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Social Quitting

locusmag.com

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Re: Social Quitting

#91

Post by nehal3m »

esperent wrote: post #43
nuc1e0n wrote: post #6

Doctorow continues to be as wise as ever.

Unfortunately I disagree. I always want to like Doctorow. In theory we have similar political views and I love that there's a famous writer who espouses them. But then I read his work and pretty much always find it lacking. For example, this post. It starts with a very clear point: huge numbers of users are leaving Facebook and Twitter, to the point where these companies are in serious trouble and will soon go the wa…

Thanks for posting this. I consider myself a Doctorow fan and I didn't realize I let myself slip.

I will continue to be a fan but a more critical one.

Re: Social Quitting

#92

Post by Lio »

antipotoad wrote: post #56
Gigachad wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“The great resignation”, “quiet quitting” and now “social quitting” are all instances of the media turning tiny observed trends or even normal operations in to some great names social shift when the reality is not much has changed.

Yet. The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.

My bet would be that the next big social platform will come about when Apple and Google agree an open messaging platform for Android and iOS.

That will at a stroke provide an alternative network to Whatsapp available on every phone and desktop.

Apple is currently resistant but I think they'll come round to the idea once they realise that that they can pretty easily displace Meta from day to day messaging.

Re: Social Quitting

#93

Post by ekianjo »

lanstin wrote: post #25
ekianjo wrote: post #13

> As I type these words, a mass exodus is underway from Twitter and Facebook. No. Given that the number of Twitter users is increasing the premise of this article is false.

Mastodon has seen pretty solid increases in usage rhe last month or so. Certainly a lot of journalists, cs folks, and science people. and i believe Facebook usage has declined to the point it is discussed on earnings calls. Even very large and successful networked media companies can wither away (source: I worked at AOL once) https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias

> Mastodon has seen pretty solid increases in usage rhe last month or so. Certainly a lot of journalists, cs folks, and science people.

Even if it gains 1 million users it will get to a few Million users, it's nothing vs the 250M active users on Twitter. I like Mastodon but let's not pretend it's going to be a major network anytime soon.

Re: Social Quitting

#94

Post by BlueTemplar »

deaddodo wrote: post #46
photochemsyn wrote: post #16

> "Twitter got bought out by a low-attention-span, overconfident billionaire who started pulling out Jenga blocks to see whether the system would fall over, and when it did, we all got crushed by the falling blocks." I've spent years mocking Twitter for it's short character limit (designed IMO for the low-attention-span trend) and the siloizing/bunkering effect of Facebook and groups (where never a contrary opinion i…

> and there's what feels like a lot of algorithmic optimization of engagement going on. Finding interesting and informationally accurate accounts to follow is a bit of a struggle, but once you do it's not too bad. I doubt it was drastically different in the past. I have never been able to use Twitter without this being dropped blatantly on my face. You can't go straight to a Twitter user's profile and read their own…

Yeah, every time I tried to use Twitter, I got the impression to be dropped into some kind of jungle where you couldn't see past a couple feets (posts) before your view getting blocked and you getting lost...

Re: Social Quitting

#95

Post by nehal3m »

orsenthil wrote: post #34

How does this apply to Whatsapp? The way I see, users of whatsapp cannot quit whatsapp. It is like quitting their phone.

I did, because I don't want anything to do with Meta. Back when I used it I typed up a copypasta with the links to installers for the platforms I would be available on from then on. Since then I set up a Matrix server with double puppets for those services to add a layer of obscurity (to throw off surveillance from those platforms, their apps are no longer installed anywhere) and to consolidate all messaging to a single app.

Works well for me, but then a majority of people I talk to already had alternative platforms or installed them for my sake. The people who didn't bother aren't people I had that close a relationship with anyway.

Re: Social Quitting

#96

Post by antipotoad »

Gigachad wrote: post #72
antipotoad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet. The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.

It won’t be HN user freedom social. It’ll be super tiktok. The platform of the year changes but they only get more invasive and more addictive.

My wish is that this big tech cycle has been long enough for us to have collectively learned at least some lessons about what’s desirable and what’s not in such vital communication infrastructure.

Is it really good for human psychology to have these hyper-connected, star-maker platforms so prominent in our lives? Online fame does very strange things to people, warping the way they interact with their actual physical surroundings, and the real people who inhabit them. Brings to mind the girl doing her TikTok dance in the middle of a lecture. It’s quite bizarre, but worth trying to understand.

Anyhow, none of this is to disagree with you, sadly. Except to say, I think there is also appetite for more humane technology, which doesn’t try to sink such deep hooks into us.

Re: Social Quitting

#97

Post by [deleted] »

onion2k wrote: post #86
dibt wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm pretty sure you could pick literally any account... > All twitter users are like this. That's the point. Cory isn't like all users. He has 480k followers. The reality is very few of his followers engage with the tweets. He previously had engagement, he no longer has that engagement, and thinks Twitter is dying. It didn't help that he told his followers to go to mastodon. I really think he doesn't play to the pl…

So the argument here is that if you have few followers or loads of followers then the ratio of views to likes don't matter, or 1% is fine, but if you're in the middle with 480k it's very important and shows that you're out of touch if you only get 1%? That doesn't seem particularly reasonable. If only 1% of users at any level are really engaging with the platform then its fair to say the platform has a problem.

[deleted]

Re: Social Quitting

#98

Post by antipotoad »

Lio wrote: post #92
antipotoad wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet. The builders of the next generation of social tools are doubtless already busy. I’d venture to say we’re looking for the wrong thing, if we’re expecting the Facebook-killer to be another giant platform.

My bet would be that the next big social platform will come about when Apple and Google agree an open messaging platform for Android and iOS. That will at a stroke provide an alternative network to Whatsapp available on every phone and desktop. Apple is currently resistant but I think they'll come round to the idea once they realise that that they can pretty easily displace Meta from day to day messaging.

Hmm. Think you could be right. Question to me is whether they can provide anything compelling beyond stability of identity / ease of connection. That would itself be pretty huge though, so is maybe enough to displace WhatsApp and the like.

Re: Social Quitting

#99

Post by npteljes »

p1esk wrote: post #38
orsenthil wrote: post #34

How does this apply to Whatsapp? The way I see, users of whatsapp cannot quit whatsapp. It is like quitting their phone.

What do you mean? What’s so unique about Whatsapp?

Network effect is what makes these platforms what they are - and what some, like Google Plus, couldn't achieve.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

Re: Social Quitting

#100

Post by kkfx »

travisgriggs wrote: post #37

There’s that old saying “God gave you two ears and one mouth, please use in that proportion.” So much of the social aspect of the internet has been about “giving more people a voice”, and we’ve chased that desire at the blogging, milli-blogging, micro-blogging level. I’m undecided, but I have a hunch that the increase in “speaking” via the internet has not increased at the same level as encouraging people to “listen.…

Two notes:

- we are social animals so we like to interact and depending on where we live and how we live finding similar cohorts of people in desired quantities it's not that easy without some form of telecommunication. Banal example: I like computers, classic desktop systems, Emacs, zsh etc even in a CS faculty I was able to find only a very small cohort of people with a similar "hobby", I like to climb, again finding other climbers is not such hard but also not that immediate, it's not that popular. I like offroad, shooting, downhill MTB, Ski-Alp. All such sports are not that common, finding people with similar interests it's easier with a bigger agorà (like internet, with usenet or the web);

- MODERN social networks have replaced older ones with a far different target: older ones have a simple target, matching people, making them communicate on common areas of interest. Modern ones have the target to profile, project and direct people discussions, isolating, matching some but not others etc. Witch means modern social targets are political and economical AGAINST their users, exploiting their characteristics.

The result is that in modern era people are hyper-connected to someone else computer system, but also hyper-isolated humanly. And that's not a side effect but a target. You can steer even an entire civilization without most noticing or even knowing who you are mastering social interactions.

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