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Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than

Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early days and they were completely different than they way they are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one cared about “likes”. I think a lot of the problems with social media today could be solved just by removing “the numbers.” If suddenly all the like, follower, following, and comment counts disappeared I suspect people would use these things fundamentally differently. I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago
The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years
- themagician 8y ago
  In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO. Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones that were taken with the camera itself. Instagram now is no different than Facebook or any other generic network, it’s just the biggest. The content is nonsensical and people will eventually get bored of it. At some point I think it occurs to every user, “why am I even doing this” and they bounce, so it always requires new users coming in to grow the userbase. IG is now easy, from a technical standpoint, to replace as it has no real identity. Just let people post whatever for internet points. Socially it’s hard to topple, but that’s hard to defend long term and somewhat out of your control. I just don’t see how or why IG exists ten years from now. For what? At least in its original incarnation it had a purpose, however niche, which might have had some long term viability. I think the best example of this is probably looking at the Chinese social apps like YY, Inke and Meipai. A billion people who don’t give a shit about Kylie Jenner and are developing apps with far more interesting features than anything we have.
  - ohnoesmyscv 8y ago
    IG content isn’t nonsensical IMO. The content on IG is generally of higher quality and visually curated. It’s also a better platform for showcasing your brand if you’re in the ecommerce space than FB Pages for example. Granted, there are accounts that are dedicated to memes and other ‘nonsensical’ content, but you get much more of that on FB. Putting IG in the same trash pile that FB is in is unfair.
    - Apocryphon 8y ago
      However, Instagram's reliance on the number of views, likes, followers, and so on still puts it in the same category as Facebook and its likes, Twitter and its retweets and favorites, LinkedIn and its likes and comments, YouTube and its upvotes and comments and subscribes... and so on. It's still a metric-driven network, even if the content happens to be better. And what is showcasing your brand if not grinding for better numbers?
    - themagician 8y ago
      It’s only for ecommerce. You are either selling a product or selling yourself for likes. Every post is an ad. The amount of sharing that happens the today on IG is the same amount of sharing that happens when you watch a TV commercial. It’s nuanced, but fundamental different from the photo sharing sites that came before it like Flickr. The share button may as well be replaced with “Promote” because that’s what it is.
amag 8y ago
> I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing. This. If nothing else scared me away from social networks the mind-numbing scroll-like-scroll-like behavior I see the users/addicts exhibit sure does.
DanielBMarkham 8y ago
Also sharing. Taking the time to save a link/picture, go to another site, and typing in a description and comments on material? Great. Seeing a cat picture and instantaneously clicking "share"? Screw that. That kind of behavior is in the website's interest, not mine. It creates an endless stream of slightly-interesting material from people I know, just enough to keep me watching but not enough to feel like anything got done. Spending time doing something compulsively that later you realize was a waste of time, then doing it again? That's addiction. I don't know what kind of addiction it is. It's certainly less addictive than opiods. But it's no doubt addictive -- and it is currently affecting billions of people worldwide. It's an amazing amount of societal damage that nobody will ever be able to quantify. We'll never know the books that weren't read, the inventions that weren't made, or the people that weren't helped because somebody was watching social media. (And before somebody talks about how great it is to have the planet connected, it is! Being able to communicate and research is nowhere near the same thing as having your head stuck in your phone eight hours a day)
- themagician 8y ago
  The planet was just connected before Facebook with AIM or ICQ. Perhaps moreso, really, since you actually had to talk to people.
- njarboe 8y ago
  Most people in the US spend an amazing amount of time watching TV. The average for adults is about 5 hours a day[1]. Not sure if I really believe these numbers, as many people have the TV on when doing something else (I hope), but most people don't choose to do something "productive" with their free time. Is social media better that TV? I would say social media has more value and is more likely to cause damage, but avoiding both is probably a good idea. I try not to eat much ice cream either. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption
  - some_account 8y ago
    I think it's because work makes people tired so all they want to do is rest, and then tv comes on....
joe_the_user 8y ago
I'm one Facebook a lot and even on the rather leftward side and I don't experience any extreme toxicity (though I hear a lot about it). Some of my friends care about likes but mostly when they feel they're being ignored. I administer a large-ish group where respectful discussion is non-negotiable. It works, it serves it's purpose. I think "good moderation" is basically the answer for toxicity.
- mng42 8y ago
  Agree-> 'good moderation'
  - reciprocity 8y ago
    Please put more substance in your comments.
- blueicecubes 8y ago
  > "good moderation" pun intended
Apocryphon 8y ago
Funnily enough, Snapchat doesn't seem to have this particular downside. It has points/scoring, but they were always somewhat hidden away and I'm not sure if anyone took them very seriously. Like the rest of the app's UX, and sort of ranking cryptic and obfuscated (like the emojis signifying how your friends compared to you) and not made into an emphasis.
- themagician 8y ago
  You’re right.
- incompatible 8y ago
  I had the impression some people were obsessed with the "streak" feature on Snapchat.
  - adjkant 8y ago
    A streak is a 1-5 minute thing at most for those who are obsessed with it. Many people in that category send out a single "streak" snap to everyone they have a streak with. You can't spend the same 20 minutes of Instagram scrolling with streaks. I don't think it's a completely harmless thing, but it's not in the same category at all.
  - pubutil 8y ago
    I know people who are obsessed with maintaining streaks on Snapchat, but I see the effects of a streak as different from the effects of the likes and shares mentioned above. While both mechanisms encourage users to use their platform more, keeping a Snapchat streak with friends puts an emphasis on actually communicating with individual people instead of blasting content across the platform. Whether or not that communication between individuals is high-quality will vary from person to person, though.
  - kristofferR 8y ago
    https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834 https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834
- 8y ago
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Jedd 8y ago
> ... the ways I used Twitter [etc] > ... completely different than they way they are used today. Are you conflating the way that you would interact with a social media site, and the way that most people would -- rather than comparing both sets of people over time? TFA's focus is on the addictive aspect of FB (etc) -- and clearly FB (etc) are constantly improving their psychological toolkit in order to obtain and retain eyeballs -- but I don't think the quantifying of likes is the main tool in their kit. Worse, they're not likely to voluntarily reduce the efficacy of their methods.
peterxpark 8y ago
For FB, there's Facebook Demetricator which removes all those #s, works only for desktop browsers unfortunately. Not affiliated in any way, just a fan and surprised I only discovered it very recently. https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/
- demetricator 8y ago
  Thanks for mentioning (I created the Demetricator). For those interested, I also have one for Twitter and one for Instagram (both desktop browser-based only). https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/instagram-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/instagram-demetricator/
simmanian 8y ago
My experience with Facebook "in the early days" is different in that I very much cared about how many likes I got on my posts and updates, whereas now I absolutely do not care.
bachbach 8y ago
And using real names and real photographs ironically makes most of us less genuine.
blablabla123 8y ago
> Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the > ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early > days and they were completely different than they way they > are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one > cared about “likes”. Yup, also when considering how this all evolved. Before that there were Newsgroups (mega techy) and various online forums/chats. They were a little trashy but people were very engaged. On the other hand pseudonymity was omnipresent, Facebook was the first big one to change that. Now there are far more users and far less online communities.

TAForObvReasons 8y ago

The problem is that the numbers obsession is what drives KPI. Without the "internet points" people wouldn't spend as much time on those sites grinding points, leading to less ad revenue. The economics are fully aligned with the user behavior we see now, and many psychologists and others warned about this over the years

themagician 8y ago
In the short term I agree with you. But it decreases the long term value and utility of the platform IMO. Take Instagram. It used to be a platform for posting pictures. It was a digital version of Polaroid—an “instant” camera. When you look on Instagram now it’s core functionality and differentiation is basically gone. When you look on the explore tab you are hard pressed to find any photos at all, let alone ones that were taken with the camera itself. Instagram now is no different than Facebook or any other generic network, it’s just the biggest. The content is nonsensical and people will eventually get bored of it. At some point I think it occurs to every user, “why am I even doing this” and they bounce, so it always requires new users coming in to grow the userbase. IG is now easy, from a technical standpoint, to replace as it has no real identity. Just let people post whatever for internet points. Socially it’s hard to topple, but that’s hard to defend long term and somewhat out of your control. I just don’t see how or why IG exists ten years from now. For what? At least in its original incarnation it had a purpose, however niche, which might have had some long term viability. I think the best example of this is probably looking at the Chinese social apps like YY, Inke and Meipai. A billion people who don’t give a shit about Kylie Jenner and are developing apps with far more interesting features than anything we have.
- ohnoesmyscv 8y ago
  IG content isn’t nonsensical IMO. The content on IG is generally of higher quality and visually curated. It’s also a better platform for showcasing your brand if you’re in the ecommerce space than FB Pages for example. Granted, there are accounts that are dedicated to memes and other ‘nonsensical’ content, but you get much more of that on FB. Putting IG in the same trash pile that FB is in is unfair.
  - Apocryphon 8y ago
    However, Instagram's reliance on the number of views, likes, followers, and so on still puts it in the same category as Facebook and its likes, Twitter and its retweets and favorites, LinkedIn and its likes and comments, YouTube and its upvotes and comments and subscribes... and so on. It's still a metric-driven network, even if the content happens to be better. And what is showcasing your brand if not grinding for better numbers?
  - themagician 8y ago
    It’s only for ecommerce. You are either selling a product or selling yourself for likes. Every post is an ad. The amount of sharing that happens the today on IG is the same amount of sharing that happens when you watch a TV commercial. It’s nuanced, but fundamental different from the photo sharing sites that came before it like Flickr. The share button may as well be replaced with “Promote” because that’s what it is.

amag 8y ago

> I see people browsing through IG tapping to like for 20 minutes at a time and think to myself, “why are you even doing that?” It’s a compulsion that does nothing. This. If nothing else scared me away from social networks the mind-numbing scroll-like-scroll-like behavior I see the users/addicts exhibit sure does.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago

Also sharing. Taking the time to save a link/picture, go to another site, and typing in a description and comments on material? Great. Seeing a cat picture and instantaneously clicking "share"? Screw that. That kind of behavior is in the website's interest, not mine. It creates an endless stream of slightly-interesting material from people I know, just enough to keep me watching but not enough to feel like anything got done. Spending time doing something compulsively that later you realize was a waste of time, then doing it again? That's addiction. I don't know what kind of addiction it is. It's certainly less addictive than opiods. But it's no doubt addictive -- and it is currently affecting billions of people worldwide. It's an amazing amount of societal damage that nobody will ever be able to quantify. We'll never know the books that weren't read, the inventions that weren't made, or the people that weren't helped because somebody was watching social media. (And before somebody talks about how great it is to have the planet connected, it is! Being able to communicate and research is nowhere near the same thing as having your head stuck in your phone eight hours a day)

themagician 8y ago
The planet was just connected before Facebook with AIM or ICQ. Perhaps moreso, really, since you actually had to talk to people.
njarboe 8y ago
Most people in the US spend an amazing amount of time watching TV. The average for adults is about 5 hours a day[1]. Not sure if I really believe these numbers, as many people have the TV on when doing something else (I hope), but most people don't choose to do something "productive" with their free time. Is social media better that TV? I would say social media has more value and is more likely to cause damage, but avoiding both is probably a good idea. I try not to eat much ice cream either. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption
- some_account 8y ago
  I think it's because work makes people tired so all they want to do is rest, and then tv comes on....

joe_the_user 8y ago

I'm one Facebook a lot and even on the rather leftward side and I don't experience any extreme toxicity (though I hear a lot about it). Some of my friends care about likes but mostly when they feel they're being ignored. I administer a large-ish group where respectful discussion is non-negotiable. It works, it serves it's purpose. I think "good moderation" is basically the answer for toxicity.

mng42 8y ago
Agree-> 'good moderation'
- reciprocity 8y ago
  Please put more substance in your comments.
blueicecubes 8y ago
> "good moderation" pun intended

Apocryphon 8y ago

Funnily enough, Snapchat doesn't seem to have this particular downside. It has points/scoring, but they were always somewhat hidden away and I'm not sure if anyone took them very seriously. Like the rest of the app's UX, and sort of ranking cryptic and obfuscated (like the emojis signifying how your friends compared to you) and not made into an emphasis.

themagician 8y ago
You’re right.
incompatible 8y ago
I had the impression some people were obsessed with the "streak" feature on Snapchat.
- adjkant 8y ago
  A streak is a 1-5 minute thing at most for those who are obsessed with it. Many people in that category send out a single "streak" snap to everyone they have a streak with. You can't spend the same 20 minutes of Instagram scrolling with streaks. I don't think it's a completely harmless thing, but it's not in the same category at all.
- pubutil 8y ago
  I know people who are obsessed with maintaining streaks on Snapchat, but I see the effects of a streak as different from the effects of the likes and shares mentioned above. While both mechanisms encourage users to use their platform more, keeping a Snapchat streak with friends puts an emphasis on actually communicating with individual people instead of blasting content across the platform. Whether or not that communication between individuals is high-quality will vary from person to person, though.
- kristofferR 8y ago
  https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834 https://www.nrk.no/slukt-av-snap-1.13811834
8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Jedd 8y ago

> ... the ways I used Twitter [etc] > ... completely different than they way they are used today. Are you conflating the way that you would interact with a social media site, and the way that most people would -- rather than comparing both sets of people over time? TFA's focus is on the addictive aspect of FB (etc) -- and clearly FB (etc) are constantly improving their psychological toolkit in order to obtain and retain eyeballs -- but I don't think the quantifying of likes is the main tool in their kit. Worse, they're not likely to voluntarily reduce the efficacy of their methods.

peterxpark 8y ago

For FB, there's Facebook Demetricator which removes all those #s, works only for desktop browsers unfortunately. Not affiliated in any way, just a fan and surprised I only discovered it very recently. https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/facebook-demetricator/

demetricator 8y ago
Thanks for mentioning (I created the Demetricator). For those interested, I also have one for Twitter and one for Instagram (both desktop browser-based only). https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/twitter-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/instagram-demetricator/ https://bengrosser.com/projects/instagram-demetricator/

simmanian 8y ago

My experience with Facebook "in the early days" is different in that I very much cared about how many likes I got on my posts and updates, whereas now I absolutely do not care.

bachbach 8y ago

And using real names and real photographs ironically makes most of us less genuine.

blablabla123 8y ago

> Social media wasn’t always like this. I think back to the > ways I used Twitter, Facebook and Instagram in the early > days and they were completely different than they way they > are used today. They were personal, real time, and no one > cared about “likes”. Yup, also when considering how this all evolved. Before that there were Newsgroups (mega techy) and various online forums/chats. They were a little trashy but people were very engaged. On the other hand pseudonymity was omnipresent, Facebook was the first big one to change that. Now there are far more users and far less online communities.