I'm really sympathetic to the author. The thing I want to hear however is what does the author and people who believe him think is an alternative that will be profitable (ie., sustainable) in the current world we live in?
Is this the end of social networking?
381–390 of 503 posts
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There are ideas that are not allowed here. It would be more accurate to say that some ideas require more work here. The reasons why are open to debate.
@dang has been explicit that they deem certain topics “inherent flame wars” and ban discussion because it upsets people. Certain ideas aren’t allowed here — even when calmly stated and cited with evidence. For example, citing the clip of the BLM founder saying she’s a “trained Marxist” would get you banned: HN was in flat out denial, even though it was her own words on film [1]. She is literally answering a question…
The "trained Marxist" phrase is so strange to me - how does one become 'trained' in Marxism? Trained in guerilla warfare, perhaps. But to be trained in Marxism has the same meaning as being "trained in Platonism" or "trained in Hayekism". The other answers she gave in the interview also indicate to me that she doesn't really know what she's talking about, and is using this language either as a LARP to claim some theoretical legitimacy or basis, or as a way to attract on-the-fence old school Marxists.
At no point did any of this 'trained Marxism' show other than in a small handful of the organization's goals, generally the most neglected ones.
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#383Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
@dang has been explicit that they deem certain topics “inherent flame wars” and ban discussion because it upsets people. Certain ideas aren’t allowed here — even when calmly stated and cited with evidence. For example, citing the clip of the BLM founder saying she’s a “trained Marxist” would get you banned: HN was in flat out denial, even though it was her own words on film [1]. She is literally answering a question…
To add to that, stating the fact that one of the tech titans of today, Bill Gates, was in cahoots with a convicted pedophile is either met with "this is just hearsay!" or "you're jumping to conclusions", when it's not ignored and down-voted altogether. Even more important (not that many of us receiving our wages and dividends from probably pedophiles isn't important), the strong connection between Silicon Valley of d…
> the strong connection between Silicon Valley of days past, and, most importantly, from today, with the Military and Security Complex is also shunned.
Whole valley at one time was off limits to anyone from the Soviet Block.
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#385I think the "social" part of social networks just moved to group chats. All my friends share updates of their family events, kids' stuff etc.. over Whatsapp and Telegram. Strangers gather over topics that interest them and want to talk about it seem to have moved to discord, slack etc. The whole "broadcast yourself to the world" part of social networks just moved to Tiktok, Twitter, Instagram etc.. I think.
Some people are moving back to anonymous communication with limited audiences. Twitter is anonymous, but 100% public. There is no way to limit your audience to a smaller group. FB is not anonymous and mostly public. Private groups do exist, but you still mostly need to have an actual name on your account. TikTok & Snapchat are mostly for people who show their faces, not anonymous. WhatsApp shows everyone everyone's p…
> Twitter is anonymous, but 100% public. There is no way to limit your audience to a smaller group.
This isn't true anymore. You can choose your audience now and there's even more features like that in test.
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#386> [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…
This reminds me of a video I watched the other day about how nobody asks you to "share" anymore. In the early days of social networks every site and app had front page ad copy asking you to "share". Nowadays most don't even tell you what they are because it's assumed that you already know. And even those that try to explain themselves no longer talk about "sharing".
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#387> [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…
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Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#388Earlier 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.
I have a feeling that a lot of people replying to you completely missed what you were doing with your comment. That's a shame, because well done.
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Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#389We've essentially transitioned from 'social networks' to 'content streams'. The evolutionary steps we went through were just pathfinding to get to where consumers always wanted to be: a nonstop amusement drip. For that reason I think that what we think of as social networks really are dead. It's not what people truly wanted in the first place.
> It's not what people truly wanted in the first place.
The transition towards "a nonstop amusement drip" has been gradual and effective but it doesn't mean that the current situation was what people always wanted from the start. This has been the evolutionary journey of companies in search of maximum profitability. It has never been exclusively about what people want, it's also about what maintains profitable engagement and eyeballs for advertisers.
There's a general sentiment that people don't like the addictive nature of social media (see other comments in this thread). Social media users have become boiled frogs as the heat has been turned up on monetizing attention. I think it's fair to say that we've not landed on the optimal solutions for social networking just yet.
IMHO the current social networking market has reached an evolutionary dead-end. The platforms are all converging on a "content stream" model or group chat. I think that there are plenty more opportunities for digital social networking that get closer to what people really want but these opportunities are hard to see. Functional fixedness[0] is the biggest barrier to imagining what comes next but more possibilities exist than these.
Re: Is this the end of social networking?
#390> [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…
The problem of "who pays for this?" still remains.
If it's free to the user, it has to be ad-supported (or I guess donation-driven; the Wikipedia/Guardian model, but I don't see that working so well for social media). If it's ad-supported that means the advertiser becomes the customer and the point of the thing gets subverted to maximise ad revenue.
If it's not free to the user, then we have to educate everyone that they need to pay for their social media. Not an easy task.