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Maybe working in secuirty has screwed my vision because this stuff bounces around in my head all day. I think social media as we know it today is already at th

Maybe working in secuirty has screwed my vision because this stuff bounces around in my head all day. I think social media as we know it today is already at the end of the road. Our data has been obtained to make generative AI products and now we are entering a new phase of the internet. The social media we have has already been poisoned by assholes trying to make everyone addicted for money, or victims of non-kinetic warfare. There is going to be way to many self-managing sock puppets all with an agenda. Automated psyops agents left to their devices, all talking to each other and you. That’s not to say there won’t be sociable media, it’s just that regardless of how federated anything is we are all still going to constantly be in contact with AI. the next big social media platform will be the one that can guarantee the most authentic human connections. Until we get to that point, we will have what we have not and watch it get worse as smaller federated instances pop up that become selective or invite only. Not much different then private hidden services

em-bee 3y ago
isn't it possible to avoid all the problems by simply using these tools in a certain way? i am on whatsapp, wechat, telegram, matrix, signal, sms, irc, email, even discord... on each of these services i am mostly in contact with real humans that i met in person. i am in a few groups mostly made out of these same people, but also some groups where i never met anyone. i am not on facebook, mastodon or ex-twitter or any service that tries to feed me with stuff instead of just giving me a timeline of all messages shared. even on youtube i follow the channels of my choice and mostly ignore recommendations except to discover other interesting channels. i don't see any of that going away. therefore i don't see anything changing for me
- zizee 3y ago
  It would be useful to categorise "social media" into "publish to strangers" vs "interact with individuals in private". Apparently these are both social media, but they are very different use-cases. Most of the apps you mentioned are focussed on that second category, whereas (I believe) the GP was talking about the first category.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    well, at least whatsapp, wechat, youtube and even telegram are trying to get into the first category. i ignore the respective features. in my case i eventually realized that i would waste to much time if i would try to follow all the posts pushed there, and it would also take to much effort to curate that content, so i decided to completely ignore it instead. but i am old, and my life experience helps me to stick to this. for young people this must be harder. i agree that this distinction is important, but i am afraid it is a lost battle, and as we criticize the negative effects of the first category of social media we need to also point out how social media can be useful when it is in the second category.
autonomousErwin 3y ago
I actually think this could be an incorrect assumption we're making that humans want authentic human connections on social media. Most humans on social media are not their authentic selves and want to project an image of who they think people want to engage with.
JohnFen 3y ago
> the next big social media platform will be the one that can guarantee the most authentic human connections. Which is a thing that I don't think is feasible. I could be wrong, of course. But I do agree that authenticity is going to be the issue that social platforms will live or die on. I think the next evolution of "social media" is more likely to be a return to the old-fashioned notion of interacting with people in person.
- layer8 3y ago
  Social media was always just a fraction of the population. Most non-tech people I know in real life don’t significantly engage with it.
  - xotesos 3y ago
    Just an absurd statement. We have good statistics on this. 84% of people aged 18 to 29 use at least one social media site.
  - nvy 3y ago
    Every single one of my computer illiterate aunts, uncles, and grandparents has a Facebook account.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Almost none of my tech-savvy friends use social media, while almost all of my non-tech-savvy friends do. But none of our personal experiences is a great indicator of what "most people" do.
- mminer237 3y ago
  The only way it's feasible is really requiring an ID or credit card to sign up. Technically, it's pretty doable, but I doubt the users would be willing to go that far for authenticity.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
avrionov 3y ago
The current generation of generative AI models is quire far from perfect. They'll need more and more data. For bigger models, for models which are targeting specific areas, etc. But is possible that social media as source is already poisoned by Gen AI postings.
deleted 3y ago
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em-bee 3y ago

isn't it possible to avoid all the problems by simply using these tools in a certain way? i am on whatsapp, wechat, telegram, matrix, signal, sms, irc, email, even discord... on each of these services i am mostly in contact with real humans that i met in person. i am in a few groups mostly made out of these same people, but also some groups where i never met anyone. i am not on facebook, mastodon or ex-twitter or any service that tries to feed me with stuff instead of just giving me a timeline of all messages shared. even on youtube i follow the channels of my choice and mostly ignore recommendations except to discover other interesting channels. i don't see any of that going away. therefore i don't see anything changing for me

zizee 3y ago
It would be useful to categorise "social media" into "publish to strangers" vs "interact with individuals in private". Apparently these are both social media, but they are very different use-cases. Most of the apps you mentioned are focussed on that second category, whereas (I believe) the GP was talking about the first category.
- em-bee 3y ago
  well, at least whatsapp, wechat, youtube and even telegram are trying to get into the first category. i ignore the respective features. in my case i eventually realized that i would waste to much time if i would try to follow all the posts pushed there, and it would also take to much effort to curate that content, so i decided to completely ignore it instead. but i am old, and my life experience helps me to stick to this. for young people this must be harder. i agree that this distinction is important, but i am afraid it is a lost battle, and as we criticize the negative effects of the first category of social media we need to also point out how social media can be useful when it is in the second category.

autonomousErwin 3y ago

I actually think this could be an incorrect assumption we're making that humans want authentic human connections on social media. Most humans on social media are not their authentic selves and want to project an image of who they think people want to engage with.

JohnFen 3y ago

> the next big social media platform will be the one that can guarantee the most authentic human connections. Which is a thing that I don't think is feasible. I could be wrong, of course. But I do agree that authenticity is going to be the issue that social platforms will live or die on. I think the next evolution of "social media" is more likely to be a return to the old-fashioned notion of interacting with people in person.

layer8 3y ago
Social media was always just a fraction of the population. Most non-tech people I know in real life don’t significantly engage with it.
- xotesos 3y ago
  Just an absurd statement. We have good statistics on this. 84% of people aged 18 to 29 use at least one social media site.
- nvy 3y ago
  Every single one of my computer illiterate aunts, uncles, and grandparents has a Facebook account.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Almost none of my tech-savvy friends use social media, while almost all of my non-tech-savvy friends do. But none of our personal experiences is a great indicator of what "most people" do.
mminer237 3y ago
The only way it's feasible is really requiring an ID or credit card to sign up. Technically, it's pretty doable, but I doubt the users would be willing to go that far for authenticity.
- JohnFen 3y ago

avrionov 3y ago

The current generation of generative AI models is quire far from perfect. They'll need more and more data. For bigger models, for models which are targeting specific areas, etc. But is possible that social media as source is already poisoned by Gen AI postings.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]