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I see. I don’t agree! The municipalities, national parks, etc, could communicate just as well on their own websites as they do on social media. As for the Inte

I see. I don’t agree! The municipalities, national parks, etc, could communicate just as well on their own websites as they do on social media. As for the Internet as a “gathering place”, I don’t think I can put it better than I did elsewhere in this thread [1]: > The Internet (or really the Web) is a common area. You tweet something, I write a blog post and embed your tweet in it, Alice emails my post to her friends, Bob writes a post in response and links back to me, Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit, David and Eve discuss in the comments, etc. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36656088 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36656088

haswell 3y ago
> The municipalities, national parks, etc, could communicate just as well on their own websites as they do on social media. Most of them already do. My argument is not that these entities can’t use their own sites, but that doing so is not a sufficient replacement for the utility afforded by social media today. They use social media because it’s the place that people go to get information. In the physical town analogy, this is like posting your services on the front door of your building. Sure, people who know where you are can now get this information, but they had to know you were there to begin with. The pre-social world had literal bulletin boards, shipped 3 inch thick phone books to every door, and would rely on the proximity of a new location to attract users who were already in the same area. What you’re describing is a limbo state where we no longer have the old tools or the new replacements. > Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit Exactly. And this tends to be where engagement happens. I personally rely pretty heavily on HN as a community of people who are interested in the same things I am. I wouldn’t be aware of 99% of the smaller blogs shared here otherwise. Ask yourself where we’d be having this discussion if we erased the Internet’s gathering places tomorrow. Unless you think HN should be exempt, which raises a whole new set of objections to the thought experiment.
- jakelazaroff 3y ago
  > Most of them already do. My argument is not that these entities can’t use their own sites, but that doing so is not a sufficient replacement for the utility afforded by social media today. They use social media because it’s the place that people go to get information. I don't agree with this. They could use RSS, email, push notifications… we are not lacking in tools to disseminate information. >> Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit > Exactly. And this tends to be where engagement happens. Again, I disagree! You're calling out the last step here as somehow distinct from the others, but I think every step of the chain I mentioned is engagement. Sharing a tweet in a blog post or an email is not fundamentally different than doing it with another tweet. The goal is human interaction, not a particular set of features. Yes, people use social media because it's convenient. But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. The point is that we would still have our digital gathering place. I'm not saying that we wouldn't lose anything valuable; I'm saying that we wouldn't lose anything fundamental.
  - haswell 3y ago
    > But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. This all started with: > "Even if every single social network vanished tomorrow, we would still have a space where anyone can say whatever they want and instantly distribute it to every corner of the Earth" I'm glad for the clarification. I think what confuses this is continuing to make claims like: > Sharing a tweet in a blog post or an email is not fundamentally different than doing it with another tweet. The goal is human interaction, not a particular set of features. The difference is in the outcome, and can be summed up with one word: reach. And I agree, human interaction is the goal. Features are just things that help humans achieve that goal. But features also modulate what is possible, and how effectively that goal will be reached. Features matter insomuch as they enable outcomes, and not all outcomes are equal across the various ways you could imagine a set of features. If you believe that publicly sharing a tweet on a platform filled with people who are there to read other tweets - is not different than me sending you a personal email, I don't think there's any way for us to get on the same page. And I guess I don't understand the point of what you're arguing at this point, because while sure, the Internet continues to exist, it would seem odd to say something like: "Well, the town got blown away by a tornado, but reality still exists, so nothing has really changed". At this point let's just agree to disagree and move on, since I don't think we're really arguing about the same things.

haswell 3y ago

> The municipalities, national parks, etc, could communicate just as well on their own websites as they do on social media. Most of them already do. My argument is not that these entities can’t use their own sites, but that doing so is not a sufficient replacement for the utility afforded by social media today. They use social media because it’s the place that people go to get information. In the physical town analogy, this is like posting your services on the front door of your building. Sure, people who know where you are can now get this information, but they had to know you were there to begin with. The pre-social world had literal bulletin boards, shipped 3 inch thick phone books to every door, and would rely on the proximity of a new location to attract users who were already in the same area. What you’re describing is a limbo state where we no longer have the old tools or the new replacements. > Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit Exactly. And this tends to be where engagement happens. I personally rely pretty heavily on HN as a community of people who are interested in the same things I am. I wouldn’t be aware of 99% of the smaller blogs shared here otherwise. Ask yourself where we’d be having this discussion if we erased the Internet’s gathering places tomorrow. Unless you think HN should be exempt, which raises a whole new set of objections to the thought experiment.

jakelazaroff 3y ago
> Most of them already do. My argument is not that these entities can’t use their own sites, but that doing so is not a sufficient replacement for the utility afforded by social media today. They use social media because it’s the place that people go to get information. I don't agree with this. They could use RSS, email, push notifications… we are not lacking in tools to disseminate information. >> Charlie submits Bob’s post to Hacker News or Reddit > Exactly. And this tends to be where engagement happens. Again, I disagree! You're calling out the last step here as somehow distinct from the others, but I think every step of the chain I mentioned is engagement. Sharing a tweet in a blog post or an email is not fundamentally different than doing it with another tweet. The goal is human interaction, not a particular set of features. Yes, people use social media because it's convenient. But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. The point is that we would still have our digital gathering place. I'm not saying that we wouldn't lose anything valuable; I'm saying that we wouldn't lose anything fundamental.
- haswell 3y ago
  > But the point of this thought experiment is not "if all social media vanished, we would be totally unaffected" — that's obviously not true. This all started with: > "Even if every single social network vanished tomorrow, we would still have a space where anyone can say whatever they want and instantly distribute it to every corner of the Earth" I'm glad for the clarification. I think what confuses this is continuing to make claims like: > Sharing a tweet in a blog post or an email is not fundamentally different than doing it with another tweet. The goal is human interaction, not a particular set of features. The difference is in the outcome, and can be summed up with one word: reach. And I agree, human interaction is the goal. Features are just things that help humans achieve that goal. But features also modulate what is possible, and how effectively that goal will be reached. Features matter insomuch as they enable outcomes, and not all outcomes are equal across the various ways you could imagine a set of features. If you believe that publicly sharing a tweet on a platform filled with people who are there to read other tweets - is not different than me sending you a personal email, I don't think there's any way for us to get on the same page. And I guess I don't understand the point of what you're arguing at this point, because while sure, the Internet continues to exist, it would seem odd to say something like: "Well, the town got blown away by a tornado, but reality still exists, so nothing has really changed". At this point let's just agree to disagree and move on, since I don't think we're really arguing about the same things.