5 ms·

Social media as a concept can definitely be fixed. Just stop doing algorithms, period. Strip the platforms of any and all initiative. Make them dumb pipes. Sto

• jstanley 1y ago
  > Just stop doing algorithms While we're at it, shall we stop storing data?
  • grishka 1y ago
    You know what I meant.
• gyomu 1y ago
  > Strip the platforms of any and all initiative. Make them dumb pipes. Stop pretending that people want to use social media for entertainment and news and celebrities. Stop trying to turn it into interactive TV. Stop forcing content from outside of my network upon me. Make the chronological feed the only option. Congrats, you now have platforms no one will care about, as attention span gets sniped by competitors who want to maximize engagement and don't care about your arbitrary rules (ie, literally what happened 15 years ago).
  • grishka 1y ago
    What do you mean by "no one"? There is definitely demand for such a platform.
    • rickdeckard 1y ago
      It's a dilemma. There might be demand, but this "platform A" will be in competition with a dopamine-focused engagement "platform B" which also supports to host updates from "the lives of people you follow". The majority of people will then have both installed but spend more time on "platform B" as it is actively engaging them. Platform A will again end up in competition for user-attention with Platform B, as it needs money to operate their business etc. Now if Platform A asks for a subscription fee to fund their non-engagement social media platform, how many of these users described above will pay and not simply prefer the free "platform B"? How will such a churn affect users willing to PAY for "Platform A", if people whose "life they want to follow" have completely moved to "Platform B"? Funny enough, as a European I could use WhatsApp as this "Platform A", as it has features to share status-updates, pictures etc. as part of your profile. Everyone I know has WhatsApp, noone is using those features. So in essence, this Platform A already exists in Europe but doesn't work as "social media" because people don't engage with it...
      • grishka 1y ago
        > The majority of people will then have both installed but spend more time on "platform B" as it is actively engaging them. And why would that be a problem? Most people also spend more time sleeping than using social media, so what? Let them be. Give them a tool that they would decide how to use best to suit their lifestyle. > Platform A will again end up in competition for user-attention with Platform B, as it needs money to operate their business etc. It would not, because it would not be run by a commercial organization. At this point I'm convinced that it's impossible for a sane social media platform to exist unless it's decentralized and/or run by a nonprofit. As soon as one touches venture capital, enshittification becomes only a matter of time.
        • rickdeckard 1y ago
          > And why would that be a problem? I'm referring to the journey that will move people away from "Platform A" again because of Platform B. That's a problem to solve because the value of the social network to an individual is largely the PEOPLE on that network. > It would not, because it would not be run by a commercial organization. Agree, taking "platform A" out of the profit-wheel could help. But still in a normal adoption scheme you need to make it worthwhile for a critical mass of people to use it for OTHER people to also consider it. In the end I believe you will need another external driver to solve this (i.e. restricting for-profit social media), because that other platform "has all the people and the dopamine". - There is a more simple parallel situation one can observe: People trying to move from WhatsApp/FB-messenger/.. to i.e. Signal. It's JUST about direct messaging, but anecdotally the majority of these transitions fail to complete because not all involved are actually on-board to abandon the old Messenger. So you succeed and your close group installs Signal and starts to use it with you, but each one is also part of other groups who are still also on the legacy app. Everyone has both apps installed, but slowly communication starts to move back to the legacy app because it's the "superset" of all friend-groups.
  • xanderlewis 1y ago
    > you now have platforms no one will care about I would care, and I imagine there are others who would too. I don’t use social media anymore (at all!) because of this. If I could have the chronological feed restored and no intrusion of other content I’d redownload immediately. There must be a market for this.
    • gyomu 1y ago
      There's plenty of options, take your pick. The latest one that I've been hearing about is https://retro.app https://retro.app, there are others. The issue of course is that your friends won't be on it, most of them won't sign up even if you beg them, and most likely none of you will be using the service anymore 6 months from now.
      • xanderlewis 1y ago
        Well, yes. That is the problem. I just want the old Instagram and Twitter back.
  • rsolva 1y ago
    I like to think that humanity is starting to build up some amount of immunity and aversion towards algorithmic feeds. Non-tech friends and family in my life (Norway and the Netherlands) express a rapidly growing discomfort being on Google and Meta's platforms, and some have gone cold turkey, others are actively formulating an exit strategy. I dropped out of these platforms some years ago and have been very happy having the Fediverse (and HN!) as my only social media. It is just the right amount of engagement and impulse for me. I do not check my feeds compulsively, but occasionally – and the people I follow is a diverse bunch, giving me food for thought and keeping me up to date with topics and software projects. It is still a niche place to hang out, but I'm OK with that. Now and then, friends get curious enough to join and check it out.
  • baxuz 1y ago
    You wouldn't as competitors who use these dark patterns should be regulated out of existence in normal countries. Every other form of mass media is regulated, for good reason.
  • const_cast 1y ago
    More addictive products will always win, because they're more addictive. That doesn't mean we need to one-up each other and repeatedly hyper optimize until we're making the digital equivalent of fentanyl-laced cigarettes. Also, we can actually ban stuff. I know it's not a physical product, but that doesn't mean we just have to fucking put up with whatever and deal with it. We'd never let a company sell fentanyl-laced cigarettes. But when it comes to tech, we all just throw up our hands and say "well we tried nothing and we're all out of ideas!"
• skeezyboy 1y ago
  >Stop trying to turn it into interactive TV. wait are you talking about social media or sites that play videos?
  • cmckn 1y ago
    For several years now, they’re mostly one and the same.
    • skeezyboy 1y ago
      for people who dont know what theyre talking about, sure. but pedophiles and addictive videos are 2 completely different things and it would help if you defined which youre referring to
  • grishka 1y ago
    I'm not talking about literal television, but more about something where you don't really get to decide what you see, you go there to get entertained with whatever.
• 0xDEAFBEAD 1y ago
  You know the "retweet" feature on Twitter didn't originally exist? Before the feature was implemented, people would just write "RT" followed by the author username, then past in the text of the tweet they wanted to retweet.
  • grishka 1y ago
    There's nothing wrong with reposts that are made knowingly by people you follow. My issue is with current dominant social media platforms all focusing on forcing people to see content from outside of their network that they would've otherwise never seen, because neither them, nor the people they follow, would follow anything like that.
• dragonwriter 1y ago
  > Stop pretending that people want to use social media for entertainment and news and celebrities People actually want media, social and otherwise, for exactly that. > Stop forcing content from outside of my network upon me. There are social media apps and platforms that don't do that. They are persistently less popular. People, by and large, do want passive discovery from outside of their network, just like they do, in aggregate, want entertainment and news and celebrities. > Make the chronological feed the only option. Chronological by what? Original post? Most recent edit? Most recent response? Most recent reaction?
  • TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
    People want addictions. The answer is to regulate addictive algorithms, not to give them more things to be addicted to. But addictions are wonderfully useful politically, so that's unlikely to happen. The point is simple - an algorithm is a form of meta-content. It's curated and designed, not neutral. And so are its commercial, psychological, and political effects. Currently SM companies have been allowed to use algorithms with little or no oversight. The emphasis has been on regulating privacy, not influence. In the same way the media need to have a Fairness Doctrine restored to restore sanity and quality to journalism, algorithm providers need to be able to demonstrate an equivalent for their platforms. This is very much against the spirit of the times, but that spirit is algorithmically created - which just proves the point. If you're thinking "Yes, but government..." - how do you know that's a spontaneous original thought, and not something you've been deliberately conditioned to believe?
    • grishka 1y ago
      Yes, people want addictions. So give them addictions. Just don't sacrifice actual social media for that. Ideally, in my view of the world anyway, there would be separate commercial addiction-focused platforms like TikTok, and separate non-addictive, pure social media platforms like the fediverse, preferably run by nonprofits.
    • tgv 1y ago
      > People want addictions. I think that's incorrect. Many addicts despise their addiction. A better way to look at it is: people can get addicted easily. Nobody gets addicted to paper press lubricant. The addiction is initiated by a positive experience, which often means: pleasure. Paper press lubricant doesn't provide that, but alcohol and facebook do. It may not be much of a distinction, but sometimes it helps to think about/see it in another way.
• seydor 1y ago
  it will fix very little. The "problems" of social media are rooted in selfish human behavior, it's like a giant high-school. You can't "fix" that because it's ingrained in humans
• HPsquared 1y ago
  That's the old vBulletin forum approach. Recommendation algorithms solve the problem of scale when these are too large. Winding back the clock doesn't work, things evolve to the next stage especially if people already know what it looks like.
• slightwinder 1y ago
  > Social media as a concept can definitely be fixed. Just stop doing algorithms, period. Algorithms only make them worse, not bad. The flaws are there, because people. > Stop pretending that people want to use social media for entertainment and news and celebrities. No, people buy this content, because they want it, not because it's there. > Social media is meant to be a place where you get updates about the lives of people you follow. Strange claim. Nothing is preventing people from doing exactly this.
  • grishka 1y ago
    > Nothing is preventing people from doing exactly this. I try my best to do this but it's futile. See, even if you don't use the algorithm, the algorithm still uses you. So, for example, you can't just discuss something on Twitter with your followers. Sometimes it would decide to show your tweet to a bunch of random people with the radical version of the views opposite to yours, and you will be forced to use the block button way too damn much. You can't opt out of having your tweets recommended to strangers. Even when that doesn't happen, many of your followers would still miss your posts if you don't appease the algorithm because they would still use the algorithmic feed — whether knowingly or because of all the dark patterns around that setting (it's very hidden, never sticks, or both). So no, the very existence of the algorithmic feed is the problem, it ruins the experience for everyone regardless of whether they use it or not.
    • slightwinder 1y ago
      > So, for example, you can't just discuss something on Twitter with your followers. That is a problem with the platform. Nothing is stopping you from changing the platform. You want it to be different, but don't want to use the different that already exists? > Even when that doesn't happen, many of your followers would still miss your posts if you don't appease the algorithm because they would still use the algorithmic feed That's still their own "choice". They decide to use Twitter, and they decide to stay on the algorithmic view. But ok, to be fair, Twitter, and other big networks, are kinda unstable on which view they offer and use by default. Forcing them to give more stable control to the user would be good. But I doubt it would fix anything on the grand scale. > So no, the very existence of the algorithmic feed is the problem The algorithmic feed exists mainly because there is too many content, so you will miss something anyway. Removing it will fix nothing for most people, it will only change what you miss. People have used self-configured algorithms even before social media existed. The demand has always been there. But of course, we could talk about the actual implementation and it's dark leanings.