9 ms·

We have to break out of this view count trap if we want to be free of the ills of centralized social media. Maybe instead of views, consider the effect of your

by bm3719 4y ago

We have to break out of this view count trap if we want to be free of the ills of centralized social media. Maybe instead of views, consider the effect of your words on the outside world. How often does a tweet change your thinking or deeply enlighten you? The rare times something like this sorta happens is in the awkward form of a tweet thread, where it would've been much better as a proper article. Speaking personally, there's blog articles that have vastly changed my view of some part of reality and improved my life.

waboremo 4y ago
The view count trap is going to exist and be effective as long as humans feel the need for validation. Let's pretend you have a blog, you're writing on it for years. It's affecting people positively. But nobody ever says a thing about it directly to you, you have no analytics running in the background, no like button. Eventually, you're probably going to stop writing on the blog, feeling it's a waste of time. We can point to popular bloggers all we want, but the fact remains most of them either have some form of view count operating (or likes/claps/whatever gimmick to replicate that "I see you" validation), had rare real life validation based on their blogs (being hired at xyz place because someone said they were a fan... but usually these blogs tend to go abandoned after they get hired), or relied on social networks to encourage them to continue writing their blogs. Until this is solved in a healthier way, we're not really going to be free of view counts.
- OJFord 4y ago
  Validation doesn't necessarily mean view count though - consider citations/WebMention or whatever - a thoughtful post referencing, disputing, discussing your own is surely worth some quite large number of views, in terms of validation.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    Being referenced by someone you look up to is more valuable than a view. But is it really different, when we consider that one view is the reason why that person is referencing your content in the first place? This is why I have a hard time with how many people push against view counts as the ultimate bad. They are just another metric, one we use for validation, but still just a metric. Sure, you might think it's healthier to care about more WebMentions, but what are those when you peel away the layers of branding? I suppose we can't really escape our desperate need to be seen, even in digital space.
- notwokeno 4y ago
  I've been journaling for 11 years and I'm not going to stop any time soon despite the lack of a "like button" or analytics. The way you get free of view counts is by not worrying about them.
  - waboremo 4y ago
    I consider journaling and blogging two distinct and separate mediums. In case you use them interchangeably, what do you write about?
    - Dalewyn 4y ago
      As I recall when blogs first came about, "blog" is shorthand for "web log". A log is a journal. Ergo, to write a blog is to journal something.
      - waboremo 4y ago
        I like the definitions referenced in this[1] article when it comes to log, diary, and journaling. In that way, I wouldn't publish my journals to my blog. [1]: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academic-development/assessmentdesign/methods/reflecting/ https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academic-development/ass...
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Nazi lives don't matter, GTFO. (user account exists to promote Hitler worship, I checked)
    - notwokeno 4y ago
      Heh. After a couple years of normal conservatives being told their only place to go to voice complaints is 4chan you shouldn't be surprised that some of us took your advice and learned from the people there.
bnralt 4y ago
Blogs are already part of the view count trap and constant output dopamine hit provider worlds. Social media is just further down the trend line. In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. There might be a "What's New" section to let people know what was updated, but other than that old content was treated as being just as relevant as new content. The blog space flipped that. Instead of most of the information being presented non-chronologically with a possible area to let people know what's new, now information was prioritized by how new it was, with a possible area to list older posts. Old blog posts that don't make it to the list end up being well hidden and almost never read. For most people, the appeal of a blog over the older long-form articles was that blogs provided a somewhat constant stream of new content. You hear this when people tell others how to blog - "right a blog post everyday/everyweek." With a personal website, you don't want your high quality articles drowned out in a sea of low level off the cuff writing. But most blogs thrive on that, because a stream of new articles is needed to keep people coming back. Almost no one would want to put a low effort website up that only says, "Man, watching the news this week. What is the world coming to?", but those kinds of hot takes are all over the blog world. Additionally, on older sites comments often consisted of an individual e-mailing the author of a site, who might that have a page for useful reader comments. The blog comment space was about firing off quick reactions, getting a quick response, and then having the whole discussion buried a day (or sometimes mere hours) later as other blog posts supplanted the top one.
- kibwen 4y ago
  > In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. I remember it differently. Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). What you're describing wasn't the blog precursors, but the wiki precursors, with pages nicely organized according to topic (with copious links to the related sites in your webring). I agree that one of the biggest original draws of the "blog" concept was the convenient comments section, but in retrospect comments aren't at all necessary to the concept of "blogging", especially since the term now encompasses the pre-blog activity that was previously just "throwing up random articles on your own personal domain". As for the view count trap, we all prominently displayed our "N people have viewed this page" widgets on Geocities. :P
comfypotato 4y ago
How much has it changed the average thinking (of the people reached) or enlightened the average person weighted by how many people it has reached. Net enlightenment per post. I critique your comment: the use of the word trap implies an inherent negativity to view count. As dang has written, often some of these raw numbers (similar to the length of a comment on HN) have a strong correlation with the quality of the content.
- bm3719 4y ago
  View counts (and similar metrics) are a trap precisely because they are correlated with the things you do want. Say you want to educate others. That's hard to measure, so instead you measure updoots and retweets. They're prominently displayed, so of course you're going to look at and consciously optimize for them. But now you're in the trap, because you've accepted these numbers as the true proxy for influencing the world, and doing anything orthogonal to the algorithm will make number go down. In reality, you're doing what Twitter wants, not necessarily what you originally wanted.
  - comfypotato 4y ago
    Ah, but I continue to attempt my point. Traps are for catching animals to eat. There’s nothing good about that for the animal. Even if you extend the analogy to the bait that got the animal in the trap, I still think it’s fundamentally different in that the outcome of these recommendation algorithms hits the spot after the fact. My Instagram Reels feeds me standup comic bits that are tailored to my taste! It’s a marvel of the modern world. I highlight your use of true proxy as showing I failed to communicated my point. As long as you/we keep in mind that updoots and retweets are just the best we currently have and not a natural truth, we can continue to work towards a healthier alternative.
blitzar 4y ago
If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, what noise does it make?
- kibwen 4y ago
  If a tree falls in the forest but the only witness is one million ants, does it make more or less of a noise than if the witness is one human?
anigbrowl 4y ago
We have to break out of this view count trap audience size directly correlates with revenue, so if you want to make any money on the internet you have to find some kind of strategy to cultivate said audience. It's not the only thing that correlates with revenue, but it's foolish to ignore its significance.

by bm3719 4y ago

waboremo 4y ago

The view count trap is going to exist and be effective as long as humans feel the need for validation. Let's pretend you have a blog, you're writing on it for years. It's affecting people positively. But nobody ever says a thing about it directly to you, you have no analytics running in the background, no like button. Eventually, you're probably going to stop writing on the blog, feeling it's a waste of time. We can point to popular bloggers all we want, but the fact remains most of them either have some form of view count operating (or likes/claps/whatever gimmick to replicate that "I see you" validation), had rare real life validation based on their blogs (being hired at xyz place because someone said they were a fan... but usually these blogs tend to go abandoned after they get hired), or relied on social networks to encourage them to continue writing their blogs. Until this is solved in a healthier way, we're not really going to be free of view counts.

OJFord 4y ago
Validation doesn't necessarily mean view count though - consider citations/WebMention or whatever - a thoughtful post referencing, disputing, discussing your own is surely worth some quite large number of views, in terms of validation.
- waboremo 4y ago
  Being referenced by someone you look up to is more valuable than a view. But is it really different, when we consider that one view is the reason why that person is referencing your content in the first place? This is why I have a hard time with how many people push against view counts as the ultimate bad. They are just another metric, one we use for validation, but still just a metric. Sure, you might think it's healthier to care about more WebMentions, but what are those when you peel away the layers of branding? I suppose we can't really escape our desperate need to be seen, even in digital space.
notwokeno 4y ago
I've been journaling for 11 years and I'm not going to stop any time soon despite the lack of a "like button" or analytics. The way you get free of view counts is by not worrying about them.
- waboremo 4y ago
  I consider journaling and blogging two distinct and separate mediums. In case you use them interchangeably, what do you write about?
  - Dalewyn 4y ago
    As I recall when blogs first came about, "blog" is shorthand for "web log". A log is a journal. Ergo, to write a blog is to journal something.
    - waboremo 4y ago
      I like the definitions referenced in this[1] article when it comes to log, diary, and journaling. In that way, I wouldn't publish my journals to my blog. [1]: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academic-development/assessmentdesign/methods/reflecting/ https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/academic-development/ass...
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Nazi lives don't matter, GTFO. (user account exists to promote Hitler worship, I checked)
  - notwokeno 4y ago
    Heh. After a couple years of normal conservatives being told their only place to go to voice complaints is 4chan you shouldn't be surprised that some of us took your advice and learned from the people there.

bnralt 4y ago

Blogs are already part of the view count trap and constant output dopamine hit provider worlds. Social media is just further down the trend line. In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. There might be a "What's New" section to let people know what was updated, but other than that old content was treated as being just as relevant as new content. The blog space flipped that. Instead of most of the information being presented non-chronologically with a possible area to let people know what's new, now information was prioritized by how new it was, with a possible area to list older posts. Old blog posts that don't make it to the list end up being well hidden and almost never read. For most people, the appeal of a blog over the older long-form articles was that blogs provided a somewhat constant stream of new content. You hear this when people tell others how to blog - "right a blog post everyday/everyweek." With a personal website, you don't want your high quality articles drowned out in a sea of low level off the cuff writing. But most blogs thrive on that, because a stream of new articles is needed to keep people coming back. Almost no one would want to put a low effort website up that only says, "Man, watching the news this week. What is the world coming to?", but those kinds of hot takes are all over the blog world. Additionally, on older sites comments often consisted of an individual e-mailing the author of a site, who might that have a page for useful reader comments. The blog comment space was about firing off quick reactions, getting a quick response, and then having the whole discussion buried a day (or sometimes mere hours) later as other blog posts supplanted the top one.

kibwen 4y ago
> In the early days of websites people often just had articles organized by topic on their website that interested readers could peruse. I remember it differently. Personal websites of the day were structured much like blogs would be, with a single index page listing all the articles in reverse-chronological order (or for the lazy/unconcerned with bandwidth, a big honking text file with new entries appended to the top). What you're describing wasn't the blog precursors, but the wiki precursors, with pages nicely organized according to topic (with copious links to the related sites in your webring). I agree that one of the biggest original draws of the "blog" concept was the convenient comments section, but in retrospect comments aren't at all necessary to the concept of "blogging", especially since the term now encompasses the pre-blog activity that was previously just "throwing up random articles on your own personal domain". As for the view count trap, we all prominently displayed our "N people have viewed this page" widgets on Geocities. :P

comfypotato 4y ago

How much has it changed the average thinking (of the people reached) or enlightened the average person weighted by how many people it has reached. Net enlightenment per post. I critique your comment: the use of the word trap implies an inherent negativity to view count. As dang has written, often some of these raw numbers (similar to the length of a comment on HN) have a strong correlation with the quality of the content.

bm3719 4y ago
View counts (and similar metrics) are a trap precisely because they are correlated with the things you do want. Say you want to educate others. That's hard to measure, so instead you measure updoots and retweets. They're prominently displayed, so of course you're going to look at and consciously optimize for them. But now you're in the trap, because you've accepted these numbers as the true proxy for influencing the world, and doing anything orthogonal to the algorithm will make number go down. In reality, you're doing what Twitter wants, not necessarily what you originally wanted.
- comfypotato 4y ago
  Ah, but I continue to attempt my point. Traps are for catching animals to eat. There’s nothing good about that for the animal. Even if you extend the analogy to the bait that got the animal in the trap, I still think it’s fundamentally different in that the outcome of these recommendation algorithms hits the spot after the fact. My Instagram Reels feeds me standup comic bits that are tailored to my taste! It’s a marvel of the modern world. I highlight your use of true proxy as showing I failed to communicated my point. As long as you/we keep in mind that updoots and retweets are just the best we currently have and not a natural truth, we can continue to work towards a healthier alternative.

blitzar 4y ago

If a tree falls in the woods and nobody is around to hear it, what noise does it make?

kibwen 4y ago
If a tree falls in the forest but the only witness is one million ants, does it make more or less of a noise than if the witness is one human?

anigbrowl 4y ago

We have to break out of this view count trap audience size directly correlates with revenue, so if you want to make any money on the internet you have to find some kind of strategy to cultivate said audience. It's not the only thing that correlates with revenue, but it's foolish to ignore its significance.