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They are optional in the same way how postal service is optional. Sure, you may just drive / sail / fly to whoever you want your package delivered... chances a

They are optional in the same way how postal service is optional. Sure, you may just drive / sail / fly to whoever you want your package delivered... chances are you'd rebel against this seeing how everyone else simply drops their package by the nearest collection point. Social networks today provide service beyond simply catching up with friends and family. They serve as front desks of companies' customer support, they provide easy means of feedback to important political figures... they became a public good and need to be recognized by the state as such.

gruez 4y ago
Going back to the OP, if people are voluntarily using social networks because they make it easier to catch up with friends and family, why should we "ditch the concept in general"? Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters?
- j2bax 4y ago
  It would be nice if at a minimum we could demand a social network that caters to making meaningful connection points with friends/family/strangers rather than ad serving algos. I know... the people have spoken and they want free stuff and are willing to sell their data/soul for it. I just wish it wasn't so! If a company built a product that was primarily designed to make me love it and find it valuable enough to pay for it I would be all in. But if the rest of my friends/family aren't in... then its pretty meaningless. I'll just have to keep relying on more manual methods of social media like texting, calls etc.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  I think the concept in general has been proven to be terrible on pretty much every count, so yes, I advocate ditching the idea. > Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters? Or email, or phone, etc. There is no lack of other communications channels. That said, I'm not in favor of banning these services. I just think society in general, and people in particular, would be better off if they stopped using them. I haven't used social media for several years, and my life is in no way poorer for it. I miss out on nothing.
- jstarfish 4y ago
  > Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters? I'd argue so. People put more thought into letters, since producing and sending them involved expense of time and effort. Laziness was its own spam filter.
- crabbone 4y ago
  Communicating with individuals is only a small fraction of what social network provides. How are you going to communicate with a group of peers who all need to know everyone's responses to your messages... by mail? Do you realize how long this will take and how cumbersome it will be? How would you make it possible for others, who weren't part of the conversation to come later and rediscover your entire conversation letter by letter? Letters aren't a good replacement to social networks if you are thinking about a pre-digital age. Newspapers that publish paid advertisements are probably a better replacement... but they also don't quite fit because they lack the function of private messaging... I don't think we have an equivalent to social networks in pre-digital world.
gretch 4y ago
I think people fall into this delusion, but if you can peel yourself out of it, you’d find it’s not really true at all. One of the best politically served groups in the US are elderly evangelical Christians - this doesn’t come from being on social media.
- throwway120385 4y ago
  Indeed, I think you could actually argue that social networks produce a lot of hot air but very little actual action. People seem to burn themselves out on political discussion and ripping on each other for having different opinions, but then they seem to do very little actual participating in the political process. Places like Facebook and NextDoor suck all the air out of the room for a lot of peoples' political ambitions. In contrast I'm finding that elected officials, aside from some gaffes here and there, are mostly receptive at the local level to the things we're asking for. If people spent the time they spend ripping on each other on social media instead navigating the bureaucracy and talking to the people that work there they could probably effect some meaningful change.
  - mym1990 4y ago
    A lot of people think that social media activity is their significant contribution to a cause. Post or like or share something pertaining to social issue of the day and their little soul can now go feel great about the change they've made in the world!
- crabbone 4y ago
  That's not a delusion. Specifically, the mechanism by which customer support is communicating with customers on social networks provides a lot of value to the customers because companies cannot gaslight individual customers. This works a lot better than even if you had a lawyer on your side, willing to work for you w/o compensation because the company might just hire a better lawyer. I've literally been in this situation before: I had intermittent connection problems and had to call ISP to look into the cabling. Once the technician finally came, he found that a squatter took over the entrance to the breaker room on the roof, so he could no longer get access to the switch the company installed there. Because he wasn't able to do anything w/o police intervening and breaking into squatter's illegal construction, he just left... I still had no Internet connection, so I decided to terminate my subscription early. Well, the ISP wouldn't have it. I had to jump through a lot of hoops, including closing and opening a bank account just to prevent the ISP from charging me for service they did not provide. I did it on principle, even though it would've been cheaper to just pay them few months. Come the end of my contract period, I get a summons to a court because the ISP hired a lawyer to go over cases like mine and try to intimidate individual customers into settling the arguments by paying the ISP (of course, by that time they tried to scare me with a fine that was about ten times the money I'd owe them on the contract). So, I had to search for lawyer organization which volunteered to provide customer protection, but due to them being an NGO, they had a requirement that they would only provide their services if I could show that my yearly income was below X, which, unfortunately, it wasn't, and so I had to pay a lawyer from my own money to deal with this case. In the end, the ISP backed off, but nobody compensated me even for the lawyer I had to hire. Needless to say that it's not possible to compensate the time spent on this. This was before social networks were popular enough to do this: ---- I had a very similar situation, which was simply due to me moving into another apartment which didn't have a coaxial outlet, so, I couldn't continue my contract with the ISP. They decided to pull the same trick. It was a single post on their Facebook page describing the situation that got me a phone call from their customer support department and my contract was terminated. Without charge.
JohnFen 4y ago
Although you can get along perfectly fine without having a social media account at all. You can still reach customer service, you can still interact with political figures, you can still do all of the things you want and need in your life.

gruez 4y ago

Going back to the OP, if people are voluntarily using social networks because they make it easier to catch up with friends and family, why should we "ditch the concept in general"? Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters?

j2bax 4y ago
It would be nice if at a minimum we could demand a social network that caters to making meaningful connection points with friends/family/strangers rather than ad serving algos. I know... the people have spoken and they want free stuff and are willing to sell their data/soul for it. I just wish it wasn't so! If a company built a product that was primarily designed to make me love it and find it valuable enough to pay for it I would be all in. But if the rest of my friends/family aren't in... then its pretty meaningless. I'll just have to keep relying on more manual methods of social media like texting, calls etc.
JohnFen 4y ago
I think the concept in general has been proven to be terrible on pretty much every count, so yes, I advocate ditching the idea. > Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters? Or email, or phone, etc. There is no lack of other communications channels. That said, I'm not in favor of banning these services. I just think society in general, and people in particular, would be better off if they stopped using them. I haven't used social media for several years, and my life is in no way poorer for it. I miss out on nothing.
jstarfish 4y ago
> Should we go back to the days of communicating to each other via letters? I'd argue so. People put more thought into letters, since producing and sending them involved expense of time and effort. Laziness was its own spam filter.
crabbone 4y ago
Communicating with individuals is only a small fraction of what social network provides. How are you going to communicate with a group of peers who all need to know everyone's responses to your messages... by mail? Do you realize how long this will take and how cumbersome it will be? How would you make it possible for others, who weren't part of the conversation to come later and rediscover your entire conversation letter by letter? Letters aren't a good replacement to social networks if you are thinking about a pre-digital age. Newspapers that publish paid advertisements are probably a better replacement... but they also don't quite fit because they lack the function of private messaging... I don't think we have an equivalent to social networks in pre-digital world.

gretch 4y ago

I think people fall into this delusion, but if you can peel yourself out of it, you’d find it’s not really true at all. One of the best politically served groups in the US are elderly evangelical Christians - this doesn’t come from being on social media.

throwway120385 4y ago
Indeed, I think you could actually argue that social networks produce a lot of hot air but very little actual action. People seem to burn themselves out on political discussion and ripping on each other for having different opinions, but then they seem to do very little actual participating in the political process. Places like Facebook and NextDoor suck all the air out of the room for a lot of peoples' political ambitions. In contrast I'm finding that elected officials, aside from some gaffes here and there, are mostly receptive at the local level to the things we're asking for. If people spent the time they spend ripping on each other on social media instead navigating the bureaucracy and talking to the people that work there they could probably effect some meaningful change.
- mym1990 4y ago
  A lot of people think that social media activity is their significant contribution to a cause. Post or like or share something pertaining to social issue of the day and their little soul can now go feel great about the change they've made in the world!
crabbone 4y ago
That's not a delusion. Specifically, the mechanism by which customer support is communicating with customers on social networks provides a lot of value to the customers because companies cannot gaslight individual customers. This works a lot better than even if you had a lawyer on your side, willing to work for you w/o compensation because the company might just hire a better lawyer. I've literally been in this situation before: I had intermittent connection problems and had to call ISP to look into the cabling. Once the technician finally came, he found that a squatter took over the entrance to the breaker room on the roof, so he could no longer get access to the switch the company installed there. Because he wasn't able to do anything w/o police intervening and breaking into squatter's illegal construction, he just left... I still had no Internet connection, so I decided to terminate my subscription early. Well, the ISP wouldn't have it. I had to jump through a lot of hoops, including closing and opening a bank account just to prevent the ISP from charging me for service they did not provide. I did it on principle, even though it would've been cheaper to just pay them few months. Come the end of my contract period, I get a summons to a court because the ISP hired a lawyer to go over cases like mine and try to intimidate individual customers into settling the arguments by paying the ISP (of course, by that time they tried to scare me with a fine that was about ten times the money I'd owe them on the contract). So, I had to search for lawyer organization which volunteered to provide customer protection, but due to them being an NGO, they had a requirement that they would only provide their services if I could show that my yearly income was below X, which, unfortunately, it wasn't, and so I had to pay a lawyer from my own money to deal with this case. In the end, the ISP backed off, but nobody compensated me even for the lawyer I had to hire. Needless to say that it's not possible to compensate the time spent on this. This was before social networks were popular enough to do this: ---- I had a very similar situation, which was simply due to me moving into another apartment which didn't have a coaxial outlet, so, I couldn't continue my contract with the ISP. They decided to pull the same trick. It was a single post on their Facebook page describing the situation that got me a phone call from their customer support department and my contract was terminated. Without charge.

JohnFen 4y ago

Although you can get along perfectly fine without having a social media account at all. You can still reach customer service, you can still interact with political figures, you can still do all of the things you want and need in your life.