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How do tech-savvy users contribute more valuable content than non-tech savvy users? Maybe when it comes to content about tech but that's not the majority of con

by nsgi 6y ago

How do tech-savvy users contribute more valuable content than non-tech savvy users? Maybe when it comes to content about tech but that's not the majority of content on Facebook and Twitter

pavel_lishin 6y ago
Yeah, this doesn't seem right to me. I don't think my family consumes content by the tech-savvy - they come for the content by friends and family members, and get sucked in via the rest of the stuff Facebook throws at them via the feed. Nowhere in that pipeline do "tech-savvy users with a solid ad-blocker", "who on the whole have a decent understanding of the mechanisms used to influence people" come into play - unless you're counting Russian agencies and others who are explicitly using it for propaganda (not to be confused with people who like-and-reshare David Icke nonsense.)
jen729w 6y ago
Hypothesis: we're in the net rather than just being on the net. That gives us access to a wider range of material. For example, I found Nightline [0] on itch.io earlier today. I'd never even heard of itch.io but I follow a cool nerd on Twitter and she retweeted [1] another cool nerd. We know about RSS. I have dozens of feeds and they're really varied. I've been following many of them for at least a decade. You're just not finding this stuff on /r/yourregionalcity unless someone like us posts it there. [0]: https://colorfiction.itch.io/nightline https://colorfiction.itch.io/nightline [1]: https://twitter.com/colorfiction/status/1330575276561063937 https://twitter.com/colorfiction/status/1330575276561063937
Freak_NL 6y ago
Not more valuable, just valuable. I don't mean to imply that what one group contributes is more valuable than the other, just that what the ad-blocking group contributes is valuable to help retain users in general. I.e., from a monetization perspective, losing (part of) the ad-blocking group is much more expensive than retaining them with their ad-blockers working.
renewiltord 6y ago
I have never encountered a single online forum where the users did not believe that 'we' were the biggest contributors to whatever.
- eindiran 6y ago
  For any given forum, the "we" making the claim is almost certainly correct. Most people on any given forum only lurk, so the people commenting are inherently "contributing" more. Many lurkers will recognize your username, and you certainly contribute more to HN than them, so if you were to have made that claim in your comment you'd be correct. See: Participation inequality [0] and the 1% rule/90-9-1 rule[1] and the friendship paradox[2]. Re-reading your comment, I think you might actually mean that people commenting on random forums think they are the biggest contributors to <something off of the the forum>, which isn't nearly as certain. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_inequality [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox

by nsgi 6y ago

How do tech-savvy users contribute more valuable content than non-tech savvy users? Maybe when it comes to content about tech but that's not the majority of content on Facebook and Twitter

pavel_lishin 6y ago

Yeah, this doesn't seem right to me. I don't think my family consumes content by the tech-savvy - they come for the content by friends and family members, and get sucked in via the rest of the stuff Facebook throws at them via the feed. Nowhere in that pipeline do "tech-savvy users with a solid ad-blocker", "who on the whole have a decent understanding of the mechanisms used to influence people" come into play - unless you're counting Russian agencies and others who are explicitly using it for propaganda (not to be confused with people who like-and-reshare David Icke nonsense.)

jen729w 6y ago

Hypothesis: we're in the net rather than just being on the net. That gives us access to a wider range of material. For example, I found Nightline [0] on itch.io earlier today. I'd never even heard of itch.io but I follow a cool nerd on Twitter and she retweeted [1] another cool nerd. We know about RSS. I have dozens of feeds and they're really varied. I've been following many of them for at least a decade. You're just not finding this stuff on /r/yourregionalcity unless someone like us posts it there. [0]: https://colorfiction.itch.io/nightline https://colorfiction.itch.io/nightline [1]: https://twitter.com/colorfiction/status/1330575276561063937 https://twitter.com/colorfiction/status/1330575276561063937

Freak_NL 6y ago

Not more valuable, just valuable. I don't mean to imply that what one group contributes is more valuable than the other, just that what the ad-blocking group contributes is valuable to help retain users in general. I.e., from a monetization perspective, losing (part of) the ad-blocking group is much more expensive than retaining them with their ad-blockers working.

renewiltord 6y ago

I have never encountered a single online forum where the users did not believe that 'we' were the biggest contributors to whatever.

eindiran 6y ago
For any given forum, the "we" making the claim is almost certainly correct. Most people on any given forum only lurk, so the people commenting are inherently "contributing" more. Many lurkers will recognize your username, and you certainly contribute more to HN than them, so if you were to have made that claim in your comment you'd be correct. See: Participation inequality [0] and the 1% rule/90-9-1 rule[1] and the friendship paradox[2]. Re-reading your comment, I think you might actually mean that people commenting on random forums think they are the biggest contributors to <something off of the the forum>, which isn't nearly as certain. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_inequality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Participation_inequality [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_(Internet_culture) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendship_paradox