6 ms·

You can monetize socialization we've done it forever, clubs come to mind for instance. No one wants to pay directly for social media unlike in person experience

by Grimm1 5y ago

You can monetize socialization we've done it forever, clubs come to mind for instance. No one wants to pay directly for social media unlike in person experiences though so we have what we have.

skinkestek 5y ago
> No one wants to pay directly for social media unlike in person experiences though so we have what we have. For the longest time I paid for MeWe, hoping they'd introduce pseudonyms and become a non Google Google+. I would actually have paid for Google+ too if they had kept it around.
- Grimm1 5y ago
  Why did you stop paying for MeWe? Just the lack of pseudonym introduction?
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    Either that, or perhaps the huge influx of far-right sympathizers.
    - skinkestek 5y ago
      I saw no such influx but then again I was only into chili growing, general gardening, photography and that kind of stuff. I'd like to discuss mental health issues as well but personally I don't feel like posting to ADHD or anything when my family or my boss or my future boss can trivially easy (two clicks, no mental gymnastics) go from my post there to my professional profile. Besides, the term "far-right" is so utterly abused now that it doesn't mean anything except "people I don't like".
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Well, good for you that you didn't see that. I, OTOH, definitely did. And, hey, would you have been happier if I'd called them Nazis?
        skinkestek 5y ago
        I'd be happier if we sometimes, once in a while, called nazis by their full name: National Socialists. Fun fact: Hitler wasn't a right wing guy in any way. He's not known for suggesting Germany introduce a second amendment like law: he was a gun grabber. He's not known for his contributions to (actually) liberal politics or for deepening the theory of the invisible hand or anything. He started as a mad socialist and ended as a mad politician in the center. His "legacy" except millions upon millions of dead (only toppled by fellow madman Stalin?) was gigantic public infrastructure projects, centrally planned, created with the help of private enterprises. Framing nazism as "right wing" is the most brilliant thing the left ever did. Now I am not a Republican either, they have their own issues. But don't use right-wing as a slur that means nazi. And don't call people nazis because you don't like them: nazism exist today and people who call Republicans nazis do us who oppose actual nazism a great disservice I think.
        CRConrad 5y ago
        Replying to myself for technical reasons: People who bring up how Hitler and the Nazis were "actually Socialists"... are usually actually Nazis.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    No, I never needed the paid features in the first place. I only paid to support a good cause and in the hope that it would become a replacement for Google+. After a year or two where they never responded to feedback I just gave up. I don't need another place to worry about leaking my identity connected to deeply personal issues.
merpnderp 5y ago
People definitely used to pay for online socialization they’d just prefer free with advertisements.
partomniscient 5y ago
That's because monetisation via serving food/alcohol sales (in moderation) can enhance the socialisation experience, so its a win-win. Because big media got hooked on advertising revenue and news became subsidised and we got news/information cheaply, we'd been collectively taught that fact generation and dispersion costs were neglible (although they're not, work and energy is required and this was offset by the ad. revenue). Move this to the digital space where information flows at close to light speed and you can accurately measure all sorts of marketing stuff - it just goes faster to the point of absurdity. Whatever value we can create via connectivity gets trashed by being subverted or obverted by corporate interests. I'm now pissed off because I pay youtube $x per month not to be interrupted by ads, and now the content creators have their own ads in their content. When you scale out, it becomes a sad picture of humanity that is excitedly self-reinforcing monetisation of things via interruption of engagement/continuity. Actual value is evapourating. No wonder we're all getting ADHD. The spaces that are mostly simple and left alone are where interesting things can still continually occur. That's precisely why HN is actually still going strong.
- Grimm1 5y ago
  I agree with you, I find size is a predictor of decline in quality. HN hasn't hit that threshold, but even still I know that with what growth it has had the moderation efforts to keep it this way also increased significantly.
  - ItsMonkk 5y ago
    It's Dunbar's Number. When a tribe gets to large, because of Metcalfe's law the tribe loses the ability to discuss things to a level of nuance that is required, and that causes fractures that lead to a tribal split. Because all of the internet communities have no natural way to split, the only thing left is for them to become toxic and eventually die. Systems attempt to keep the tribe going longer by attempting to keep track of metrics, and this works for a while because the tribe had built up trust, but the bigger the tribe gets(with new members never trusting, forming Eternal September), the more the metrics reign, Goodhart's law states the more inevitable it is that it collapses. > ... there seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. ... And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units. - Leopold Kohr, 1957
amelius 5y ago
That's because clubs do not interfere with the things we say to one another. Also they are not monopolies, so they can't experiment freely without risking us going to another club.
- polynomial 5y ago
  Well, yes and no. The music in clubs is often designed to be so loud as to interfere in conversation, on the premise that the less you are able to converse the more you will drink.
Const-me 5y ago
I paid for livejournal.com social media for a few years, then Russians bought the company and I cancelled.
pharke 5y ago
No one will pay to hang out in an empty room just because other people are there. They pay to go to clubs and bars because they provide entertainment, food, drinks, and atmosphere to go along with the social experience. If you created a rich enough social media experience then people would be fine paying for it. It's not surprising people don't want to pay for social media as it currently exists since it parasitizes all of its content from the web which is for the most part freely available. It's like fencing off a corner of a public park and trying to charge admission to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by Grimm1 5y ago

You can monetize socialization we've done it forever, clubs come to mind for instance. No one wants to pay directly for social media unlike in person experiences though so we have what we have.

skinkestek 5y ago

> No one wants to pay directly for social media unlike in person experiences though so we have what we have. For the longest time I paid for MeWe, hoping they'd introduce pseudonyms and become a non Google Google+. I would actually have paid for Google+ too if they had kept it around.

Grimm1 5y ago
Why did you stop paying for MeWe? Just the lack of pseudonym introduction?
- CRConrad 5y ago
  Either that, or perhaps the huge influx of far-right sympathizers.
  - skinkestek 5y ago
    I saw no such influx but then again I was only into chili growing, general gardening, photography and that kind of stuff. I'd like to discuss mental health issues as well but personally I don't feel like posting to ADHD or anything when my family or my boss or my future boss can trivially easy (two clicks, no mental gymnastics) go from my post there to my professional profile. Besides, the term "far-right" is so utterly abused now that it doesn't mean anything except "people I don't like".
    - CRConrad 5y ago
      Well, good for you that you didn't see that. I, OTOH, definitely did. And, hey, would you have been happier if I'd called them Nazis?
      - skinkestek 5y ago
        I'd be happier if we sometimes, once in a while, called nazis by their full name: National Socialists. Fun fact: Hitler wasn't a right wing guy in any way. He's not known for suggesting Germany introduce a second amendment like law: he was a gun grabber. He's not known for his contributions to (actually) liberal politics or for deepening the theory of the invisible hand or anything. He started as a mad socialist and ended as a mad politician in the center. His "legacy" except millions upon millions of dead (only toppled by fellow madman Stalin?) was gigantic public infrastructure projects, centrally planned, created with the help of private enterprises. Framing nazism as "right wing" is the most brilliant thing the left ever did. Now I am not a Republican either, they have their own issues. But don't use right-wing as a slur that means nazi. And don't call people nazis because you don't like them: nazism exist today and people who call Republicans nazis do us who oppose actual nazism a great disservice I think.
      - CRConrad 5y ago
        Replying to myself for technical reasons: People who bring up how Hitler and the Nazis were "actually Socialists"... are usually actually Nazis.
- skinkestek 5y ago
  No, I never needed the paid features in the first place. I only paid to support a good cause and in the hope that it would become a replacement for Google+. After a year or two where they never responded to feedback I just gave up. I don't need another place to worry about leaking my identity connected to deeply personal issues.

merpnderp 5y ago

People definitely used to pay for online socialization they’d just prefer free with advertisements.

partomniscient 5y ago

That's because monetisation via serving food/alcohol sales (in moderation) can enhance the socialisation experience, so its a win-win. Because big media got hooked on advertising revenue and news became subsidised and we got news/information cheaply, we'd been collectively taught that fact generation and dispersion costs were neglible (although they're not, work and energy is required and this was offset by the ad. revenue). Move this to the digital space where information flows at close to light speed and you can accurately measure all sorts of marketing stuff - it just goes faster to the point of absurdity. Whatever value we can create via connectivity gets trashed by being subverted or obverted by corporate interests. I'm now pissed off because I pay youtube $x per month not to be interrupted by ads, and now the content creators have their own ads in their content. When you scale out, it becomes a sad picture of humanity that is excitedly self-reinforcing monetisation of things via interruption of engagement/continuity. Actual value is evapourating. No wonder we're all getting ADHD. The spaces that are mostly simple and left alone are where interesting things can still continually occur. That's precisely why HN is actually still going strong.

Grimm1 5y ago
I agree with you, I find size is a predictor of decline in quality. HN hasn't hit that threshold, but even still I know that with what growth it has had the moderation efforts to keep it this way also increased significantly.
- ItsMonkk 5y ago
  It's Dunbar's Number. When a tribe gets to large, because of Metcalfe's law the tribe loses the ability to discuss things to a level of nuance that is required, and that causes fractures that lead to a tribal split. Because all of the internet communities have no natural way to split, the only thing left is for them to become toxic and eventually die. Systems attempt to keep the tribe going longer by attempting to keep track of metrics, and this works for a while because the tribe had built up trust, but the bigger the tribe gets(with new members never trusting, forming Eternal September), the more the metrics reign, Goodhart's law states the more inevitable it is that it collapses. > ... there seems to be only one cause behind all forms of social misery: bigness. Oversimplified as this may seem, we shall find the idea more easily acceptable if we consider that bigness, or oversize, is really much more than just a social problem. It appears to be the one and only problem permeating all creation. Whenever something is wrong, something is too big. ... And if the body of a people becomes diseased with the fever of aggression, brutality, collectivism, or massive idiocy, it is not because it has fallen victim to bad leadership or mental derangement. It is because human beings, so charming as individuals or in small aggregations, have been welded into overconcentrated social units. - Leopold Kohr, 1957

amelius 5y ago

That's because clubs do not interfere with the things we say to one another. Also they are not monopolies, so they can't experiment freely without risking us going to another club.

polynomial 5y ago
Well, yes and no. The music in clubs is often designed to be so loud as to interfere in conversation, on the premise that the less you are able to converse the more you will drink.

Const-me 5y ago

I paid for livejournal.com social media for a few years, then Russians bought the company and I cancelled.

pharke 5y ago

No one will pay to hang out in an empty room just because other people are there. They pay to go to clubs and bars because they provide entertainment, food, drinks, and atmosphere to go along with the social experience. If you created a rich enough social media experience then people would be fine paying for it. It's not surprising people don't want to pay for social media as it currently exists since it parasitizes all of its content from the web which is for the most part freely available. It's like fencing off a corner of a public park and trying to charge admission to enjoy the fresh air and sunshine.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]