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As a side-note: a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is when they start conflating liking and sharing by implementing the "You fo
by clhodapp 5y ago
As a side-note: a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is when they start conflating liking and sharing by implementing the "You follow x, and he liked" feature that you described. Since this clearly violates the user's intention (if you wanted to share something, you would have shared it), this serves as a subtle but distinct signal that manipulating users has become more important than listening to them.
- oblio 5y ago> a good test of when social networks turn the corner and become evil is ... when they are created. Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model: manipulate users into addiction and serve ads. How do non-evil social networks look like? They're forums, plain old forums. But you don't become an ultra trillionaire with PhpBB.
- baq 5y agoi'd argue social networks only become evil if the want to grow revenue and earnings and more importantly keep growing them at some fixed rate y/y for too long (otherwise they get recategorized as value instead of growth and all the juicy multiples disappear from their stock grants...)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- addingnumbers 5y ago> Social networks are inherently evil, that's their business model What's evil about Mastodon, Matrix, Pleroma, diaspora, etc?
- oblio 5y agoThe fact that if they're good they're not adopted, I guess? I don't know anyone using any of those networks.
- rightbyte 5y agoWhen I joined FB there were no ads and a chronological feed and everything was awesome. Reddit was awesome. Nowadays they are an evil manipulation mess, but I don't think it is an inherit property of social networks.
- oblio 5y agoPhase 1: user acquisition. Phase 2: profit (through using and abusing their users). Both steps are written in stone in their business plan on day 1, you just don't know it. As a user you were still in phase 1. Similar story with image hosting websites. First they don't have ads and load fast and don't really have image restrictions. Then they start adding restrictions and ads.
- Nextgrid 5y agoProfit doesn't have to be equivalent to abuse. The idea that you have to abuse your users to make a profit is a relatively new one pioneered by Silicon Valley scum thanks to anti-competitive practices and lax/non-existent regulation. Before this, we had centuries of businesses who were sustainable by just charging a fair premium on the goods they sold to their customers, and both sides were happy enough with the transaction to continue.
- oblio 5y agoWell, considering the context of this thread, are there any social networks not working based on the Silicon Valley model? I don't know any.
- emaro 5y agoOr federated like the Fediverse applications, i.e. Mastodon. It's much harder to squeeze users because they can leave you without loosing their social network.