People aren't posting on social media as much
1–10 of 52 posts
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#2I often remark to family and friends that the human race wasn't ready for the capacity for instant communication with 'everyone everywhere all at once' but perhaps that was overly pessimistic and we are developing that muscle. Or is the novelty just wearing off and there are movements to other platforms that aren't represented in the article?
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#3Other than IG envy posts a lot of my younger friends seem to be switching to private or mostly private group chats. A lot of them use Discords even for non-gaming stuff probably due to the illusion of a smaller and more authentic community. Tiktok and YT may be replacing others but those seem much more heavily leaning to watching versus posting as the skill and production of what it takes to look good on it is more effort.
If I had to guess they're getting annoyed at the rapid enshittification push at some of the big platforms. We may see federated mastodon model become more popular once a few celebrities figure it out.
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#4Other than IG envy posts a lot of my younger friends seem to be switching to private or mostly private group chats. A lot of them use Discords even for non-gaming stuff probably due to the illusion of a smaller and more authentic community. Tiktok and YT may be replacing others but those seem much more heavily leaning to watching versus posting as the skill and production of what it takes to look good on it is more e…
A lot of the enshittification is a result of the drop in organic content from friends and needing to maintain engagement numbers. It’s a vicious cycle, possibly a death spiral.
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#5Even disregarding privacy concerns (which you shouldn't!), I stopped posting on social media largely because I'm too argumentative of a person for it.
When arguing is limited to people I see in person, it's a somewhat time-boxed and constrained operation. I typically can only argue with one person for N minutes, and eventually both of us get tired of it and we move on with our lives, but there's always someone wrong on the internet, and a lot of those wrong people love to be wrong publicly on social media. I would always end up arguing with a stupid post that a stupid person on Facebook had, and then someone would chime in in support of me or the person I'd argue with. Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media.
Eventually, it started getting annoying and I deleted my Facebook, and never really looked back. I run a Mastodon instance that I almost never use (but I had to justify the server I bought somehow), I briefly worked at Reddit, and obviously I post a bit on HN which is basically social-media adjacent, but despite all this I never really felt compelled to go back to constantly posting on social media.
I suspect a lot of people have come to similar conclusions. I enjoy talking to my friends, and I do pretty liberally on Signal, but I feel that's sort of in a different category than "social media".
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#6good, hopefully they'll shut down and we'll get back to having communities
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#7People are realizing (again) that their opinions are like some ... body parts
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#8I agree largely with all of the posts here, but the nagging concern in the back of my mind is always: isn't social media still valuable for businesses? Or rather, are you leaving customers "on the table" by ignoring it?
Maybe less so for B2B or "serious" things like WSJ, but for B2C it still sounds like a serious contender. For your dropshipping doohickies or crafted niche fandom doodads, where else do you go? Etsy and Pinterest aren't the norm everywhere. Then there's always the hope of "building a following" around either yourself or your product, or perhaps hitting a viral moment ("use this app to help you ABC 2x faster" by some influencer). Does one just SEO their way around and hope someone with a following gives you a boost or asks for an affiliate program?
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#9Other than IG envy posts a lot of my younger friends seem to be switching to private or mostly private group chats. A lot of them use Discords even for non-gaming stuff probably due to the illusion of a smaller and more authentic community. Tiktok and YT may be replacing others but those seem much more heavily leaning to watching versus posting as the skill and production of what it takes to look good on it is more e…
A lot of the enshittification is a result of the drop in organic content from friends and needing to maintain engagement numbers. It’s a vicious cycle, possibly a death spiral.
I don’t think enshittification entirely explains it.
At least for me, social is exhausting because rage bait drives engagement and I’m tired of being angry all the time. It’s 1984 and the Two Minutes Hate. Instagram was a lot more fun when it was just food and travel. Even without algorithmic feeds, the introduction of revenue sharing and sponsorships means that creators would eventually make the same hateful content to increase clicks and revenue.
Unless of course, you consider revenue sharing enshittification.
Re: People aren't posting on social media as much
#10The great logging off and the cozy web.