3 ms·

I've flown across the US to meet what will likely be lifelong friends[0], and just went out to dinner and an escape room with some others, all of which I connec

by Zambyte 8mo ago

I've flown across the US to meet what will likely be lifelong friends[0], and just went out to dinner and an escape room with some others, all of which I connected with through Bluesky. The worst of social media is terrible, but I would hate to lose the best of it by banning it outright. The really negative parts come are - Underage people who do not have the emotional maturity to deal with digital public spaces - Emotional manipulation through "algorithmic" timelines (chronological or bust) - Waves of unwanted interactions Social media seems like it can be a positive tool to me. I would love to be able to continue to use it as I am. I do think there is a conflict of interest issue between the mental health of the people that use social media, and for-profit corporations that provide social media services. Regulating social media in a sane way has become difficult due to how much financial sway social media companies have on legislation, but it's an important fight to fight. [0] I have a thread on my bsky account with a bunch of group photos, if you're interested it shouldn't be hard to find. I'm not linking it because I'm not interested in people engaging in it from here.

Gud 8mo ago
Blue sky is a social network, not social media. A subtle but important distinction
- runako 8mo ago
  I am super curious about this distinction! Could you say more?
  - Gud 8mo ago
    On a network, people interact with each other. In ~media~, you have a few specialized ~creators~, and doom scrollers. Compare Lunarstorm anno 2000 and instagram 2026.
    - Izkata 8mo ago
      The "media" in "social media" doesn't refer to image/video/audio, it refers to "the medium being used". Twitter/Blue Sky/etc are all social media. Read it like "a medium being used for social interaction".
      - Gud 8mo ago
        It was renamed from social network to social media by business executives, who hijacked the social networks built by us
      - npunt 8mo ago
        OPs is closer to the truth; the shift from network -> media shows a useful distinction between what the focal point of activity is. Note that "social" (as in social interaction with people you know) in "social networking" is a requirement, while it is not in "social media". You may as well call it "parasocial media" since that is the way most people use it most of the time. Thus 'social media' is primarily based on content, while 'social networking' is primarily based on social connection and interaction.
        Izkata 8mo ago
        If anything the terminology shift was the other way, we called forums and MySpace social media back then even though MySpace is called social networking now. "Networking" back then was pretty restricted to business / self-promotion oriented stuff like LinkedIn.
        Gud 8mo ago
        We didn’t call forums back then “social media”, we called them discussion forums… I was there, just go to the official phpBB forums and search my name..
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        I was also there. We (ie the people I interacted with) called myspace social media and considered discussion forums to be a specialized subset of social media. We also considered myspace to be a social network (due to the friend graph) while forums were not. The chans were a weird almost edge case. I think they qualify as social media but the lack of persistent identities significantly changes the dynamics (obviously).
    - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
      By that logic, Discord would be a network. There's no default feed for Discord, you need to actively seek out friends and community. Meanwhile, HN would be closer to media. It technically has a few personalities, and one default feed to doom scroll.
    - runako 8mo ago
      > "specialized ~creators~" I can understand what this means in the context of visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok. (Slight quibble on TT in that a number of very large creators there record from their cars, kitchens, or otherwise do not employ specialized production.) In any case, what does "specialized creators" mean in the context of (primarily) text-based platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? Does that mean they are not social media? > On a network, people interact with each other. On any platform that would be considered social media by any definition, popular posts serve as a place for people to interact with each other. They are more ephemeral than a subreddit, but they serve the same function. I am honestly not trying to troll, I just don't understand the distinction.
      - direwolf20 8mo ago
        Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have the same patterns. There's no requirement for them to be in video form. Most successful Twitter and Facebook posts are visual anyway.
    - heavyset_go 8mo ago
      This is a distinction that no existing or proposed law has made and is based solely on your feels. A social network exists between people, it does not require a platform or technology. Social media is a medium where people correspond.
      - Gud 8mo ago
        https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/answer/Whats-the-difference-between-social-media-and-social-networking#:~:text=While%20the%20terms%20social%20media,read%2C%20watch%20and%20interact%20with. https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/answe...
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        All the explainers in the world don't matter if people don't actually use the terminology that way.
        direwolf20 8mo ago
        And yet here we are, using the terminology that way.
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        Not uniformly, no. The local comment subtree is plenty evidence of that.
- AuthAuth 8mo ago
  Blueskys only difference is that it hasnt been enshitified yet.
  - Zambyte 8mo ago
    And when (if) that happens, everyone will just continue to use the same network through a better app. Blacksky is a notable example of this already happening.
- pibaker 8mo ago
  Sorry but you sound exactly like that comic. "Our blessed homeland, their barbarous waters" https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-ba... More seriously, I have seen similar exchanges many times on this social media where one party tries to exempt what is clearly a social media from his anti-social media agenda because he finds it personally more palatable. Usually he tries to exempt Reddit or HN but in this case it is Bluesky, which has the same features as Twitter ten years ago and is notorious for being always politically charged. It makes me think whatever criticisms he may have against social media are actually less about social media but about people he does not like being on social media. Like a driver complaining about all the other cars causing a congestion while he sits in his own car. But fear not, because our blessed regulators (totally different from their tyrannical censors) will save us from the Big Bad. Never mind when Nepal blocked WhatsApp in its social media ban or when UK came after Wikipedia!
  - npunt 8mo ago
    Disagree, that's reductive and beside the point. It's useful to have words that distinguish major classes of activity online, even if several types are combined on a given platform. "Messaging", "Chat Rooms", "Streaming", "Forums", "Social Networking", and "Social Media" are all different things. You can quibble about what constitutes the edges of the definitions but they all have different key activities they enable. If you lump everything together, you fail to understand the necessary nuances to identify the problems let alone solve them. The key to understanding any given social platform is to understand the proportion of which activity that platform enables. This tells you things like the incentives, constraints, externalities, etc of the platform. Different designs have different effects.
    - pibaker 8mo ago
      I don't disagree in general. I wouldn't call 4chan a social media, for example. What I find hilariously objectionable is pretending that bluesky is somehow better than all the social medias out there. It's not. It was founded by jack dorsey and copied the UI and features of old Twitter. Its main selling point is "twitter but no Elon musk" and is, from my perspective, almost exclusively inhabited by politically antagonized people seeking a refuge which then resulted in US politics sucking the air out of everything else on that platform. Can people forge constructive relationships on bluesky? I am sure they do, but they can also do it on X, Reddit, Facebook or whatever "bad" social media out there.
everdrive 8mo ago
This right here is why we keep having this problem. The benefits (or in more cases) the addictions are too enticing. So we take the good with the bad, except the problem is that the bad far, far outweighs the good.
- Zambyte 8mo ago
  The thing is that I literally just don't have the bad, that's why I listed those things. Bluesky is chronological by default, and that is what I use exclusively. There is a "Discover" feed, but I straight up removed it from my account. I have a few other user made feeds that I use very sparingly (basically just chronological keyword search feeds). There are powerful tools for blocking brigading (blocks detach quotes, or quotes can be detached without blocking). I am a mentally mature adult capable of dealing with public interactions. It's wise to limit use under different conditions from these, but these conditions are seriously positive. I've never had such a positive experience with social media before. The fedi came the closest, but my experience was limited to interacting with technically inclined people who weren't the most socially skilled. Bluesky is approachable enough that anyone who can figure out mainstream social media can figure it out, so there is a much more diverse set of people.
- LexiMax 8mo ago
  Hacker News is also social media - at least by most reasonable definitions of social media. Should it also be banned?
  - Gigachad 8mo ago
    Having an account should probably be restricted to adults only. But it's such a low priority target compared to the other platforms.
  - skeptic_ai 8mo ago
    I think we should ban all users until they provide 10 photos of their face from different angles and lighting. Passport and birth certificates and a lawyer letter confirming it’s really you trying to sign up under the username: LexiMax Then all this will be synced with govs so can read all your messages. And sell to ad companies to spam you later. (They can link your phone number, email etc to you as you provided real id on all those). And if you travel to some country that doesn’t approve what you ever said, maybe you broke their law, so you deserve a few years in prison.
deleted 8mo ago
[deleted]
direwolf20 8mo ago
Social media doesn't mean communicating with people you know. Social media means optimized algorithmic feeds. You could have met the same friends over email.

by Zambyte 8mo ago

Gud 8mo ago

Blue sky is a social network, not social media. A subtle but important distinction

runako 8mo ago
I am super curious about this distinction! Could you say more?
- Gud 8mo ago
  On a network, people interact with each other. In ~media~, you have a few specialized ~creators~, and doom scrollers. Compare Lunarstorm anno 2000 and instagram 2026.
  - Izkata 8mo ago
    The "media" in "social media" doesn't refer to image/video/audio, it refers to "the medium being used". Twitter/Blue Sky/etc are all social media. Read it like "a medium being used for social interaction".
    - Gud 8mo ago
      It was renamed from social network to social media by business executives, who hijacked the social networks built by us
    - npunt 8mo ago
      OPs is closer to the truth; the shift from network -> media shows a useful distinction between what the focal point of activity is. Note that "social" (as in social interaction with people you know) in "social networking" is a requirement, while it is not in "social media". You may as well call it "parasocial media" since that is the way most people use it most of the time. Thus 'social media' is primarily based on content, while 'social networking' is primarily based on social connection and interaction.
      - Izkata 8mo ago
        If anything the terminology shift was the other way, we called forums and MySpace social media back then even though MySpace is called social networking now. "Networking" back then was pretty restricted to business / self-promotion oriented stuff like LinkedIn.
        Gud 8mo ago
        We didn’t call forums back then “social media”, we called them discussion forums… I was there, just go to the official phpBB forums and search my name..
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        I was also there. We (ie the people I interacted with) called myspace social media and considered discussion forums to be a specialized subset of social media. We also considered myspace to be a social network (due to the friend graph) while forums were not. The chans were a weird almost edge case. I think they qualify as social media but the lack of persistent identities significantly changes the dynamics (obviously).
  - johnnyanmac 8mo ago
    By that logic, Discord would be a network. There's no default feed for Discord, you need to actively seek out friends and community. Meanwhile, HN would be closer to media. It technically has a few personalities, and one default feed to doom scroll.
  - runako 8mo ago
    > "specialized ~creators~" I can understand what this means in the context of visual platforms like Instagram and TikTok. (Slight quibble on TT in that a number of very large creators there record from their cars, kitchens, or otherwise do not employ specialized production.) In any case, what does "specialized creators" mean in the context of (primarily) text-based platforms like Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook? Does that mean they are not social media? > On a network, people interact with each other. On any platform that would be considered social media by any definition, popular posts serve as a place for people to interact with each other. They are more ephemeral than a subreddit, but they serve the same function. I am honestly not trying to troll, I just don't understand the distinction.
    - direwolf20 8mo ago
      Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook have the same patterns. There's no requirement for them to be in video form. Most successful Twitter and Facebook posts are visual anyway.
  - heavyset_go 8mo ago
    This is a distinction that no existing or proposed law has made and is based solely on your feels. A social network exists between people, it does not require a platform or technology. Social media is a medium where people correspond.
    - Gud 8mo ago
      https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/answer/Whats-the-difference-between-social-media-and-social-networking#:~:text=While%20the%20terms%20social%20media,read%2C%20watch%20and%20interact%20with. https://www.techtarget.com/searchunifiedcommunications/answe...
      - fc417fc802 8mo ago
        All the explainers in the world don't matter if people don't actually use the terminology that way.
        direwolf20 8mo ago
        And yet here we are, using the terminology that way.
        fc417fc802 8mo ago
        Not uniformly, no. The local comment subtree is plenty evidence of that.
AuthAuth 8mo ago
Blueskys only difference is that it hasnt been enshitified yet.
- Zambyte 8mo ago
  And when (if) that happens, everyone will just continue to use the same network through a better app. Blacksky is a notable example of this already happening.
pibaker 8mo ago
Sorry but you sound exactly like that comic. "Our blessed homeland, their barbarous waters" https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-barbarous-wastes https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/our-blessed-homeland-their-ba... More seriously, I have seen similar exchanges many times on this social media where one party tries to exempt what is clearly a social media from his anti-social media agenda because he finds it personally more palatable. Usually he tries to exempt Reddit or HN but in this case it is Bluesky, which has the same features as Twitter ten years ago and is notorious for being always politically charged. It makes me think whatever criticisms he may have against social media are actually less about social media but about people he does not like being on social media. Like a driver complaining about all the other cars causing a congestion while he sits in his own car. But fear not, because our blessed regulators (totally different from their tyrannical censors) will save us from the Big Bad. Never mind when Nepal blocked WhatsApp in its social media ban or when UK came after Wikipedia!
- npunt 8mo ago
  Disagree, that's reductive and beside the point. It's useful to have words that distinguish major classes of activity online, even if several types are combined on a given platform. "Messaging", "Chat Rooms", "Streaming", "Forums", "Social Networking", and "Social Media" are all different things. You can quibble about what constitutes the edges of the definitions but they all have different key activities they enable. If you lump everything together, you fail to understand the necessary nuances to identify the problems let alone solve them. The key to understanding any given social platform is to understand the proportion of which activity that platform enables. This tells you things like the incentives, constraints, externalities, etc of the platform. Different designs have different effects.
  - pibaker 8mo ago
    I don't disagree in general. I wouldn't call 4chan a social media, for example. What I find hilariously objectionable is pretending that bluesky is somehow better than all the social medias out there. It's not. It was founded by jack dorsey and copied the UI and features of old Twitter. Its main selling point is "twitter but no Elon musk" and is, from my perspective, almost exclusively inhabited by politically antagonized people seeking a refuge which then resulted in US politics sucking the air out of everything else on that platform. Can people forge constructive relationships on bluesky? I am sure they do, but they can also do it on X, Reddit, Facebook or whatever "bad" social media out there.

everdrive 8mo ago

This right here is why we keep having this problem. The benefits (or in more cases) the addictions are too enticing. So we take the good with the bad, except the problem is that the bad far, far outweighs the good.

Zambyte 8mo ago
The thing is that I literally just don't have the bad, that's why I listed those things. Bluesky is chronological by default, and that is what I use exclusively. There is a "Discover" feed, but I straight up removed it from my account. I have a few other user made feeds that I use very sparingly (basically just chronological keyword search feeds). There are powerful tools for blocking brigading (blocks detach quotes, or quotes can be detached without blocking). I am a mentally mature adult capable of dealing with public interactions. It's wise to limit use under different conditions from these, but these conditions are seriously positive. I've never had such a positive experience with social media before. The fedi came the closest, but my experience was limited to interacting with technically inclined people who weren't the most socially skilled. Bluesky is approachable enough that anyone who can figure out mainstream social media can figure it out, so there is a much more diverse set of people.
LexiMax 8mo ago
Hacker News is also social media - at least by most reasonable definitions of social media. Should it also be banned?
- Gigachad 8mo ago
  Having an account should probably be restricted to adults only. But it's such a low priority target compared to the other platforms.
- skeptic_ai 8mo ago
  I think we should ban all users until they provide 10 photos of their face from different angles and lighting. Passport and birth certificates and a lawyer letter confirming it’s really you trying to sign up under the username: LexiMax Then all this will be synced with govs so can read all your messages. And sell to ad companies to spam you later. (They can link your phone number, email etc to you as you provided real id on all those). And if you travel to some country that doesn’t approve what you ever said, maybe you broke their law, so you deserve a few years in prison.

deleted 8mo ago

[deleted]

direwolf20 8mo ago

Social media doesn't mean communicating with people you know. Social media means optimized algorithmic feeds. You could have met the same friends over email.