5 ms·

Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social media as we know it really be a bad thing?

by jdhn 6y ago

raziel2p 6y ago
How? Forbid all of it? Forbid what, exactly - any app that allows communication between more than 1 person? Even if Twitter were to go bankrupt tomorrow, something else would come to replace it.
- jdhn 6y ago
  If Trump actually closed it (not going to happen), then something may come along to replace Twitter, but it certainly wouldn't act like Twitter.
  - w0m 6y ago
    Why wouldn't it? Proven good formula and a hole in the market. A dozen clones would spring up immediately.
    - croon 6y ago
      Because the government closed something that acted exactly like it before? Aka chilling effect.
- ImprobableTruth 6y ago
  Social media can only survive because of safe harbor provisions. If sites become responsible for the content they host, social media as we know would instantly die out.
  - shultays 6y ago
    You are not forced to follow or interact poeple you disagree with.
    - orian 6y ago
      Funny you say, but on social platforms we know you are kind of forced, through suggestions and ads.
      - raziel2p 6y ago
        Newspapers "force" you to read articles by their writers and ads as well... This has nothing to do with social media.
        anewdirection 6y ago
        Newspapers are curated and responsible for what they publish.
  - rwmj 6y ago
    So would a vast number of things. github, blogs, cloud, public web hosting of almost any kind.
    - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
      Sure. I'm not saying that I think it would be good, just that it's possible.
- eloc49 6y ago
  Get rid of section 230
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Making public comments anywhere online impossible? I don't think that's helpful.
teknopaul 6y ago
That would be a USA Great Firewall. It would require some re-branding to get the US population to accept it
- michaelt 6y ago
  We're gonna build a wall, and make Cyberspace pay for it.
Mindwipe 6y ago
Trump would have no intention of ending social media. He just wants to end social media that doesn't do what he wants. And yes, that would be an overwhelmingly bad thing.
ecmascript 6y ago
I think it would be great and I pretty much long for it. It's so obvious that even if it may be an overreach, there is such malpractice going on from all major social media players. Youtube: Censors youtubers, documented in so many cases. It also gives "authoritarian news" a heavier weight in the algorithm. Removes comments with "communist bandits" in Chinese. Twitter: Seriously bans people if they say the wrong pronoun Reddit: A few people controls the majority of big subreddits, bans people with conservative views outright. Bans people that upvote stuff that they don't like. The have removed, banned hundreds of subreddits and users in the last few months. While they have chinese owners. Facebook: Surprisingly the best of the bunch when it comes to serving every viewpoint imo. But they have had huge privacy implications just so many times. But even so, I am very torn on the subject. The best thing would probably to force these companies not to censor/ban/remove people based on opinions. But the best thing for the world would most likely for these social media sites to not exist in the first place. Personally I think social media sucks but I think most people are not ready to live without it either.
neuland 6y ago
Although it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, social media has had a net negative effect on a LOT of people. There's people that have had a big positive effect to. So, it's not obvious where it ends up on net if that even matters. But, yeah. There's a lot of people that would be better off not on social media. But it's so addictive that they can't help themselves. I, for one, have stopped using social media (unless you consider HN social). And I've had a lot less friends because of it. But it's been a huge improvement in my mood and outlook on life.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >(unless you consider HN social) Yes, yes it is. What else would it be? What's the difference between sites like HN and reddit, and facebook?
  - neuland 6y ago
    Yes, so that's why I somewhat included it. But, it's definitely on the lighter side of social I think. On HN, it's a lot tougher to follow specific people, though it's cool to see posts and then follow up with what they've recently posted or commented.
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    I think one place HN falls short of what I think of as social media is that there's no following of individual accounts, that creation of networks and personalized feeds feels like part of the core of what separates social media from simpler forums. Reddit was closer to just forums as well but subreddits allowed you to more directly curate and associate between groups, now every user basically has their own little subreddit they can post on and people can follow and join.
- hunter2_ 6y ago
  > unless you consider HN social Why wouldn't we? Pseudonyms? Reddit is considered social, I think, and that tends to be even more difficult to map to IRL identity. Edit: just barely not inb4!
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I could do without Facebook and Twitter, but what counts as social media? Does Stack Exchange count? Hacker News? Email?
- drewmate 6y ago
  We probably need a more detailed vocabulary for describing various types of social media. In my opinion, the most insidious forms of social media share three attributes: * Broad reach - they are accessible to and used by a population broadly for public communication rather than a specific subset of the population or private communication. * Optimized for engagement - Content is personalized and optimized for individual engagement. Compare this to a stream of content organized by time (email inbox) or basically time with minimal voting/decaying (HN) * Feedback is quantifiable and visible - Likes, retweets, upvotes (ie, engagement metrics) are countable and displayed to users. I think this gets at something deep in the human psyche and encourages users to chase those metrics. It turns out that in systems with all three (FB, Twitter), you create enormous echo chambers that only occasionally flare up into outrage when they inevitably leak to a broader audience. This is great for engagement but pretty self evidently bad for society. Lots of sites fit somewhere on this spectrum (including HN and Stack Exchange) but have basic safeguards to prevent the worst types of behavior. But this is usually because they aren't profit motivated to slide all the way to one side on the three factors above.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Someone1234 6y ago
Just so we're clear: Hacker News is social media.
- hunter2_ 6y ago
  Are message boards / BBS / forums?
  - danShumway 6y ago
    Yes. I don't want to be dismissive, if you have some kind of distinction you're trying to get at, I'm open to hearing it. But I personally don't see a big conceptual difference between Reddit and a forum, other than that one of them happened to get bigger. And I'm pretty skeptical of using size as a criteria here, because it would force us to say that Google+ and MySpace stopped being social media at some point when they dipped in popularity.
    - hunter2_ 6y ago
      The distinction I was going for was things that predate the classification terminology. I guess there's no particular reason not to apply such classification retroactively, but it feels a bit weird considering that in the heyday of these technologies, few if any people referred to them as social media. Seems a bit like saying "let's stream some music" as you're loading up a CD player. Technically yes there is a stream of bits but it just seems silly to speak in such terms.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rcurry 6y ago
But you can - just don't use it.

Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social media as we know it really be a bad thing?

by jdhn 6y ago

Putting aside concerns about overreach government powers, would ending social media as we know it really be a bad thing?

raziel2p 6y ago

How? Forbid all of it? Forbid what, exactly - any app that allows communication between more than 1 person? Even if Twitter were to go bankrupt tomorrow, something else would come to replace it.

jdhn 6y ago
If Trump actually closed it (not going to happen), then something may come along to replace Twitter, but it certainly wouldn't act like Twitter.
- w0m 6y ago
  Why wouldn't it? Proven good formula and a hole in the market. A dozen clones would spring up immediately.
  - croon 6y ago
    Because the government closed something that acted exactly like it before? Aka chilling effect.
ImprobableTruth 6y ago
Social media can only survive because of safe harbor provisions. If sites become responsible for the content they host, social media as we know would instantly die out.
- shultays 6y ago
  You are not forced to follow or interact poeple you disagree with.
  - orian 6y ago
    Funny you say, but on social platforms we know you are kind of forced, through suggestions and ads.
    - raziel2p 6y ago
      Newspapers "force" you to read articles by their writers and ads as well... This has nothing to do with social media.
      - anewdirection 6y ago
        Newspapers are curated and responsible for what they publish.
- rwmj 6y ago
  So would a vast number of things. github, blogs, cloud, public web hosting of almost any kind.
  - ImprobableTruth 6y ago
    Sure. I'm not saying that I think it would be good, just that it's possible.
eloc49 6y ago
Get rid of section 230
- jtbayly 6y ago
  Making public comments anywhere online impossible? I don't think that's helpful.

teknopaul 6y ago

That would be a USA Great Firewall. It would require some re-branding to get the US population to accept it

michaelt 6y ago
We're gonna build a wall, and make Cyberspace pay for it.

Mindwipe 6y ago

Trump would have no intention of ending social media. He just wants to end social media that doesn't do what he wants. And yes, that would be an overwhelmingly bad thing.

ecmascript 6y ago

I think it would be great and I pretty much long for it. It's so obvious that even if it may be an overreach, there is such malpractice going on from all major social media players. Youtube: Censors youtubers, documented in so many cases. It also gives "authoritarian news" a heavier weight in the algorithm. Removes comments with "communist bandits" in Chinese. Twitter: Seriously bans people if they say the wrong pronoun Reddit: A few people controls the majority of big subreddits, bans people with conservative views outright. Bans people that upvote stuff that they don't like. The have removed, banned hundreds of subreddits and users in the last few months. While they have chinese owners. Facebook: Surprisingly the best of the bunch when it comes to serving every viewpoint imo. But they have had huge privacy implications just so many times. But even so, I am very torn on the subject. The best thing would probably to force these companies not to censor/ban/remove people based on opinions. But the best thing for the world would most likely for these social media sites to not exist in the first place. Personally I think social media sucks but I think most people are not ready to live without it either.

neuland 6y ago

Although it's impossible to put the genie back in the bottle, social media has had a net negative effect on a LOT of people. There's people that have had a big positive effect to. So, it's not obvious where it ends up on net if that even matters. But, yeah. There's a lot of people that would be better off not on social media. But it's so addictive that they can't help themselves. I, for one, have stopped using social media (unless you consider HN social). And I've had a lot less friends because of it. But it's been a huge improvement in my mood and outlook on life.

Loughla 6y ago
>(unless you consider HN social) Yes, yes it is. What else would it be? What's the difference between sites like HN and reddit, and facebook?
- neuland 6y ago
  Yes, so that's why I somewhat included it. But, it's definitely on the lighter side of social I think. On HN, it's a lot tougher to follow specific people, though it's cool to see posts and then follow up with what they've recently posted or commented.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  I think one place HN falls short of what I think of as social media is that there's no following of individual accounts, that creation of networks and personalized feeds feels like part of the core of what separates social media from simpler forums. Reddit was closer to just forums as well but subreddits allowed you to more directly curate and associate between groups, now every user basically has their own little subreddit they can post on and people can follow and join.
hunter2_ 6y ago
> unless you consider HN social Why wouldn't we? Pseudonyms? Reddit is considered social, I think, and that tends to be even more difficult to map to IRL identity. Edit: just barely not inb4!

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I could do without Facebook and Twitter, but what counts as social media? Does Stack Exchange count? Hacker News? Email?

drewmate 6y ago
We probably need a more detailed vocabulary for describing various types of social media. In my opinion, the most insidious forms of social media share three attributes: * Broad reach - they are accessible to and used by a population broadly for public communication rather than a specific subset of the population or private communication. * Optimized for engagement - Content is personalized and optimized for individual engagement. Compare this to a stream of content organized by time (email inbox) or basically time with minimal voting/decaying (HN) * Feedback is quantifiable and visible - Likes, retweets, upvotes (ie, engagement metrics) are countable and displayed to users. I think this gets at something deep in the human psyche and encourages users to chase those metrics. It turns out that in systems with all three (FB, Twitter), you create enormous echo chambers that only occasionally flare up into outrage when they inevitably leak to a broader audience. This is great for engagement but pretty self evidently bad for society. Lots of sites fit somewhere on this spectrum (including HN and Stack Exchange) but have basic safeguards to prevent the worst types of behavior. But this is usually because they aren't profit motivated to slide all the way to one side on the three factors above.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Someone1234 6y ago

Just so we're clear: Hacker News is social media.

hunter2_ 6y ago
Are message boards / BBS / forums?
- danShumway 6y ago
  Yes. I don't want to be dismissive, if you have some kind of distinction you're trying to get at, I'm open to hearing it. But I personally don't see a big conceptual difference between Reddit and a forum, other than that one of them happened to get bigger. And I'm pretty skeptical of using size as a criteria here, because it would force us to say that Google+ and MySpace stopped being social media at some point when they dipped in popularity.
  - hunter2_ 6y ago
    The distinction I was going for was things that predate the classification terminology. I guess there's no particular reason not to apply such classification retroactively, but it feels a bit weird considering that in the heyday of these technologies, few if any people referred to them as social media. Seems a bit like saying "let's stream some music" as you're loading up a CD player. Technically yes there is a stream of bits but it just seems silly to speak in such terms.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rcurry 6y ago

But you can - just don't use it.