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Social networks are no longer social
- lazyjones 8y agoThis article brought to you by the Oath network, a faceless media conglomerate that slaps a hostile privacy policy in your face when you dare click on such links and asks you to agree to their dubious handling of personal information and preferences. The social aspect of the Internet used to be about people communicating with people. Today it's about large corporations deciding how you interact, who gets to know about it and what consequences it'll have for your life in the following decades. Disgusting.
- octosphere 8y agoOutline to the rescue: https://outline.com/2XKLG2 https://outline.com/2XKLG2
- Kye 8y agoOutline's ToS and privacy policy are collectively almost 2000 words.
- androidgirl 8y agoTo be fair, even on small sites I have written, Privacy Policies can get truly huge due to the boilerplate. Most of my sites have Google Analytics that gets disabled when DNT is turned on. That plus server logs for fail2ban and DoS protection easily bumps the policy to 500 words. Do you use cookies for storing basic session data? That's more. Run ads or use affiliate links? That's even more. There's limit to a sane Privacy Policy, but all of this is rudimentary, common stuff.
- dkersten 8y agoYeah. That privacy policy really put me off any of their sites.
- mtgx 8y agoRejoice, Verizon's content acquisitions have turned into complete and utter disasters and Verizon announced that it will exit the content business (A Reuters article I can't seem to find now said so): https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-yahoo-aol-divisions-are-almost-worthless-n946846 https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/verizon-signals-its-y... The funny thing is Marissa Mayer made more from the deal than Yahoo is now worth for Verizon: https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-mayer-severance-stock-verizon/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/investing/yahoo-marissa-may... And she got a severance paycheck that's also worth 10% of Verizon's content business now.
- snovv_crash 8y agoThe money she made was due to the Alibaba investment, not the content business.
- jiveturkey 8y agoyeah, i use adblocker so i have never supported them (except in viewer counts) but as of a few months ago i stopped reading them altogether. thanks for the reminder why.
- a_imho 8y agoThe EU should really swing its GDPR stick around. Can someone shed some light on why the e.g Oath Family has not been hit with a serious fine yet? The violation is clear as a day.
- bogomipz 8y agoCould you elaborate? Aren't those ToS/Privacy Policy displays there in order to satisfy GDPR requirements? I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. I don't claim to be that well-versed in GDPR law however but genuinely curious.
- a_imho 8y agoIanal but I don't think so. Without nitpicking all the finer details how Oath/Techcrunch fails (probably very much willingly) to comply, their wall of text is a bad excuse for informed consent. Eg I still have no idea what data they collect and who they share it with or how can I opt-out (itself is non compliant btw, but I'm assuming industry best practices here) I thought the idea was that you could either agree to accept them and continue or decline. IIRC forced/umbrella consent like that is explicitly forbidden.
- paraditedc 8y agoErr, the tone is way too personal. This kind of editorial rants reminds me of articles on medium.
- j45 8y agoThoughts alone aren't relevant, feelings have a valid place too.
- evrydayhustling 8y agoI love this take. When we can get past the breathless danger of social networks (which, to some, spells "opportunity"), we can treat their failure modes for what they are: systems acting as boorish neighbors. The most scalable defenses against exploitation of social networks will be distributed cultural notions of etiquette, self determination and even hygiene - not instantly-out-of-date regulation or even technological solutions (although a strong cultural take on owning your information landscape will inspire it's own technical opportunities) I hope my kids will find it kind of gross and embarrassing to be caught up in somebody's disinformation, rather than lending it credibility as enemy action.
- PavlovsCat 8y agofrom http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/ http://blog.pinboard.in/2011/11/the_social_graph_is_neither/ > Right now the social networking sites occupy a similar position to CompuServe, Prodigy, or AOL in the mid 90's. At that time each company was trying to figure out how to become a mass-market gateway to the Internet. Looking back now, their early attempts look ridiculous and doomed to failure, for we have seen the Web, and we have tasted of the blogroll and the lolcat and found that they were good. > But at the time no one knew what it would feel like to have a big global network. We were all waiting for the Information Superhighway to arrive in our TV set, and meanwhile these big sites were trying to design an online experience from the ground up. Thank God we left ourselves the freedom to blunder into the series of fortuitous decisions that gave us the Web. > My hope is that whatever replaces Facebook and Google+ will look equally inevitable, and that our kids will think we were complete rubes for ever having thrown a sheep or clicked a +1 button. It's just a matter of waiting things out, and leaving ourselves enough freedom to find some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online.
- Swizec 8y ago> some interesting, organic, and human ways to bring our social lives online. Let me introduce you to The Private Group Chat where 90% of online social activity happens between people under 30. It’s rrally quite fascinating. It’s everything Google+ wanted to be, but totally organic, apread over dozens of chat apps and services, and without the big brother oversight.
- yooooooooopoo 8y agoThe year media were no longer media.
- nqi 8y agohttps://twitter.com/romaindillet/status/1067418103452192768 https://twitter.com/romaindillet/status/1067418103452192768 Of all the things to complain... What a lousy article.
- baybal2 8y agoI believe we should start calling them as antisocial networks from now on
- pcurve 8y agoThe article mentions of days when you were anonymous, getting to know strangers through common interests and exchanging ideas. I do miss those early days. For me, social network stopped being social as soon as reasonable assurance of anonymity when out the window once companies started pressuring people use their real identity, and that became the norm.
- gnomodromo 8y agoI have a news site with a comment section where you don't need an account to chat, the messages disappear after a while. Maybe I'll add accounts when there are many users, but there are no users yet :) http://www.uptopnews.com http://www.uptopnews.com
- octosphere 8y agoYou can still be anonymous on Facebook if you use their onion service[1]. Although I think you can't register for an account under Tor, which is counter intuitive (I mean why would you offer a Tor hidden service if you can't register under it?). In that case I would register using a 3G/GSM IP which many people share (instead of a unique IP where few people share it); and then, once registered, proceed to browse Facebook with their hidden service. Just be careful, because if you are using Facebook with Tor, you run the risk of outing your real identity from things like your social graph, search queries, likes, and other metadata. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookcorewwwi.onion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebookcorewwwi.onion
- saagarjha 8y ago> Facebook has been applauded for allowing such access, which makes it available in countries that actively try to block Facebook I’m not sure how I feel about this…
- flyinghamster 8y ago> In that case I would register using a 3G/GSM IP which many people share Be careful... some cell providers use IPv6 these days. T-Mobile US gives me an IPv6 address and a 192.0.0.x CGNAT address.
- werds 8y agoSurprised that he doesn't mention Reddit, where the lost communities he described certainly do exist and thrive.
- yifanl 8y agoReddit's a bit different than forums as far as I can tell. There was a forum I used to frequent, even years later I can recognize someone's avatar, crack inside jokes with them. Reddit's a little too open to have that kind of connection.
- johnchristopher 8y agoIt seems really to boil down to: can you spin off a server and run on your own place or not ? If not you get a free for-all place with bouncers (privacy policy, rules, modes, etc.) coming up at some point or not. I can see "the next messenger app" plus "total privacy à la signal" capturing that feeling back.
- ryanmercer 8y agoThat depends on the sub. If you join some massive sub sure but in /r/silverbugs for example we have a Monday thread where we talk about what's going on in our lives as well as similar, newer, Friday thread and several people have even met up offline. We've got a lot of shared jokes and stuff in /r/mysteriousuniverse too related to the podcast by the same name and are pretty tight-knit.
- txcwpalpha 8y agoI've noticed this in a lot of smaller subs and I agree that there is a much better sense of community, and in general, a much better experience. With the smaller community tends to be higher quality content and less of a propensity for small, minute details to launch a vitriolic argument. However, being attached to the larger reddit "network" can easily ruin those communities. All it takes is a single front page r/AskReddit thread where a top comment says "check out r/[small_community_here], it's great!" and that pretty much spells the end of that small, tight-knit community. It's the age old problem that's not at all unique to online communities: everyone wants to be part of the cool, fun communities/bars/neighborhoods. But if everyone crowds in, that community/bar/neighborhood isn't as cool or fun anymore.
- wybiral 8y agoI vote we return to the age of late Geocities, forums, and early blogs. Less conformity in design, less "social" by modern definition, but more people who just liked one topic enough to build something about it and communities forming around them.
- gnomodromo 8y agoI have a free chat function on my site where the comments disappear after a while, but I'm still experimenting with it http://www.uptopnews.com/comments/992yhc3u0bg/?t=breaking http://www.uptopnews.com/comments/992yhc3u0bg/?t=breaking
- nunodonato 8y agothis is why I keep my old-style blog, and read rss from others. that's the real internet for me, where the real content and people are
- gaius 8y agoMy group of real-world friends did an overnight migration (well not quite but once it started it was very fast) from Livejournal to Facebook; in retrospect that was a mistake and we all should have stayed on LJ. The killer feature? Being able to tag people in photos, such an obvious thing, but LJ was unable to do it. Add events and it was game over for LJ. Incidentally, I said at the time, it was a massive strategic blunder for Google+ to launch without full integration with the Google Calendar. People want a one-stop shop and FB was it for photos and events.
- krapp 8y agoThe thing is, there's plenty of room on the web for both, and always has been, but people seem to only want one or the other.
- wybiral 8y agoIt's more of an internet culture change. People used to be more into making and curating their own little corner of the web and that's how the early internet felt. Now everyone gathers at the garden between the walls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
- buckysock 8y agoI don’t think this is the endgame and another paradigm shift needs to and will occur. Fb is going to be around and relevant about as much as Microsoft is around and relevant.
- rrebelo 8y ago> Watching distant cousins fight about politics I've long been cautious to step into the WhatsApp hysteria going on here in Brazil. But the last (disgraceful) election here was the last straw. The level of stupidity in the memes from both sides was far beyond repulsive. A solution that is working so far: automatic regulation. I created a Telegram group with a bot that censors the most common names and expressions on Brazilian partisan politics, using regular expressions. It is surprisingly effective, in a "no broken windows way": if you block the small infractions people don't come close to big infractions. Breaking rules is a second national pastime in Brazil. Therefore, at the beginning people found it amusing to try to cheat the censoring regular expressions (e.g.: B0150N4R0, etc) After a while the trick only sharpened these expressions and now they just don't mention politics in the most partisan terms. We do see postings about issues (e.g.: education, fiscal crisis, etc) but not the stupid partisan dogfight. Politics is mostly a tribal thing, not an ideological one. EDIT: I'd like to stress the "automatic" aspect of it. When you make the regulation/moderation algorithmic you gain 2 big psychological benefits: * A fast feedback loop: because the post is immediately removed the association between cause and effect is much stronger. People understand much more that they are breaking a rule when the consequences of it are certain and immediate. * Algorithmic solutions are "rules based" for most people that don't understand them. They perceive it as "the way things are" instead of an arbitrary decision by the person that wrote the algorithm.
- iagovar 8y agoHmmm, this is an interesting take. I may apply it to one of my communities. I've been playing with the idea of banning politics entirely, but that's what most people want to talk about. Did you notice any improvement on the level of discussion? Or do they just reacted different with each other posts? Also, do you just censor the keyword or remove the post entirely?
- rrebelo 8y agoBeware: the devil is in the details. The trick is to choose the most provocative, trolling or insulting words. I let people discuss generic terms such as income distribution, fiscal crisis, education, etc. But I filter out terms such as "comunist", "fascist", "Bolsonaro" (the Brazilian version of Rodrigo Duterte) etc. > Did you notice any improvement on the level of discussion? So far, people are still on a "treading the waters"/"sensing the environment" period. But I sense that: * The posts tangent to politics don't immediately trigger a knee jerk reaction. Surprisingly, when people discuss politics in a more abstract way, there is a lot more "I agree with you" between people that used to fight a lot. I count this as an improvement, although it is too early to see an increase of depth of understanding on the issues. * In the beginning some people complained about my heavy-handed approach, calling it censorship and authoritarianism. I just didn't engage in their complaints. My standard response was "my house, my rules". * There is a lot more of light-heart, especially among the younger ones. Childish jokes and memes are still around, but nothing offensive. In friends and family groups it is ok, these are habits I don't want to break. > Also, do you just censor the keyword or remove the post entirely? I remove the post and post a standard bot answer. Often, the bot gives some false positives, but people find it funny (e.g: "PT" is the acronym for both the main opposition political party and for "total loss" in Portuguese). Because I use regular expressions, people started a game of trying to outsmart the bot. Since it was for fun, it only helped sharpen up the expressions.
- Liriel 8y agoI think that developers can safely migrate to communities such as Hashnode instead of wasting their time scrolling through numerous groups on Facebook. All the features are already there without the tracking system in place.
- halbritt 8y agoAny idea what software hashnode is running on? I like the features. I'm looking to setup a private community and I'm not totally stoked on the features of mastodon and diaspora and I'm not exactly looking for a forum. I suppose this could be an AskHN...
- beat 8y agoThe one thing that jumps out at me when thinking about those older network is friends-of-friends... I have cool friends, and my cool friends have cool friends. So I'd wind up friending people on whatever network because I liked how they interacted with my friends. But yeah, common-interest groups are way better than the de-anonymized social graph of Facebook.
- osrec 8y agoFacebook described in 50 years: a network where real world relationships were gamified and users competed for popularity. The network eventually died because the relationships it represented became meaningless in the eyes of its users, and the perceived value of the "game" fell to virtually zero.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoI'm ahead of my time!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 8y agoMeaningless at best. For some users the relationships and one-upmanship is detrimental to their mental/emotional wellbeing.
- jsemrau 8y agoFacebook in 50 years : People wanted World of Warcraft but got Star Wars Galaxies instead.
- pretendscholar 8y agoStar Wars Galaxies was great dammit
- revskill 8y agoIt's all about advertising. Social network is about advertising in the end. To CEOs: top using "social network" vocabulary for your business, when in the end, it's about advertising. Or you're liars.
- WilliamEdward 8y agoThat's what advertising is though. It's lying just enough to sell the product but not enough to get in trouble.
- revskill 8y agoNaming is hard ? Not sure in this case. Naming an advertising framework as "social network" is false.
- pyr0hu 8y agoOkay, lets say I am developing a "social network" for a specific group of people, its a pretty closed one so not for everyone. The main revenue is not coming from advertisement, because there is nothing we can advertise to the users. So am I a liar? Or what? I can use social network for marketing without implying that we use and/or sell user data
- revskill 8y agoIf you build an app for advertisement purpose, call it an Advertising App, not Social Network.
- AJ007 8y agoFile this under design anti-patterns: scroll to the bottom of the article and Techcrunch sends you to their front page.
- Y7ZCQtNo39 8y ago"Increasing engagement" is probably a KPI in nearly every consumer-facing product these days. And as time goes on, it becomes more obvious, desperate, and frankly, annoying. Like when I receive FB notifications since I haven't posted in awhile. Really de-values the functionality of what a notification is, and now I don't care about them much since receiving a notification doesn't mean I've had an interaction with a FB Friend.
- annadane 8y agoZuckerberg, in his hearing about the election thing, said "you control your feed on Facebook", or something. I find that hard to believe. I find that VERY hard to believe. Either he is completely ignorant, or he has no problem lying to the general public. Because between forcing Top Stories and broadcasting things you never meant to broadcast... well, it's a bald faced lie. Why can't these companies either listen to their customers directly or if they absolutely must make user hostile decisions, say that they must do that because the venture capitalists demand it? I'm getting very tired of the "feedback matters to us" when it clearly doesn't.
- elliekelly 8y ago> Why can't these companies either listen to their customers directly They do listen to their customers. We just aren't their customers.
- annadane 8y agoPedantic. You know what I meant.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- samatman 8y agoI ran a simple experiment in 2016. Facebook lets you mark posts you don’t want to see, so I did that for any post with the string “Trump” in it, for about two weeks. Didn’t work. Haven’t been back since.
- fgandiya 8y agoI'm not sure how to feel about this. From social media I've been able to connect with old friends, enjoy good memes and keep up with current affairs. It's also been useful at times where I've found people willing to put in a good word for a job, mentor me and there are a few people who are really good at providing a fruitful environment for discussion (even controversial topics) that makes me sad to leave. Unfortunately, it just got too extra for me. I mean, there is a lot of bullshit in the world, but at times it looks like people just want to get mad for the sake of it. While I'm not a big proponent of don't feed the trolls, I doubt quote tweeting some asshole to score a satisfying dunk does any favors. It just seems to import garbage into other people's timelines. Also, they'll be done people going about their day, or writing something intended for their like-minded friends and it catches wind far beyond where it was supposed to go, setting you up for an unwanted roast. Even though I deleted my social media, I'm hoping that it becomes less extra because there can be a lot of value in it. Sadly, it's hard to see that happening, especially with how social media is becoming the whole internet and IRL for many people in the world. The Telecom operators in my home country insist on selling unlimited social media packages rather than just giving us cheaper internet even though they can somehow provide 2GB of data for $5 that has to be used in 24 hours.
- ricardobeat 8y agoCan you explain ‘extra’ in this context? #oldfart
- sixstringtheory 8y agoToo much to handle; over the top; not worth the effort. Synonyms: ratchet, trifling.
- emsal 8y agoI don't think extra is a synonym of ratchet. Ratchet is a mostly-sexist way of saying "trashy".
- fgandiya 8y agoExtra means over the top, excessive or dramatic. Generally, People on Twitter trend to be rather dramatic.
- mistrial9 8y agothere have been pundits and intellectuals all along that predicted the current state of affairs (to a greater or lesser extent). When Facebook arose in the beginning, it caused (and still causes) quite a bit of anguish in those circles. Some of the less-stable people had actual despair and negative life-outcomes, seeing what was basically their "worst-case scenario" come true, and the wealth that went with it.
- 40acres 8y agoI think there is a balance to be struk but I don't know what it is. As someone who frequented gaming forums in the late 2000s I've seen the dark side of 100% anonymous forums: there is definitely a lack of humanity that comes across in communities where anyone could be a dog. There is no repercussion to speech and there is very little context to conversations. When humans interact we not only process the words that are communicated but the context: what is our social history, what facial expressions and micro-expressions are being displayed, what is the race and/or social standing of the people involved. All of this is lost in anonymous conversation. Now, this definitely has it's perks, it allows for communication on a neutral platform, where racial and sexual discrimination is less likely to occur and individuals can choose which parts of themselves to reveal, but humans are not really built to communicate this way, and it shows if you've ever been on an online forum or in a chatroom of an online FPS.
- zanny 8y agoExcept participation on anonymous forums is wholly voluntary and you have no immutable paper trail to stalk you across the whole Internet. You can at whim make a new account and be a new person, and avoid the parts you didn't like on your last romp around. Widespred persistent harassment only grew in popularity as real identities were plastered all over the popular sites.
- hank808 8y agoShameless promotion... If you enjoy looking at and sharing dog pictures, and don't love the broad social networks, try https://puppy.pics https://puppy.pics Thanks!!!
- danielbigham 8y agoFound this article very insightful -- the universe when it is working well is like a giant pattern matcher operating at every level of abstraction, bringing together those things which make a good match. The converse is exemplified by what we call "spam" in our email inbox -- signals which have an extremely high false positive rate. Facebook by its nature seems to tend towards a high false positive rate, which diminishes its utility.
- Reedx 8y agoFacebook's slogan, "Bringing the world closer together", reminds me of cigarette companies purporting health benefits.
- jesperlang 8y agoBut what does it mean to be "social"? I've been thinking about this alot lately and it's not easy to define. But social media's version of social is making me more and more uncomfortable. I have so many unfinished thoughts around this but here goes.. I can say that a good social experience is usually in a very small group, dynamic, immersive, thrilling, you can feel it in your entire body, you loose your sense of time. On some social media the interactions are relatively slow, shallow, fragmented, in some sense performative because you know potentially alot of people can read what you're posting. It's like a totally different kind of social, which of course can have it's value but it becomes a problem when most of our social interactions are like this. Take the experience of sharing your vacation pictures. On social media it is like you are packaging your memory to present for a broader audience. Imagine, in contrast, how you would invite your friend over and share your (printed) pictures over a coffee. Depending on what your relationship looks like you will present your trip differently. This shared memory will be woven into your relationship in a unique way, giving it yet another layer. It's like the word social has been hijacked. It was never about making a "social media". It was about changing our idea about what social means..
- smallnamespace 8y ago> what does it mean to be "social" It sounds like you're making a distinction between 'public' and 'private', a distinction with a very long history in the West with sharply differing sets of norms. Early social networks were intensely private, even though you were dealing with individual members of the public. As networks grow and try to vacuum up connections, the actual connections weaken and social networking becomes either quasi-public (the circle of friends' friends could be hundreds to thousands of people), or if something goes viral then it's just public. Our norms for public discourse are sharply different from private conversation—you can say lots of things in the privacy of actual friends and family that presumably you wouldn't say in the middle of a town square. But social media today means that every interaction you have targeted just to friends has a low, but non-zero probability of being judged also by all your neighbors and faraway strangers who have less context. Of course that's uncomfortable—you don't know ahead of time which set of rules are going to get applied to you.
- noer 8y agoI really get what this article is talking about. Most of the friends I've had the longest I met on the internet. I went to a small private high school far from my home and had interests that none of my classmates had, plus it was difficult to socialize after school because I lived far away. I was into Punk & Hardcore and found a local Punk & Hardcore music messageboard (powered by PostNuke!). I definitely remember being at a show (probably in 2003 or 2004) and someone saying, "Wow, most of the people I hang out with, I met on the internet." When I went to college I met a bunch of friends on a bike focused messageboard I'm still active on. I met people who went to the same school as me, but what was probably the most odd is that I met them online, not at school.
- rblion 8y agoWhat is anyone going to do about it?
- barbs 8y agoHas anyone else noticed that Facebook notifications seem intentionally broken? So many times I've noticed that the number of new notifications go out of sync between FB on my desktop browser, mobile browser and messenger app. Even viewing the notifications on the desktop and navigating somewhere else seems to make some notifications new again. Anything to make that red dot appear again to get you clicking and engaged.
- clubm8 8y agoI've noticed a larger trend where notifications used to be notifications of something a human sent, but now it means "$SOCIALNETWORK wants your attention" For example if I don't tweet for a few days Twitter will give me a "notification" that several high follower count accounts I follow have tweeted. That's not a "notification". I'm well aware frequent posters post frequently.
- thatoneuser 8y agoTotally. I wasn’t on Facebook for the last month or two. Get on and I had around 75 notifications. Literally 3 of them were non repeats or something that I was interested in receiving from someone. But it’s cool - it reminds me how pointless Facebook really is.
- starchild_3001 8y agoThe biggest benefit of social media over forums or email lists is ML-based ranking. You save a ton of time reading the most crucial, while skipping the rest. The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be, but because they pick out the best and most interesting content! FB, YouTube etc represent a revolution about how content is created and consumed. You no longer need to browse through 10s of posts or emails (or videos) to find something you really like. Algorithms do the curation for you. I learned so much by hanging out in FB forums (much more so than any other old-style forum). And my favorite pastime these days is YouTube Red. Don't believe in the scare or the negative hype. Social media and AI curated content aren't going anywhere. They might evolve as required.
- taurath 8y ago> The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be, but because they pick out the best and most interesting content! The best by the users interests or the best for the advertisers? I think ignoring the personal and societal effects of social media is something you do at your own peril.
- starchild_3001 8y agoAs a broad response, let's just say not everything is perfect. These systems can be and are abused (by publishers, malicious actors). Yes, let's fix those. But let's not overlook why these things have become popular in the first place (from a utility point of view). Google made the whole web searchable and digestable. Facebook made social & forum content much higher utility than before. YT did the same with billions of mostly-uninteresting videos. Going back to an old style forum & email-list experience is a step backwards. Well, be my guest, do it if you like :) I won't. See Reddit, Hackernews etc regarding how social cues can be used for ranking/curation. Yet, those platforms do a bare minimum (imo not quite enough). E.g. Google Feed is more engaging, interesting, and informative (in my experience).
- Applejinx 8y agoWow. >The biggest benefit of social media over forums or email lists is ML-based ranking. That's what Jaron Lanier calls 'behavior modification networks' and control of that stuff is intensely valuable to whoever wants to behavior modify, valuable in myriad VERY practical ways. Machine learning? My ass. The machines can learn all they want; application is going to be controlled by management, when it's that profitable. >The platforms are addictive not because they're designed to be Not designed to be, my ass. Next you'll tell me mobile games aren't designed to be addictive? This is a science by now, and we're seeing the results. Like hell they aren't designed to be. You could say (from a certain viewpoint) that it's a breach of fiduciary duty if they are NOT designed to be addictive. >Algorithms do the curation for you Control of that is more valuable than any previous form of advertising or marketing. The social media revolution as you describe it has meant you can define people's experiential bubbles, orthogonally to what their wishes might be. You can expose 'em to whatever you need them to believe in. They don't even experience what you want to exclude. All for a price. This ain't the Singularity. Algorithms give big data to the people who really make decisions on who gets to influence, and you know neither the influencers nor the decision makers. Something like youtube 'Elsa videos' for kids are not an AI deciding kids need more creepy in their lives, there are people trying to manipulate the system and other people who see it happening and go 'heh' and probably make notes and study what happens. The algorithms are just not sophisticated enough to be directive in the way you allude to. It's not going away, which is WHY to attend to the negative side. If you're cynical, you don't have to see it as 'scare' so much as yet another banality of evil. Which we don't casually accept, even though it has been with us since the days of cavemen.
- zby 8y agoOK - so now everybody feels that there is something wrong with Facebook and maybe other big social networking sites. There is the widespread feeling that there were better online times. This article did nothing to further my understanding of this subject - it is just repeating stuff we already know.
- IronWolve 8y agoUsenet newsgroups use to have moderated lists to stop the offtopic and flame wars. When perl moved to the web, that was the last time I used newsgroups as a daily discussion. (mostly...) I can't even enjoy tech without the invasion of politics, use to like a bunch of sites that I found out are gawker writer staffed like jalopnik. Every 10 or so car articles is an anti-trump article. They can't even leave politics out, social media is 100x worse. I remember the days, I could read linux news and not once would politics be mentioned, that is no more.
- asdkhadsj 8y agoI'm still convinced that I want something for a social network, but I don't know what that is..
- jaked89 8y agoReddit is almost perfect in avoiding these issues. The only thing missing: allow assigning exclusive psuedonames per group. Users shouldn't be allowed to associate one name to another across group. It currently allows multiple accounts, but this still makes users worry about accidentally responding from the wrong account.
- nukemandan 8y agoI have moved off of social media to find myself in these kind of channels much more and other semi-private communities to find and grow social connections. It is so much more fulfilling and refreshing to not be all about capturing my attention to keep me hooked and make ad revenue. Thank you all for being there and spending your most valuable resource - your attention - on this smaller and more connected community.
- stackzero 8y agoWhat's new?
- sanoojm 8y agoThese are expected when people run behind instant gratification instead of creative happiness. For me, it's like chain smoking, everyone says to quitting smoking, you know it's not making any good for you, you know it's you paying cigar industry to make yourself sick. Still you can't give up. But once you give up, you will start seeing the world differently. I Uninstalled Facebook and insta from my cellphone. I am counting that as a small step.
- tendel 8y agoNice analogy.