13 ms·

People aren't posting on social media as much

56 points by muser8 3y ago

muser8 3y ago
I often remark to family and friends that the human race wasn't ready for the capacity for instant communication with 'everyone everywhere all at once' but perhaps that was overly pessimistic and we are developing that muscle. Or is the novelty just wearing off and there are movements to other platforms that aren't represented in the article?
- paulmd 3y ago
  we still are exceptionally bad at managing large in-groups (or ostensible in-groups). discord is a perfect example, you can fairly easily maintain relationships with 10 groups of 50 people, but 500 people is a chore
  - whstl 3y ago
    Yep. This is why I think super large Reddit communities, and also the federation part of Mastodon, are all a mistake that failed IMO. Sure, those tools need those things to grow, but the end result is as bad as social networking. "Less is more" has never been apt. I don't want to be able to connect to a billion people :/
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  https://youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU https://youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
- jug 3y ago
  There is a Kurzgesagt that I can recommend about this! How our puny brains are ready for socializing and it’s been very important for us, but more on an isolated “tribe” level or at the very least without social networks, arguing that returning to special interest bulletin boards online will probably have us feel better. https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0 https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0
yetanotherloss 3y ago
Other than IG envy posts a lot of my younger friends seem to be switching to private or mostly private group chats. A lot of them use Discords even for non-gaming stuff probably due to the illusion of a smaller and more authentic community. Tiktok and YT may be replacing others but those seem much more heavily leaning to watching versus posting as the skill and production of what it takes to look good on it is more effort. If I had to guess they're getting annoyed at the rapid enshittification push at some of the big platforms. We may see federated mastodon model become more popular once a few celebrities figure it out.
- mackman 3y ago
  A lot of the enshittification is a result of the drop in organic content from friends and needing to maintain engagement numbers. It’s a vicious cycle, possibly a death spiral.
  - jinushaun 3y ago
    I don’t think enshittification entirely explains it. At least for me, social is exhausting because rage bait drives engagement and I’m tired of being angry all the time. It’s 1984 and the Two Minutes Hate. Instagram was a lot more fun when it was just food and travel. Even without algorithmic feeds, the introduction of revenue sharing and sponsorships means that creators would eventually make the same hateful content to increase clicks and revenue. Unless of course, you consider revenue sharing enshittification.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      For me IG is still dogs and landscapes, so I'm wondering if perhaps its recommendation algorithm has an inner death spiral where it randomly showed you something that made you angry, then interpreted your reaction as "jinushaun engages more with this than that" and stopped showing you good stuff forever after?
    - Zak 3y ago
      I'd define enshittification as anything that makes the platform worse long-term in order to bring in short-term profit. Revenue sharing might do that in some cases while being beneficial in others.
tombert 3y ago
Even disregarding privacy concerns (which you shouldn't!), I stopped posting on social media largely because I'm too argumentative of a person for it. When arguing is limited to people I see in person, it's a somewhat time-boxed and constrained operation. I typically can only argue with one person for N minutes, and eventually both of us get tired of it and we move on with our lives, but there's always someone wrong on the internet, and a lot of those wrong people love to be wrong publicly on social media. I would always end up arguing with a stupid post that a stupid person on Facebook had, and then someone would chime in in support of me or the person I'd argue with. Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media. Eventually, it started getting annoying and I deleted my Facebook, and never really looked back. I run a Mastodon instance that I almost never use (but I had to justify the server I bought somehow), I briefly worked at Reddit, and obviously I post a bit on HN which is basically social-media adjacent, but despite all this I never really felt compelled to go back to constantly posting on social media. I suspect a lot of people have come to similar conclusions. I enjoy talking to my friends, and I do pretty liberally on Signal, but I feel that's sort of in a different category than "social media".
- whstl 3y ago
  Funny. I was actually able to control myself in Facebook/Twitter (I had veeeery few discussions there, even peaceful ones were rare), but the problem was the increasing amount of arguing I was seeing, especially thanks to the algorithmic timeline. It was making me feel like shit even when I wasn't participating. Even when I stopped liking stuff it was visible that it was fucking with my mental health. Walking away from reading two people arguing completely drains my energy. Reddit is not that different. I don't have an account and just go there to get updated on my favourite hobby, but even that will show me a lot of people arguing and things getting heated, and it makes me a bit anxious after reading. Mastodon is going in the same direction IMO. It is a bit of an echo chamber the people I follow (I don't mind this tbh), but 60% of the things that get going are fucking powderkegs where a single disagreement becomes too heated. I've seen people piling on others because of opinions I agree, and vicariously reading makes me feel like shit. I'm perfectly fine with conflict and with discussions, but it doesn't really work for me when lots of topics are treated as if it was as high-stakes as we do online.
nektro 3y ago
good, hopefully they'll shut down and we'll get back to having communities
- chris-orgmenta 3y ago
  Hmm, sounds like you want to destroy my nice-happy-niche social media communities there - Please don't throw my baby out with the bathwater when you do :) (This was intentionally flippant , to point out the lack of nuance in parent)
  - macguyvermectin 3y ago
    [dead]
seydor 3y ago
People are realizing (again) that their opinions are like some ... body parts
- PopAlongKid 3y ago
  The point being, everyone has one.
  - bratwurst3000 3y ago
    It’s so smart to not have an opinion.
  - DavidPiper 3y ago
    I thought the point was that you shouldn't bring them out at the family dinner table
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
I agree largely with all of the posts here, but the nagging concern in the back of my mind is always: isn't social media still valuable for businesses? Or rather, are you leaving customers "on the table" by ignoring it? Maybe less so for B2B or "serious" things like WSJ, but for B2C it still sounds like a serious contender. For your dropshipping doohickies or crafted niche fandom doodads, where else do you go? Etsy and Pinterest aren't the norm everywhere. Then there's always the hope of "building a following" around either yourself or your product, or perhaps hitting a viral moment ("use this app to help you ABC 2x faster" by some influencer). Does one just SEO their way around and hope someone with a following gives you a boost or asks for an affiliate program?
- riffraff 3y ago
  I have not read the article but it is my understanding that reach in classic social medias s (Fb, Instagram, Twitter) has become incredibly bad. E.g. a post on Instagram would previously reach 40% of your followers and is now closer to 5%. So the value for a business also went down dramatically. You might as well just invest in advertisement rather than a social presence beyond the minimum.
  - SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
    A big problem is that the social media platforms are incentivized to try and keep people on the platform, aka away from external sites where you can sell your services. So your links to where to sell your stuff or whatever is not promoted
    - infecto 3y ago
      Is a possible other problem that everyone created social media with incredibly diluted messaging. Every brand had to post multiple times a day for things that seemed pretty worthless.
- TheCapeGreek 3y ago
  Downvotes for a genuine question? Are we only supposed to say "social media bad"? Come on.
_smfg 3y ago
The great logging off and the cozy web.
blinding-streak 3y ago
https://archive.ph/6l9Ei https://archive.ph/6l9Ei
bufio 3y ago
Doing away with chronological, non-curated feeds (by default) has disincentivised posting. Social interaction is no longer a concern for the few big social media companies. To a large extent, it has been optimised out.
epolanski 3y ago
I feel like posting has become simply uncool in time for few major reasons: - older gens (50+) getting on socials (cool kids club vanishes) - raise of influencers and post quality (comparison anxiety) - change to algos (fewer people will see it) I can't but think that plain old vBulletin/PhpBB topic-based forums are still the pinnacle of internet discussions. I don't like the fact, e.g. that interesting discussion on hackernews end up in a day and you don't have long threaded discussions.
- pests 3y ago
  I go a few weeks back into my comments daily and find new comments all the time that I interact with. Some users have notifiers set up when they get replied to. You can still have those discussions, just missing the recent-at-top sort.
Tao3300 3y ago
Why would I? Whenever I do it gets buried by the algorithm unless I specifically tag someone.
- 15457345234 3y ago
  That's the issue, it's all the algorithm. Social media was literally what it was named - a way to interact, socially, with rich media. Post a photo, all your 'friends' would see it. Write something, all your friends would see it. Now they don't see it because the algorithm doesn't show them anything that doesn't either push the platform agenda or make money. There's not (enough) money in showing people pictures that their friends took while out for a walk. You can make a buck or two, but you can make 10x as much if you show them celebrity crap instead. Or just straight up push genocidal urges. You want people to see your pictures? Make a livejournal or a blog and email it to your friends. I don't want to sound like a drama queen but If you use these platforms in any way shape or form you are aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes and your hands are literally soaked in blood.
efields 3y ago
Yep. As someone who just tried social media again this summer, mostly as a promotional tool, there’s been a downward usage trend. I think the events of October 7 didn’t help. Too soon to call this good or bad for any singular reason, but what sucks as a result is how hard it is to build an audience now. The network effects are shattered. It’s a shame because I think the Instagram creation tools are kind of neat. If that service was just a digital community bulletin board where every post expired after 30 days or something… idk, could be cool. Or a massive pendulum swing back to more analog, offline groups.
smitty1e 3y ago
I've got to cut the chit-chat and get on with the PhD thesis proposal.
gofemib187 3y ago
[dead]
gofemib187 3y ago
[dead]

56 points by muser8 3y ago

I often remark to family and friends that the human race wasn't ready for the capacity for instant communication with 'everyone everywhere all at once' but perhaps that was overly pessimistic and we are developing that muscle. Or is the novelty just wearing off and there are movements to other platforms that aren't represented in the article?

paulmd 3y ago
we still are exceptionally bad at managing large in-groups (or ostensible in-groups). discord is a perfect example, you can fairly easily maintain relationships with 10 groups of 50 people, but 500 people is a chore
- whstl 3y ago
  Yep. This is why I think super large Reddit communities, and also the federation part of Mastodon, are all a mistake that failed IMO. Sure, those tools need those things to grow, but the end result is as bad as social networking. "Less is more" has never been apt. I don't want to be able to connect to a billion people :/
toomuchtodo 3y ago
https://youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU https://youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU
jug 3y ago
There is a Kurzgesagt that I can recommend about this! How our puny brains are ready for socializing and it’s been very important for us, but more on an isolated “tribe” level or at the very least without social networks, arguing that returning to special interest bulletin boards online will probably have us feel better. https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0 https://youtu.be/fuFlMtZmvY0

yetanotherloss 3y ago

Other than IG envy posts a lot of my younger friends seem to be switching to private or mostly private group chats. A lot of them use Discords even for non-gaming stuff probably due to the illusion of a smaller and more authentic community. Tiktok and YT may be replacing others but those seem much more heavily leaning to watching versus posting as the skill and production of what it takes to look good on it is more effort. If I had to guess they're getting annoyed at the rapid enshittification push at some of the big platforms. We may see federated mastodon model become more popular once a few celebrities figure it out.

mackman 3y ago
A lot of the enshittification is a result of the drop in organic content from friends and needing to maintain engagement numbers. It’s a vicious cycle, possibly a death spiral.
- jinushaun 3y ago
  I don’t think enshittification entirely explains it. At least for me, social is exhausting because rage bait drives engagement and I’m tired of being angry all the time. It’s 1984 and the Two Minutes Hate. Instagram was a lot more fun when it was just food and travel. Even without algorithmic feeds, the introduction of revenue sharing and sponsorships means that creators would eventually make the same hateful content to increase clicks and revenue. Unless of course, you consider revenue sharing enshittification.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    For me IG is still dogs and landscapes, so I'm wondering if perhaps its recommendation algorithm has an inner death spiral where it randomly showed you something that made you angry, then interpreted your reaction as "jinushaun engages more with this than that" and stopped showing you good stuff forever after?
  - Zak 3y ago
    I'd define enshittification as anything that makes the platform worse long-term in order to bring in short-term profit. Revenue sharing might do that in some cases while being beneficial in others.

tombert 3y ago

Even disregarding privacy concerns (which you shouldn't!), I stopped posting on social media largely because I'm too argumentative of a person for it. When arguing is limited to people I see in person, it's a somewhat time-boxed and constrained operation. I typically can only argue with one person for N minutes, and eventually both of us get tired of it and we move on with our lives, but there's always someone wrong on the internet, and a lot of those wrong people love to be wrong publicly on social media. I would always end up arguing with a stupid post that a stupid person on Facebook had, and then someone would chime in in support of me or the person I'd argue with. Before I knew it, a not-insignificant percentage of each day was being dedicated to responding to idiocy on social media. Eventually, it started getting annoying and I deleted my Facebook, and never really looked back. I run a Mastodon instance that I almost never use (but I had to justify the server I bought somehow), I briefly worked at Reddit, and obviously I post a bit on HN which is basically social-media adjacent, but despite all this I never really felt compelled to go back to constantly posting on social media. I suspect a lot of people have come to similar conclusions. I enjoy talking to my friends, and I do pretty liberally on Signal, but I feel that's sort of in a different category than "social media".

whstl 3y ago
Funny. I was actually able to control myself in Facebook/Twitter (I had veeeery few discussions there, even peaceful ones were rare), but the problem was the increasing amount of arguing I was seeing, especially thanks to the algorithmic timeline. It was making me feel like shit even when I wasn't participating. Even when I stopped liking stuff it was visible that it was fucking with my mental health. Walking away from reading two people arguing completely drains my energy. Reddit is not that different. I don't have an account and just go there to get updated on my favourite hobby, but even that will show me a lot of people arguing and things getting heated, and it makes me a bit anxious after reading. Mastodon is going in the same direction IMO. It is a bit of an echo chamber the people I follow (I don't mind this tbh), but 60% of the things that get going are fucking powderkegs where a single disagreement becomes too heated. I've seen people piling on others because of opinions I agree, and vicariously reading makes me feel like shit. I'm perfectly fine with conflict and with discussions, but it doesn't really work for me when lots of topics are treated as if it was as high-stakes as we do online.

nektro 3y ago

good, hopefully they'll shut down and we'll get back to having communities

chris-orgmenta 3y ago
Hmm, sounds like you want to destroy my nice-happy-niche social media communities there - Please don't throw my baby out with the bathwater when you do :) (This was intentionally flippant , to point out the lack of nuance in parent)
- macguyvermectin 3y ago
  [dead]

seydor 3y ago

People are realizing (again) that their opinions are like some ... body parts

PopAlongKid 3y ago
The point being, everyone has one.
- bratwurst3000 3y ago
  It’s so smart to not have an opinion.
- DavidPiper 3y ago
  I thought the point was that you shouldn't bring them out at the family dinner table

TheCapeGreek 3y ago

I agree largely with all of the posts here, but the nagging concern in the back of my mind is always: isn't social media still valuable for businesses? Or rather, are you leaving customers "on the table" by ignoring it? Maybe less so for B2B or "serious" things like WSJ, but for B2C it still sounds like a serious contender. For your dropshipping doohickies or crafted niche fandom doodads, where else do you go? Etsy and Pinterest aren't the norm everywhere. Then there's always the hope of "building a following" around either yourself or your product, or perhaps hitting a viral moment ("use this app to help you ABC 2x faster" by some influencer). Does one just SEO their way around and hope someone with a following gives you a boost or asks for an affiliate program?

riffraff 3y ago
I have not read the article but it is my understanding that reach in classic social medias s (Fb, Instagram, Twitter) has become incredibly bad. E.g. a post on Instagram would previously reach 40% of your followers and is now closer to 5%. So the value for a business also went down dramatically. You might as well just invest in advertisement rather than a social presence beyond the minimum.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
  A big problem is that the social media platforms are incentivized to try and keep people on the platform, aka away from external sites where you can sell your services. So your links to where to sell your stuff or whatever is not promoted
  - infecto 3y ago
    Is a possible other problem that everyone created social media with incredibly diluted messaging. Every brand had to post multiple times a day for things that seemed pretty worthless.
TheCapeGreek 3y ago
Downvotes for a genuine question? Are we only supposed to say "social media bad"? Come on.

_smfg 3y ago

The great logging off and the cozy web.

blinding-streak 3y ago

https://archive.ph/6l9Ei https://archive.ph/6l9Ei

bufio 3y ago

Doing away with chronological, non-curated feeds (by default) has disincentivised posting. Social interaction is no longer a concern for the few big social media companies. To a large extent, it has been optimised out.

epolanski 3y ago

I feel like posting has become simply uncool in time for few major reasons: - older gens (50+) getting on socials (cool kids club vanishes) - raise of influencers and post quality (comparison anxiety) - change to algos (fewer people will see it) I can't but think that plain old vBulletin/PhpBB topic-based forums are still the pinnacle of internet discussions. I don't like the fact, e.g. that interesting discussion on hackernews end up in a day and you don't have long threaded discussions.

pests 3y ago
I go a few weeks back into my comments daily and find new comments all the time that I interact with. Some users have notifiers set up when they get replied to. You can still have those discussions, just missing the recent-at-top sort.

Tao3300 3y ago

Why would I? Whenever I do it gets buried by the algorithm unless I specifically tag someone.

15457345234 3y ago
That's the issue, it's all the algorithm. Social media was literally what it was named - a way to interact, socially, with rich media. Post a photo, all your 'friends' would see it. Write something, all your friends would see it. Now they don't see it because the algorithm doesn't show them anything that doesn't either push the platform agenda or make money. There's not (enough) money in showing people pictures that their friends took while out for a walk. You can make a buck or two, but you can make 10x as much if you show them celebrity crap instead. Or just straight up push genocidal urges. You want people to see your pictures? Make a livejournal or a blog and email it to your friends. I don't want to sound like a drama queen but If you use these platforms in any way shape or form you are aiding and abetting some of the most heinous crimes and your hands are literally soaked in blood.

efields 3y ago

Yep. As someone who just tried social media again this summer, mostly as a promotional tool, there’s been a downward usage trend. I think the events of October 7 didn’t help. Too soon to call this good or bad for any singular reason, but what sucks as a result is how hard it is to build an audience now. The network effects are shattered. It’s a shame because I think the Instagram creation tools are kind of neat. If that service was just a digital community bulletin board where every post expired after 30 days or something… idk, could be cool. Or a massive pendulum swing back to more analog, offline groups.

smitty1e 3y ago

I've got to cut the chit-chat and get on with the PhD thesis proposal.

gofemib187 3y ago

[dead]

gofemib187 3y ago

[dead]