4 ms·

I agree broadly and admire in particular the author's application of Frederic Jameson, but feel I must speak in favour of the Facebook groups function, which, y

by spats1990 7y ago

I agree broadly and admire in particular the author's application of Frederic Jameson, but feel I must speak in favour of the Facebook groups function, which, yes, even though it exists on Facebook, seems to have allowed all kinds of weird communities to spring up in a way they might not have otherwise. Like the group "famtastic lomgbois amd where to fimd them", which is dedicated to long things, and where 'n' is considered a banned glyph because it is short, and 'm' is long (or as the members would say, LOMG). [Edit: what I mean is that it's not all groups mocking boomers or digital nonnatives. The infamous NUMTOTS is another example of a vibrant fb-only community, and it has a whole series of spinoff groups for different subjects]. Regarding platforms in general, lately I have caught myself thinking of these platforms (FB and the gram in particular) as essentially shopping malls: fine if you follow the rules, maybe some pretty things to look at, but a bit boring. Everybody knows it's more fun to do stuff in the mall that you aren't really supposed to do, and those are usually the most interesting uses of these platforms from an analytical standpoint. Like the person who has obsessively collected all the leaked songs from a rapper's upcoming album, scraping them off YouTube, then circumvented copyright strikes by hosting them on Spotify as a "podcast", each 'episode' a song. Then no one who wants to hear those leaks has to dig around for MP3s or sift through youtube uploads that are often mislabelled as new releases so that the uploader can try to increase views. The "podcast" gets taken down every week or so, but always pops up again. More "interesting" uses of these platforms: Groups dedicated to tracking the locations of police DUI checkpoints, people selling drugs through Snapchat, etc. Air traffic controller meme groups. People find previously unimagined uses for even the most boring and soulsucky platforms.

pmlnr 7y ago
Before FB, there were niche, interesting, though a bit more local - language barriers - communities around interesting topics. Most of them dried or died out specifically because of Facebook - I can point at quite a lot of Hungarian forums and community sites that went silent around 2009-2010. UX wise Facebook groups are abysmal compared to old style forums: they are very hard to search, to follow threads, everything is thrown in at one pile of things where something "magical" decides priority, and most comments are hidden behind "more...". It also has fairly strict policy on acceptable topics. Apart from all those problems, I also have the issue with FB is all-on-one. I firmly believe that most Europeans have work (colleagues and/or professional life), outside of work (family, generic friends), and private personas (very close friends, spouse, etc) - I don't know about the rest of the world. FB wants to merge these. I have no desire to accidentally mix my private persona with my professional one in case I forgot to set a post on a niche community private, or because FB suddenly changed something and reset the setting. This also applies for the visuals: everything looks the same. I want my communities/niches to look different. Cyberpunk doesn't go well with black text on white background. I think you're on the right track with the mall parallel, but it may go even further: social media is high street stores. And it's killing specialist business.
einr 7y ago
but feel I must speak in favour of the Facebook groups function, which, yes, even though it exists on Facebook, seems to have allowed all kinds of weird communities to spring up in a way they might not have otherwise. But they probably would have. If not on newsgroups or mailing lists or webrings or forums, then on a hypothetical, less malicious social media platform. Somewhere where the data could be preserved, sorted, filtered, and indexed by search engines. That there is interesting information on Facebook is an argument against it, not for it, because Facebook is a prison for data and all its prisoners will eventually be executed when the warden deems them no longer worthy of life.
- spats1990 7y ago
  >If not on newsgroups or mailing lists or webrings or forums, then on a hypothetical, less malicious social media platform. this is the dream, of course. I totally agree. I suppose what I was trying to express was that I think the specific boring ubiquity of FB is what caused these groups to grow and flourish. I can imagine an urbanism group growing on a phpbb board or community of blogs and eventually getting high-traffic and powerful, with its own set of memes etc, but the hyperniche-ing of groups (the lomgboi example) seems to be a feature of FB groups because it isn't something most people would bother to take part in if it weren't already there, in the mall. FWIW i consider reddit part of the mall too, because apart from the weirdo small subreddits I find it alienating in a community sense, since I literally grew up on phpbb boards with avatars and threads, where you were able to recognise and come to know certain regular posters within a week or two.

pmlnr 7y ago

Before FB, there were niche, interesting, though a bit more local - language barriers - communities around interesting topics. Most of them dried or died out specifically because of Facebook - I can point at quite a lot of Hungarian forums and community sites that went silent around 2009-2010. UX wise Facebook groups are abysmal compared to old style forums: they are very hard to search, to follow threads, everything is thrown in at one pile of things where something "magical" decides priority, and most comments are hidden behind "more...". It also has fairly strict policy on acceptable topics. Apart from all those problems, I also have the issue with FB is all-on-one. I firmly believe that most Europeans have work (colleagues and/or professional life), outside of work (family, generic friends), and private personas (very close friends, spouse, etc) - I don't know about the rest of the world. FB wants to merge these. I have no desire to accidentally mix my private persona with my professional one in case I forgot to set a post on a niche community private, or because FB suddenly changed something and reset the setting. This also applies for the visuals: everything looks the same. I want my communities/niches to look different. Cyberpunk doesn't go well with black text on white background. I think you're on the right track with the mall parallel, but it may go even further: social media is high street stores. And it's killing specialist business.

einr 7y ago

but feel I must speak in favour of the Facebook groups function, which, yes, even though it exists on Facebook, seems to have allowed all kinds of weird communities to spring up in a way they might not have otherwise. But they probably would have. If not on newsgroups or mailing lists or webrings or forums, then on a hypothetical, less malicious social media platform. Somewhere where the data could be preserved, sorted, filtered, and indexed by search engines. That there is interesting information on Facebook is an argument against it, not for it, because Facebook is a prison for data and all its prisoners will eventually be executed when the warden deems them no longer worthy of life.

spats1990 7y ago
>If not on newsgroups or mailing lists or webrings or forums, then on a hypothetical, less malicious social media platform. this is the dream, of course. I totally agree. I suppose what I was trying to express was that I think the specific boring ubiquity of FB is what caused these groups to grow and flourish. I can imagine an urbanism group growing on a phpbb board or community of blogs and eventually getting high-traffic and powerful, with its own set of memes etc, but the hyperniche-ing of groups (the lomgboi example) seems to be a feature of FB groups because it isn't something most people would bother to take part in if it weren't already there, in the mall. FWIW i consider reddit part of the mall too, because apart from the weirdo small subreddits I find it alienating in a community sense, since I literally grew up on phpbb boards with avatars and threads, where you were able to recognise and come to know certain regular posters within a week or two.