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Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

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Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#361

Post by alphawhisky »

gavin-1 wrote: post #209
hedora wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

billions; 30%. (His approval rating is finally starting to drop below the historic floor).

Where are you seeing 30%? I feel like I keep seeing this claim, month after month, but then I look it up and he's still got around the same ~38% approval. I keep getting my hopes up that people are finally realizing how awful he is, only to be disappointed again. It's depressing.

They're probably not looking on the first page of Google, for a start. We're at the sunset of the Information Age, that means that companies have bought all the info and are now manipulating it.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#362

Post by xnx »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

Additionally, "social media" is as inaccurate a name "ride sharing". A better name would be "targeted ad scroll media".

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#363

Post by IAmBroom »

captainclam wrote: post #195
IAmBroom wrote: post #143

This thread is doomed by a common HN* affliction: People are bandying around key terms without defining them, assuming and pretending that the definitions are universally accepted. Here, the term is "social media", which can also be pronounced "boogeye man". We all seem to agree it is bad, but very few are willing to lay down a solid definition. It isn't limited to bad terms. It happens anytime we argue over whether…

I don't think the quality of discussion about social media suffers from lack of specification. Whether or not you consider HN to be social media, or wherever your decision boundary is, doesn't change that most of the conversation does apply to the general class of apps/websites that have become de-facto short form video platforms. Which lots of people use, so the effects of use are consequential and worth discussing.…

I see commenters ITT vehemently disagreeing on the point. Maybe you collapsed those conversations?

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#364

Post by overgard »

rvshchwl wrote: post #265
Aurornis wrote: post #240

This article has struck a nerve in the comment section. It's describing how traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are not used for social features anymore, but for content discovery. The descriptions of how people are using Facebook to find new content anonymously are not that different from how we use Hacker News, which has reignited the debate about whether Hacker News is social media. I had to…

Hacker News is certainly addictive. As I've started to limit my interactions on other sites like Instagram and X by removing the apps from my phone, I've seen I spend more time on this site than I did before. The content is a lot more interesting and relevant to me, so I don't see it as a problem (Yet) but I don't think that'll always be the case. I feel that this is one of the consequences of spending so much time o…

I'm old enough to remember life before internet/social media (40ish). One thing that's weird now, to me, is that it's very rare that I'm outright bored, but it's like that boredom just became diffuse into everything, almost everything in life is sort of boredom-tinted (probably just because I'm so flooded with too many dopamine-reward-signaling low-value things)

A couple weeks ago, I had a power outage, and instead of being upset I felt RELIEVED. Like, everything in life just felt calmer for a moment. It was kind of nice to just grab a book because it was the only option. (well, I mean, there was still the cell phone but at least it was the only distraction)

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#365

Post by zem »

I think nothing has contributed to the depersonalization of social media more than the (facebook led, afaik) push to aggressively show as many people as possible everything you post. after the first few jarring reminders that random friends were being served up my comments on other random friends' posts, and that their friends were likewise being served their interactions with my posts, I drew back very sharply from the social aspect.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#366

Post by [deleted] »

armchairhacker wrote: post #136
close04 wrote: post #70

Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.

Social media is any website whose purpose is socialization i.e. “small-talk” style discussion, with many (50+) members. If it’s a larger site that contains socialization, like blog comments, the blog itself may not be social media but the comments can be. I define TikTok, Twitch, and part of YouTube as social media because the videos themselves are casual and therefore quality as small-talk (if you only visit YouTube…

[deleted]

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#367

Post by jimbo808 »

everdrive wrote: post #3

Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with…

It's worse in many ways but also better in one way, which is that buried in all the propaganda and manipulation is usually the truth somewhere in there. Before, the truth was simply not available.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#368

Post by overgard »

Insanity wrote: post #2

Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.

Facebook, when it was only-for-college-students was a much nicer/more social experience. Once it became a general social network it really fell off the cliff in quality, in my opinion. Like, when I had 30 friends and I actually knew them and cared it was a lot different than having like 1000 friends and regularly being like "who is this person?"

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#369

Post by kayo_20211030 »

Right. Anything that matters a blind bit to me is on WhatsApp (don't judge!), I don't consume too much from other sources, and when I do I don't expect anything more than a sensible person would expect. It is what it is. Choose your channel and you'll get what you expect. That's pretty much it.

Re: Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

#370

Post by testudovictoria »

al_borland wrote: post #177
torben-friis wrote: post #83

If you're on Android, you can use revanced to patch social network apps, to, among other things, remove content from non-friends (and ads). It's scary how empty the feed is once you do this. It can be full days with the same post at the top. And the worst part is that I hadn't noticed how empty it was until I did the change.

As people’s default shifts to consumption, they stop posting content themselves. They also stop living a life worth posting about… especially when they start comparing themselves with “influencers”, who have made a full time job out of pretending to live an interesting life. The problem with filtering out all the junk as a solution is that it doesn’t fix the actual problem of those sites with perverse incentives havi…

The problem with some of (all of?) these is that it's becoming increasingly moot to bother posting. I posted back in the early days of social media to share with my friends. In response, my friends and acquaintances kept me up to date with their lives. Now the apps only bother to show me friend/following posts if they deem it matches my interests.

I understand that this sort of algorithmic feed likely matches the metrics to keep people scrolling. This would also track with every app moving away from "friend" verbiage to something like followers, subscribers, or members. Users are encouraged to post _to_ their audience rather than sharing _with_ their friends.

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