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I agree. In fact it’s pretty wild to think that Facebook used to be somehow … sane. Before engagement algorithms, influencers and news outlets everywhere … it

by pjerem 3y ago

I agree. In fact it’s pretty wild to think that Facebook used to be somehow … sane. Before engagement algorithms, influencers and news outlets everywhere … it was just what your friends did today. It was mostly stupid and sentimental but that’s what humans are anyway. I’m sad the world now looks like a worse place.

jader201 3y ago
The world outside of social media and the internet is not necessarily worse. I think it’s just these things that have brought out the worst in people and the world. Sure, in some ways it brought people together. But I think the net result is worse and has divided people and the world, and monetized relationships. I wish we would collectively realize this, and just abandon these apps, and go back to real life connections. But it’s too late for that, I’m afraid. The world is already addicted.
- zerbinxx 3y ago
  I think the beauty of the mid-internet era was the aggressive personalization of it: the connections I made galvanized careers and friendships, celebrities seemed closer and more human, ideas seemed worthy of debate in your small corner of the world. As these became KPIs for companies, they drifted into the realm of the inhuman - the algorithm ultimately decides who meets who, what gets brought up, who gets listened to. I will say that I find discord to be a breath of fresh air, but I haven’t really found a true community there, more like disparate groups of people who share common interests but rarely first names. The internet today is either terrifyingly closely related to your first and last name or a hall of mirrors hidden behind myriad layers of post-irony. The veil has been shattered: either you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know or settle for a blanched façade of communication with real-world acquaintances who refuse to really show themselves for fear of what that might mean.
  - ruszki 3y ago
    > you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know This only works very rarely, and I don’t think that it can work today anywhere. When my favourite subreddit had 5000 subscribers in 2014-2015, it worked. There were meaningful conversations, because every active people knew everybody else, and nobody was asshole with each other. Nowadays, I can’t find such communities, and of course the same subreddit now with 400000 subscribers is a terrible place. Even smaller ones behave like these larger ones now. People who want to achieve something, or simple assholes find these places too quickly, if it’s open in any way. I’ve also met people who behaved in real life like during a stupid political argument on an anonymous forum. That slowly becomes the norm for too many. Btw, game theory indicates that this should happen when most of your communication is with strangers. Also politics, and state of the society in my original country definitely made people in Hungary more asshole. The society, how people behaved there 20 years ago, basically collapsed there to a depressive and anxious state (“conservatives”/alt-right/“classical liberalists” hurray!). This can be applied to most of the countries, but if you are lucky, just not that extreme way. That also doesn’t help to find any kind of community where there are no toxic people.
    - zerbinxx 3y ago
      The online-ification of conversation is so gross. Whenever I hear someone bring up a weird niche online thing (mostly incel/femcel/rightoid/tankie shit) I get so embarrassed for both of us: mostly on me for knowing what a “pickme” or the weird dogwhistles I find out about from a Very Online lifestyle. I agree that the ability to have any good convo forum online is always screwed up by people being mean or basic so fast that it’s barely worth engaging meaningfully with people. Sad state of affairs!
randomdata 3y ago
> It was mostly stupid and sentimental Which is why it didn't last. When there was a novelty to it, people tried posting things to see what happens. Being something new, they didn't know what to expect. But soon the novelty wore off and the stupid and sentimental revealed itself as being cringy. As such, the people made it clear that if they were going to continue to produce, they wanted tighter and tighter control over who can see it. They wanted private chats and closed groups, not a global newsfeed for all to see. Which, indeed, Facebook delivered on, but that also destroyed the "what I did today" content for the casual observer. So, that left Facebook to draw on professional (or wannabe professional, at least) content creators to fill the void. And here we are today. > I’m sad the world now looks like a worse place. There does seem to be a missing gap in news about regular people. Before Facebook you could read the newspaper to find out what your friends "did today". Seriously, look at newspapers from the last century. There are pages upon pages of stories like "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith invited Miss Jones from Nantucket to stay at their home this past week. A good time was had by all." But maybe lacking that isn't actually worse. Perhaps there is something to be said about staying close enough to your friends that you already know what they "did today" without having to read an account in the news?
- d1sxeyes 3y ago
  No, what killed Facebook for me was the 'like' button. Until the 'like' button, you had to either start or contribute to a discussion. With the 'like' button, the door was open to zero-value 'engagement'. Skinner tells us that rewards for any kind of conditioned behaviour are most effective if they are delivered on what he calls a ‘Variable ratio schedule (VR)’, meaning that the reward delivery should be proportionate to the stimulus response, but not predictably so. It’s like one-armed bandits in the casino - you put in 100 coins, you’re more likely to get a reward than if you put in 10, but it’s not predictable that every 50 coins you’ll win something. Or if you go and like 20 photos, then maybe someone will like one of yours back. So I ended up 'interacting' more with likes, hoping for the social affirmation of a like in return. I ended up spending more and more time on Facebook, 'liking' this, and watching that, but I think the quality of personal interactions decreased. Once healthy friendships fizzled out into yearly birthday messages and the occasional like on a post. But what was once a place to catch up on what was going on in the lives of my friends (even if it was just ‘anyone going to the pub tonight?!’) became reposts of recipes reduced to a minute’s play time. Opinions about divisive issues, boiled down into pithy quotes in curly writing on square backgrounds. Without the 'like' button, would this have happened anyway? Maybe. But for me, the 'like' button was really the beginning of the end of Facebook. I've more or less removed Facebook from my life by now, but I do lament the passing of the early Facebook—a platform for people to share and chat and be social, rather than a place where people compete for internet points that only win Facebook more money.

by pjerem 3y ago

jader201 3y ago

The world outside of social media and the internet is not necessarily worse. I think it’s just these things that have brought out the worst in people and the world. Sure, in some ways it brought people together. But I think the net result is worse and has divided people and the world, and monetized relationships. I wish we would collectively realize this, and just abandon these apps, and go back to real life connections. But it’s too late for that, I’m afraid. The world is already addicted.

zerbinxx 3y ago
I think the beauty of the mid-internet era was the aggressive personalization of it: the connections I made galvanized careers and friendships, celebrities seemed closer and more human, ideas seemed worthy of debate in your small corner of the world. As these became KPIs for companies, they drifted into the realm of the inhuman - the algorithm ultimately decides who meets who, what gets brought up, who gets listened to. I will say that I find discord to be a breath of fresh air, but I haven’t really found a true community there, more like disparate groups of people who share common interests but rarely first names. The internet today is either terrifyingly closely related to your first and last name or a hall of mirrors hidden behind myriad layers of post-irony. The veil has been shattered: either you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know or settle for a blanched façade of communication with real-world acquaintances who refuse to really show themselves for fear of what that might mean.
- ruszki 3y ago
  > you sign up for “real” talk with people you will never know This only works very rarely, and I don’t think that it can work today anywhere. When my favourite subreddit had 5000 subscribers in 2014-2015, it worked. There were meaningful conversations, because every active people knew everybody else, and nobody was asshole with each other. Nowadays, I can’t find such communities, and of course the same subreddit now with 400000 subscribers is a terrible place. Even smaller ones behave like these larger ones now. People who want to achieve something, or simple assholes find these places too quickly, if it’s open in any way. I’ve also met people who behaved in real life like during a stupid political argument on an anonymous forum. That slowly becomes the norm for too many. Btw, game theory indicates that this should happen when most of your communication is with strangers. Also politics, and state of the society in my original country definitely made people in Hungary more asshole. The society, how people behaved there 20 years ago, basically collapsed there to a depressive and anxious state (“conservatives”/alt-right/“classical liberalists” hurray!). This can be applied to most of the countries, but if you are lucky, just not that extreme way. That also doesn’t help to find any kind of community where there are no toxic people.
  - zerbinxx 3y ago
    The online-ification of conversation is so gross. Whenever I hear someone bring up a weird niche online thing (mostly incel/femcel/rightoid/tankie shit) I get so embarrassed for both of us: mostly on me for knowing what a “pickme” or the weird dogwhistles I find out about from a Very Online lifestyle. I agree that the ability to have any good convo forum online is always screwed up by people being mean or basic so fast that it’s barely worth engaging meaningfully with people. Sad state of affairs!

randomdata 3y ago

> It was mostly stupid and sentimental Which is why it didn't last. When there was a novelty to it, people tried posting things to see what happens. Being something new, they didn't know what to expect. But soon the novelty wore off and the stupid and sentimental revealed itself as being cringy. As such, the people made it clear that if they were going to continue to produce, they wanted tighter and tighter control over who can see it. They wanted private chats and closed groups, not a global newsfeed for all to see. Which, indeed, Facebook delivered on, but that also destroyed the "what I did today" content for the casual observer. So, that left Facebook to draw on professional (or wannabe professional, at least) content creators to fill the void. And here we are today. > I’m sad the world now looks like a worse place. There does seem to be a missing gap in news about regular people. Before Facebook you could read the newspaper to find out what your friends "did today". Seriously, look at newspapers from the last century. There are pages upon pages of stories like "Mr. and Mrs. John Smith invited Miss Jones from Nantucket to stay at their home this past week. A good time was had by all." But maybe lacking that isn't actually worse. Perhaps there is something to be said about staying close enough to your friends that you already know what they "did today" without having to read an account in the news?

d1sxeyes 3y ago
No, what killed Facebook for me was the 'like' button. Until the 'like' button, you had to either start or contribute to a discussion. With the 'like' button, the door was open to zero-value 'engagement'. Skinner tells us that rewards for any kind of conditioned behaviour are most effective if they are delivered on what he calls a ‘Variable ratio schedule (VR)’, meaning that the reward delivery should be proportionate to the stimulus response, but not predictably so. It’s like one-armed bandits in the casino - you put in 100 coins, you’re more likely to get a reward than if you put in 10, but it’s not predictable that every 50 coins you’ll win something. Or if you go and like 20 photos, then maybe someone will like one of yours back. So I ended up 'interacting' more with likes, hoping for the social affirmation of a like in return. I ended up spending more and more time on Facebook, 'liking' this, and watching that, but I think the quality of personal interactions decreased. Once healthy friendships fizzled out into yearly birthday messages and the occasional like on a post. But what was once a place to catch up on what was going on in the lives of my friends (even if it was just ‘anyone going to the pub tonight?!’) became reposts of recipes reduced to a minute’s play time. Opinions about divisive issues, boiled down into pithy quotes in curly writing on square backgrounds. Without the 'like' button, would this have happened anyway? Maybe. But for me, the 'like' button was really the beginning of the end of Facebook. I've more or less removed Facebook from my life by now, but I do lament the passing of the early Facebook—a platform for people to share and chat and be social, rather than a place where people compete for internet points that only win Facebook more money.