11 ms·

How do we stop Meta in 2024? We fix the information loop

74 points by moritzruth 3y ago

moritzruth 3y ago
This is a follow-up post to this submission from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617
maxwell 3y ago
[flagged]
- mpalmer 3y ago
  This one isn't clickbait, so probably not. He complains that losing the "Copy, Acquire, Kill" context hurts the people who never read the post(??), which is a tad rich considering his post's success hangs on aggregators like HN. But I'm guessing he's really salty that his breathless exaggeration "How Meta could pull off the most extraordinary pivot in tech history" was changed to something that's actually descriptive of the piece.
  - jayveeone 3y ago
    Hey author here. Couple of things: 1. I omitted the Copy, Acquire, Kill part of the title. And while I often do complain about my own actions, I did not in this situation. 2. I'm always salty! :) Less so with Hacker News. I was exaggerating in my writing to show the silliness of trying to convince people to write while highlighting the parts that make writing less fun. Though I concede that sarcasm often does me no favors. Ultimately, my beef with my favorite news agg is the lack of editorial note when they change a post title.
    - mpalmer 3y ago
      > I'm always salty! :) Same! > Ultimately, my beef with my favorite news agg is the lack of editorial note when they change a post title. I would support this.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Did they actually editorialize? I don't see any posts from dang in the original (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617), the change is pretty significant. That said, I do think that HN submissions should have a public moderation log / title edit history. But, HN has been very reluctant to add features because idk why.
  - jayveeone 3y ago
    Hey, author here. Yes I can confirm it was editorialized[1] The fact that you're (rightfully) questioning that, is the crux of the issue. Without an editorial note, it causes confusion and suspicion even when neither are warranted. HN might be my favorite agg site on the web. I appreciate that I can read non-corporate blogs on here. So, I don't want to sound like I'm hammering this point too hard. But clearly there's a better way to editorialize? Maybe not. I don't have to make difficult moderation decisions so perhaps it's easy to say what they must change. [1] https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/111677854315632640 https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/111677854315632640
te_chris 3y ago
This and the author's other post both remind me of tyler the creator's famous tweet about cyber bullying (https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/285670822264307712?lang=en https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/28567082226430771...). We choose where we put our time. Obviously it's harder for teens etc, but we still have agency in this. I installed an app called clearspace that makes instagram annoying to open. It's killed it for me. Using it less has shown me how little value it was delivereing me. So, how does this reconcile? The author is too deep in social, they're not seeing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't some minute one about which social platform matters, the problem is that they're bad products 90% of the time, with the occasional gleams of brilliance that keep us hooked. I get the same value out of checking instagram for 5 min a day that I did when I didn't have the chastity belt app and could check it continuously. This is a problem for Zuck. And Musk. AI could read instgram for me and summarise, and my utility would increase even further.
- twodave 3y ago
  I’m with you, having quit social media some 10 years ago. That said, not everybody has the ability to exercise their agency. In this social media addiction isn’t much different from any other addiction. Many folks find themselves incapable of making a change here, while some like you (and myself) simply decided one day. Same goes for a lot of other things. I quit drinking alcohol because I saw it as a negative in my life. Other things have been much, much harder for me.
  - te_chris 3y ago
    Agree, I'm certainly not trying to minimise the effects of real addiction, but I do think for a lot of us it's more crutch than dependency.
  - heresie-dabord 3y ago
    > not everybody has the ability to exercise agency Disaster awaits a person whose habits become lucrative for someone else. At the same time, the distribution of Meta users by country is interesting. The top 5 countries for Meta are (with some variance among Funkbook, Insipigram, Wartsapp): * India * USA * Indonesia * Brazil * Mexico [1] _ https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-country/#canada https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-cou...
blfr 3y ago
Stop from doing what? Threads is even deader than Mastodon. Twitter faltered but recovered and competitors don't have an opening any more. Between Facebook's (and its users) ageing out, Instagram quickly turning into yestermonth's TikTok, and Threads going nowhere, it has never been this easy to avoid Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg. Happy 2024! Zuck is not building a common infrastructure for social media. Just like he's not pivoting to owning the metaverse (lol) and we won't be his virtual tenants. As for the Data Transfer Project or Data Transfer Initiative, we already have a common, portable data format for social media. It's screenshots of tweets. Yeah, it's a crappy format but the users have spoken.
- sabellito 3y ago
  Meta seems to have 3B monthly active users.
  - zer0zzz 3y ago
    I thought it was closer to 4, if you total up everyone on WhatsApp too.
- juujian 3y ago
  Sorry to break it to you, but your parents are still 100% in on Facebook. Or at least their generation is. And those folks vote like there is no tomorrow (literally).
  - malka 3y ago
    Of course. Tommorow they will be dead, and we will be the one paying the bill Congrats on their generation. They deeply convinced me that democracy is one of the worst systems.
    - maxwell 3y ago
      What's a better system?
cpach 3y ago
Site’s not reachable AFAICT, but the blog post is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240102121433/https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/how-do-we-stop-meta-in-2024-we-fix-the-information-loop/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240102121433/https://www.fromj...
AnnaMere 3y ago
We built the hyper-local based informational social network, but the competition to beat meta sites is not meta sites like Insta or FB, but users using meta sites. To attract that user you will have to become something like meta, it is an infinite loop. Hyper-local social network: Qocial.com
- JKCalhoun 3y ago
  > Hyper-local social network NextDoor?
  - micromacrofoot 3y ago
    local isn't the first word many people would have come to mind about nextdoor
  - esafak 3y ago
    They're SoMoLo (Social-Mobile-Local)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    We got a letter in the mail from nextdoor, supposedly sent by a neighbour; it seemed scummy as hell and I don't believe the neighbour was actually consciously aware of what they agreed to (having their name on a letter etc).
zzzeek 3y ago
I spend a lot of time on both Threads and Mastodon and I think the notion of Threads being highly interweaved with Mastodon is not really going to be much of a Thing. I'm sure it will be implemented from a technical perspective, but between the already immense hostility to Threads from Mastodon instance operators and users as well as the quite frankly gigantic gaping hole in culture between the two systems, there's not going to be much interplay for very long. Having discussions on Threads vs. Mastodon one has to assume a completely different behavioral posture for each one, the former being all zingers and memes and the latter being fairly reasoned /calm / deliberative (but alas boring!) discussion. The Threads algorithm is really kind of a disaster so far, coupled with a very weak / hobbled search etc., the site is still "fun" but in a really plastic kind of way.
- zer0zzz 3y ago
  This is spot on. I wish there were a way to reconcile how annoying boring and opinionated the mastodon experience is with the threads experience that is also really really badly tuned albeit sort of neat in its design language. The threads recommendation algo is really screwed up for sure.
xhevahir 3y ago
Can anyone summarize this Platform As A Service idea for someone who doesn't know much of anything about the Fediverse? How would this become Meta's new business model in the event of Facebook's death? (Which the author seems to believe is inevitable?)
infinityplus1 3y ago
Just spread a hoax that Meta is going to shut down because Zukerberg thinks he has earned enough money and there is no need to earn any more. Plenty of people will buy it.
- mensetmanusman 3y ago
  Not earned enough, but wants to start a space rocket company.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Have you ever seen a rich guy who is familiar with the concept of “enough”?
  - wombat-man 3y ago
    I hear myspace Tom is living the life.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
amelius 3y ago
The only thing I use social media for is "events". Just give me a way to see what events exist around where I live, and who of my friends attend, then I'm happy.
- monetus 3y ago
  Meetup dropped the ball there pretty badly, leaving FB events as the main tool for this.
ecshafer 3y ago
If meta is going to imminently collapse as the author believes, they should put their money where their mouth is: show your short position! Theres this segment of, lets say highly online people, that think meta is about to die. But whatsapp, facebook and instagram are very heavily used by normal people.
- tempodox 3y ago
  Yes, and they are lifestyle apps and thus generational. Kids won't be caught dead in the place where their parents hang out.
  - throwitaway222 3y ago
    Those kids don't have money yet. Parents do, advertising goes to where the aging people are.
  - Cthulhu_ 3y ago
    Their kids might though, places like roller skating rinks and arcades seem to have a bit of a resurgence lately.
- pharmakom 3y ago
  How can you prove they don’t privately have a long position?
- badcppdev 3y ago
  I've just reread the article and I'm having trouble finding anything saying that, "Meta is going to imminently collapse". Can you clarify please?
- kmeisthax 3y ago
  >show your short position! I've heard this before from crypto boosters. Shorting doesn't work that way: you cannot hold a short forever just because you think something is a scam. In order to short anything, you need to borrow it first, and that comes with recurring fees. The profit margins on most short plays are thin enough that holding a short for longer than a week or two would eat up fees. So just because you know something is a scam or about to collapse is useless for profitably shorting it - you also need to know when exactly that bubble is going to burst or you will lose lots of money. Meanwhile, the market is full of people high on hype, loading up on the stock, and frustrating any attempt at a profitable short. Even when a short play is perfectly warranted (e.g. GameStop late 2020), people might barrel into the stock you're shorting just to fuck you. It's not enough for there to be bad news about a stock, it has to be salient to the investor class to get them to sell. So no, shorting is not a way to "put your money where your mouth is".
romanovcode 3y ago
[flagged]
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Not sure. My teen daughter and all her friends are deep down in Instagram. Their entire social lives are through its messenger (which isn't even a particularly good messaging client.) And plenty of posted content in both shorts and posts. She has Zero interest in facebook, but Instagram is what they're using constantly.
- hashtag-til 3y ago
  I really would like this to be true. It probably is for Facebook, but it seems younger users are all on Instagram, sadly.
tjpnz 3y ago
By turning its presence on a resume into a red flag.
karaterobot 3y ago
> In other words— Don’t stop talking. Don’t stop sharing. Don’t stop writing. It’s what we need the most right now. What did I just read? Stop using their products, it is simple. Your plan will fail because it involves being mad at something you're still addicted to, and hoping that fixes it.
DueDilligence 3y ago
[dead]
iteratethis 3y ago
This entire series of articles is surely well intended, but so delusional. Personal blogs were killed with the arrival of social networks. Enthusiasts still blog, which is great, I'm just saying it doesn't move any needles. The typical information consumer is on their phone, has 1 or 2 social media apps, and checks their feed with minimal effort to optimize it, largely relying on algorithms, which is the entire reason people keep coming back. The typical user of HN will be different, but the point is that you're the exception. Mastodon is similar to the personal blog situation. A charming attempt, but nothing more. It's a delusion to think that it will fundamentally change the nature of social networks. It's an enthusiast network of misfits. 80% is left-wing Twitter refugees. Federation is broken (it can't even sync likes or replies), there's constant moderation wars, and the ever-present danger of your account, your followers and all your content getting lost. The network can't scale because bills sky-rocket at the first sign of popularity and that doesn't even include the fact that most social media is video content these days. If you like Mastodon, good for you. But stop with the delusions.

74 points by moritzruth 3y ago

This is a follow-up post to this submission from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617

maxwell 3y ago

[flagged]

mpalmer 3y ago
This one isn't clickbait, so probably not. He complains that losing the "Copy, Acquire, Kill" context hurts the people who never read the post(??), which is a tad rich considering his post's success hangs on aggregators like HN. But I'm guessing he's really salty that his breathless exaggeration "How Meta could pull off the most extraordinary pivot in tech history" was changed to something that's actually descriptive of the piece.
- jayveeone 3y ago
  Hey author here. Couple of things: 1. I omitted the Copy, Acquire, Kill part of the title. And while I often do complain about my own actions, I did not in this situation. 2. I'm always salty! :) Less so with Hacker News. I was exaggerating in my writing to show the silliness of trying to convince people to write while highlighting the parts that make writing less fun. Though I concede that sarcasm often does me no favors. Ultimately, my beef with my favorite news agg is the lack of editorial note when they change a post title.
  - mpalmer 3y ago
    > I'm always salty! :) Same! > Ultimately, my beef with my favorite news agg is the lack of editorial note when they change a post title. I would support this.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
Did they actually editorialize? I don't see any posts from dang in the original (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38826617), the change is pretty significant. That said, I do think that HN submissions should have a public moderation log / title edit history. But, HN has been very reluctant to add features because idk why.
- jayveeone 3y ago
  Hey, author here. Yes I can confirm it was editorialized[1] The fact that you're (rightfully) questioning that, is the crux of the issue. Without an editorial note, it causes confusion and suspicion even when neither are warranted. HN might be my favorite agg site on the web. I appreciate that I can read non-corporate blogs on here. So, I don't want to sound like I'm hammering this point too hard. But clearly there's a better way to editorialize? Maybe not. I don't have to make difficult moderation decisions so perhaps it's easy to say what they must change. [1] https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/111677854315632640 https://mastodon.social/@fromjason/111677854315632640

te_chris 3y ago

This and the author's other post both remind me of tyler the creator's famous tweet about cyber bullying (https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/285670822264307712?lang=en https://twitter.com/tylerthecreator/status/28567082226430771...). We choose where we put our time. Obviously it's harder for teens etc, but we still have agency in this. I installed an app called clearspace that makes instagram annoying to open. It's killed it for me. Using it less has shown me how little value it was delivereing me. So, how does this reconcile? The author is too deep in social, they're not seeing the forest for the trees. The problem isn't some minute one about which social platform matters, the problem is that they're bad products 90% of the time, with the occasional gleams of brilliance that keep us hooked. I get the same value out of checking instagram for 5 min a day that I did when I didn't have the chastity belt app and could check it continuously. This is a problem for Zuck. And Musk. AI could read instgram for me and summarise, and my utility would increase even further.

twodave 3y ago
I’m with you, having quit social media some 10 years ago. That said, not everybody has the ability to exercise their agency. In this social media addiction isn’t much different from any other addiction. Many folks find themselves incapable of making a change here, while some like you (and myself) simply decided one day. Same goes for a lot of other things. I quit drinking alcohol because I saw it as a negative in my life. Other things have been much, much harder for me.
- te_chris 3y ago
  Agree, I'm certainly not trying to minimise the effects of real addiction, but I do think for a lot of us it's more crutch than dependency.
- heresie-dabord 3y ago
  > not everybody has the ability to exercise agency Disaster awaits a person whose habits become lucrative for someone else. At the same time, the distribution of Meta users by country is interesting. The top 5 countries for Meta are (with some variance among Funkbook, Insipigram, Wartsapp): * India * USA * Indonesia * Brazil * Mexico [1] _ https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-country/#canada https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/facebook-users-by-cou...

blfr 3y ago

Stop from doing what? Threads is even deader than Mastodon. Twitter faltered but recovered and competitors don't have an opening any more. Between Facebook's (and its users) ageing out, Instagram quickly turning into yestermonth's TikTok, and Threads going nowhere, it has never been this easy to avoid Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg. Happy 2024! Zuck is not building a common infrastructure for social media. Just like he's not pivoting to owning the metaverse (lol) and we won't be his virtual tenants. As for the Data Transfer Project or Data Transfer Initiative, we already have a common, portable data format for social media. It's screenshots of tweets. Yeah, it's a crappy format but the users have spoken.

sabellito 3y ago
Meta seems to have 3B monthly active users.
- zer0zzz 3y ago
  I thought it was closer to 4, if you total up everyone on WhatsApp too.
juujian 3y ago
Sorry to break it to you, but your parents are still 100% in on Facebook. Or at least their generation is. And those folks vote like there is no tomorrow (literally).
- malka 3y ago
  Of course. Tommorow they will be dead, and we will be the one paying the bill Congrats on their generation. They deeply convinced me that democracy is one of the worst systems.
  - maxwell 3y ago
    What's a better system?

cpach 3y ago

Site’s not reachable AFAICT, but the blog post is archived here: https://web.archive.org/web/20240102121433/https://www.fromjason.xyz/p/notebook/how-do-we-stop-meta-in-2024-we-fix-the-information-loop/ https://web.archive.org/web/20240102121433/https://www.fromj...

AnnaMere 3y ago

We built the hyper-local based informational social network, but the competition to beat meta sites is not meta sites like Insta or FB, but users using meta sites. To attract that user you will have to become something like meta, it is an infinite loop. Hyper-local social network: Qocial.com

JKCalhoun 3y ago
> Hyper-local social network NextDoor?
- micromacrofoot 3y ago
  local isn't the first word many people would have come to mind about nextdoor
- esafak 3y ago
  They're SoMoLo (Social-Mobile-Local)! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  We got a letter in the mail from nextdoor, supposedly sent by a neighbour; it seemed scummy as hell and I don't believe the neighbour was actually consciously aware of what they agreed to (having their name on a letter etc).

zzzeek 3y ago

I spend a lot of time on both Threads and Mastodon and I think the notion of Threads being highly interweaved with Mastodon is not really going to be much of a Thing. I'm sure it will be implemented from a technical perspective, but between the already immense hostility to Threads from Mastodon instance operators and users as well as the quite frankly gigantic gaping hole in culture between the two systems, there's not going to be much interplay for very long. Having discussions on Threads vs. Mastodon one has to assume a completely different behavioral posture for each one, the former being all zingers and memes and the latter being fairly reasoned /calm / deliberative (but alas boring!) discussion. The Threads algorithm is really kind of a disaster so far, coupled with a very weak / hobbled search etc., the site is still "fun" but in a really plastic kind of way.

zer0zzz 3y ago
This is spot on. I wish there were a way to reconcile how annoying boring and opinionated the mastodon experience is with the threads experience that is also really really badly tuned albeit sort of neat in its design language. The threads recommendation algo is really screwed up for sure.

xhevahir 3y ago

Can anyone summarize this Platform As A Service idea for someone who doesn't know much of anything about the Fediverse? How would this become Meta's new business model in the event of Facebook's death? (Which the author seems to believe is inevitable?)

infinityplus1 3y ago

Just spread a hoax that Meta is going to shut down because Zukerberg thinks he has earned enough money and there is no need to earn any more. Plenty of people will buy it.

mensetmanusman 3y ago
Not earned enough, but wants to start a space rocket company.
tempodox 3y ago
Have you ever seen a rich guy who is familiar with the concept of “enough”?
- wombat-man 3y ago
  I hear myspace Tom is living the life.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

amelius 3y ago

The only thing I use social media for is "events". Just give me a way to see what events exist around where I live, and who of my friends attend, then I'm happy.

monetus 3y ago
Meetup dropped the ball there pretty badly, leaving FB events as the main tool for this.

ecshafer 3y ago

If meta is going to imminently collapse as the author believes, they should put their money where their mouth is: show your short position! Theres this segment of, lets say highly online people, that think meta is about to die. But whatsapp, facebook and instagram are very heavily used by normal people.

tempodox 3y ago
Yes, and they are lifestyle apps and thus generational. Kids won't be caught dead in the place where their parents hang out.
- throwitaway222 3y ago
  Those kids don't have money yet. Parents do, advertising goes to where the aging people are.
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  Their kids might though, places like roller skating rinks and arcades seem to have a bit of a resurgence lately.
pharmakom 3y ago
How can you prove they don’t privately have a long position?
badcppdev 3y ago
I've just reread the article and I'm having trouble finding anything saying that, "Meta is going to imminently collapse". Can you clarify please?
kmeisthax 3y ago
>show your short position! I've heard this before from crypto boosters. Shorting doesn't work that way: you cannot hold a short forever just because you think something is a scam. In order to short anything, you need to borrow it first, and that comes with recurring fees. The profit margins on most short plays are thin enough that holding a short for longer than a week or two would eat up fees. So just because you know something is a scam or about to collapse is useless for profitably shorting it - you also need to know when exactly that bubble is going to burst or you will lose lots of money. Meanwhile, the market is full of people high on hype, loading up on the stock, and frustrating any attempt at a profitable short. Even when a short play is perfectly warranted (e.g. GameStop late 2020), people might barrel into the stock you're shorting just to fuck you. It's not enough for there to be bad news about a stock, it has to be salient to the investor class to get them to sell. So no, shorting is not a way to "put your money where your mouth is".

romanovcode 3y ago

[flagged]

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Not sure. My teen daughter and all her friends are deep down in Instagram. Their entire social lives are through its messenger (which isn't even a particularly good messaging client.) And plenty of posted content in both shorts and posts. She has Zero interest in facebook, but Instagram is what they're using constantly.
hashtag-til 3y ago
I really would like this to be true. It probably is for Facebook, but it seems younger users are all on Instagram, sadly.

tjpnz 3y ago

By turning its presence on a resume into a red flag.

karaterobot 3y ago

> In other words— Don’t stop talking. Don’t stop sharing. Don’t stop writing. It’s what we need the most right now. What did I just read? Stop using their products, it is simple. Your plan will fail because it involves being mad at something you're still addicted to, and hoping that fixes it.

DueDilligence 3y ago

[dead]

iteratethis 3y ago

This entire series of articles is surely well intended, but so delusional. Personal blogs were killed with the arrival of social networks. Enthusiasts still blog, which is great, I'm just saying it doesn't move any needles. The typical information consumer is on their phone, has 1 or 2 social media apps, and checks their feed with minimal effort to optimize it, largely relying on algorithms, which is the entire reason people keep coming back. The typical user of HN will be different, but the point is that you're the exception. Mastodon is similar to the personal blog situation. A charming attempt, but nothing more. It's a delusion to think that it will fundamentally change the nature of social networks. It's an enthusiast network of misfits. 80% is left-wing Twitter refugees. Federation is broken (it can't even sync likes or replies), there's constant moderation wars, and the ever-present danger of your account, your followers and all your content getting lost. The network can't scale because bills sky-rocket at the first sign of popularity and that doesn't even include the fact that most social media is video content these days. If you like Mastodon, good for you. But stop with the delusions.