34 ms·

I feel like all of these decentralized attempts to respond to the ills of social media/social products are going to never make it out of the curious POC phase s

by dchuk 3y ago

I feel like all of these decentralized attempts to respond to the ills of social media/social products are going to never make it out of the curious POC phase simply because the vast vast majority of people do not care about hosting their own instances or owning their data to that degree. When it comes down to it, there are 3 key issues with the "traditional" model of social products: You are the product - This is true of 1) your data you put into the system explicitly, 2) the data you create by using the system, and 3) the predominant business model (ads) of these products. This could be fixed by: 1) some easy means to extract all data you create in an accessible format (only some users will care about this) 2 & 3) Allowing people the choice of whether they are the product or not. "Subscribe for no ads" seems like a good middle path alternative to selling ads without demanding a whole new architecture and operational model for federated solutions. Separate of the above ideas is the fact that social products are really addiction mechanisms. Reddit/Hacker News/Tik Tok/Instagram are all heavily optimized to addict their users to their product. This is, in my opinion, where the real risk lies overall, because it is directly leading to aggressive micro feedback loops and information bubbles that are evolving faster than humans can process. I'm not sure what to do about this problem save for outright control/limitation attempts, which seems like a guaranteed mess.

interroboink 3y ago
While I am also not very bullish on any fedi-xyz that requires special extra effort from users, I think there's another problem with the current popular schemes that makes your (2&3) solution problematic: money incentives, over time. Even if a company today were to offer "subscribe for no ads", I don't have especially great confidence that it will stay that way, or that the quality of the product will be maintained over time. Fundamentally, if you have a situation where making money is the goal (whether via ads or subscriptions, etc), then that is the goal that will be pursued. But a healthy community is not about money. One way to "keep the money-grubbing company honest", as it were, is to have genuine competition. Maybe there are other good ways, but that's at least one. There needs to be an existential threat to that company, at all times, that its users (and thus revenue) could leave and go somewhere else. A federated approach at least somewhat pushes things in that direction. I'm curious to see how much traction it gains. Maybe there could be a non-profit approach. Or maybe "online community as a public utility" approach; I really don't know. But the money-driven incentive tends to be a slow poison, I think.
muglug 3y ago
The vast majority of users absolutely don't care about data residency or "privacy", however you interpret that word. You can convince individuals to care, but good luck convincing a large group. What can happen (and has happened) is that the existing thing becomes just toxic enough to lessen the pull and invite alternatives. For the tech communities I've been a part of this has happened a number of times in the history of the web — off the top of my head: • ExpertsExchange -> StackOverflow • IE 6 -> Firefox • Twitter -> Mastodon In all cases the migration was driven by software engineers' disgust with the platform. The current Twitter -> Mastodon migration is mostly just folks in tech, but there are enough of us to forge decent-sized communities there.
- jxf 3y ago
  ExpertsExchange was before my time, but was it "toxic" or was it just simply not as good?
  - ascagnel_ 3y ago
    It was significantly less useful — answers were behind a paywall.
  - muglug 3y ago
    I use "toxic" in the sense that it actively repelled users.
- copperx 3y ago
  Wait, does Mastodon have traction?
  - yborg 3y ago
    Relative to what? It currently has ~1.2M monthly active users, or less than 0.5% of Twitter. It's probably 20x the active user base of IRC.
  - ImaCake 3y ago
    It has enough traction that it’s a vibrant set of communities. I use it to share bird photos, talk about adhd/autism, and follow some climate science. Its smaller than twitter, but its big enough to work now.
kelnos 3y ago
> Allowing people the choice of whether they are the product or not. "Subscribe for no ads" seems like a good middle path alternative to selling ads without demanding a whole new architecture and operational model for federated solutions. The main problem with social media as it exists today is not advertising (as much as I despise advertising), but the toxic, addictive, engagement-at-all-costs nature of how the information is presented. I agree with you that most people don't care about their data ownership/privacy to the point that they'll host their own instances. And if they don't do that, then they are beholden to whatever "algorithms" the centralized players want to use to ensure high levels of engagement that keep people on the site/app, and coming back to the site/app.
- munificent 3y ago
  But it's the advertising that drives all of the stuff you do hate. When a business is ad-driven, human attention is the raw crude that it harvests to turn into a product (ad impressions) that it then generates revenue from. The more attention it can siphon up, the more ad impressions it can deliver and the more money the business makes. Does your coffee maker chime every twenty minutes to helpfully suggest you might want another coffee? No, of course not. Because the people who made that coffee maker already got as much money from you as they're gonna get when you bought it. As long as you're happy enough with it to not switch to the competition, they don't care how much you use it. They get no additional revenue from your additional use. With ad-driven businesses, every user is a potentially inexhaustible source of future attention, which is what drives all of these toxic user experience choices.
rainonmoon 3y ago
Hosting your own instance isn't a requirement for joining any of the alternatives I've seen so far (e.g. Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy etc.) but I'm open to being corrected if you've seen this stipulated. As for the rest of this comment, it's really predicated on certain ideas about what websites have to be based on what they have been over the past 15 years. In fact it's highly possible to participate in community-run efforts that aren't driven by profit incentives, which also don't aspire to drive addiction.
courseofaction 3y ago
There is mass attention on the pitfalls of centralization right now - Twitter, and now Reddit, two public squares annihilated by corporate greed. People are learning that the rewards of social media are possible without the ennui machine sucking their souls. They do care, but many don't understand enough to navigate this combination of tech and social structures. Now is the time to educate them and take advantage of that.
- api 3y ago
  One of the things people may have to learn is that it might not be possible (for several reasons) for privacy respecting user centric online systems to equal the ease of use and friction free on boarding of centralized silos. There are both technical and economic reasons for this. If people want freedom, privacy, and control of their own data they may have to tolerate a somewhat higher friction user experience. This may be unavoidable. The cost of online freedom may be a few extra steps.
dheera 3y ago
They also need a better name. "Pixelfed" is not something that non-tech people will think they need.

by dchuk 3y ago

interroboink 3y ago

While I am also not very bullish on any fedi-xyz that requires special extra effort from users, I think there's another problem with the current popular schemes that makes your (2&3) solution problematic: money incentives, over time. Even if a company today were to offer "subscribe for no ads", I don't have especially great confidence that it will stay that way, or that the quality of the product will be maintained over time. Fundamentally, if you have a situation where making money is the goal (whether via ads or subscriptions, etc), then that is the goal that will be pursued. But a healthy community is not about money. One way to "keep the money-grubbing company honest", as it were, is to have genuine competition. Maybe there are other good ways, but that's at least one. There needs to be an existential threat to that company, at all times, that its users (and thus revenue) could leave and go somewhere else. A federated approach at least somewhat pushes things in that direction. I'm curious to see how much traction it gains. Maybe there could be a non-profit approach. Or maybe "online community as a public utility" approach; I really don't know. But the money-driven incentive tends to be a slow poison, I think.

muglug 3y ago

The vast majority of users absolutely don't care about data residency or "privacy", however you interpret that word. You can convince individuals to care, but good luck convincing a large group. What can happen (and has happened) is that the existing thing becomes just toxic enough to lessen the pull and invite alternatives. For the tech communities I've been a part of this has happened a number of times in the history of the web — off the top of my head: • ExpertsExchange -> StackOverflow • IE 6 -> Firefox • Twitter -> Mastodon In all cases the migration was driven by software engineers' disgust with the platform. The current Twitter -> Mastodon migration is mostly just folks in tech, but there are enough of us to forge decent-sized communities there.

jxf 3y ago
ExpertsExchange was before my time, but was it "toxic" or was it just simply not as good?
- ascagnel_ 3y ago
  It was significantly less useful — answers were behind a paywall.
- muglug 3y ago
  I use "toxic" in the sense that it actively repelled users.
copperx 3y ago
Wait, does Mastodon have traction?
- yborg 3y ago
  Relative to what? It currently has ~1.2M monthly active users, or less than 0.5% of Twitter. It's probably 20x the active user base of IRC.
- ImaCake 3y ago
  It has enough traction that it’s a vibrant set of communities. I use it to share bird photos, talk about adhd/autism, and follow some climate science. Its smaller than twitter, but its big enough to work now.

kelnos 3y ago

> Allowing people the choice of whether they are the product or not. "Subscribe for no ads" seems like a good middle path alternative to selling ads without demanding a whole new architecture and operational model for federated solutions. The main problem with social media as it exists today is not advertising (as much as I despise advertising), but the toxic, addictive, engagement-at-all-costs nature of how the information is presented. I agree with you that most people don't care about their data ownership/privacy to the point that they'll host their own instances. And if they don't do that, then they are beholden to whatever "algorithms" the centralized players want to use to ensure high levels of engagement that keep people on the site/app, and coming back to the site/app.

munificent 3y ago
But it's the advertising that drives all of the stuff you do hate. When a business is ad-driven, human attention is the raw crude that it harvests to turn into a product (ad impressions) that it then generates revenue from. The more attention it can siphon up, the more ad impressions it can deliver and the more money the business makes. Does your coffee maker chime every twenty minutes to helpfully suggest you might want another coffee? No, of course not. Because the people who made that coffee maker already got as much money from you as they're gonna get when you bought it. As long as you're happy enough with it to not switch to the competition, they don't care how much you use it. They get no additional revenue from your additional use. With ad-driven businesses, every user is a potentially inexhaustible source of future attention, which is what drives all of these toxic user experience choices.

rainonmoon 3y ago

Hosting your own instance isn't a requirement for joining any of the alternatives I've seen so far (e.g. Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy etc.) but I'm open to being corrected if you've seen this stipulated. As for the rest of this comment, it's really predicated on certain ideas about what websites have to be based on what they have been over the past 15 years. In fact it's highly possible to participate in community-run efforts that aren't driven by profit incentives, which also don't aspire to drive addiction.

courseofaction 3y ago

There is mass attention on the pitfalls of centralization right now - Twitter, and now Reddit, two public squares annihilated by corporate greed. People are learning that the rewards of social media are possible without the ennui machine sucking their souls. They do care, but many don't understand enough to navigate this combination of tech and social structures. Now is the time to educate them and take advantage of that.

api 3y ago
One of the things people may have to learn is that it might not be possible (for several reasons) for privacy respecting user centric online systems to equal the ease of use and friction free on boarding of centralized silos. There are both technical and economic reasons for this. If people want freedom, privacy, and control of their own data they may have to tolerate a somewhat higher friction user experience. This may be unavoidable. The cost of online freedom may be a few extra steps.

dheera 3y ago

They also need a better name. "Pixelfed" is not something that non-tech people will think they need.