Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease' • Hacker News Board

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#81

Post by tfandango » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:40 PM UTC

skilled wrote: post #33

BFLpL0QNek wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

Yeah, man! Nothing will ever come close to modded phpBB forums with the light on dark themes. A well-moderated forum encouraged so much discussion and productivity. And I have to say, the modern versions of forums -- like Facebook Groups -- just don't replicate that same feeling to me.

I am a member of a facebook group for my city's ward. We had an election on Tuesday regarding some rather complicated funding mechanism for managing stormwater. Something which would have greatly benefited from some rational discussion. Instead people just spammed the group with conspiracy theories about how the city wants to steal our money and build arenas and other eccentricities. It was worse than useless. I found myself longing for the forums of old where there would have been one topic and lots of useful discussion instead of 100 posts with name calling and conspiracy.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#82

Post by AlexB138 » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:44 PM UTC

mr_overalls wrote: post #75

seneca wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is very far from a forum. It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive, it serves ads, has a terrible free speech record, and a slight amount of popularity means people will wander into your community and, generally, fill it with low content garbage. Reddit is a horrible place to host a community, and, in my eyes, is the actual cause of the death of forums more so than…

Do you have any recommendations for a better general-discussion site? Personally, I have found myself resorting to discussion sites focused on a single topic, like Hacker News instead of /r/programming, or DharmaWheel.net instead of /r/Buddhism.

I don't, unfortunately. I'm in the same boat as you. I frequent a few narrowly focused sites, and spend some time in a couple IRC channels for more general discussion, but that's not quite the same. I wish I had a good recommendation, and would love to hear one from others.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#83

Post by 0xbadcafebee » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

All these people complaining about social media, on a social network called Hacker News...

Every platform you use to communicate with other humans is a social network, they're not new. Slashdot was an early 'modern' social network, after regular old forums, as was Usenet and the BBS. All these networks had very similar properties to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram - they just didn't have pictures, and were restricted mostly to computer nerds.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is what happens when you open up these services to the whole world, add media, make it easier to share, and more addictive to use. The 'highest upvoted story' is a picture with a quote and a lot of likes. Our old flame wars about text editors and OSes are now caustic rants about vaccinations or politics. The only significant change is the subject matter, and the number of people involved.

As a 'disease', FB, Twitter and Insta are just a more evolved form of something that's always been here. They reflect and amplify humanity. You can focus on the bad, or you can notice the good. But it's a mistake to think these products are somehow uniquely different than everything else, or even inherently bad. They're inherently human.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#84

Post by de_watcher » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:48 PM UTC

seneca wrote: post #44

smt88 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those forums exist and are more widely-used than ever. They're just mostly hosted on reddit now.

Reddit is very far from a forum. It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive, it serves ads, has a terrible free speech record, and a slight amount of popularity means people will wander into your community and, generally, fill it with low content garbage. Reddit is a horrible place to host a community, and, in my eyes, is the actual cause of the death of forums more so than…

> It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive

The only thing that the administrators outside your community do is the shitty redesigns of the UI (big thanks to them for the "old.reddit.com" option though).

Everything else is done by the community of a subreddit.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#85

Post by hprotagonist » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:53 PM UTC

BFLpL0QNek wrote: post #18

trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

wait, adv is gone? it’s always been a bit weird but it was thriving the last time i looked in on it.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#86

Post by seneca » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

de_watcher wrote: post #84

seneca wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is very far from a forum. It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive, it serves ads, has a terrible free speech record, and a slight amount of popularity means people will wander into your community and, generally, fill it with low content garbage. Reddit is a horrible place to host a community, and, in my eyes, is the actual cause of the death of forums more so than…

> It's centrally administered by people outside your community who have a profit motive The only thing that the administrators outside your community do is the shitty redesigns of the UI (big thanks to them for the "old.reddit.com" option though). Everything else is done by the community of a subreddit.

Reddit admins shut down communities without warning due to their own political whims, have edited the content of a users post with no indication of doing so, and, as said already, inject ads. Reddit's model is paternalistic at best.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#87

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 3:00 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #2

He’s right. The problem is the incentive for “popularity” running amok. If Linus’s angry emails are on a distribution list, the exposure is minimal and the damage is contained. His same excess in social media is reproduced and exploited for various reasons, positive and negative and overflows into unrelated circles where unrelated people have input into something containment would prevent them from being exposed. Thi…

Coincidentally this came up in a conversation with a friend recently, where we drew parallels between the way hallucinogens cause normally disconnected parts of the brain to interact and how the internet has done the same for global society.

From a certain perspective, the noospehere is currently tripping balls on social media.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#88

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 3:02 PM UTC

trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

Heh. I have a totally different perspective on that.

The biggest forums were always toxic wastelands. Life, Universe, and Everything (the LUEsers of GameFAQs) has gone through this same trajectory.

Toxic people attract OTHER toxic people, because trolls love trolling others. The forum gets more and more toxic as people prefer to mess with other people more than actually have solid conversation. Things get extreme: LUEsers start to post porn to an otherwise innocuous site known to have young people browsing (GameFAQs), and the admins are finally forced to shut LUEsers down.

LUEsers exodus to another major forum, known to be more open to "free speech", and the toxicity cycle continues. Similar cycles happen for 4chan (exodus to 8chan), Something Awful, Reddit (/r/clopclop, /r/TheFappening, /r/Jailbait, /r/BeatingWomen) and other websites.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram have NOT had their exodus moment yet. The admins still think doing nothing is the best move. Eventually, there will be a controversy so big that the admins will be forced to do something about it. (Youtube is beginning to enter this cycle).

And "do something about it" inevitably means banning the toxic portion of the website. Its the most obvious choice.

Guess what? GameFAQs, 4Chan, Something Awful all still exist today. The Exodus moment is always scary, its always "against free speech", but guess what? The websites are fine afterwards.

---------

I see this all as part of the same cycle. The cycle seems to be slower for larger websites / social networks like Twitter / Facebook, but its the same cycle nonetheless.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#89

Post by jredwards » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 3:04 PM UTC

BFLpL0QNek wrote: post #18

trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

I have relationships built on forums that I maintain to this day, even though the forums died years ago.

Re: Linus Torvalds Says Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram Are 'A Disease'

#90

Post by dragontamer » Thu, Apr 04, 2019, 3:05 PM UTC

BFLpL0QNek wrote: post #18

trpc wrote: post #7

Social media ruined the internet forever, even less than a decade ago there were websites, forums of all sorts and for all kinds of interests, now the internet for most people is just these social websites/apps which intentionally lock users inside their services as long as possible to make more money from advertising and promoted posts. Unfortunately unless something big happens to fix this issue, the internet is lo…

I really miss forums. Google did a really good job of indexing forums, they where a great place to find honest reviews, share information etc. Now they are dying with users spread across various services which are not publicly indexed making it hard to find interesting information, that and forum posts look to be now down ranked in Google in favor retail sites. A few of the communities I am interested in such as outd…

Frankly... forums are dying because of Discord. Maybe Google-docs (which is emerging as a highly-curated, invite-only chat-platform for the younger generation).

Kids these days go to Discord and/or Google Docs for serious conversation. If you have an adult community, they may still use forums, but its more or less seen as a dated and ancient Web 1.0 sort of thing.

Google-docs fits all the requirements. No major school bans google-docs. It allows real-time communication, collaboration, and holds a repository of data. Its semi-private, scales to large numbers of users, and moderation is decentralized (controlled by the owner of the Google Doc).