Live data from Hacker News

Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

susam.net

81–90 of 283 posts

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#81
post #80

I'm surprised there's not more discussion here and in general about symmetric- vs. asymmetric-relationship networks. Facebook worked in the beginning because relationships were symmetric and there was no concept of getting "follows" -- friendships are modeled after real life ones, where the friendship is between two people. I can see why the big networks moved away from that: pushing "content" has a lot more friction…

What does that mean exactly, how do you see that manifesting itself? Would we even be aware of these networks, sounds like email

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#82
That's why I am so glad to only be on Mastodon these days, the true social network, without any rich sociopath billionare or some vulture crapitalist behind it. That keeps Mastodon form becoming the attention/propaganda platforms that all these for profit platforms really are.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#83

I will admit, one thing the crowd attention model does exceptionally well is surface the best comments on content. Whether it's HN, Instagram, YouTube, etc... the top comments are usually the "best", depending on how best is defined in the given context. On the silly Instagram meme videos my algo serves up, the top comments are invariably hilarious, often funnier than the actual content, and as you scroll it's impres…

I regularly see pretty bad/misinformed takes upvoted to the top though.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#85
post #81
post #80

I'm surprised there's not more discussion here and in general about symmetric- vs. asymmetric-relationship networks. Facebook worked in the beginning because relationships were symmetric and there was no concept of getting "follows" -- friendships are modeled after real life ones, where the friendship is between two people. I can see why the big networks moved away from that: pushing "content" has a lot more friction…

What does that mean exactly, how do you see that manifesting itself? Would we even be aware of these networks, sounds like email

Not email; social networking. Symmetrical just means the relationship is the same from both sides. Imagine a two-way "friendship" relationship (old-school Facebook) vs. a one-way "following" relationship (more recent Facebook, Insta, Twitter, etc.).

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#86

"Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from friends and more and more content from random strangers. " It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for someone but its not what I am looking for, I w…

While number of active users still grows, one have to ask a question, who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and bots. The only reason why I didn’t delete facebook is messenger, where I chat with old folks.

The growth is across the family of products (inc Instagram and WhatsApp) not Facebook itself. Facebook itself is a zombie, and I don't believe they have a way to innovate out of it. I'm not going to predict the end of Meta, they have more than enough products, but agreed that it's actually quite difficult to understand who's really left.

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#87
friction is underrated as an attention design pattern. blocking feels punitive, friction just makes you notice the reach instead of being on autopilot. not saying it solves algorithmic feeds, but the pause before opening apps changes the math for most people

Re: Attention Media ≠ Social Networks

#88
post #22

Mastodon really isn't the answer. You frequent enough servers and you realise social media has taught people bad habits..not everything needs to be expressed online. Genuinely I think people need something else. The format fails. What's the alternative? I don't know. But I'm trying to figure it out. Why? Because walking away from it all isn't the right answer. Why? Because we leave behind all those people addicted to…

Yeah the first three paragraphs of the article really resonated strongly and then the fourth was an ad for mastodon, which is only slightly less bad IMHO.
Post reply on HN