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

Toot.community is shutting down

social.jorijn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 85 posts

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#51

Post by Barrin92 »

orangedog wrote: post #12

> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insigh…

I do think this has always been the case, Jerry Pournelle funnily enough made a very similar observation back in 1986 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet_term)#Histor....)

People who post on the internet are outliers, something like 98% of message board users lurk, can't remember who said it but someone summed it up as "everyone you talk to online is crazy". The reality is life is boring a lot of the time and I've always seen online interaction not as a substitute for social life but with no expectation. Sometimes you get good conversations, often you don't.

There is more negativity in terms of volume which has a quality of its own because it seeps more into real life than in it used to, but honestly some conversations in the olden days were worse.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#52

Post by dewey »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #49

>the server won’t be handed over to anyone else. That's a shame. It seems to me that we are in a frustrating situation where there are probably clever ways to solve the problems created by social media. But because launching new social platforms requires solving a difficult chicken-and-egg problem, we don't get very many chances to try anything new or innovative. Another way of putting it is: Occasionally people will…

> If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform

I feel like once you arrive at the situation where you want to free up your time and shut down a project (Which is already a hard decision to arrive at) you'll not want to put in extra work to run some contest, pick a winner, hand over domains, infra or figure out a way forward.

It already takes me a lot of energy to shut down side projects with little to no users instead of just keep paying for it.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#53

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

apitman wrote: post #37

> More importantly, I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I'm really just not convinced social media is very useful. The main use I can see is very fast dispersal of information, but anything truly important will be distributed by mainstream media, and less important things will travel between small communities at a slower rate. So what are we left with exactly? I think small communities where peo…

>I think small communities where people actually have to maintain a reputation are the future, and the past.

I believe early on in the internet, there was more discussion of reputation systems like you see for eBay sellers.

Seems like this area hasn't advanced very much. You've got karma systems like on HN, and follow-count systems like on X or Instagram, but both of those arguably track "usage intensity" x "susceptibility to audience capture" more than "reputation".

Low-hanging fruit would be if X showed you the number of Community Notes a user has received. They aren't even bothering to do that.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#54

Post by cuu508 »

baron3dl wrote: post #29
cokefan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author doesn't sound like they are pitching a fit to me.

maybe i read more into it. i got put off by his refusal to hand it off. he can quit, no qualms there. but not handing it over? that seems petty, imo.

When mastodon.technology shut down, the operator commented on this, see "Why Not Transfer to a New Admin?" here -- https://ashfurrow.com/blog/mastodon-technology-shutdown/

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#55

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

dewey wrote: post #52
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #49

>the server won’t be handed over to anyone else. That's a shame. It seems to me that we are in a frustrating situation where there are probably clever ways to solve the problems created by social media. But because launching new social platforms requires solving a difficult chicken-and-egg problem, we don't get very many chances to try anything new or innovative. Another way of putting it is: Occasionally people will…

> If anyone else is in this situation of desiring to sunset a social platform I feel like once you arrive at the situation where you want to free up your time and shut down a project (Which is already a hard decision to arrive at) you'll not want to put in extra work to run some contest, pick a winner, hand over domains, infra or figure out a way forward. It already takes me a lot of energy to shut down side projects…

Fair enough. Maybe the threshold for doing as I suggest should be if you are just starting to lose enthusiasm.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#56

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

orangedog wrote: post #12

> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insigh…

One way to think of it is a sort of multiplayer iterated prisoner's dilemma. If players generally cooperate, cooperating is the best strategy. If players generally defect, defecting is the best strategy. Over time you can get a death spiral (loss of social capital) where people defect more, which leads to more defections. You can also get selection effects where people who enjoy conflict stay, and people who dislike conflict leave.

The medium is the message. Certain specific features, such as the retweet-with-comment feature, incentivize starting fights. Older platforms didn't feature likes/retweets as prominently. Newer platforms are constantly giving you numerical scores, which leads to competitive socialization and status-seeking. Some people are into that sort of thing. And to be fair, clout is objectively valuable in certain ways.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#57

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

kps wrote: post #31
nickdothutton wrote: post #21

As someone whose first “social media” was USENET of the early 90s, and I suppose FidoNet before then, I don’t really consider the bulk of mainstream Internet users today to be in any way “my people”. The herd is endlessly mindless, shallow, bought with bread, and hungry for the circus.

Today is the 12021th of September 1993.

I'm not old enough to have experienced Usenet. For those who remember Usenet: Do you believe that Eternal September was a failure of cultural transmission? Or was it more of a human capital thing? (Early adopters/academics tend to be better-behaved users?)

Another way of thinking about it: Suppose the exact same userbase had joined Usenet, but they trickled in gradually instead of flooding in all at once. How much would that have changed the outcome?

FWIW I used to think it was human capital, but have updated more towards cultural explanations. For example, it seems fairly common for academics to make fools of themselves online nowadays.

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#58

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

tredre3 wrote: post #39
orangedog wrote: post #12

> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insigh…

> Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insights are often banal. Reddit grew up as a community of edgelords. Trying to be funny by exaggeratedly insulting others is just how it was. Think a community of Ben Shapiros. Coming to the site as an outsider could be brutal until you got used to ignoring it (or engaging, if you're into…

>Reddit grew up as a community of edgelords. Trying to be funny by exaggeratedly insulting others is just how it was. Think a community of Ben Shapiros. Coming to the site as an outsider could be brutal until you got used to ignoring it (or engaging, if you're into it).

Reddit was rather similar to HN in the earliest days: https://web.archive.org/web/20060415194256/http://www.reddit...

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#59

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

Barrin92 wrote: post #51
orangedog wrote: post #12

> I don’t enjoy how people interact on social media anymore I can't figure out if this is me or if things really have changed. I was on early Reddit (before there were comments) and HN. There were always jerks and flamewars and pedants but it just feels like any thread I read on HN or Reddit is just full of the worst behavior. People think nothing of just being incredibly, incredibly rude to strangers and ther insigh…

I do think this has always been the case, Jerry Pournelle funnily enough made a very similar observation back in 1986 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaming_(Internet_term)#Histor... .) People who post on the internet are outliers, something like 98% of message board users lurk, can't remember who said it but someone summed it up as "everyone you talk to online is crazy". The reality is life is boring a lot of the t…

https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/9rvroo/most...

Re: Toot.community is shutting down

#60

Post by UtopiaPunk »

sph wrote: post #50
micromacrofoot wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's because mainstream internet users today are everyone... I don't go for a walk and expect the world to be filled with "my people" either.

In fact, the people I see during my walk out are more my people than those I meet on the Internet. They speak my language, are immersed in my culture, and find local neighbourhood problems very relevant. Then I go online, and there's a high likelihood I encounter people from other countries; worse is when you don't even enjoy a little bit of multiculturalism, but all you experience is a majority of people from one co…

I don't see this happening, but I really wish that the Mastodon model centered on joining your city's local Mastodon server. Your server is centered on local people and local conversations. Maybe one would find this local community sort of annoying, but it would be at relevant, at least some of the time.

From there, you can connect with other individuals on other servers with similar interests or whatever. But your online identity would be rooted to where you actually live.

Time to move to a new city? You just migrate to a new Mastodon server. Makes sense.

As it stands now, Mastodon servers are primarily centered on some kind of shared interest, but I don't think that makes much sense. I am a person with many interests, so which do I pick? Over time, I might gradually lose interest in a subject, or simply prioritize something else. Do I leave that old server? It seems like a hassle to move, but it seems weird to stay. The result is that Mastodon servers seem so arbitrary, when they should be really important.

Other servers could still exist for the misfits or for people who otherwise find their city's server objectionable. But I think a city being the "default" option would make a lot of sense.

Post reply on HN