7 ms·

It’s crazy to think the social media era may finally be ending. There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what frie

by xwdv 4y ago

It’s crazy to think the social media era may finally be ending. There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Everything is about feeding you content you didn’t ask for but may be targeted enough to catch your attention. And for what? To show you some ads here and there? To collect data that can be used to… sell more ads and products? Instagram was once my favorite app. There was a golden age before stories came a long where people just posted random pictures of what they were up to or what they were seeing. Things weren’t too memefied or political, unlike Facebook. Then photos got more and more glamorized and more about flexing and showing how much cooler and more awesome your life was. People started following themes and niches for their profile content rather than just posting random unorganized series of photos. Businesses and brands started getting built on the platform. Building an Instagram clone the way it used to be is fairly trivial these days. I could probably throw one together in a few months, but growing its popularity is practically impossible these days with such entrenched incumbents and no niches left to start a user base with. …unless perhaps… we build a social network on the blockchain

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Is this something that people really want to do though... I did that for a bit back when fb was still new but quickly and I mean quickly fell off the habit and stopped using fb.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Yes, otherwise it’s basically back to the dark age where I have no idea what other people are doing because I have no close friends.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    Then get off the computer and go makes some friends.
    - xwdv 4y ago
      There is little to no way to deliberately make friends after age 30. Friends become a much lower priority in adult life. You can meet some people, but they are unlikely to ever ascend to the level of a close friend.
      - yair99dd 4y ago
        Try this https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
      - oska 4y ago
        > There is little to no way to deliberately make friends after age 30 This is absolute nonsense in my opinion and more importantly, in my experience
- psyc 4y ago
  Just as myself and most of my friends and acquaintances all started using FB because we’d all started using it, we also all stopped using it because we’d all stopped using it.
- prawn 4y ago
  In theory, yes. But maybe the average circle of friends and acquaintances isn't sticky enough without more encouragement, karma, whatever? I don't mind if a platform feels quiet because it takes less time to keep up with, but the platform itself would see a downturn as a serious failing.
mullingitover 4y ago
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. The Facebook general experience is to slowly (or immediately) dislike your family. Instagram's general experience is to like posts from strangers and occasionally your friends. Tiktok's experience is to really disconnect from your social circle and get sucked into shockingly personalized content from strangers. Facebook's feed is a dying product, Instagram is barely keeping its head above water, and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat.
- honkler 4y ago
  > and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat. Nah. The government calls it a national security threat because Facebook has been lobbying pretty hard for it. They did ban tiktok in india for this very reason. Though for the same so called national security threat. But interestingly, facebook allows ruling fascist party's pages to call for genocide quite openly on its platform, and has recently invested a ton of money into businessmen close to the ruling party.
caseyross 4y ago
It really is weird, isn't it? To have what was essentially a solved problem 10 years ago become... what you described. On Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn, I still have tons of people I'd be interesting in passively keeping up with. Maybe even actively, sometimes. But all that latent sociality is increasingly just dead out of the gate, seeing as I no longer use any of those platforms regularly. My closest friends, the ones I will actually put in effort to talk to? Group chat. The polar opposite of the public social media ecosystem that we used to have. A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.
- poglet 4y ago
  I agree. I setup a Discord server for a few friends and it turned out to be infinitely better then current social media platforms when it came to keeping up with what everyone was up to.
  - beej71 4y ago
    +100. I have different slacks and discords for different groups. One for extended family--we share pix there. I sometimes post the same content to two groups, but it's pretty rare. I do miss the broader reach of classic Instagram where I could follow friends without them needing to be in a close circle with one another. Lots of them are unwilling to join the chat. But I don't miss it enough to put up with f---ing TikTok behavior.
  - WorldPeas 4y ago
    if only someone could make a discord that wasnt owned by an adtech corp
- danmaz74 4y ago
  Agree. I still check FB from time to time hoping to see something from friends and acquaintances, but my main "social media" has become a family group chat on WhatsApp.
- rightbyte 4y ago
noveltyaccount 4y ago
I have two Instagram accounts. One just for my friends and family. And one for mindless content feed, brands, entertainment, etc. The separation has helped me reduce the mindless scrolling amazingly. I log into my friends and family account and catch up in five minutes per day. I very rarely choose to switch to the other account. Splitting into two accounts has been really healthy for me.
- dmix 4y ago
  Yeah it's always been an option to use Instagram this way. Most people don't want to use it that way apparently, using it as a content machine instead of a traditional social network. But I know plenty of people who still do just share photos of themselves/family and only like/comment on culture stuff.
- cruano 4y ago
  The time thing is the biggest takeaway for me, not only I spend less time overall on Instagram but I also feel way more "productive" (Weird word to use, but you know what I mean) as I actually look at every story from my friends instead of navigating through a bunch of spam from {SPORT} or {CELEBRITY}
civilized 4y ago
> …unless perhaps… we build a social network on the blockchain Ah yes, the one thing that would be worse than the status quo.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  Why don't you see, we'll solve the social dysfunction created by a commercialized monetized internet by hypercommercialization and monetizing it even more! There is no alternative! It'll be the end of history!
  - trollski 4y ago
  - kristopolous 4y ago
    To respond to the dead comment below, the last two disjointed sentences are from Margaret Thatcher and an allusion to Francis Fukayama's "End of History". I've given that guy a fair shake, I think he's a well spoken idiot. I wish I could come to some other conclusion. There's an adage that (properly defined) economic liberalism warps the imaginary and closes off possibilities, he may be a victim of it. The guy is clearly sincere and passionate and I really like that, I just think he's really mistaken There's healthier futures possible based on we and not on me, one that pulls from more human emotions than greed and fear and there's something that precludes the man from considering it possible or palatable. I want so much for those that care to be better.
- zeofig 4y ago
  Ahem... we prefer to call that "progress"
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I think something like mastodon could be like that with a group of friends, but most people don't seem to want to keep up with that kind of decentralized platform. Lol we certainly don't need blockchain though. That literally brings nothing to the table and unnecessarily complicates it. I think people just keep adding and adding anything and everything to Instagram and Facebook, and it just turns into an amorphous fatberg. I pared both down a lot to more or less my top 50 friends/family/groups and it's a lot more useful, sorting by "most recent" doesn't turn up bunch of junk and defeats the facebook algorithm.
kumarvvr 4y ago
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal fill that place quite nicely. I regularly check my Whatsapp contacts status messages. Most of them are filled with things from their daily lives. I have a bunch of groups in Telegram, both personal and professional. I feel FB style of "feed" thing has become a chore solely due to the mind-numbing complexity of the interface. WA is dead simple. I know what I am looking at, I can interact with the person who put the status message, I can block them or delete them or archive them. SM has evolved itself into chat apps, which, funnily, was what we used FB for in the first place. The likes of IG, TT, etc are a mixed broadcast medium, that are natural evolutions of the Twitter model. Also, FB is finally evolving into a form that is close to how users use it.
- xwdv 4y ago
  Checking WhatsApp statuses is like checking peoples away messages on AIM. I think a feed is still the best way to deliver updates, but they seem to quickly get corrupted for monetization and algorithmic manipulation.
  - whymauri 4y ago
    I haven't updated my WhatsApp status in 8 years. I legitimately did not know that people viewed/cared about them. And I use WhatsApp daily.
  - ergl 4y ago
    What OP means with WhatsApp status is the photo/video stories that only last for 24 hours. What you're describing is now called the "About" section of your profile.
prawn 4y ago
It's been an interesting path. It went from the early days where you'd post just about anything, then people tightened up on what felt "good enough" and some of the charm was lost. I got the sense that people became more anxious about what reached that "good enough" mark. A friend who was making a living from putting up Instagram content just abruptly started turning down money and stopped posting. No one should be fretting about sharing content because they worry about how their grid looks - it's idiotic. I think that slowdown in content in part (also, fending off rivals) brought about Stories. I grew to appreciate Stories as a way to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the main feed highlight shot/video. And the ability to save those screens into actual stories (of an outing or a project). Then they ramped up ads, added Reels and wrecked the way the main feed works with integrating Reels. Reels feels like the step too far. Revert the main feed UI, let me switch off all suggested content (not just for 30 days, you bastards), tone down the ads, and I'll be OK.
- echelon 4y ago
  > No one should be fretting about sharing content because they worry about how their grid looks - it's idiotic. Pre-social media, nobody shared pictures of food. I don't think we're self-censoring, I think we're returning to normal.
  - prawn 4y ago
    The feed anxiety thing predates the pandemic. People using it semi commercially were stressing about the right colour tones of their grid, etc. I find myself avoiding posting shots in a particular sequence because I don't want a cluster of ocean photos or video icons adjacent, etc - less so because I care, but because my prospective clients would think about it showing a lack of attention to detail. Very silly. In a scrolling feed, no issue. If you were creating a collated folio of best work, no issue. I think having a chronological grid is what irks people. Better to let people choose a grid that represents them. A photographer could have their best work, someone else might choose to have their most popular, and others could leave it chronological.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Pre-social media I didn't have any easy way too share pictures of food, and I generally mean high quality digital photography in a timely fashion. I share food pics with family all the time these days because technology allows me too. Didn't work back in the 320px resolution days.
thex10 4y ago
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. IMO it’s pointless to “passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing”. We should either actively keep up (thus actually maintain the relationship), or let it go~
- kinghtown 4y ago
  Sure, but there is a desire or even need to have robust and interactive options in our communication devices for keeping in touch with all the people we know in a more inclusive and less active way than just directly messaging or calling a specific person, which to be clear people are still doing. People want something like Facebook as an option. It has usefulness- sharing photos, inviting people to events, a simple platform for small business. I’m not going to get into the negatives of Facebook which, I feel, outweigh the benefits. Facebook has become a net negative on society but in the early days it was quite good. The problem isn’t social networking apps as much as the sad reality that these services can’t exist without ads or sweeping changes to drive growth. If only it were possible to have something like Facebook but without the suits.
  - xwowsersx 4y ago
    Not everything we desire is good for us. Also, there is a need? How so?
    - kinghtown 4y ago
      I used to be a DJ for a few years and Facebook was useful for organizing and promoting my parties. I’m not interested in getting into a semantic debate if such a need is necessary or good for society, but it was useful for me and many people did want to go to my parties. This is a modest example. Also, people are artists or learning. It’s nice to have a simple and organized way to save your public work online to share with friends.. I can keep going. It’s easy to forget the usefulness of facebook. To be clear, Facebook has done harm and the company is at fault for much, but I do think there is something in the structure or DNA of facebook which could be salvaged and become useful. I don’t think that Likes, algorithmic feeds, or sharing political/insane links with everyone you kind of know are quality features of facebook.
TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago
Maybe what someone should do is build a Social Network as a Service. SNaaS. Letting anyone run their own, and turning whatever features they want on or off. You as the service provider take a cut of advertising revenue, or subscription fees, etc.
- tuukkah 4y ago
  I believe this exists since 2005, originally founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini: https://ning.com/ https://ning.com/
  - dmix 4y ago
    That massive cookie banner is really terrible. What were they thinking?
- xigoi 4y ago
  I have an even better idea. How about creating a big network where everyone could have their little space and put whatever they want in it? The main method of content discovery would be by adding “links” to other people's places. Since it would be interconnected like a spider web, we could cáll it “the web” or something…
  - tqkxzugoaupvwqr 4y ago
    The technical hurdle is too high. A text box and submit button is the maximum if you want to make it accessible to billions of people.
    - xigoi 4y ago
      Text box and submit button you say? http://txti.es/ http://txti.es/
      - alexb_ 4y ago
        Are there any FOSS alternatives to this?
timmytokyo 4y ago
"When somebody says you can solve X with blockchain, they don’t understand X, and you can ignore them." - Nicholas Weaver
- once_inc 4y ago
  Bitcoiners in general say this too. Blockchains don't make sense except in the single, highly specific use case for which has already been implemented.
once_inc 4y ago
> Building an Instagram clone the way it used to be is fairly trivial these days. I could probably throw one together in a few months, but growing its popularity is practically impossible these days with such entrenched incumbents and no niches left to start a user base with. Setting aside the fact that the social media platform you are cloning is probably going to sue you for copyright infringement if it takes off, you'd still be fighting the network effect. I'm not saying it is impossible, but I doubt that building a clone of a product will successfully move people from the original. Signal and telegram haven't been able to best WhatsApp. Building it in a decentralized way probably makes it even harder.
alx__ 4y ago
For me, a large majority of my friend/family updates come through group chats. I have 4 large (10+) groups that are friend groupings from different interest areas. Which use iMessage/WhatsApp/Signal 1 huge one for a group of concert/rave friends on Signal 3 overlapping groups of various family-relatives using iMessage/WhatsApp I don't even need to open FB/IG anymore. Bye Felica
- jackdh 4y ago
  Until they start to require Facebook to log into WhatsApp..
  - guilamu 4y ago
    Then just leave for Telegram which is infinetly better (their native windows client is just incredible compared to the other atrocious electron based chat apps) or even better for Signal which is not as feature rich yet but open source.
    - toastal 4y ago
      While missing the Matrix, Wire, and IRC options?
    - oynqr 4y ago
      Telegram doesn't do e2ee by default, no thanks.
      - dmix 4y ago
        So you can turn it on for your group then? Signal has an excellent app these days and supports encrypted group chat. But Whatsapp doesnt require convincing people.
  - alx__ 4y ago
    It won't be very challenging to get folks to move to Signal
  - 4y ago
Banana699 4y ago
>we build a social network on the blockchain Mmmmm yes, documenting my shitty cringe opinions in an immutable record forever with the full force of a global distributed hashing network. Unironically though, imagine where we would be if logging to social media was even a tiny bit more expensive than free, PoW was originally invented to combat email spam after all.
permo-w 4y ago
this golden age you refer to, if it even existed in the first place, was around well, well before stories came along
fsflover 4y ago
> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. How about Mastodon? You can even set up your own server if you want, exclusively for your friends and relatives.
hackernewds 4y ago
The answer to the one platform that resisted all temptations and did this well: Twitter. The #metoo #blacklivesmatters and not to mention numerous international protests and movements sprouted there. As both cause and effect, Twitter has missed the capitalistic financial success of similarly sized and engaged companies.
- Gareth321 4y ago
  Twitter's rage algorithm is just as bad as Facebook. Twitter engagement is solid. Their problem is that their core product is harder to monetise.
- mcintyre1994 4y ago
  Twitter does seem to be replacing most of their feed with random posts from people you don't follow, poorly categorised by AI into topics they incorrectly think you're interested in though.
  - stjohnswarts 4y ago
    I find nitter helps a bit with this, certainly cuts down on the noise.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  Twitter is full of self-important people and I hate that as much the firehouse ads and follows on facebook. It's more of an echo chamber. I only use it to follow a couple of people who are important to me (and not just themselves), some memes, and try to have a variety of news source from the middle out so I don't get stuck in wokeville or fascisttown echo chambers.
mib32 4y ago
You should try telegram. Can make your own channel there and share with close friends
invig 4y ago
The “if we just go back to the old app” theory ignores half the problem. People learn how to be good at instagram and how to use it to their advantage over time. To pretend that Facebook is the only party extracting value is wrong. People (who aren’t you) cause a lot of the problems that drive these apps to the places they end up. Turns out that most people would prefer to see the Kardashians over their friends most of the time. Sad, but there it is.

by xwdv 4y ago

KaoruAoiShiho 4y ago

> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Is this something that people really want to do though... I did that for a bit back when fb was still new but quickly and I mean quickly fell off the habit and stopped using fb.

xwdv 4y ago
Yes, otherwise it’s basically back to the dark age where I have no idea what other people are doing because I have no close friends.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  Then get off the computer and go makes some friends.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    There is little to no way to deliberately make friends after age 30. Friends become a much lower priority in adult life. You can meet some people, but they are unlikely to ever ascend to the level of a close friend.
    - yair99dd 4y ago
      Try this https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/List_of_Hacker_Spaces
    - oska 4y ago
      > There is little to no way to deliberately make friends after age 30 This is absolute nonsense in my opinion and more importantly, in my experience
psyc 4y ago
Just as myself and most of my friends and acquaintances all started using FB because we’d all started using it, we also all stopped using it because we’d all stopped using it.
prawn 4y ago
In theory, yes. But maybe the average circle of friends and acquaintances isn't sticky enough without more encouragement, karma, whatever? I don't mind if a platform feels quiet because it takes less time to keep up with, but the platform itself would see a downturn as a serious failing.

mullingitover 4y ago

> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. The Facebook general experience is to slowly (or immediately) dislike your family. Instagram's general experience is to like posts from strangers and occasionally your friends. Tiktok's experience is to really disconnect from your social circle and get sucked into shockingly personalized content from strangers. Facebook's feed is a dying product, Instagram is barely keeping its head above water, and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat.

honkler 4y ago
> and Tiktok is growing so fast the government is worried that it's a national security threat. Nah. The government calls it a national security threat because Facebook has been lobbying pretty hard for it. They did ban tiktok in india for this very reason. Though for the same so called national security threat. But interestingly, facebook allows ruling fascist party's pages to call for genocide quite openly on its platform, and has recently invested a ton of money into businessmen close to the ruling party.

caseyross 4y ago

It really is weird, isn't it? To have what was essentially a solved problem 10 years ago become... what you described. On Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/LinkedIn, I still have tons of people I'd be interesting in passively keeping up with. Maybe even actively, sometimes. But all that latent sociality is increasingly just dead out of the gate, seeing as I no longer use any of those platforms regularly. My closest friends, the ones I will actually put in effort to talk to? Group chat. The polar opposite of the public social media ecosystem that we used to have. A closed, private space that admits no outsiders, marketers, or clout chasers, but strongly discourages developing relationships with new people or expanding one's horizons.

poglet 4y ago
I agree. I setup a Discord server for a few friends and it turned out to be infinitely better then current social media platforms when it came to keeping up with what everyone was up to.
- beej71 4y ago
  +100. I have different slacks and discords for different groups. One for extended family--we share pix there. I sometimes post the same content to two groups, but it's pretty rare. I do miss the broader reach of classic Instagram where I could follow friends without them needing to be in a close circle with one another. Lots of them are unwilling to join the chat. But I don't miss it enough to put up with f---ing TikTok behavior.
- WorldPeas 4y ago
  if only someone could make a discord that wasnt owned by an adtech corp
danmaz74 4y ago
Agree. I still check FB from time to time hoping to see something from friends and acquaintances, but my main "social media" has become a family group chat on WhatsApp.
rightbyte 4y ago

noveltyaccount 4y ago

I have two Instagram accounts. One just for my friends and family. And one for mindless content feed, brands, entertainment, etc. The separation has helped me reduce the mindless scrolling amazingly. I log into my friends and family account and catch up in five minutes per day. I very rarely choose to switch to the other account. Splitting into two accounts has been really healthy for me.

dmix 4y ago
Yeah it's always been an option to use Instagram this way. Most people don't want to use it that way apparently, using it as a content machine instead of a traditional social network. But I know plenty of people who still do just share photos of themselves/family and only like/comment on culture stuff.
cruano 4y ago
The time thing is the biggest takeaway for me, not only I spend less time overall on Instagram but I also feel way more "productive" (Weird word to use, but you know what I mean) as I actually look at every story from my friends instead of navigating through a bunch of spam from {SPORT} or {CELEBRITY}

civilized 4y ago

> …unless perhaps… we build a social network on the blockchain Ah yes, the one thing that would be worse than the status quo.

kristopolous 4y ago
Why don't you see, we'll solve the social dysfunction created by a commercialized monetized internet by hypercommercialization and monetizing it even more! There is no alternative! It'll be the end of history!
- trollski 4y ago
- kristopolous 4y ago
  To respond to the dead comment below, the last two disjointed sentences are from Margaret Thatcher and an allusion to Francis Fukayama's "End of History". I've given that guy a fair shake, I think he's a well spoken idiot. I wish I could come to some other conclusion. There's an adage that (properly defined) economic liberalism warps the imaginary and closes off possibilities, he may be a victim of it. The guy is clearly sincere and passionate and I really like that, I just think he's really mistaken There's healthier futures possible based on we and not on me, one that pulls from more human emotions than greed and fear and there's something that precludes the man from considering it possible or palatable. I want so much for those that care to be better.
zeofig 4y ago
Ahem... we prefer to call that "progress"
stjohnswarts 4y ago
I think something like mastodon could be like that with a group of friends, but most people don't seem to want to keep up with that kind of decentralized platform. Lol we certainly don't need blockchain though. That literally brings nothing to the table and unnecessarily complicates it. I think people just keep adding and adding anything and everything to Instagram and Facebook, and it just turns into an amorphous fatberg. I pared both down a lot to more or less my top 50 friends/family/groups and it's a lot more useful, sorting by "most recent" doesn't turn up bunch of junk and defeats the facebook algorithm.

kumarvvr 4y ago

> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal fill that place quite nicely. I regularly check my Whatsapp contacts status messages. Most of them are filled with things from their daily lives. I have a bunch of groups in Telegram, both personal and professional. I feel FB style of "feed" thing has become a chore solely due to the mind-numbing complexity of the interface. WA is dead simple. I know what I am looking at, I can interact with the person who put the status message, I can block them or delete them or archive them. SM has evolved itself into chat apps, which, funnily, was what we used FB for in the first place. The likes of IG, TT, etc are a mixed broadcast medium, that are natural evolutions of the Twitter model. Also, FB is finally evolving into a form that is close to how users use it.

xwdv 4y ago
Checking WhatsApp statuses is like checking peoples away messages on AIM. I think a feed is still the best way to deliver updates, but they seem to quickly get corrupted for monetization and algorithmic manipulation.
- whymauri 4y ago
  I haven't updated my WhatsApp status in 8 years. I legitimately did not know that people viewed/cared about them. And I use WhatsApp daily.
- ergl 4y ago
  What OP means with WhatsApp status is the photo/video stories that only last for 24 hours. What you're describing is now called the "About" section of your profile.

prawn 4y ago

It's been an interesting path. It went from the early days where you'd post just about anything, then people tightened up on what felt "good enough" and some of the charm was lost. I got the sense that people became more anxious about what reached that "good enough" mark. A friend who was making a living from putting up Instagram content just abruptly started turning down money and stopped posting. No one should be fretting about sharing content because they worry about how their grid looks - it's idiotic. I think that slowdown in content in part (also, fending off rivals) brought about Stories. I grew to appreciate Stories as a way to tell the behind-the-scenes story of the main feed highlight shot/video. And the ability to save those screens into actual stories (of an outing or a project). Then they ramped up ads, added Reels and wrecked the way the main feed works with integrating Reels. Reels feels like the step too far. Revert the main feed UI, let me switch off all suggested content (not just for 30 days, you bastards), tone down the ads, and I'll be OK.

echelon 4y ago
> No one should be fretting about sharing content because they worry about how their grid looks - it's idiotic. Pre-social media, nobody shared pictures of food. I don't think we're self-censoring, I think we're returning to normal.
- prawn 4y ago
  The feed anxiety thing predates the pandemic. People using it semi commercially were stressing about the right colour tones of their grid, etc. I find myself avoiding posting shots in a particular sequence because I don't want a cluster of ocean photos or video icons adjacent, etc - less so because I care, but because my prospective clients would think about it showing a lack of attention to detail. Very silly. In a scrolling feed, no issue. If you were creating a collated folio of best work, no issue. I think having a chronological grid is what irks people. Better to let people choose a grid that represents them. A photographer could have their best work, someone else might choose to have their most popular, and others could leave it chronological.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Pre-social media I didn't have any easy way too share pictures of food, and I generally mean high quality digital photography in a timely fashion. I share food pics with family all the time these days because technology allows me too. Didn't work back in the 320px resolution days.

thex10 4y ago

> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. IMO it’s pointless to “passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing”. We should either actively keep up (thus actually maintain the relationship), or let it go~

kinghtown 4y ago
Sure, but there is a desire or even need to have robust and interactive options in our communication devices for keeping in touch with all the people we know in a more inclusive and less active way than just directly messaging or calling a specific person, which to be clear people are still doing. People want something like Facebook as an option. It has usefulness- sharing photos, inviting people to events, a simple platform for small business. I’m not going to get into the negatives of Facebook which, I feel, outweigh the benefits. Facebook has become a net negative on society but in the early days it was quite good. The problem isn’t social networking apps as much as the sad reality that these services can’t exist without ads or sweeping changes to drive growth. If only it were possible to have something like Facebook but without the suits.
- xwowsersx 4y ago
  Not everything we desire is good for us. Also, there is a need? How so?
  - kinghtown 4y ago
    I used to be a DJ for a few years and Facebook was useful for organizing and promoting my parties. I’m not interested in getting into a semantic debate if such a need is necessary or good for society, but it was useful for me and many people did want to go to my parties. This is a modest example. Also, people are artists or learning. It’s nice to have a simple and organized way to save your public work online to share with friends.. I can keep going. It’s easy to forget the usefulness of facebook. To be clear, Facebook has done harm and the company is at fault for much, but I do think there is something in the structure or DNA of facebook which could be salvaged and become useful. I don’t think that Likes, algorithmic feeds, or sharing political/insane links with everyone you kind of know are quality features of facebook.

TheSpiceIsLife 4y ago

Maybe what someone should do is build a Social Network as a Service. SNaaS. Letting anyone run their own, and turning whatever features they want on or off. You as the service provider take a cut of advertising revenue, or subscription fees, etc.

tuukkah 4y ago
I believe this exists since 2005, originally founded by Marc Andreessen and Gina Bianchini: https://ning.com/ https://ning.com/
- dmix 4y ago
  That massive cookie banner is really terrible. What were they thinking?
xigoi 4y ago
I have an even better idea. How about creating a big network where everyone could have their little space and put whatever they want in it? The main method of content discovery would be by adding “links” to other people's places. Since it would be interconnected like a spider web, we could cáll it “the web” or something…
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 4y ago
  The technical hurdle is too high. A text box and submit button is the maximum if you want to make it accessible to billions of people.
  - xigoi 4y ago
    Text box and submit button you say? http://txti.es/ http://txti.es/
    - alexb_ 4y ago
      Are there any FOSS alternatives to this?

timmytokyo 4y ago

"When somebody says you can solve X with blockchain, they don’t understand X, and you can ignore them." - Nicholas Weaver

once_inc 4y ago
Bitcoiners in general say this too. Blockchains don't make sense except in the single, highly specific use case for which has already been implemented.

once_inc 4y ago

> Building an Instagram clone the way it used to be is fairly trivial these days. I could probably throw one together in a few months, but growing its popularity is practically impossible these days with such entrenched incumbents and no niches left to start a user base with. Setting aside the fact that the social media platform you are cloning is probably going to sue you for copyright infringement if it takes off, you'd still be fighting the network effect. I'm not saying it is impossible, but I doubt that building a clone of a product will successfully move people from the original. Signal and telegram haven't been able to best WhatsApp. Building it in a decentralized way probably makes it even harder.

alx__ 4y ago

For me, a large majority of my friend/family updates come through group chats. I have 4 large (10+) groups that are friend groupings from different interest areas. Which use iMessage/WhatsApp/Signal 1 huge one for a group of concert/rave friends on Signal 3 overlapping groups of various family-relatives using iMessage/WhatsApp I don't even need to open FB/IG anymore. Bye Felica

jackdh 4y ago
Until they start to require Facebook to log into WhatsApp..
- guilamu 4y ago
  Then just leave for Telegram which is infinetly better (their native windows client is just incredible compared to the other atrocious electron based chat apps) or even better for Signal which is not as feature rich yet but open source.
  - toastal 4y ago
    While missing the Matrix, Wire, and IRC options?
  - oynqr 4y ago
    Telegram doesn't do e2ee by default, no thanks.
    - dmix 4y ago
      So you can turn it on for your group then? Signal has an excellent app these days and supports encrypted group chat. But Whatsapp doesnt require convincing people.
- alx__ 4y ago
  It won't be very challenging to get folks to move to Signal
- 4y ago

Banana699 4y ago

>we build a social network on the blockchain Mmmmm yes, documenting my shitty cringe opinions in an immutable record forever with the full force of a global distributed hashing network. Unironically though, imagine where we would be if logging to social media was even a tiny bit more expensive than free, PoW was originally invented to combat email spam after all.

permo-w 4y ago

this golden age you refer to, if it even existed in the first place, was around well, well before stories came along

fsflover 4y ago

> There’s really no viable platform anymore where you can just go passively keep up with what friends and acquaintances are doing. How about Mastodon? You can even set up your own server if you want, exclusively for your friends and relatives.

hackernewds 4y ago

The answer to the one platform that resisted all temptations and did this well: Twitter. The #metoo #blacklivesmatters and not to mention numerous international protests and movements sprouted there. As both cause and effect, Twitter has missed the capitalistic financial success of similarly sized and engaged companies.

Gareth321 4y ago
Twitter's rage algorithm is just as bad as Facebook. Twitter engagement is solid. Their problem is that their core product is harder to monetise.
mcintyre1994 4y ago
Twitter does seem to be replacing most of their feed with random posts from people you don't follow, poorly categorised by AI into topics they incorrectly think you're interested in though.
- stjohnswarts 4y ago
  I find nitter helps a bit with this, certainly cuts down on the noise.
stjohnswarts 4y ago
Twitter is full of self-important people and I hate that as much the firehouse ads and follows on facebook. It's more of an echo chamber. I only use it to follow a couple of people who are important to me (and not just themselves), some memes, and try to have a variety of news source from the middle out so I don't get stuck in wokeville or fascisttown echo chambers.

mib32 4y ago

You should try telegram. Can make your own channel there and share with close friends

invig 4y ago

The “if we just go back to the old app” theory ignores half the problem. People learn how to be good at instagram and how to use it to their advantage over time. To pretend that Facebook is the only party extracting value is wrong. People (who aren’t you) cause a lot of the problems that drive these apps to the places they end up. Turns out that most people would prefer to see the Kardashians over their friends most of the time. Sad, but there it is.