4 ms·

I feel like he should have taken a long holiday. Not being rude or anything, but a new social network needs thorough thinking. For instance everywhere i read ab

I feel like he should have taken a long holiday. Not being rude or anything, but a new social network needs thorough thinking. For instance everywhere i read about the topic on casual forums, someone mentions myspace. Maybe it is time that such a network is built - fun customisations and neutral content.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago
"The thing you have to ask yourself ... is why the content was neutral ... do you feel lucky, punk?"
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  “What, are you a cop?”
pixl97 4y ago
>For instance everywhere i read about the topic on casual forums, someone mentions myspace. My grandparents also talk about how wonderful the past was, but that doesn't mean a lick of it was true. Was MySpace better? In some ways yes, but that's because we were better as social media users, and such massive bot farms, and financial interests in corrupting said social media didn't exist. If you turn on MySpace today it would immediately become foul shithole. The first thing some spammer would do is start creating profiles based on every identity they could find and the site would have to deal with that. Massive amounts of time would be used in getting rid of scams and spam on the sites. User content would not be neutral because peoples internet identities are no longer neutral, we've weaponized and politicized them. In order to maintain the neutrality you'd spend untold amounts of time banning content and polarizing a large amount of the user base against you turning them adversarial. Social media is a garbage fire these days. Most of the time I try to avoid talking about it on HN in order to stay in this sites guidelines.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  I dont think your analogy to rosy retrospection applies here. The issues we have with todays social media are the same issues IRC, usenet and other primordial internet social tools have suffered from in the past at scale. People abandoned those for what they thought was better. They went on to myspace and eventually they gave up myspace and went on to facebook and twitter because they thought these would be even better. And they were for a while. Facebook was really cool when people limited to sharing meal and travel photos with friends and family. Twitter was cool when limited to sharing fun short stories or updates. Then gradually the noisy plebe invaded. The drunken pub types debating angry politics, pseudo intellectuals, wannabe thought leaders, cheap scammers and sleazy politicians. And instead of banning or pushing them towards network ghettos, algorithms where made to amplify specifically their voice, in order to bait all the decent people into engaging with platforms even more. These algorithms developed habits in us that turned everyone into a little bit of the above. We tried this. Doesn't work. We need to iterate what worked. MySpace did. I fail to understand why facebook and twitter didnt put more thought into how to monetise the platform in better ways. Was it lack of imagination or the lack of people skills of their founders? Anger and politics are not the only things that drive sales and profits. Social networks are a reflection of our society and in a society you tend to marginalise the angry violent mobs that try to capture your attention and suck your energy, and instead you go where you can do your shopping, eating, reading, traveling, entertainment consuming safely and peacefully. Social networks can monetise on that. Instead they made us fight each other.
  - fuzzfactor 4y ago
    When you have a website intended to be the next myspace, you shouldn't be surprised when it reaches its own version of peak myspace. Like you say, myspace was actually quite good, but users >gave up myspace and went on to facebook and twitter because they thought these would be even better. People may be questioning this now more than ever, but it's too late for myspace now, and only hindsight will pinpoint peak Facebook and peak Twitter after those milestones are unmistakeable. These are not just "social" networks (some say anti-social), they are pop-culture trends. Which respond to and influence culture as much as they can while they are popular, the more popular the more so while it lasts.
pfraze 4y ago
Something that isn’t clear to folks is that Jack is on the board and advises us, but Bluesky’s founder and team are pulled from the dweb community.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Respectfully, the issue i see with bluesky and at is that it’s solving a problem no casual user really cares about solving. And jack hasnt been particularly great at solving the issue social media suffers from these days: toxicity. Facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit are all ridden by toxicity. Give us a place where nana and that weird cousin can socialise without risking being radicalised one political way or another, cant be misinformed and cant be scammed. On twitter i follow strictly science, book writer, game dev, and tech topics yet politics and identity issues are always creeping in. Angry mobs of glorified nobodies and their followers toxify.every.single topic. So instead of solving protocols please solve the quality of content and emotion. We need to fix the habits social media helped create instead of creating new ghettos. Capture the beauty of life not the garbage of it. Look at human psychology and see what else other than anger can increase engagement and what algorithms can create a better culture. There is more than that emotion that can drive growth. I refuse to believe we are all angry shits, we can do better.
  - pfraze 4y ago
    Youre right. I don’t think the bar is avoiding a toxic free-for-all, as people fear with decentralization, because that suggests we’re only attempting to be “as good” as Twitter is now. We need to be trying to be better. If we’re not then this is a solipsistic exercise.

PaulDavisThe1st 4y ago

"The thing you have to ask yourself ... is why the content was neutral ... do you feel lucky, punk?"

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
“What, are you a cop?”

pixl97 4y ago

>For instance everywhere i read about the topic on casual forums, someone mentions myspace. My grandparents also talk about how wonderful the past was, but that doesn't mean a lick of it was true. Was MySpace better? In some ways yes, but that's because we were better as social media users, and such massive bot farms, and financial interests in corrupting said social media didn't exist. If you turn on MySpace today it would immediately become foul shithole. The first thing some spammer would do is start creating profiles based on every identity they could find and the site would have to deal with that. Massive amounts of time would be used in getting rid of scams and spam on the sites. User content would not be neutral because peoples internet identities are no longer neutral, we've weaponized and politicized them. In order to maintain the neutrality you'd spend untold amounts of time banning content and polarizing a large amount of the user base against you turning them adversarial. Social media is a garbage fire these days. Most of the time I try to avoid talking about it on HN in order to stay in this sites guidelines.

yrgulation 4y ago
I dont think your analogy to rosy retrospection applies here. The issues we have with todays social media are the same issues IRC, usenet and other primordial internet social tools have suffered from in the past at scale. People abandoned those for what they thought was better. They went on to myspace and eventually they gave up myspace and went on to facebook and twitter because they thought these would be even better. And they were for a while. Facebook was really cool when people limited to sharing meal and travel photos with friends and family. Twitter was cool when limited to sharing fun short stories or updates. Then gradually the noisy plebe invaded. The drunken pub types debating angry politics, pseudo intellectuals, wannabe thought leaders, cheap scammers and sleazy politicians. And instead of banning or pushing them towards network ghettos, algorithms where made to amplify specifically their voice, in order to bait all the decent people into engaging with platforms even more. These algorithms developed habits in us that turned everyone into a little bit of the above. We tried this. Doesn't work. We need to iterate what worked. MySpace did. I fail to understand why facebook and twitter didnt put more thought into how to monetise the platform in better ways. Was it lack of imagination or the lack of people skills of their founders? Anger and politics are not the only things that drive sales and profits. Social networks are a reflection of our society and in a society you tend to marginalise the angry violent mobs that try to capture your attention and suck your energy, and instead you go where you can do your shopping, eating, reading, traveling, entertainment consuming safely and peacefully. Social networks can monetise on that. Instead they made us fight each other.
- fuzzfactor 4y ago
  When you have a website intended to be the next myspace, you shouldn't be surprised when it reaches its own version of peak myspace. Like you say, myspace was actually quite good, but users >gave up myspace and went on to facebook and twitter because they thought these would be even better. People may be questioning this now more than ever, but it's too late for myspace now, and only hindsight will pinpoint peak Facebook and peak Twitter after those milestones are unmistakeable. These are not just "social" networks (some say anti-social), they are pop-culture trends. Which respond to and influence culture as much as they can while they are popular, the more popular the more so while it lasts.

pfraze 4y ago

Something that isn’t clear to folks is that Jack is on the board and advises us, but Bluesky’s founder and team are pulled from the dweb community.

yrgulation 4y ago
Respectfully, the issue i see with bluesky and at is that it’s solving a problem no casual user really cares about solving. And jack hasnt been particularly great at solving the issue social media suffers from these days: toxicity. Facebook, twitter, instagram, reddit are all ridden by toxicity. Give us a place where nana and that weird cousin can socialise without risking being radicalised one political way or another, cant be misinformed and cant be scammed. On twitter i follow strictly science, book writer, game dev, and tech topics yet politics and identity issues are always creeping in. Angry mobs of glorified nobodies and their followers toxify.every.single topic. So instead of solving protocols please solve the quality of content and emotion. We need to fix the habits social media helped create instead of creating new ghettos. Capture the beauty of life not the garbage of it. Look at human psychology and see what else other than anger can increase engagement and what algorithms can create a better culture. There is more than that emotion that can drive growth. I refuse to believe we are all angry shits, we can do better.
- pfraze 4y ago
  Youre right. I don’t think the bar is avoiding a toxic free-for-all, as people fear with decentralization, because that suggests we’re only attempting to be “as good” as Twitter is now. We need to be trying to be better. If we’re not then this is a solipsistic exercise.