7 ms·
Social networks neither ‘social’ nor ‘networks’ – what should we call them?
- rcardo11 5y agoAccording to the theory of the author, I've found that Twitter can be used like an actual social network and I do use it like this with a group of friends. It is kind of a cluster and anyone can join only by answering our tweets and hanging out.
- tharejamudit 5y agoI think twitter has a lot of potential, more than just a social network
- notjustanymike 5y agoI'm preferential to "Echo Chamber"
- agumonkey 5y agoBrownian venter
- jeezzbo 5y agofratnets = cult fisheries
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- TheAdamAndChe 5y agoWith their algorithmic feeds designed to maximize engagement, they're just Skinner Boxes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber
- ineiti 5y agoI just learnt this term. And also saw that this example is already in the Wikipedia article ;)
- Strang 5y agoDerangement loci
- gregasquith 5y agoScrollbait?
- RocketSyntax 5y agoI like it =)
- PotatoPancakes 5y agoML-curated distraction-entertainment feeds and surveillance services
- amelius 5y agosoul traps
- tacocataco 5y agoPropagandapps
- motohagiography 5y agoI'm proposing the Hegemonet, which has emerged as distinct from the internet.
- goatinaboat 5y agoCigarnettes
- throwawaysea 5y agoI think they are not social anymore, having been overrun with politics and ads. However they are still a network. There is a network effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect) that makes it valuable to the participants and advertisers alike, which is the large number of users. It’s just that the network’s value went from being driven by positive actions (sharing photos with friends) to something negative - which is preventing others’ political views or business competitors from winning by influencing the network. All sides feel like they have to participate because others participate and they’ll be irrelevant otherwise. In that sense it’s more like a war zone.
- 1MachineElf 5y agoReminds me of this article that had been submitted a couple times in recent months, "User Engagement" is code for "Addiction" https://medium.com/swlh/user-engagement-is-code-for-addiction-a2f50d36d7ac https://medium.com/swlh/user-engagement-is-code-for-addictio... I hope we can come up with a new phrase that sticks for these. Some good ones have been posted here in the comments. Ideally, an altruistic entity will trademark them.
- midolzzzz 5y ago"User Engagement Networks" Sounds perfectly fine to me. At least there would be an idea of what these apps are trying to accomplish at the expense of the user.
- worker767424 5y agoThis might sound like a nit, but I'd call it habit-forming, not addictive. I watched friends go from obsessed with Facebook when it launched to mostly using it for sharing family photos, and this is at a time when there was a focus on user engagement. It just seems like people lost interest too easily for it to be actual addiction.
- guscost 5y agoNot my invention, but: "hive mine".
- pram 5y agoSkinner boxes is my favorite euphemism
- kwdc 5y agoCertainly sums up most games that involve any form of XP or grinding mechanic.
- ksdale 5y agoThaaat's not actually a euphemism.
- libraryatnight 5y agoAccurate. Though if that's a euphemism, what's the harsher term you're masking? lol
- rubyist5eva 5y agoCancer. They are cancer. Pure and simple.
- aendruk 5y ago“engagement media”
- qqii 5y agoOpinion amplifiers.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- born-jre 5y agohttps://theportal.wiki/wiki?title=Algorithmic_Fun_House&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktop https://theportal.wiki/wiki?title=Algorithmic_Fun_House&mobi...
- api 5y agoUnimatrix One? "We are Borg. You will be red pilled. Resistance is futile. Where we go one we go all!"
- Chazprime 5y agoToxic waste dumps?
- gregasquith 5y agoIs there now a gap for a new social platform that goes back to chronologically ordered content from those you choose to follow/friend rather than algorithmically curated content from other sources designed to lure you in?
- TheRealDunkirk 5y agoThere is, but anyone who would fund it would require it to be monetized in the same way. This situation will continue to persist until people are willing to pay for such a service, and subvert the advertising motive. And, even then, we have the example of cable to show us that ads will probably creep back in, and come to dominate it all over again. When people are willing to drive dump trucks full of money to your loading dock, what else can you do? </s>
- gregasquith 5y agoVery true. I have to confess to a very leading question there, as I am building exactly this and thinking long and hard about monetisation. I do like the cable analogy and think it's very true. I think ads can be done better/more ethically than currently as well though - whether that be less of them, less "native" so they don't appear exactly like posts from your family/friends and with less granular targeting - whether advertisers would go for it is another matter entirely though...
- tgirod 5y agoUnless the application is decentralized enough so there is no central server to pay for ... EDIT: but I probably wouldn't use it either.
- phoe-krk 5y agoYou just described the Fediverse. https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse
- Black101 5y agoI don't want Facebook to show me anything that isn't posted by one of my friends... are there any settings that allows that? Sure it's kind of interesting to look at a bear being washed by a human, but who cares.
- imvetri 5y agoHuman neural networks
- whiw 5y agoClique Clusters
- mtnygard 5y ago"Scrolling media" is pretty good. It sounds enough like the existing term to catch on.
- atat7024 5y ago"Corpo networks"
- local_dev 5y ago"Reality Internet" similar to "Reality TV". It is all trash and a waste of time.
- asdff 5y agoTabloid internet.
- abhishekbasu 5y agoA thing I've noticed, and I could be wrong about this, is that social networks have not done much to increase avenues for interaction between 2nd degree connections of two people (say a and b) without needing the active participation of the a and b themselves. For instance, if we have the following undirected connections: {(a,b), (b,c), (a,d)}. There could be a mechanism to make the graph more dense by the way of increasing interactions between (c,d) without needing, for example, a to like c's content for it to then appear on d's feed. Done naively, this could result in a lot of unwanted content on someone's feed, but I wonder if there are ways around it.