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The End of Social Media

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Re: The End of Social Media

#51

Post by OrvalWintermute »

goatkey wrote: post #31
ramesh31 wrote: post #5

YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really enjoy YouTube Premium. It’s nice to have the option to pay for an ad free experience, which is particularly useful on iOS mobile as uBlock origin doesn’t work. Having the ability to easily download videos for offline viewing and turn off auto play (which I think is also available without premium) is nice, too. I am sure they are still hoovering up all my data but I hope…

Your opinion may be unpopular, but I appreciate the perspective you bring to the table.

I do think there is merit to the idea of market segmentation and value offerings in different ways:

1 - Eyeballs : Give us attention in exchange for browsing

2 - Premium : Pay us, and we will omit all ads

3 - VendorCosted: Vendor pays, and we omit all ads from certain content

Re: The End of Social Media

#52

Post by AlbertCory »

This is a junk article. Why is it even on the front page?

60 years ago, before even the ARPANET, there was Newton Minow giving a speech [1] about how TV was garbage (the "vast wasteland" speech). If you want to read something timeless, read that instead.

[1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wast...

Re: The End of Social Media

#53

Post by olah_1 »

This reads like an advertisement for peer to peer apps like Manyverse[1], Iris[2], or Capsule[3].

He mentions mirror.xyz in the footnotes, but I can't figure out what that is. One of those annoyingly exclusive projects like Clubhouse. The fact that not letting people in was a "feature" really just turned me off. Sour grapes, but oh well.

[1]: https://www.manyver.se/

[2]: https://iris.to

[3]: https://capsule.social/

Re: The End of Social Media

#54

Post by donretag »

Here is my take: content creators are the problem.

When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept!

Then people noticed you can monetize their content. No longer was it about sharing with friends, but creating for profit.

Social networks, as they were envisioned, are a great concept. As a method for distributing content to be monetized, not so much.

Re: The End of Social Media

#55

Post by joghues »

It's just that people are making the most out of social media. Others have decided to make a hustle out of it, and it's not a bad thing as it allows other people to have money to put food on their table.

Re: The End of Social Media

#56

Post by ebiester »

ramesh31 wrote: post #5

YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

If you want to see it with this lens, then look at "trending." I don't tend to have an issue with the algorithm - I like that I get amateur science, humor, and puzzles.

I don't use it to watch political content, so I don't get much of it.

Re: The End of Social Media

#57

Post by Sebb767 »

donretag wrote: post #54

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something with a high production value or live their dream by earning money while doing the things they love. Veratasium or VSauce, for example, are a great channels, but they would've never gotten where they are now if they wouldn't have been able to earn money with it.

A similar topic comes up in music all the time, too: People accuse their favorite band of changing their style in order to get mainstream appeal and, therefore, more money. Which is definitely true to some extend, but I don't think this makes paying musicians a bad thing in general. And it's the same thing with content creators on the internet.

Re: The End of Social Media

#58

Post by whoooooo123 »

Gunax wrote: post #13
markbnj wrote: post #4

>> Some time ago I tried to find information about Crocodiles, the animals. Instead, I got results about Crocs shoes and zero information about the actual crocodiles. I just entered 'crocodile' into Google search while signed into my normal private account, and got a ton of useful information about crocodiles. Shoes were nowhere to be found in the first 30 or 40 results that I scanned. I don't know if the OP is using…

This might be a bad example, since crocs and crocodiles are different words. But in some regions, 'croc' is used much more often than 'crocodile' in the same way that Americans say 'sitcom' much more often than 'situational comedy'. Even though it's an abbreviation, it's eclipsed the full word in frequency. But I think the author's general point isn't about the information being unavailable (even if croc was the whol…

Is there anywhere in the English-speaking world where people say "situational comedy" instead of "sitcom"? I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "situational comedy" once in my life, unless they were answering the question "what is sitcom short for?"

Re: The End of Social Media

#59

Post by milkytron »

donretag wrote: post #54

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content.…

> content creators are the problem.

> you can monetize their content.

Wouldn't that put the blame on the monetization of social media? Content creators are trying to make money, social media companies determine what kind of content is relevant and worthy of views, thus which content deserves the money. Content creators seem to be at the mercy of providing content that will be recommended.

I view it as a sort of "don't hate the player, hate the game." And the social media companies determine the rules of the game.

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