91–100 of 112 posts
If some social media website has no community, and has only negative effects for its users, but makes money, that is a positive outcome for its owners.
It's a net negative for society perhaps, but the owners don't have to care about that part.
After reading this I wonder if ifMud has survived 29 years because we use a modified perlMud that has an IRC-like channel communication system. We’re not beholden to any commercial service and the mud is self-hosted by the community (generally the IFTF - IF Technology Foundation). No one could disrupt our community the way Discord or Reddit might.
When thinking about online communities I think the lack of "global" identities has dramatically hampered community migration and evolution. I fully agree with the author that you can't just pick up and move a community wholesale but irl we do see patterns of migration, disaporas, etc that bring along with them relationships and trust networks. That's been basically impossible to do online. The networks where most of…
I can’t disagree with this more. Even on discord I have four accounts for different contexts. One, my real name. Another, my gaming name. Another, my music/stage name. Another still, a different gaming name. Why? Because I don’t want people in any of those contexts knowing anything about who I am in the other contexts. This is a feature, not a bug.
After reading this I wonder if ifMud has survived 29 years because we use a modified perlMud that has an IRC-like channel communication system. We’re not beholden to any commercial service and the mud is self-hosted by the community (generally the IFTF - IF Technology Foundation). No one could disrupt our community the way Discord or Reddit might.
many muds have/had those. there is intermud too. i guess ifmud just had the critical mass to keep people interested in communicating even though they stopped playing.
Communities are not fungible, but they are also not permanent. Because humans are mobile, the community changes as people, institutions, infrastructure, and industries come and go over time. Even if a substantial fraction of the population never leaves the geographic boundaries that contain the community they were born in, their web of relationships constantly changes as old neighbors leave and new neighbors arrive,…
Like many technical people, my personality naturally gravitates towards introverted behavior. I am very comfortable being alone for long periods of time, and in spending my day writing code or fixing bugs with just me and my computer. But I also enjoy interacting with other people. It just takes the right 'community' to draw me out of my shell. There have been periods of my life when I was outgoing, because I was in…
But frankly it's best for everyone, the isolated computer age has made in person get togethers have friction when they historically have had zero friction and were just things we did along the way.
This is part of why I love going to NYC, as long as you understand and respect the local rules it's an incredibly positive, effortless social area, so much pleasant casual interaction.
Human communities (even digital ones) ultimately have the character of an ecological system IMO (albeit in a more allegorical sense). What the author calls fungibility I might call conservation; weird Twitter accounts "migrating" to Bluesky is sort of like pandas surviving primarily in zoos. Some element of the original system is kept, but ultimately the "conservation" is more like "recreation" or "homage" rather than truly freezing the system in amber. Does that mean that it's futile to try? Or is there some sense in which we can have meaningful translation of the relationship web from one medium to the next? Maybe we don't even care about maintaining the system; if it's just the biodiversity we prize then maybe pandas in zoos forever is enough.
I don't think this is adding anything new to what the author is saying per se, but I find the parallels interesting to muse about.
Communities are not fungible, but they are also not permanent. Because humans are mobile, the community changes as people, institutions, infrastructure, and industries come and go over time. Even if a substantial fraction of the population never leaves the geographic boundaries that contain the community they were born in, their web of relationships constantly changes as old neighbors leave and new neighbors arrive,…
Everything has to evolve to progress. We can’t just say protect community at all cost because it also means you must prevent expansion and improvement of the status quo of other quality of life metrics.
Two things this reminds me of. I was once part of a "traveling" community that would sign up for every new platform. A good few tech bloggers among us. We would meet again and again but the community still failed long term despite everyone artificially trying to make it work. I got one good friend out of it, whom I never talk to. I one time tried to root in a new city, I talk with everyone, buy cups of coffee for rel…