4 ms·

To be fair, all (minimally relevant) social media has been designed with goals to optimise that have nothing to do with the betterment of society - the variable

by kace91 8y ago

To be fair, all (minimally relevant) social media has been designed with goals to optimise that have nothing to do with the betterment of society - the variables to max out are retention of users, engagement/addiction, etc. A network with positive effects might be feasible, we've literally never tried.

adventured 8y ago
> A network with positive effects might be feasible, we've literally never tried. I'd argue that Hacker News and Stack Exchange are two clear examples of relevant social networks with overwhelmingly positive effects (neither is without flaws of course). Github might very reasonably make the list as well. I think the line is functional networks vs general networks. Not all functional networks are net positive, LinkedIn for example went negative in my opinion after initially being a positive. However I think functional networks tend to rapidly fail (competition) or erode if they go negative (eg Experts Exchange), rather than persist (with LinkedIn being one of the few exceptions). HN does very little to ensure max engagement or retention. To the extent HN self promotes Y Combinator, it's quite modest compared to the number of stories passing through the front page. The type of content that might drive a huge spike in engagement via comments (overt senationalism, anger-baiting articles, political flaming), is frequently kept off the site because it's fundamentally anti what HN is about. And of course you can use HN mostly anonymously.
- kace91 8y ago
  It's funny, I would not really have counted HN or Reddit as social networks (much less SE or github) even though they clearly have a social aspect. What makes a social network a social network? I think in my mind a social network is a site where the information you can see is a feed either created or curated by a group of people you know. twitter and other asymmetrical networks fit in because you know famous people even if they don't know you. that would leave sites like reddit or HN in the outer edge of the definition, since you're seeing content curated by like minded strangers (spotify or pornhub would also qualify there), and sites like stackexchange out since the feed is either non existent or of low importance.
  - cronix 8y ago
    > What makes a social network a social network? I'd boil it down to something that offers 2 way communication instead of read-only (I'm not including clicking on a link [GET request] to get to a different page as part of 2 way communication, although technically it is). If it has a commenting system, voting system, or any other way for a user to be able to change/alter the information that is displayed on the site/platform to other users, I'd call that a social network. News sites used to be more like news papers. You could only read the article. Then they just about all added Disqus/commenting systems, which turned them into more social networks. A typical weather type app is not a social network. It only shows the weather.

by kace91 8y ago

adventured 8y ago

> A network with positive effects might be feasible, we've literally never tried. I'd argue that Hacker News and Stack Exchange are two clear examples of relevant social networks with overwhelmingly positive effects (neither is without flaws of course). Github might very reasonably make the list as well. I think the line is functional networks vs general networks. Not all functional networks are net positive, LinkedIn for example went negative in my opinion after initially being a positive. However I think functional networks tend to rapidly fail (competition) or erode if they go negative (eg Experts Exchange), rather than persist (with LinkedIn being one of the few exceptions). HN does very little to ensure max engagement or retention. To the extent HN self promotes Y Combinator, it's quite modest compared to the number of stories passing through the front page. The type of content that might drive a huge spike in engagement via comments (overt senationalism, anger-baiting articles, political flaming), is frequently kept off the site because it's fundamentally anti what HN is about. And of course you can use HN mostly anonymously.

kace91 8y ago
It's funny, I would not really have counted HN or Reddit as social networks (much less SE or github) even though they clearly have a social aspect. What makes a social network a social network? I think in my mind a social network is a site where the information you can see is a feed either created or curated by a group of people you know. twitter and other asymmetrical networks fit in because you know famous people even if they don't know you. that would leave sites like reddit or HN in the outer edge of the definition, since you're seeing content curated by like minded strangers (spotify or pornhub would also qualify there), and sites like stackexchange out since the feed is either non existent or of low importance.
- cronix 8y ago
  > What makes a social network a social network? I'd boil it down to something that offers 2 way communication instead of read-only (I'm not including clicking on a link [GET request] to get to a different page as part of 2 way communication, although technically it is). If it has a commenting system, voting system, or any other way for a user to be able to change/alter the information that is displayed on the site/platform to other users, I'd call that a social network. News sites used to be more like news papers. You could only read the article. Then they just about all added Disqus/commenting systems, which turned them into more social networks. A typical weather type app is not a social network. It only shows the weather.