7 ms·

I wonder why social media in general enforces everything to be ephemeral. Sure, Stories are specific about it, but even regular old posts in Facebook, Instagram

by soneca 7y ago

I wonder why social media in general enforces everything to be ephemeral. Sure, Stories are specific about it, but even regular old posts in Facebook, Instagram, Twitter are very hard to track and consume. They are there, you can search if you are looking for something specific, a Facebook resurface some old memory for you when an algorithm decides it should. But they are not made to be a memory repository for users. Why is that? I wonder this because I am building a social-network-y site (https://www.quidsentio.com https://www.quidsentio.com) that's pretty much memory-focused, I even position it as a journal. I wonder if I am missing some obvious connection between hiding users memories and being a successful social network site.

bkinnard 7y ago
likewise, I'm building a social-network-y site for retail investors (https://www.holfolio.com https://www.holfolio.com) to track and share what they and others are investing in. One of the main points is you can see the history of what someone has invested in and get a picture of their whole portfolio. Some people currently post their trades on traditional social media but its really hard to keep track of, these fleets are only going to make it worse (helping me in the process?)
Shank 7y ago
The biggest thing is that I find my own posts cringeworthy 6 months back. Facebook's Timeline revamp a few years back really exacerbated this by making it easy to jump back multiple years to see what people had posted. A small example: people often post memes & jokes on social media. Old memes don't really sound funny though, unless they were well recognized. They seem embarrassing or downright stupid. You look terrible if you find one of those old posts. On the larger scale: most people grow more mature over time. So you have this whole historical graph of someone's life and you can easily surface when they made less great decisions or were younger. Lots of people don't like this.
Jagat 7y ago
That's because it's not just about you. Things you post are things that are meant to be interesting to your followers (so that they spend time on the newsfeed where ads can be injected). And believe or not, users only find recent things interesting. You may be interested in your old content, but your followers are not, and they'd have have likely already seen your old content.
rriepe 7y ago
I've thought a lot about this recently. A large portion of people hate social artifacts. They don't want to have their picture taken. They don't want to be recorded on audio or video. They don't want their daily utterances to be a matter of record. They want comfort and low stakes. A performance can be evaluated in the moment. An artifact (a recording of that performance) can be scrutinized forever, even by people who weren't actually there. It's why I love public speaking but I hate being on video. Our whole society is increasingly becoming Mirandized, where "anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of [public opinion]." Ephemerality mitigates that, providing the expression and connection of social media without the stakes.
- cirno 7y ago
  > They don't want their daily utterances to be a matter of record. Experience being stalked and harassed online for years and you'll hate it as well. Imagine in your 30s having your job threatened because you made a dumb post when you were a teenager, and no one will ever let it go or accept that people change. Many people are uninteresting, and never have this experience. Celebrities have large support networks and agents. For anyone caught between the two extremes, this can really break people who have no one to turn to and no support when they end up targeted. > Ephemerality mitigates that, providing the expression and connection of social media without the stakes. It's also a lie and setting people up for disaster. Nothing will stop stalkers from crawling stories with archive.is or even just taking screenshots. Nothing you put online is ephemeral, unless it's too uninteresting to be worth saving. Stalkers will write bots to scrape your Twitter stories, your Discord deleted messages and on and on, and then peruse the results at their leisure for juicy content to twist and distort. Google currently OCRs text in screenshots posted to stalking websites to tie back to you in search results. And those websites rank like you wouldn't believe. Once Google gets their hands on it, forget it. You'll never outlive it.
  - nine_k 7y ago
    I keep saying that, and I'll repeat. To my mind, if you're posting something publicly (or even semi-publicly but you can't vouch personally for everyone who has access), stop and think. Would you mind if the content you're posting, with your real name attached, were posted on every wall in your city, and on the front page of every newspaper? If you'd feel uncomfortable, don't post it publicly.
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
Sometimes I wish I could delete everything I've ever posted on the internet. Pretty sure many people feel the same way.
kabacha 7y ago
This is a huge problem with Facebook groups which are replacing many forums and are unindexable. I'm part of few groups and the same questions and discussions are being held asked daily.
wildpeaks 7y ago
Because FOMO increases engagement, which means bigger ad sales: the user has to keep coming back or they miss the ephemeral content, same reason F2P-style games have daily activities.

by soneca 7y ago

bkinnard 7y ago

likewise, I'm building a social-network-y site for retail investors (https://www.holfolio.com https://www.holfolio.com) to track and share what they and others are investing in. One of the main points is you can see the history of what someone has invested in and get a picture of their whole portfolio. Some people currently post their trades on traditional social media but its really hard to keep track of, these fleets are only going to make it worse (helping me in the process?)

Shank 7y ago

The biggest thing is that I find my own posts cringeworthy 6 months back. Facebook's Timeline revamp a few years back really exacerbated this by making it easy to jump back multiple years to see what people had posted. A small example: people often post memes & jokes on social media. Old memes don't really sound funny though, unless they were well recognized. They seem embarrassing or downright stupid. You look terrible if you find one of those old posts. On the larger scale: most people grow more mature over time. So you have this whole historical graph of someone's life and you can easily surface when they made less great decisions or were younger. Lots of people don't like this.

Jagat 7y ago

That's because it's not just about you. Things you post are things that are meant to be interesting to your followers (so that they spend time on the newsfeed where ads can be injected). And believe or not, users only find recent things interesting. You may be interested in your old content, but your followers are not, and they'd have have likely already seen your old content.

rriepe 7y ago

I've thought a lot about this recently. A large portion of people hate social artifacts. They don't want to have their picture taken. They don't want to be recorded on audio or video. They don't want their daily utterances to be a matter of record. They want comfort and low stakes. A performance can be evaluated in the moment. An artifact (a recording of that performance) can be scrutinized forever, even by people who weren't actually there. It's why I love public speaking but I hate being on video. Our whole society is increasingly becoming Mirandized, where "anything you say can and will be used against you in the court of [public opinion]." Ephemerality mitigates that, providing the expression and connection of social media without the stakes.

cirno 7y ago
> They don't want their daily utterances to be a matter of record. Experience being stalked and harassed online for years and you'll hate it as well. Imagine in your 30s having your job threatened because you made a dumb post when you were a teenager, and no one will ever let it go or accept that people change. Many people are uninteresting, and never have this experience. Celebrities have large support networks and agents. For anyone caught between the two extremes, this can really break people who have no one to turn to and no support when they end up targeted. > Ephemerality mitigates that, providing the expression and connection of social media without the stakes. It's also a lie and setting people up for disaster. Nothing will stop stalkers from crawling stories with archive.is or even just taking screenshots. Nothing you put online is ephemeral, unless it's too uninteresting to be worth saving. Stalkers will write bots to scrape your Twitter stories, your Discord deleted messages and on and on, and then peruse the results at their leisure for juicy content to twist and distort. Google currently OCRs text in screenshots posted to stalking websites to tie back to you in search results. And those websites rank like you wouldn't believe. Once Google gets their hands on it, forget it. You'll never outlive it.
- nine_k 7y ago
  I keep saying that, and I'll repeat. To my mind, if you're posting something publicly (or even semi-publicly but you can't vouch personally for everyone who has access), stop and think. Would you mind if the content you're posting, with your real name attached, were posted on every wall in your city, and on the front page of every newspaper? If you'd feel uncomfortable, don't post it publicly.

jsjddbbwj 7y ago

Sometimes I wish I could delete everything I've ever posted on the internet. Pretty sure many people feel the same way.

kabacha 7y ago

This is a huge problem with Facebook groups which are replacing many forums and are unindexable. I'm part of few groups and the same questions and discussions are being held asked daily.

wildpeaks 7y ago

Because FOMO increases engagement, which means bigger ad sales: the user has to keep coming back or they miss the ephemeral content, same reason F2P-style games have daily activities.