, if you monetize via advertising, that your business isn't really about whatever you say it is. I was replying that I fail to see how that's different from non-advertising-fueled businesses.

For example, Facebook isn't really about connecting people, but a hypothetical competitor with the exact same feature set that charged a subscription fee instead of running ads would be about connecting people?

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#347

Post by lelanthran »

tbossanova wrote: post #121
shevis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I 100% disagree with your idea that you, or anyone for that matter, is just here to disagree with other people’s ideas. Nobody disagrees with stuff just for the sake of disagreement. Who would do such a thing? Don’t bother answering that question though because you’d be wrong.

Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?

> Oh I'm sorry, is this a five minute argument, or the full half hour?

It's abuse.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#348

Post by atoav »

I must say I really liked social networking when it started out. Now I barely use it anymore because it has been poisoned. And I do not mean the discourses that happen there, I mean the entities who are running it.

If I meet an old friend in my city I would take them for a walk in a public park for a chat, or sit at a nice cafe. What I would not do is go to a place where I do not trust the people who listen to sell that information. And this is what social media has become.

It must not be like this, and maybe the solution is really aomething like the fediverse, but social media without the people you like is no use.

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#349

Post by _Algernon_ »

beebmam wrote: post #31
moreira wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. What’s…

> People want their bubbles. We’re all here on HN for that exact purpose. 100% disagree. I'm here to find ideas I disagree with and tell people how they're wrong. I'm not looking for an agreeable experience here. I'm also here to learn about new tech.

Relevant xkcd: https://xkcd.com/386/

Re: Is this the end of social networking?

#350

Post by lelanthran »

cookiengineer wrote: post #98
moreira wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it might just be that that’s not needed anymore. The social networks of the past were useful as a way to keep in touch with people. MySpace, early Facebook, and the countless others from back then. Now everyone’s online 24/7, and accessible on multiple services all at the same time, all the time. You don’t need social networks to keep in touch with anyone anymore, their original raison d'être is gone. What’s…

Social networks aren't that important to stay connected. In countries where there's still load shedding or shitty internet, people connect via whatsapp and gmail and you'll see advertising signs and paint on buildings and even cargo ships that just contain a whatsapp number and a gmail address. That's their form of the internet, because everything else won't even load with speeds less than 100kBit/s. Also: Whatsapp s…

> Also: Whatsapp somehow works on dumbphones. I don't know how (yet) but there's apps for KaiOS, Samsung Bada and other old phones. I wonder if vendors reverse engineered the APIs and implemented their own clients.

How "dumb" are those dumbphones? I ask because since around 2002 (prior to smartphones), some phones allowed apps to be downloaded. From around 2005, most phones supported downloadable apps, written by third parties.

They were called "midlets", written in Java, and I wrote a few of them myself.

Post reply on HN