6 ms·

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et

I recall being a bit confused about the terms, "social web," and "social network" when they were beginning to be bandied about to discuss Flickr and Facebook et al. The Internet was already a social network. You had irc, nntp, http, ftp, etc etc... communication protocols. For communicating with other humans. The only thing Facebook did, in my experience, was make the web anti-social. I distinctly recall when my group of friends had stopped calling around each week to figure out what we were going to do on the weekend. I was calling people to find out what they were up to... and I got that condescending call to action, just get on Facebook. So I did. I tried it for about a year or two. And it didn't make the web any better or more social for me. It would recommend events to attend and I'd go... but people would just be in their cliques not talking to anyone outside of their groups. Even learning about upcoming concerts and events required a Facebook account. People stopped calling and hanging out. It was all very passive: like, like, comment, meme, har, har. So I closed down my Facebook account and haven't used it since 2009 or so. The "social web" has only become more anti-social. Most of these web services made quite a lot of interesting innovations and such but I can't help but wonder what the web would've been like if we'd stayed true to its roots and improved the protocols and infrastructure instead of centralizing everything behind walled gardens.

lyra_comms 9y ago
It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction
- ukulele 9y ago
  > advertising should not corrode conversation. You really followed this with a link to your website?
  - pipio21 9y ago
    Why downvoting you for stating the obvious contradiction? We humans apply double standards for others and for us.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
  - inimino 9y ago
    You really can't see the difference between the kind of advertising this guy is complaining about and a link to a personal website / manifesto complaining about advertising? Really?
    - wehere111 9y ago
      lol that's not a personal website...
  - nitrogen 9y ago
    Tactful self promotion used to be accepted and encouraged on HN. (No comment on whether this comment fits that description)
  - lyra_comms 9y ago
    Yes, we did! Self-promotion in a relevant context (in a discussion of a worsening problem which affects many) is a very different undertaking than paid, off-topic advertising.
- watwut 9y ago
  The period since Enlightenment in West contains two world wars, genocide, nationalists movements, monarchy keeping in power through censorship, revolutionary attempts, KKK ... All of them totally full of critical thinking and self-determination for sure.
  - lyra_comms 9y ago
    These aren't developments that should be encouraged. The political influence of targeted advertising on social media has encouraged and enabled several nationalist movements. We believe that the lack of an open communication platform makes accessing and discussing complex ideas, whether ethical or political, much harder.
- reificator 9y ago
  > advertising should not corrode conversation. > Viva la revolucion! > www.hellolyra.com/introduction
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drngdds 9y ago
  Ironically, the only thing that came up when I googled Lyra Communications was a digital marketing agency with the same name. That's unlucky.
  - lyra_comms 9y ago
    We did research the name in advance and we're happy with it; we're not concerned that another company shares it.
amelius 9y ago
> Most of these web services made quite a lot of interesting innovations and such but I can't help but wonder what the web would've been like if we'd stayed true to its roots and improved the protocols and infrastructure instead of centralizing everything behind walled gardens. In my view, we should let academia develop the protocols, and let companies deliver the basic tools (such as hardware). This makes sure that innovation happens in a way that people find useful (not serving advertisement/shareholder goals), and also keeps data out of the hands of companies (because universities will develop federated protocols to keep data safe, and companies actually have no business looking into our data). This would be a quite bit like how the internet worked in the old days (with universities and government agencies running the internet, and companies providing the hardware).
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- maehwasu 9y ago
  > In my view, we should let academia develop the protocols, and let companies deliver the basic tools (such as hardware). This makes sure that innovation happens in a way that people find useful (not serving advertisement/shareholder goals), and also keeps data out of the hands of companies (because universities will develop federated protocols to keep data safe, and companies actually have no business looking into our data). And what would you do if companies wanted to develop protocols, and people wanted to use them? The verb "let" sounds very innocuous here, but this is poorly thought-out at best, and extremely sinister at worst.
gaius 9y ago
I only recently cut the cord myself, my thoughts on it https://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-books/ https://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/less-facebook-mor...
rahoulb 9y ago
> Most of these web services made quite a lot of interesting innovations and such but I can't help but wonder what the web would've been like if we'd stayed true to its roots and improved the protocols and infrastructure instead of centralizing everything behind walled gardens. These walled gardens were built on top of the open web and they are winning (at least at the moment). How would you stop them from taking over? Regulation?
batbomb 9y ago
It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough that you would never interact with them. At that point, you could click on anything in anybody's profile and you'd be able to find people who self-identified with that tag, be it music, movies, or anything else. Most of these people were average computer users, they weren't denizens of LiveJournal/Xanga/internet forums, but they were possibly acquainted with Myspace, which was already a ghetto by 2004. I had friends who were disappointed by the fact that you couldn't style your Facebook page (or track who was visiting your profile). Facebook cleaned up the mess that was Myspace and made it palatable and connecting easy. Over time, Facebook preferred connecting you to people already in your IRL social network instead of new people, and that's when it started getting boring.
- agentultra 9y ago
  I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social. But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we socialized quite a lot using existing technology. It just seems like the Facebook hype-train carried us along and abandoned protocols for services. And the centralization brought along everything with it: the need for users and stickiness sucked up a lot of effort that could've been spent elsewhere but wasn't. So I wonder what the Internet would be like today if instead we had developed the protocols to work around their short-comings rather than went on the path we did, that's all.
  - 13of40 9y ago
    In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.
bluedino 9y ago
Facebook did two things: make everyone part of the network (from your grandma to your 9 year old nephew), and made it not nerdy to use. the raw web, irc, newsgroups, were all for nerds.
- wolfgke 9y ago
  > Facebook did two things: make everyone part of the network (from your grandma to your 9 year old nephew) This "everybody" clearly does not include privacy-conscious people.
bowlich 9y ago
This last year I made the connection that Facebook only provided the illusion that I was socializing with past friends. Sure, I know what is going on in the lives of my buddies from high school and college. I know when they have a kid, bought a house, that they switched jobs, that they moved out to Denver, etc. But I realized that I had learned all of this through passive consumption. With the exception of three close friends, the vast majority of my "friends" list are people who I haven't directly messaged, spoken to, or even written on their "wall" in ten years. At this junction, I'm more of a voyeur into their lives then an actual participant. I haven't deleted my FB account, but I have stopped browsing it. I've started to pick out people who I would really like to re-connect with and then using the platform to start real conversation with people and perhaps drop in for lunch when I pass through their cities. And then perhaps, un-friend everyone not important enough to my life to value maintaining that kind of a connection.
type0 9y ago
I share your sentiments, I remember those "social networks" i.e. forums, irc, etc being a place that actually were centered around social activities. In the late 90s and early 2000s there were numerous communities with their own flare and "internet culture" (in a positive way), they facilitated local meet-ups and were genuinely friendly to new members. Even though users were pseudonymous there wasn't as much hostility as it is now behind the real names on fb, probably because those communities were small and you users actually knew each other. I'm not sure what happened, maybe bullies and jocks found their way to the web, maybe everyone just suddenly became superficial, maybe it's generational changes, who knows... It's sad in a way, there are glimpses of hope emerging, like matrix and mastodon. Fb has eaten the social networks as I knew it and it came out of the other end to the point that I sometimes call it faecesbook, that summaries it well for me.

lyra_comms 9y ago

It's absolutely hearbreaking to see the independence, critical thinking and self-determination that Western society has been building up since the Enlightenment, weakening under the forces of big data and targeted advertising. Communication should be open, profit should not be involved in discourse, and advertising should not corrode conversation. Viva la revolucion! www.hellolyra.com/introduction

ukulele 9y ago
> advertising should not corrode conversation. You really followed this with a link to your website?
- pipio21 9y ago
  Why downvoting you for stating the obvious contradiction? We humans apply double standards for others and for us.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- inimino 9y ago
  You really can't see the difference between the kind of advertising this guy is complaining about and a link to a personal website / manifesto complaining about advertising? Really?
  - wehere111 9y ago
    lol that's not a personal website...
- nitrogen 9y ago
  Tactful self promotion used to be accepted and encouraged on HN. (No comment on whether this comment fits that description)
- lyra_comms 9y ago
  Yes, we did! Self-promotion in a relevant context (in a discussion of a worsening problem which affects many) is a very different undertaking than paid, off-topic advertising.
watwut 9y ago
The period since Enlightenment in West contains two world wars, genocide, nationalists movements, monarchy keeping in power through censorship, revolutionary attempts, KKK ... All of them totally full of critical thinking and self-determination for sure.
- lyra_comms 9y ago
  These aren't developments that should be encouraged. The political influence of targeted advertising on social media has encouraged and enabled several nationalist movements. We believe that the lack of an open communication platform makes accessing and discussing complex ideas, whether ethical or political, much harder.
reificator 9y ago
> advertising should not corrode conversation. > Viva la revolucion! > www.hellolyra.com/introduction
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
drngdds 9y ago
Ironically, the only thing that came up when I googled Lyra Communications was a digital marketing agency with the same name. That's unlucky.
- lyra_comms 9y ago
  We did research the name in advance and we're happy with it; we're not concerned that another company shares it.

amelius 9y ago

> Most of these web services made quite a lot of interesting innovations and such but I can't help but wonder what the web would've been like if we'd stayed true to its roots and improved the protocols and infrastructure instead of centralizing everything behind walled gardens. In my view, we should let academia develop the protocols, and let companies deliver the basic tools (such as hardware). This makes sure that innovation happens in a way that people find useful (not serving advertisement/shareholder goals), and also keeps data out of the hands of companies (because universities will develop federated protocols to keep data safe, and companies actually have no business looking into our data). This would be a quite bit like how the internet worked in the old days (with universities and government agencies running the internet, and companies providing the hardware).

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
maehwasu 9y ago
> In my view, we should let academia develop the protocols, and let companies deliver the basic tools (such as hardware). This makes sure that innovation happens in a way that people find useful (not serving advertisement/shareholder goals), and also keeps data out of the hands of companies (because universities will develop federated protocols to keep data safe, and companies actually have no business looking into our data). And what would you do if companies wanted to develop protocols, and people wanted to use them? The verb "let" sounds very innocuous here, but this is poorly thought-out at best, and extremely sinister at worst.

gaius 9y ago

I only recently cut the cord myself, my thoughts on it https://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/less-facebook-more-faces-and-books/ https://gaiustech.wordpress.com/2017/12/29/less-facebook-mor...

rahoulb 9y ago

batbomb 9y ago

It's a bit disingenuous to pretend (The) Facebook didn't do anything to connect people. Maybe it's because I graduated High School in 2003, but in early 2005 it was amazing to be able to connect to people you either went to high school with or went to your own university, people who were often living parallel lives but you just didn't know because your high school friends went out-of-state or college was large enough that you would never interact with them. At that point, you could click on anything in anybody's profile and you'd be able to find people who self-identified with that tag, be it music, movies, or anything else. Most of these people were average computer users, they weren't denizens of LiveJournal/Xanga/internet forums, but they were possibly acquainted with Myspace, which was already a ghetto by 2004. I had friends who were disappointed by the fact that you couldn't style your Facebook page (or track who was visiting your profile). Facebook cleaned up the mess that was Myspace and made it palatable and connecting easy. Over time, Facebook preferred connecting you to people already in your IRL social network instead of new people, and that's when it started getting boring.

agentultra 9y ago
I'm not pretending that it didn't do anything to connect people. It did. In my anecdote the friends who stopped calling around started using Facebook to organize our activities together. But therein was the problem for me: nobody had to actively maintain relationships that way. Socializing became a spectator sport. Passive. It became anti-social. But prior to its existence I still had plenty of friends and we socialized quite a lot using existing technology. It just seems like the Facebook hype-train carried us along and abandoned protocols for services. And the centralization brought along everything with it: the need for users and stickiness sucked up a lot of effort that could've been spent elsewhere but wasn't. So I wonder what the Internet would be like today if instead we had developed the protocols to work around their short-comings rather than went on the path we did, that's all.
- 13of40 9y ago
  In my experience, the "calling around" thing was something that started when everyone got a cellphone. Prior to about 1999, folks would actually just drop by your house unannounced sometimes.

bluedino 9y ago

Facebook did two things: make everyone part of the network (from your grandma to your 9 year old nephew), and made it not nerdy to use. the raw web, irc, newsgroups, were all for nerds.

wolfgke 9y ago
> Facebook did two things: make everyone part of the network (from your grandma to your 9 year old nephew) This "everybody" clearly does not include privacy-conscious people.

bowlich 9y ago

This last year I made the connection that Facebook only provided the illusion that I was socializing with past friends. Sure, I know what is going on in the lives of my buddies from high school and college. I know when they have a kid, bought a house, that they switched jobs, that they moved out to Denver, etc. But I realized that I had learned all of this through passive consumption. With the exception of three close friends, the vast majority of my "friends" list are people who I haven't directly messaged, spoken to, or even written on their "wall" in ten years. At this junction, I'm more of a voyeur into their lives then an actual participant. I haven't deleted my FB account, but I have stopped browsing it. I've started to pick out people who I would really like to re-connect with and then using the platform to start real conversation with people and perhaps drop in for lunch when I pass through their cities. And then perhaps, un-friend everyone not important enough to my life to value maintaining that kind of a connection.

type0 9y ago

I share your sentiments, I remember those "social networks" i.e. forums, irc, etc being a place that actually were centered around social activities. In the late 90s and early 2000s there were numerous communities with their own flare and "internet culture" (in a positive way), they facilitated local meet-ups and were genuinely friendly to new members. Even though users were pseudonymous there wasn't as much hostility as it is now behind the real names on fb, probably because those communities were small and you users actually knew each other. I'm not sure what happened, maybe bullies and jocks found their way to the web, maybe everyone just suddenly became superficial, maybe it's generational changes, who knows... It's sad in a way, there are glimpses of hope emerging, like matrix and mastodon. Fb has eaten the social networks as I knew it and it came out of the other end to the point that I sometimes call it faecesbook, that summaries it well for me.