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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 communi

by 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.