Not "if," but "when".
Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
351–360 of 361 posts
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it needs to be in the control of the user. What do you want to see and how do you want to see it? Of course I don't want the pile of shit that the YouTube comment section often is (Google Plus' YT integration was probably their worst idea), but when someone shares a blog post, so I comment on the share and discuss it with my contacts on the social network, or do I comment on the blog itself so the blogger kno…
At that point you basically have Facebook I.e. your wall. What it was before the feed. It’s a good idea still.
It's certainly not an easy thing to solve. I want that stuff in my feed and share it with my friends, but the blogger will want it on their blog. And blogs could be using any of hundreds of different comment systems, which no social network is going to support. So there would have to be a standard for communication between the social network and the blog that enables them to share comments, while still letting the blogger keep control over their blog (the social network shouldn't be a backdoor to force spam or abuse on his blog), but the social network user should remain in control over their feed.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#353The vast majority of commenters here fundamentally misunderstand what Twitter is, or rather what it has become. It's not a "social network" anymore. I mean, it is in the technical sense - you and I can both sign up for an account. But what it is today is an elite coordination mechanism, and Twitter became this because it was the first of it's kind and some sort of momentum or technological inertia put us where we're…
Most people would not use these platforms if they knew the true extent of how the platforms disadvantage people who are not deemed "elite". It would also reduce the ad revenue the platforms make from unknown people seeking to elevate their social status. Social sites are healthier and more fair, when all accounts have equal post visibility across the platform (which is usually the case when they start, but slowly declines as they mature).
The main conflict in social media is profit versus ethics... The platform costs a lot to develop, promote, and maintain... That is why these platforms often mislead users on their capabilities for social elevation. In reality, the platforms do nothing now in order to help users to be visible to new audiences of people... It is mostly users creating controversy, using bots, faking celebrity, or paying to promote themselves that increases their popularity on social platforms. There are reampant cases of accounts with mostly fake followers everywhere, the platforms do nothing to stop fakery because it only enhances their deceitful ideals that everyman can succeed on the platform. Reducing overhead for running the platform is a big key to ensuring that fairness can be upheld... Cloud hosting cost is increasing at wild rates... It's crazy how that is happening when technology costs generally decrease over time for infrastructure... And also citing how most host infrastructure now is trending towards being 100% virtual.
Creating a better social site means constant vigilance to assure fairness and equality, keeping the community smaller or thoughtfully segmented and more focused around individual topics, genres, or niches and creating channels for each of those that let users subscribe and unsub...
It pretty much boils down to something similar to Reddit I guess, but better though out... Without all the management corruption, bad UI, and oversimplified/overapplied moderation and spam/mod bots.
It is hard to maintain a huge site like Twitter with all the potential for liability, a new system of accountability for user accounts needs to be developed, while still maintaining a proper degree of anonymity... There are also rules like COPA and others that create huge complexities, but maintaining account anonymity kind of helps that, because e.g. - if the platform does not ask for a user's name and age in any way, there is no record of that user's real name and age stored on the platform... Unlike a site like Facebook, that catalogues every aspect of a user's personal ID and activity.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> virtue signaling I despise this term. You don't know people's motivations. These may be genuinely important issues that they are using their audience and reach to magnify and promote. And if you've had the luck/misfortune of becoming famous, should you not use the attention and reach you wield to focus on issues that you think are important in society? > Validation checkmarks will now cost $20/month. A) They're not…
> > virtue signaling > I despise this term. You don't know people's motivations. These may be genuinely important issues that they are using their audience and reach to magnify and promote. Accusations of virtue signalling get misused a lot, especially by people opposed to those important issues. But it's absolutely a real thing. I think the most notable form of virtue signalling is public prayer on TV by politicians…
Absolutely no one who uses "virtue signalling" on the internet is talking about prayer - from TV preachers or politicians.
It's a word typically used associated with a whole set of vocabulary including "woke" and "social justice warrior/SJW".
It's meant to deride people talking about diversity initiatives, systemic inequalities, feminism, LGBTQ issues, etc.
The explicit implication of the term is that nobody actually genuinely cares about these issues, they just speak about them to virtue signal to their in-group (progressive/left/urban/etc) that they have permissible opinions and that they are not problematic.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
>These may be genuinely important issues that they are using their audience and reach to magnify and promote. This is still Twitter you're talking about. Blue checkmarks are overwhelmingly associated with 'woke' narcissists stoking the flames of the culture war
From the creator of Godwin's Law: https://twitter.com/sfmnemonic/status/1504687870006620163
Isn't "appeal to authority" a common fallacy?
No surprise Godwin disparages the use of 'woke', when he is most likely a 'woke-ist' himself.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#356Earlier quoted context omitted.
From AT protocol (bluesky) FAQ: > Why not use ActivityPub? > [...] Account portability is the major reason why we chose to build a separate protocol. We consider portability to be crucial because it protects users from sudden bans, server shutdowns, and policy disagreements.
Account data migrations are already supported on ActivityPub. If they didn't like the way they are implemented, they could have extended the specs. Building a completely new protocol just because you want to support account migrations your own way is just dumb.
You lose all your followers. It's like going from blacklight@aol.com to blacklight@gmail.com. It's on you to go to you 1M followers and beg them to refollow you. The goal is to go from tmobile to verizon and your grandma can just call you.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#357Earlier quoted context omitted.
At that point you basically have Facebook I.e. your wall. What it was before the feed. It’s a good idea still.
It's certainly not an easy thing to solve. I want that stuff in my feed and share it with my friends, but the blogger will want it on their blog. And blogs could be using any of hundreds of different comment systems, which no social network is going to support. So there would have to be a standard for communication between the social network and the blog that enables them to share comments, while still letting the bl…
There was a YC company awhile back doing something like this App.net. Maybe it could work now.. I could see YC funding a set of companies that build on a platform together, Dalton is a big part of YC now. That might be the way to bootstrap something like this. Discord seems to have something kind of going this way. If you think of the IRC and usenet model but I guess modernize it?
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
> > virtue signaling > I despise this term. You don't know people's motivations. These may be genuinely important issues that they are using their audience and reach to magnify and promote. Accusations of virtue signalling get misused a lot, especially by people opposed to those important issues. But it's absolutely a real thing. I think the most notable form of virtue signalling is public prayer on TV by politicians…
Absolutely no one who uses "virtue signalling" on the internet is talking about prayer - from TV preachers or politicians. It's a word typically used associated with a whole set of vocabulary including "woke" and "social justice warrior/SJW". It's meant to deride people talking about diversity initiatives, systemic inequalities, feminism, LGBTQ issues, etc. The explicit implication of the term is that nobody actually…
Like I said, it gets misused a lot. Often by the very people using the word to silence honest ways to raise awareness.
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#359forums
Re: Ask HN: What social media site could replace Twitter?
#360Earlier quoted context omitted.
Account data migrations are already supported on ActivityPub. If they didn't like the way they are implemented, they could have extended the specs. Building a completely new protocol just because you want to support account migrations your own way is just dumb.
You lose all your followers. It's like going from blacklight@aol.com to blacklight@gmail.com. It's on you to go to you 1M followers and beg them to refollow you. The goal is to go from tmobile to verizon and your grandma can just call you.
On Mastodon people who see your old profile would get a screen like "this profile has moved here".
Ok, it's still on them to follow you on your new profile, but it's not like you have no connection between the old and new profile.
And I'm among those who want to improve this feature, so actual data exchange (followers and posts) can happen before the two instances during the migration.