11 ms·

The End of Social Media

119 points by miikavonbell 5y ago

crazy_horse 5y ago
I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding rude, but what is this saying that adds insight to what I've been reading on places like HN for a decade? Is it true that people are getting dumber? Big claim, no evidence. Do paragraphs exist? I'm looking for solution. Saying nobody knows what the future looks like ain't it.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  This book [1] argues that average IQ has been significantly increasing over the past century, and supports the claim with a wide variety of evidence. However the author also posits that whether intelligence is increasing is still controversial and difficult to prove conclusively. [1] Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_-ykOVpRccC https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_-ykOVpRccC
  - skeeter2020 5y ago
    While it's pretty tough to even measure intelligence, nutrition and general health have improved dramatically, so that's likely to have spill-over into cognitive improvements as well.
  - asdff 5y ago
    I wonder how well we are able to maintain focus relative to years past, what with the mental damage of consuming content in thirty second or so intervals for long chunks of time for years and years. My internet addiction as a teenager 15 years ago was bad enough, if I grew up with fast paced junk like TikTok I feel like I would probably develop ADD just from the rewiring process that happens while growing up coupled with these short spurts of junk food tier content meant to engage you for as long as possible. Hopefully in another 20 years people see social media like a cigarette but for mental health.
    - moate 5y ago
      Adult with ADHD here: You would not develop ADD from media. That's not how this works. The fact that devs have found ways to design sites that mimic patterns for addiction doesn't mean it's the people. It's the things. If you suddenly found yourself removed from the stimuli, you'd be fine, no longer the exposure period. I will not. Since our jumping off point was "people are getting dumber"(they aren't) I just want to point out people aren't also developing ADHD, they just have more things vying for their neurtypical brain's attention.
      - asdff 5y ago
        Maybe you wouldn't get canonical ADD but you'd definitely have an attention deficit disorder of some sort. Drink alcohol every day and you become addicted to that dopamine hit. Gamble every day you are addicted to gambling. Play video games every day and you are addicted to video games. These things infect your mind because they work just like crack cocaine, luring you in with a hit of dopamine and you end up sacrificing showering at best, interpersonal relationships and other aspects of life at worst. There is science showing these rewiring events happening due to drinking, gambling, and other addictive or compulsive repeated behaviors. I'm not sure why repeated daily consumption of 30 seconds of viral content would be any different and wouldn't predispose you towards seeking your dopamine hit thirty seconds at a time, and make you de facto have a disorder holding attention on something for longer than 30 seconds.
- moate 5y ago
  The "people are getting dumber" argument really rubbed me the wrong way as well. It's glib and pithy and people love to make this claim when talking about things they don't like about society. "I dislike ads and only stupid idiot babies would tolerate platforms with ads, therefore everyone using the majority of websites is an idiot" is such lazy thinking. IDK, I'm a huge fan of social sciences which means I might as well be the devil to many engineers/HN posters.
- xcfvbnkhnkjq 5y ago
  >Is it true that people are getting dumber? Big claim, no evidence. Do paragraphs exist? I'm looking for solution. Are the grammar issues intentional?
monkeynotes 5y ago
Social media isn't over, just as trash TV, and entertainment parading as news isn't over.
- marto1 5y ago
  It's also incredibly potent for spreading propaganda. I doubt any of the big players want to give any of that power just yet :-)
markbnj 5y ago
>> Some time ago I tried to find information about Crocodiles, the animals. Instead, I got results about Crocs shoes and zero information about the actual crocodiles. I just entered 'crocodile' into Google search while signed into my normal private account, and got a ton of useful information about crocodiles. Shoes were nowhere to be found in the first 30 or 40 results that I scanned. I don't know if the OP is using a different search engine that is more blatant about ads.
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  the OP probably searched for 'Crocs'. Even DDG floods the front page with the footwear. I'm not sure this is a great example.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > the OP probably searched for 'Crocs' Why would you do that when searching for crocodiles?
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Because it's shorter and is a common term for crocodiles in various places where they're common.
      - chrisseaton 5y ago
        Not sure it’s reasonable to search an international search engine with a regional slang and then complain when it doesn’t recognise it.
        ghaff 5y ago
        I don't disagree. As soon as I started typing I would realize that crocs would probably turn up the shoe. However, to the degree that people routinely use regionalisms, it's easy to see why they might use them reflexively. Of course, it's also easy to see why a search engine might not return the results they expect.
ramesh31 5y ago
YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.
- criticaltinker 5y ago
  Being logged out and having cookies disabled definitely helps, but in my experience it's almost not enough. I need to access Youtube from a completely different IP address, with a different user agent and browser window size to get rid of certain themes and suggestions that magically appear on the front page. Browser fingerprinting is responsible for this adversarial dynamic I find myself in.
- mbg721 5y ago
  I had done this in a new browser because my work once used it to stream a meeting, and I was shocked how tabloid-trashy the default front-page suggestions were. I can't believe that's what a plurality of people would want without the algorithms.
  - krapp 5y ago
    In my experience, Youtube only works as a curated experience, which means being logged into an account, having subscriptions, an active search history, etc.
  - jjoonathan 5y ago
    I can believe the tabloid trash is what people want: I've seen supermarket checkout aisles and daytime TV, the depths of the lowest common denominator have been plumbed before and it seems reasonable that youtube would arrive at much the same place. I can understand occasionally wanting to check the popular content for neat trends that you missed out on, but the idea of seeking out the pop / tabloid experience as your main interaction mechanism is foreign and slightly revolting to me. It's not an escape from the algorithm, it's just another side of the algorithm, and not the best one. IMO the curated youtube experience is far better. Yes, it recommends similar content and will push you down a rabbithole if you let it, but that's what recommender systems do. The flipside of discovering good content from good choices is discovering bad content from bad choices, and I don't think those can be automatically separated. On occasion you have to actively and firmly tell the algorithm "no" in the form of "don't recommend this channel," but once you do it respects your decision. A tiny bit of curation goes a long way, and if if I didn't let youtube work with me to figure out what I liked I imagine I would wind up doing the same thing but worse by keeping a list of interesting channels that I periodically checked.
b1d3nb3h1d3n 5y ago
Most of social media is just liberal bots pushing their liberal agenda. Someone once mentioned that something like only 8% of twitter are actual real users. The rest are just bots.
duxup 5y ago
Problems I see: - Most content produced by people on social media is not good and you probably don't want to see it. Serendipity of a bunch of crappy content "I had a bad day nobody ask me about it" is not something you want, but it is serendipity. - Social media isn't where you go to get info on Crocodiles, not sure how that would even work? That's Wikipedia. ... or if we're talking social media, YouTube (I searched YouTube and got a lot of legitimate results).
- zhdc1 5y ago
  Social media - at least, Twitter, but a couple of other sites before that - is still the go to source for breaking news. It can take tens of minutes to hours for major news sites to report on a breaking event (e.g., the fall of Kabul). Meanwhile, you can get detailed - albiet in some cases very innacurate - information within minutes of it happening simply by watching for Tweets from people on the ground.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > albiet in some cases very innacurate I would correct to most cases. Or that the information you get is without sufficient context to be of use.
    - zhdc1 5y ago
      Actually, I've found that they tend to be fairly accurate at reporting 'what' is happening - it's hard for several people at the same time to post unique, fake videos of people driving around with guns while others are posting corroborating textual accounts. The 'why' part is a completely different matter. If there's any interpretation or time difference between the event and the post, scepticism is absolutely warranted.
      - bryan_w 5y ago
        It's not that hard if you use "residential proxies"
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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animanoir 5y ago
I believe blogging will have a Renaissance since it has all the benefits from "social networks" but excluding the ads, the unnecessary "likes", and focus on the fundamentals which are sharing and discussing, just like forums, but blogs will be about individuals mainly.
- moate 5y ago
  IDK what blogs you're reading, but many of those sites are a confederation of ads with small islands of content interspersed between. Many bloggers are trying to do it as a way to gain income at this point, and the ads are either all over the site or inserted directly into the "content".
  - animanoir 5y ago
    Well, like mine, which is completely about me and my thoughts with zero ads, and I share and discuss whatever I want https://safetyinsolitude.blogspot.com/ https://safetyinsolitude.blogspot.com/ This is what I send to people if they want to know my digital self. So yeah, mentality needs to change to stop seeking revenue out of everything...
    - moate 5y ago
      The issue is that some people want to blog for a living (and there's nothing wrong with that IMO) which leads the platforms to optimize for that. I don't think enough people are willing to spin up their own self-hosted blogs just to throw their thoughts into the aether. Not when points to what the internet has become exists and they can get the engagement/dopamine they want elsewhere. That's not to say your prediction is wrong, just feels extremely unlikely, barring some massive regulatory upheaval changing the internet's current paradigm.
  - brodouevencode 5y ago
    I think OPs original point was more of a circa-2005 blog, which would be nice. But your point is equally as valid. Try searching for a recipe for your favorite dish - the first two pages are blog posts each filled with incessant chatter about how the dish makes them feel. You have to scroll to the very bottom just to get the actual recipe.
fsiefken 5y ago
for a long while i was thinking my comments on facebook would raise the quality of interaction, but with the onslaught of disinformation my thoughtful and respectful comments (or so I think) seem to be futile and just fodder for the facebook network and the attention economy. So I wrote a goodbye note on instagram and facebook, felt confirmation by reading Jaron Lanier. Got a new domain and configured jekyll. Now I can blog and write my 'digital garden' notes on my own island and share it with a smaller circle of people outside of the regular social media which artificially disciplines my thoughts, responses and behavior like the panopticon (michel foucault). I'll keep an eye on facebook groups, will schedule some script to rss-ify some feeds from 'facebook friends' but that's it.
bodge5000 5y ago
"The end of social media" is quite a lofty statement, bearing in mind that facebook, twitter, ect... are social media, but social media isnt facebook, twitter. It'd be like if there were some massive drama involving Netflix and YouTube. You wouldnt call it the end of streaming, or web based video. There'd be a massive shift in the market certainly, and I think eventually social media will look completely different to how it looks now, but thats not the end. It might sound like I'm arguing over semantics but I'd disagree.
thickened 5y ago
Miika- This article is a dog whistle for right-wing behaviour and is quite frankly problematic, starting with this quip in the first paragraph which sets the stage: "[...] instead of letting algorithms and machine learning decide what is good for you." We've spent a good twenty years now, and longer really, building the infrastructure to ensure that when it comes to the World Wide Web, FAAMNG+ companies - not just restricted to US-centric ones but globally really - can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. I used to be against mass surveillance, logging everything, but seeing this kind of an article in 2021 sends shivers up my spine. I'm quite worried. Is this what we should look into next?
- bee_rider 5y ago
  I don't think anyone on the Left wants to give the Right ownership of the idea that algorithmic advertisements and social media are mostly bad. > We've spent a good twenty years now, and longer really, building the infrastructure to ensure that when it comes to the World Wide Web, FAAMNG+ companies - not just restricted to US-centric ones but globally really - can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. Wait, maybe I'm being hit by Poe's law here -- is your post actually sarcasm?
- claytongulick 5y ago
  > This article is a dog whistle for right-wing behaviour and is quite frankly problematic Every time I see a sentence like this, I interpret it as the first step of an attempt to reduce speech. Step 1: Identify 'problematic' content. Step 2: Create rules to limit the distribution of 'problematic' content. Step 3: Broaden the definition of 'problematic' content to include anything that disagrees with a specific point of view. Step 4: Dystopian hell straight from Orwell. > can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. Is this a 'woosh' moment? Is this intended to be satire? > I used to be against mass surveillance, logging everything > Is this what we should look into next? If this is satire, can you please clarify?
gpsx 5y ago
I don't think anyone likes advertising, but that does bankroll the internet. There are some great content providers on youtube who do that full time and make a living from it. Even many basic sites owe their existence to advertising because running a server is not free. But the joke in on the advertisers. Internet advertising doesn't work, or at least that is what I have read. If we hadn't had advertising but instead came up with some micropayment formalism, I bet the internet never would have developed to be what it is today, even for today's content that is not ad driven.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I don't know if it's actually a plausible outcome, but take advertising out of the equation and you probably end up with a significantly more limited Internet that's mostly accessed from institutional accounts (as was originally the case) and by individuals who are fine with a fairly expensive subscription fee. ADDED: I do tend to think the commercialization of the Internet with advertising was probably inevitable, but someone could probably construct at least a vaguely plausible narrative around a less commercialized post-NSFNET world.
AlbertCory 5y ago
This is a junk article. Why is it even on the front page? 60 years ago, before even the ARPANET, there was Newton Minow giving a speech [1] about how TV was garbage (the "vast wasteland" speech). If you want to read something timeless, read that instead. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wasteland-reconsidered/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wast...
- pphysch 5y ago
  Ironically, instead of linking to Minow's speech, you link to another "junk article" that reads like an ad for Harvard ("Hey look, this famous guy's daughter works at Harvard. Here are some random related facts." --the Harvard Gazette). The mind boggles.
  - lofties 5y ago
    The full speech[1] for those interested. [1] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm
    - asdff 5y ago
      I was expecting a lot more damning points about TV but this legitimately reads like the man is a luddite rather than someone thinking about maybe the value of deep thinking. His cited evils on TV: "You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons." Yet in the paragraph above he gives the newspaper as well as the theater a pass, when you can see many of these tropes outlined in this quote from just Shakespeare. Old Old media also was a "vast wasteland" of sponsored radio programs, poorly written syndicated stories meant to engage readers to see other advertisements in newspapers (literally the social media model), and billboards adorning theaters and most aspects of public life, even more than today. I was hoping he would get into something about devoting ones efforts towards improvements, personal or otherwise, rather than endless consumption that leaves you in the same place as beforehand, but that wasn't really his mark and probably not even in his capitalist head given the opining about 'tyrannical communism'.
olah_1 5y ago
This reads like an advertisement for peer to peer apps like Manyverse[1], Iris[2], or Capsule[3]. He mentions mirror.xyz in the footnotes, but I can't figure out what that is. One of those annoyingly exclusive projects like Clubhouse. The fact that not letting people in was a "feature" really just turned me off. Sour grapes, but oh well. [1]: https://www.manyver.se/ https://www.manyver.se/ [2]: https://iris.to https://iris.to [3]: https://capsule.social/ https://capsule.social/
donretag 5y ago
Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content. No longer was it about sharing with friends, but creating for profit. Social networks, as they were envisioned, are a great concept. As a method for distributing content to be monetized, not so much.
- Sebb767 5y ago
  Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something with a high production value or live their dream by earning money while doing the things they love. Veratasium or VSauce, for example, are a great channels, but they would've never gotten where they are now if they wouldn't have been able to earn money with it. A similar topic comes up in music all the time, too: People accuse their favorite band of changing their style in order to get mainstream appeal and, therefore, more money. Which is definitely true to some extend, but I don't think this makes paying musicians a bad thing in general. And it's the same thing with content creators on the internet.
  - el-salvador 5y ago
    I've noticed that before IG and Tiktok influencers become popular, their content is more authentic / less cookie-cutter. Also their followers leave better comments (they are only followed by those who genuinely like them).
  - Shish2k 5y ago
    > Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something That’s great and I’m happy for them... but it’s not social media. It’s just regular impersonal broadcast media, with a lower barrier to entry.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > content creators are the problem. > you can monetize their content. Wouldn't that put the blame on the monetization of social media? Content creators are trying to make money, social media companies determine what kind of content is relevant and worthy of views, thus which content deserves the money. Content creators seem to be at the mercy of providing content that will be recommended. I view it as a sort of "don't hate the player, hate the game." And the social media companies determine the rules of the game.
joghues 5y ago
It's just that people are making the most out of social media. Others have decided to make a hustle out of it, and it's not a bad thing as it allows other people to have money to put food on their table.
mrfusion 5y ago
I think an anonymous “dislike” button could go a long way in improving social media.
deleted 5y ago
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wombatmobile 5y ago
"New technology, this kind or any other kind, is a kind of Faustian bargain. It always gives us something important, but it also takes away something that's important. That's been true of the alphabet, the printing press, and telegraphy right up to the computer." Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49rcVQ1vFAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49rcVQ1vFAY
lsalvatore 5y ago
Most instagram ads are more entertaining and insightful than this article. Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. Sometimes you come across an ad that helps you or even changes your life. Things like new games, books or ideas. This article has nothing to do with the end of social media.
- nicce 5y ago
  > Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. They try to make consumer to buy the product in all means. Which means, that this education is often very far away from facts in the most of the cases.
  - lsalvatore 5y ago
    This is like saying "most products don't work". It's totally subjective. Blatant lies usually aren't tolerated in ad networks. I'm talking about "it's the hottest summer on record, therefore you may consider a pool" not "you will lose 10 pounds" which is strictly not allowed.
- TFYS 5y ago
  > Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products This is so obviously false. If education was the goal of advertising, ads would inform about the negative sides of the products as well. I've never seen that. The goal of advertising is to make people buy more using any psychological trick you can come up with. If you want to educate people, you need to do actual education. Bombarding people with propaganda is not education.
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LOOKOUT 5y ago
One of the best features of a jailbroken iPhone is the ability to hide all ads on YouTube / Spotify / Instagram / Twitter / TikTok. I feel impervious to social media advertising & you can too if you just go through the effort.
- asdff 5y ago
  Is there an untethered jailbreak these days?
  - LOOKOUT 5y ago
    jailbreaks are currently described as semi-tethered. meaning a jailbreak app must be ran after a phone has booted. your phone stays jailbroken as long as it does not power down. it is functionally untethered. as the app that jailbreaks the phone persists through reboots. there are firmware restrictions where these methods work however.
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sillycross 5y ago
I completely agree with the author's rants on machine learning algorithm. > consuming content through internet has become more and more manipulative. This is 100% true. With those ML-based "personalized" info feed, users keep getting pushed biased information that matches their prejudice and is not a reflection of the true picture. I'm actually dubious that what fraction of the pro-Trump conspiracy theorists had developed their conspiracy views "thanks to" Facebook et al's ML-based info suggestion algorithms.
jaredcwhite 5y ago
I don't fully understand the point of the article, but there's my take anyway. ;-) I pay for YouTube Premium so I don't get any ads on YouTube. And I don't really care about the (crappy) algorithm because I only watch what I subscribe to. I hope Twitter's utility will similarly increase as they pivot to (a) premium paid services, and (b) open protocols via BlueSky. Glass is a new social media photography app for iOS that feels a lot like early Instagram, but it's a paid service with no ads. So yeah, perhaps it's the end of social media as we knew it…but that's fine because new and existing services will adapt to provide people premium experiences (for a fee of course). Remember, we are the internet. If we don't like what it is, we can build something better.
- rnd0 5y ago
  >Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate. No, actually, we can't. By "we", of course, I mean garden-variety consumers. The legal, financial, and social barriers to entry are far too high. Anyone attempting to make the next youtube would be priced out of existance, anyone trying to make another reddit would be reduced to a smouldering crater by the time the lawsuits hit them, assuming that paypal doesn't force them to do an onlyfans first. It's not 2003 (when 4chan started) any more. The internet game is fixed, rigged and it will only become more restrictive, not less. Fuckerberg pulled the ladder up after him; there's not gonna be another movement -at least not coming from the internet.
miikavonbell 5y ago
OP Here. Wasn't really expecting this much discussion and attention for my article, but I am quite happy to see so much people having similar thoughts like I have, which I wrote in my article. I wrote a follow up post to my blog to share some of my afterthoughts: https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/ https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/

119 points by miikavonbell 5y ago

I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding rude, but what is this saying that adds insight to what I've been reading on places like HN for a decade? Is it true that people are getting dumber? Big claim, no evidence. Do paragraphs exist? I'm looking for solution. Saying nobody knows what the future looks like ain't it.

criticaltinker 5y ago
This book [1] argues that average IQ has been significantly increasing over the past century, and supports the claim with a wide variety of evidence. However the author also posits that whether intelligence is increasing is still controversial and difficult to prove conclusively. [1] Are We Getting Smarter?: Rising IQ in the Twenty-First Century https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_-ykOVpRccC https://books.google.com/books?id=Z_-ykOVpRccC
- skeeter2020 5y ago
  While it's pretty tough to even measure intelligence, nutrition and general health have improved dramatically, so that's likely to have spill-over into cognitive improvements as well.
- asdff 5y ago
  I wonder how well we are able to maintain focus relative to years past, what with the mental damage of consuming content in thirty second or so intervals for long chunks of time for years and years. My internet addiction as a teenager 15 years ago was bad enough, if I grew up with fast paced junk like TikTok I feel like I would probably develop ADD just from the rewiring process that happens while growing up coupled with these short spurts of junk food tier content meant to engage you for as long as possible. Hopefully in another 20 years people see social media like a cigarette but for mental health.
  - moate 5y ago
    Adult with ADHD here: You would not develop ADD from media. That's not how this works. The fact that devs have found ways to design sites that mimic patterns for addiction doesn't mean it's the people. It's the things. If you suddenly found yourself removed from the stimuli, you'd be fine, no longer the exposure period. I will not. Since our jumping off point was "people are getting dumber"(they aren't) I just want to point out people aren't also developing ADHD, they just have more things vying for their neurtypical brain's attention.
    - asdff 5y ago
      Maybe you wouldn't get canonical ADD but you'd definitely have an attention deficit disorder of some sort. Drink alcohol every day and you become addicted to that dopamine hit. Gamble every day you are addicted to gambling. Play video games every day and you are addicted to video games. These things infect your mind because they work just like crack cocaine, luring you in with a hit of dopamine and you end up sacrificing showering at best, interpersonal relationships and other aspects of life at worst. There is science showing these rewiring events happening due to drinking, gambling, and other addictive or compulsive repeated behaviors. I'm not sure why repeated daily consumption of 30 seconds of viral content would be any different and wouldn't predispose you towards seeking your dopamine hit thirty seconds at a time, and make you de facto have a disorder holding attention on something for longer than 30 seconds.
moate 5y ago
The "people are getting dumber" argument really rubbed me the wrong way as well. It's glib and pithy and people love to make this claim when talking about things they don't like about society. "I dislike ads and only stupid idiot babies would tolerate platforms with ads, therefore everyone using the majority of websites is an idiot" is such lazy thinking. IDK, I'm a huge fan of social sciences which means I might as well be the devil to many engineers/HN posters.
xcfvbnkhnkjq 5y ago
>Is it true that people are getting dumber? Big claim, no evidence. Do paragraphs exist? I'm looking for solution. Are the grammar issues intentional?

monkeynotes 5y ago

Social media isn't over, just as trash TV, and entertainment parading as news isn't over.

marto1 5y ago
It's also incredibly potent for spreading propaganda. I doubt any of the big players want to give any of that power just yet :-)

markbnj 5y ago

>> Some time ago I tried to find information about Crocodiles, the animals. Instead, I got results about Crocs shoes and zero information about the actual crocodiles. I just entered 'crocodile' into Google search while signed into my normal private account, and got a ton of useful information about crocodiles. Shoes were nowhere to be found in the first 30 or 40 results that I scanned. I don't know if the OP is using a different search engine that is more blatant about ads.

skeeter2020 5y ago
the OP probably searched for 'Crocs'. Even DDG floods the front page with the footwear. I'm not sure this is a great example.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > the OP probably searched for 'Crocs' Why would you do that when searching for crocodiles?
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Because it's shorter and is a common term for crocodiles in various places where they're common.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      Not sure it’s reasonable to search an international search engine with a regional slang and then complain when it doesn’t recognise it.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I don't disagree. As soon as I started typing I would realize that crocs would probably turn up the shoe. However, to the degree that people routinely use regionalisms, it's easy to see why they might use them reflexively. Of course, it's also easy to see why a search engine might not return the results they expect.

ramesh31 5y ago

YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

criticaltinker 5y ago
Being logged out and having cookies disabled definitely helps, but in my experience it's almost not enough. I need to access Youtube from a completely different IP address, with a different user agent and browser window size to get rid of certain themes and suggestions that magically appear on the front page. Browser fingerprinting is responsible for this adversarial dynamic I find myself in.
mbg721 5y ago
I had done this in a new browser because my work once used it to stream a meeting, and I was shocked how tabloid-trashy the default front-page suggestions were. I can't believe that's what a plurality of people would want without the algorithms.
- krapp 5y ago
  In my experience, Youtube only works as a curated experience, which means being logged into an account, having subscriptions, an active search history, etc.
- jjoonathan 5y ago
  I can believe the tabloid trash is what people want: I've seen supermarket checkout aisles and daytime TV, the depths of the lowest common denominator have been plumbed before and it seems reasonable that youtube would arrive at much the same place. I can understand occasionally wanting to check the popular content for neat trends that you missed out on, but the idea of seeking out the pop / tabloid experience as your main interaction mechanism is foreign and slightly revolting to me. It's not an escape from the algorithm, it's just another side of the algorithm, and not the best one. IMO the curated youtube experience is far better. Yes, it recommends similar content and will push you down a rabbithole if you let it, but that's what recommender systems do. The flipside of discovering good content from good choices is discovering bad content from bad choices, and I don't think those can be automatically separated. On occasion you have to actively and firmly tell the algorithm "no" in the form of "don't recommend this channel," but once you do it respects your decision. A tiny bit of curation goes a long way, and if if I didn't let youtube work with me to figure out what I liked I imagine I would wind up doing the same thing but worse by keeping a list of interesting channels that I periodically checked.

b1d3nb3h1d3n 5y ago

Most of social media is just liberal bots pushing their liberal agenda. Someone once mentioned that something like only 8% of twitter are actual real users. The rest are just bots.

duxup 5y ago

Problems I see: - Most content produced by people on social media is not good and you probably don't want to see it. Serendipity of a bunch of crappy content "I had a bad day nobody ask me about it" is not something you want, but it is serendipity. - Social media isn't where you go to get info on Crocodiles, not sure how that would even work? That's Wikipedia. ... or if we're talking social media, YouTube (I searched YouTube and got a lot of legitimate results).

zhdc1 5y ago
Social media - at least, Twitter, but a couple of other sites before that - is still the go to source for breaking news. It can take tens of minutes to hours for major news sites to report on a breaking event (e.g., the fall of Kabul). Meanwhile, you can get detailed - albiet in some cases very innacurate - information within minutes of it happening simply by watching for Tweets from people on the ground.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > albiet in some cases very innacurate I would correct to most cases. Or that the information you get is without sufficient context to be of use.
  - zhdc1 5y ago
    Actually, I've found that they tend to be fairly accurate at reporting 'what' is happening - it's hard for several people at the same time to post unique, fake videos of people driving around with guns while others are posting corroborating textual accounts. The 'why' part is a completely different matter. If there's any interpretation or time difference between the event and the post, scepticism is absolutely warranted.
    - bryan_w 5y ago
      It's not that hard if you use "residential proxies"
- 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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animanoir 5y ago

I believe blogging will have a Renaissance since it has all the benefits from "social networks" but excluding the ads, the unnecessary "likes", and focus on the fundamentals which are sharing and discussing, just like forums, but blogs will be about individuals mainly.

moate 5y ago
IDK what blogs you're reading, but many of those sites are a confederation of ads with small islands of content interspersed between. Many bloggers are trying to do it as a way to gain income at this point, and the ads are either all over the site or inserted directly into the "content".
- animanoir 5y ago
  Well, like mine, which is completely about me and my thoughts with zero ads, and I share and discuss whatever I want https://safetyinsolitude.blogspot.com/ https://safetyinsolitude.blogspot.com/ This is what I send to people if they want to know my digital self. So yeah, mentality needs to change to stop seeking revenue out of everything...
  - moate 5y ago
    The issue is that some people want to blog for a living (and there's nothing wrong with that IMO) which leads the platforms to optimize for that. I don't think enough people are willing to spin up their own self-hosted blogs just to throw their thoughts into the aether. Not when points to what the internet has become exists and they can get the engagement/dopamine they want elsewhere. That's not to say your prediction is wrong, just feels extremely unlikely, barring some massive regulatory upheaval changing the internet's current paradigm.
- brodouevencode 5y ago
  I think OPs original point was more of a circa-2005 blog, which would be nice. But your point is equally as valid. Try searching for a recipe for your favorite dish - the first two pages are blog posts each filled with incessant chatter about how the dish makes them feel. You have to scroll to the very bottom just to get the actual recipe.

fsiefken 5y ago

for a long while i was thinking my comments on facebook would raise the quality of interaction, but with the onslaught of disinformation my thoughtful and respectful comments (or so I think) seem to be futile and just fodder for the facebook network and the attention economy. So I wrote a goodbye note on instagram and facebook, felt confirmation by reading Jaron Lanier. Got a new domain and configured jekyll. Now I can blog and write my 'digital garden' notes on my own island and share it with a smaller circle of people outside of the regular social media which artificially disciplines my thoughts, responses and behavior like the panopticon (michel foucault). I'll keep an eye on facebook groups, will schedule some script to rss-ify some feeds from 'facebook friends' but that's it.

bodge5000 5y ago

"The end of social media" is quite a lofty statement, bearing in mind that facebook, twitter, ect... are social media, but social media isnt facebook, twitter. It'd be like if there were some massive drama involving Netflix and YouTube. You wouldnt call it the end of streaming, or web based video. There'd be a massive shift in the market certainly, and I think eventually social media will look completely different to how it looks now, but thats not the end. It might sound like I'm arguing over semantics but I'd disagree.

thickened 5y ago

Miika- This article is a dog whistle for right-wing behaviour and is quite frankly problematic, starting with this quip in the first paragraph which sets the stage: "[...] instead of letting algorithms and machine learning decide what is good for you." We've spent a good twenty years now, and longer really, building the infrastructure to ensure that when it comes to the World Wide Web, FAAMNG+ companies - not just restricted to US-centric ones but globally really - can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. I used to be against mass surveillance, logging everything, but seeing this kind of an article in 2021 sends shivers up my spine. I'm quite worried. Is this what we should look into next?

bee_rider 5y ago
I don't think anyone on the Left wants to give the Right ownership of the idea that algorithmic advertisements and social media are mostly bad. > We've spent a good twenty years now, and longer really, building the infrastructure to ensure that when it comes to the World Wide Web, FAAMNG+ companies - not just restricted to US-centric ones but globally really - can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. Wait, maybe I'm being hit by Poe's law here -- is your post actually sarcasm?
claytongulick 5y ago
> This article is a dog whistle for right-wing behaviour and is quite frankly problematic Every time I see a sentence like this, I interpret it as the first step of an attempt to reduce speech. Step 1: Identify 'problematic' content. Step 2: Create rules to limit the distribution of 'problematic' content. Step 3: Broaden the definition of 'problematic' content to include anything that disagrees with a specific point of view. Step 4: Dystopian hell straight from Orwell. > can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you. Is this a 'woosh' moment? Is this intended to be satire? > I used to be against mass surveillance, logging everything > Is this what we should look into next? If this is satire, can you please clarify?

gpsx 5y ago

I don't think anyone likes advertising, but that does bankroll the internet. There are some great content providers on youtube who do that full time and make a living from it. Even many basic sites owe their existence to advertising because running a server is not free. But the joke in on the advertisers. Internet advertising doesn't work, or at least that is what I have read. If we hadn't had advertising but instead came up with some micropayment formalism, I bet the internet never would have developed to be what it is today, even for today's content that is not ad driven.

ghaff 5y ago
I don't know if it's actually a plausible outcome, but take advertising out of the equation and you probably end up with a significantly more limited Internet that's mostly accessed from institutional accounts (as was originally the case) and by individuals who are fine with a fairly expensive subscription fee. ADDED: I do tend to think the commercialization of the Internet with advertising was probably inevitable, but someone could probably construct at least a vaguely plausible narrative around a less commercialized post-NSFNET world.

AlbertCory 5y ago

This is a junk article. Why is it even on the front page? 60 years ago, before even the ARPANET, there was Newton Minow giving a speech [1] about how TV was garbage (the "vast wasteland" speech). If you want to read something timeless, read that instead. [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wasteland-reconsidered/ https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wast...

pphysch 5y ago
Ironically, instead of linking to Minow's speech, you link to another "junk article" that reads like an ad for Harvard ("Hey look, this famous guy's daughter works at Harvard. Here are some random related facts." --the Harvard Gazette). The mind boggles.
- lofties 5y ago
  The full speech[1] for those interested. [1] https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/newtonminow.htm
  - asdff 5y ago
    I was expecting a lot more damning points about TV but this legitimately reads like the man is a luddite rather than someone thinking about maybe the value of deep thinking. His cited evils on TV: "You will see a procession of game shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, western bad men, western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence, and cartoons." Yet in the paragraph above he gives the newspaper as well as the theater a pass, when you can see many of these tropes outlined in this quote from just Shakespeare. Old Old media also was a "vast wasteland" of sponsored radio programs, poorly written syndicated stories meant to engage readers to see other advertisements in newspapers (literally the social media model), and billboards adorning theaters and most aspects of public life, even more than today. I was hoping he would get into something about devoting ones efforts towards improvements, personal or otherwise, rather than endless consumption that leaves you in the same place as beforehand, but that wasn't really his mark and probably not even in his capitalist head given the opining about 'tyrannical communism'.

olah_1 5y ago

This reads like an advertisement for peer to peer apps like Manyverse[1], Iris[2], or Capsule[3]. He mentions mirror.xyz in the footnotes, but I can't figure out what that is. One of those annoyingly exclusive projects like Clubhouse. The fact that not letting people in was a "feature" really just turned me off. Sour grapes, but oh well. [1]: https://www.manyver.se/ https://www.manyver.se/ [2]: https://iris.to https://iris.to [3]: https://capsule.social/ https://capsule.social/

donretag 5y ago

Here is my take: content creators are the problem. When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept! Then people noticed you can monetize their content. No longer was it about sharing with friends, but creating for profit. Social networks, as they were envisioned, are a great concept. As a method for distributing content to be monetized, not so much.

Sebb767 5y ago
Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something with a high production value or live their dream by earning money while doing the things they love. Veratasium or VSauce, for example, are a great channels, but they would've never gotten where they are now if they wouldn't have been able to earn money with it. A similar topic comes up in music all the time, too: People accuse their favorite band of changing their style in order to get mainstream appeal and, therefore, more money. Which is definitely true to some extend, but I don't think this makes paying musicians a bad thing in general. And it's the same thing with content creators on the internet.
- el-salvador 5y ago
  I've noticed that before IG and Tiktok influencers become popular, their content is more authentic / less cookie-cutter. Also their followers leave better comments (they are only followed by those who genuinely like them).
- Shish2k 5y ago
  > Yet monetization enabled great content creators to generate something That’s great and I’m happy for them... but it’s not social media. It’s just regular impersonal broadcast media, with a lower barrier to entry.
milkytron 5y ago
> content creators are the problem. > you can monetize their content. Wouldn't that put the blame on the monetization of social media? Content creators are trying to make money, social media companies determine what kind of content is relevant and worthy of views, thus which content deserves the money. Content creators seem to be at the mercy of providing content that will be recommended. I view it as a sort of "don't hate the player, hate the game." And the social media companies determine the rules of the game.

joghues 5y ago

It's just that people are making the most out of social media. Others have decided to make a hustle out of it, and it's not a bad thing as it allows other people to have money to put food on their table.

mrfusion 5y ago

I think an anonymous “dislike” button could go a long way in improving social media.

deleted 5y ago

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wombatmobile 5y ago

"New technology, this kind or any other kind, is a kind of Faustian bargain. It always gives us something important, but it also takes away something that's important. That's been true of the alphabet, the printing press, and telegraphy right up to the computer." Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49rcVQ1vFAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49rcVQ1vFAY

lsalvatore 5y ago

Most instagram ads are more entertaining and insightful than this article. Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. Sometimes you come across an ad that helps you or even changes your life. Things like new games, books or ideas. This article has nothing to do with the end of social media.

nicce 5y ago
> Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. They try to make consumer to buy the product in all means. Which means, that this education is often very far away from facts in the most of the cases.
- lsalvatore 5y ago
  This is like saying "most products don't work". It's totally subjective. Blatant lies usually aren't tolerated in ad networks. I'm talking about "it's the hottest summer on record, therefore you may consider a pool" not "you will lose 10 pounds" which is strictly not allowed.
TFYS 5y ago
> Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products This is so obviously false. If education was the goal of advertising, ads would inform about the negative sides of the products as well. I've never seen that. The goal of advertising is to make people buy more using any psychological trick you can come up with. If you want to educate people, you need to do actual education. Bombarding people with propaganda is not education.

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LOOKOUT 5y ago

One of the best features of a jailbroken iPhone is the ability to hide all ads on YouTube / Spotify / Instagram / Twitter / TikTok. I feel impervious to social media advertising & you can too if you just go through the effort.

asdff 5y ago
Is there an untethered jailbreak these days?
- LOOKOUT 5y ago
  jailbreaks are currently described as semi-tethered. meaning a jailbreak app must be ran after a phone has booted. your phone stays jailbroken as long as it does not power down. it is functionally untethered. as the app that jailbreaks the phone persists through reboots. there are firmware restrictions where these methods work however.

deleted 5y ago

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sillycross 5y ago

I completely agree with the author's rants on machine learning algorithm. > consuming content through internet has become more and more manipulative. This is 100% true. With those ML-based "personalized" info feed, users keep getting pushed biased information that matches their prejudice and is not a reflection of the true picture. I'm actually dubious that what fraction of the pro-Trump conspiracy theorists had developed their conspiracy views "thanks to" Facebook et al's ML-based info suggestion algorithms.

jaredcwhite 5y ago

I don't fully understand the point of the article, but there's my take anyway. ;-) I pay for YouTube Premium so I don't get any ads on YouTube. And I don't really care about the (crappy) algorithm because I only watch what I subscribe to. I hope Twitter's utility will similarly increase as they pivot to (a) premium paid services, and (b) open protocols via BlueSky. Glass is a new social media photography app for iOS that feels a lot like early Instagram, but it's a paid service with no ads. So yeah, perhaps it's the end of social media as we knew it…but that's fine because new and existing services will adapt to provide people premium experiences (for a fee of course). Remember, we are the internet. If we don't like what it is, we can build something better.

rnd0 5y ago
>Back in my day, we made mods for fun, and then we used the skills we learned to get jobs doing something corporate. No, actually, we can't. By "we", of course, I mean garden-variety consumers. The legal, financial, and social barriers to entry are far too high. Anyone attempting to make the next youtube would be priced out of existance, anyone trying to make another reddit would be reduced to a smouldering crater by the time the lawsuits hit them, assuming that paypal doesn't force them to do an onlyfans first. It's not 2003 (when 4chan started) any more. The internet game is fixed, rigged and it will only become more restrictive, not less. Fuckerberg pulled the ladder up after him; there's not gonna be another movement -at least not coming from the internet.

miikavonbell 5y ago

OP Here. Wasn't really expecting this much discussion and attention for my article, but I am quite happy to see so much people having similar thoughts like I have, which I wrote in my article. I wrote a follow up post to my blog to share some of my afterthoughts: https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/ https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/