17 ms·

Anti-social: It's fads, not friends, which now dominate social media feeds

• eqiq 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• Insanity 5mo ago
  Social media was never really “social” in my opinion. Reading updates from hundreds of people you have shallow interactions with offers the illusion of having a social life. So I’m not sure if this change to “fads” makes it meaningfully less social than it already was.
  • blitzar 5mo ago
    I 'member when facebook was campus only. For about 5 minutes my friends were friends. 10 minutes later it was just a frenzy of (trying to) poke people that I thought I might have seen at some point that year, and conversations about how many "friends" people had.
  • LtWorf 5mo ago
    It was quite social if you only added your actual friends instead of everyone. Now the feeds are just pure algorithm and very seldom I see someone I know.
    • skydhash 5mo ago
      As someone that was raised in a small town, the feed was very shallow compared to my actual interactions with friends. It was great for status updates (especially for friends in foreign countries), but messenger was way more popular than the feed.
      • bluGill 5mo ago
        Close friends are better. However I want to know how my now very distant old friends (ie from high school) and relatives are doing. I want to know when they have babies, see a couple pictures of their kids dance reticle - it gives me something to talk about when our next reunion comes around. My life is worse because instead of see the above I see only fads. Now that I only check my feed once a month I see less fads are more real life - but I also have reason to believe there is more going on from those distant friends that facebook chooses to hide from me because I don't interact with them enough.
        • skydhash 5mo ago
          > I want to know how my now very distant old friends (ie from high school) and relatives are doing YMMV, but I got all of these through words of mouth (and WhatsApp status updates). I think it’s ok to be estranged from a friend or a relative. The next time, we meet, I can ask them how everything is going and what has happened. And if they want they can show me pictures then.
          • emodendroket 5mo ago
            All right, but "I personally don't care for that" wasn't actually the proposition anyone was arguing with.
      • dbspin 5mo ago
        For some context, messenger (originally FB chat) didn't launch until 2008. A year later in 2009 FB started sorting posts by popularity, by 2011 they'd switched the newsfeed to a blogspam / advertising feed, burying your friends posts. Depending on your age, you may never have used 'golden age' Facebook. As someone who was in college 2003 - 2008, there was a period in which Facebook was an insanely useful tool for organising your social life. You could literally make a facebook post about an event or even stating where you were on a given night, and know that people were likely to see it. Facebooks business model after around 2011 explicitly became disconnecting people. This isn't stated loudly enough or often enough, but algorithmic feeds and mixing 'news' 'entertainment' with real status updates meant that social networks in general became forces for disconnection and polarisation around this time. Early FB and Twitter were useful and operated in precisely the opposite way - because they didn't use any algorithmic filtering whatsoever.
  • piva00 5mo ago
    For a brief period it was social. Even if you had hundreds of people you had barely interacted with there were still people you continued to interact in real life from that lot. Getting updates helped me even to form friendships long after the first interaction where we had added each other, I'd see someone I had connected with visiting a place nearby, and could go grab a beer with them while they are around. Or the other way around, I'd be visiting their city and would try to catch up, more often than not it helped to keep in touch, develop a deeper friendship, etc. That is absolutely dead nowadays, it's drowned in noise on any "social" feature (feeds, Instagram stories [and similar features in other "social" apps], etc.), just a barrage of ads, influencer bullshit, and the odd friend update that isn't just a meme... The worst part for me is that it was a deliberate choice from these companies to disappear with most social aspects of these apps in favour of the money printing scheme that created the whole influencer culture. I still have hopes for the rebound, when people get extremely fed up with how these apps work, and something different appears to retake what "social" means, not this doublespeak-esque meaning it came to be.
    • popupeyecare 5mo ago
      [flagged]
  • pryelluw 5mo ago
    I wrote a humor post about it https://open.substack.com/pub/yelluwcomedy/p/old-school?r=7c090l&utm_medium=HN https://open.substack.com/pub/yelluwcomedy/p/old-school?r=7c...
  • estearum 5mo ago
    Curious how old you are? There was definitely a sweet spot if you were in highschool or college in like 2004 - 2010 (so born something like 1986 - 1994?) where online social media was almost painstakingly manicured to mirror real-life social dynamics. Many people remember the drama of deciding who your "top friends" were on MySpace.
    • Insanity 5mo ago
      I was in high school when Facebook took off in my country (2008). And fair enough, first few years were maybe more “social-ish”. I left the platform by 2012 though. Might also say more about me and my social behaviour than the social media platforms themselves, I never cared about it too much.
      • hinata08 5mo ago
        personal blogs, tumblr, forums, BBS, some kind of irc and platforms like Discords remained active throughout the 2010s to actually be social a bunch of ppl turned to Facebook as it was just what the mob did, but it still required to be active in groups indeed
    • austin-cheney 5mo ago
      I was in college at that time and I did not get this feeling in any possible way. Instead I can remember online topic focused forum boards, of which some I had numerous daily interactions with the same people over years. These online forums made no pretense about replacing real life social dynamics and yet they were still so much better for real social experiences than the social media that replaced them at that time. To me social media has always felt artificial for people who shout into a vortex hoping for attention.
    • cjrp 5mo ago
      It's been downhill since FB removed pokes.
      • jezzamon 5mo ago
        I think they're still there, but deeply hidden in their menus
  • tantalor 5mo ago
    You're confusing social networks and social media. Social media was never meant to be a virtual extension of social life. It's what it says on the tin: media created by users, and shared from user to user. Old-school BBS were social media. Of course you can have actual social experiences, make friends, etc. on social media. But that almost never happens. Online social networks on the other hand basically do not exist any more.
  • mbesto 5mo ago
    I am very critical of social media but this is far too of a myopic take. There is a ton of real life social benefit to these platforms. Simplest example - someone posts a picture/video of them in a city that I also am in and now I know they live there / traveling there and I can meet up with them.
    • PaulHoule 5mo ago
      I fell out of touch with my relatives in New England and got back in touch because I got back on Facebook so something social does come out of it once in a while.
      • Ajedi32 5mo ago
        Yes the social aspect does definitely still exist, it's just half buried by all the other nonsense.
      • switchbak 5mo ago
        What annoys me is this is how a lot of people expect social interactions to happen - so if you want to stay off the corporate platforms to maintain your attention/mental health, etc - you get treated like you're snubbing them.
    • pwndByDeath 5mo ago
      Sounds like adict talk to me ;) Seriously though, the legit claims of benefits are from people who need outreach and don't want to pay for advertising. But your favorite taco truck gets attention while you get to slip into depressive oblivion.
      • mbesto 5mo ago
        There are legitimate benefits. I just think its very easy to argue (which I agree) that the benefits don't necessarily outweigh the harm for most people.
    • everforward 5mo ago
      This is bizarre to me, because anyone I know well enough to link up with on a trip also knows where I live and vice versa. That’s just a really odd relationship to me. Maybe it’s a social media thing. FWIW, I hear things like this but have never heard of any of my friends that use social media actually doing it. In the same way that you could use an Emmy as hammer, but nobody does.
  • IshKebab 5mo ago
    Facebook definitely was social before about 2010. Especially if you were at uni in the golden era before they left everyone in. You pretty much only had people you actually knew as friends. People posted photos and messages about real life. No sharing of posts, memes, few stupid people. It was great. We'll probably never get that back.
  • microtonal 5mo ago
    For a window, it was really social, early to late 2000s (anyone in NL remember Hyves?). It was a great way for keeping up with friends as you went to different schools, when they were traveling, etc. There were a bunch of things that destroyed it: Ajax [1], async tech made it possible to continuously push new dopamine shots when viewing a page; the rise of smartphones, since before smartphones you could only check social media when you were behind a computer, which was not true for most people most of the day; and the realization that dopamine shots + ads can bring in a lot of money. Even though we had cell phones in the early 2000s, in most countries it was just for calling and some SMS (which was expensive outside the US). You would only go to Hyves, Myspace, or whatever when you had some time in the evening. I am sure some people got addicted, but it was much harder than having a device that tries to entice you all day to look. That said, I still find social networks like Mastodon very useful. Not so much as a replacement for keeping up with friends/family, but it makes it very easy to discover what people who are in niches I'm interested in are up to. And since it does not have an algorithmic feed or ads, the addiction factor is much lower. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajax_(programming)
    • nehal3m 5mo ago
      I’d krabbel your HN profile if it let me. Respect!
  • emodendroket 5mo ago
    When I was in college it served as a useful directory of everyone I met (like, "oh, who was that guy again?" type of questions) and also essentially every offline event was organized through Facebook. It served a clear social function that posting in meme groups does not.
  • overgard 5mo ago
    Facebook, when it was only-for-college-students was a much nicer/more social experience. Once it became a general social network it really fell off the cliff in quality, in my opinion. Like, when I had 30 friends and I actually knew them and cared it was a lot different than having like 1000 friends and regularly being like "who is this person?"
• everdrive 5mo ago
  Social media is now exactly what cable television used to be, but worse; it exists solely to coerce you. You make you feel insecure, you leverage your emotions for someone else's aims. Due to the changes in technology, social media is far more effective at this than cable TV ever could be, but the concept is the same. It's some remote person attempting to manipulate you by also packaging something enticing along with that manipulation. It's long past time to leave it permanently. And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.
  • xnx 5mo ago
    Additionally, "social media" is as inaccurate a name "ride sharing". A better name would be "targeted ad scroll media".
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • austin-cheney 5mo ago
    > And no, HN is not social media in any normal sense of the word. The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome. I am thrilled you pointed this out. I also get tired of seeing that.
    • ctdinjeu4 5mo ago
      [dead]
    • yifanl 5mo ago
      We keep saying it, because it's what it is. There's some black box (that can _sometimes_ be reached via dang) that determines what you see on HN's front page, and this place is just as susceptible to trends and rabbit holes as any short form video app, it just doesn't have the funny sound effects.
      • appplication 5mo ago
        > just as susceptible It’s really not though. There is no personalized algorithm, which is 98% of the issue with social media. It may seem pedantic, but it’s like saying a horse and a car are essentially the same thing, the car just has an engine.
• 45612987 5mo ago
  Given that even reaction videos from modern Jerry Springer figures with 20 million subscribers can attract 20,000 comments that all parrot their guru and demand doxxing of the target or worse, it is no longer a mystery how totalitarian states form. Maybe that is unfair to Jerry Springer. He at least heard both sides of a story.
• gwbas1c 5mo ago
  I (mostly) stopped looking at Facebook around 2016. It just wasn't fun anymore; and at least for me, my feed was all political nonsense trying to manipulate me.
• SirFatty 5mo ago
  And this is a revelation to the BBC? Who doesn't know this?
  • smakt 5mo ago
    [dead]
• sublinear 5mo ago
  > What we're seeing is social media splitting in two [...] young people publish a lot of content but it's more funny parodies and remixes of existing material. The goal is to make people laugh, not to tell people about their lives. [...] Whether it's TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, we are a long way from the "digital town square" of personal interaction that social media was even just a few years ago. I don't understand why this article has to play dumb. This is how most of the internet always was until commercial interest invaded social media. They yelled their billions of dollars worth of messaging so loudly for over a decade that it drowned out anything authentic. Now that there's a political break away from all the tone deaf pseudoprogressive messaging and the money for it has dried up, what did they expect to see there? Most people never posted sincere "life updates" unless they had something to sell or were a naive part of the bandwagon.
• avaer 5mo ago
  Imagine if everyone called it "fad media" or something more accurate. It would be dead overnight. The only thing keeping it afloat is the lie that it's social.
  • Towaway69 5mo ago
    "Fantasy Media" or "Social Fantasy"? After all, the advertising powering the media is all about creating a fantasy around a future you will be living once you have bought the product.
  • holistio 5mo ago
    Or just f ad media.
• lo_zamoyski 5mo ago
  In other news, water is wet. This has virtually always been the case and it is only "social media" is an Orwellian sense. It is an antisocial consumerist machine. In consumerism, everything is for sale.
• IshKebab 5mo ago
  Now? It's been like that for a decade.
• lenerdenator 5mo ago
  Friends haven't been a focus of social media feeds for almost 20 years now. There's not a lot of money in hosting a website where people share in-jokes and comment on each others' graduations, engagements, and baby announcements. Well, maybe there is, but there's a lot more money in farming engagement through ragebait and division. Meta in particular is a great example of why you cannot judge companies purely by profitability and why you shouldn't ever let the CEO also be the primary shareholder and chairman of the board that's meant to govern the company's behavior.
  • hedora 5mo ago
    Twitter was similarly bad. A better heuristic is market share. We should reintroduce media ownership rules that cap audience share to something < 10% per distribution channel. Meta, Disney, Paramount, etc should not exist.
    • lenerdenator 5mo ago
      In a way, I'd argue Twitter was the thing that motivated social media to take the path it's currently on. Facebook was originally about people you were acquainted with in real life. You had a pre-existing reason to engage with them. That engagement wasn't as lucrative as SV investors wanted, but it was there. Twitter never had that premise, or lost it very early on. You screamed into the ether, and people either responded or they didn't. One way to increase the chance of receiving a response is to say outrageous things. Once people figured that out and how to put ads adjacent to the outrageous thing, there was at least some pressure on Facebook (later Meta) to do the same thing, because we're here to make money, not friends. And really, there are elements of that in old media, too. Their business model was to have captivating programming on TV and radio that would keep you tuned in to see what was happening in the next part of the show after the ad break. Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Springer, every 24-hour news channel, etc. were all very good at this, coarsening of the discourse be damned. Regardless of who owns it, if you introduce a motive to constantly and eternally increase the value of a media company, you will see a move towards slop content at some point if you have a long enough timeline. It's inevitable.
• armchairhacker 5mo ago
  HN is social media. Social media is a spectrum. You can imagine HN like a documentary channel compared to Facebook’s reality TV, but even “documentaries” can be dopamine sinks that aren’t actually informative (or accurate). (But personally, I see lots of short and pure opinion posts here, documentaries are long and at least pretend to contain facts; so I’d hesitate to compare it to a documentary channel even with the caveat.)
  • titzer 5mo ago
    You don't see pictures and videos directly on the site. It's text links and text comments and discussions. In the minimal sense of the word, even printed text is media, so it's technically true that HN is social media, but I think it's more like a news aggregator and discussion forum.
    • armchairhacker 5mo ago
      How does being text only make it not social media? Good explanation at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48445343 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48445343
      • kelseyfrog 5mo ago
        Because the people who think HN is social media and avoid social media aren't going to see this and respond. It's a selection bias.
        • titzer 5mo ago
          > OP: The pedantry involved in that comparison is extremely tiresome.
          • kelseyfrog 5mo ago
            Maybe take a rest from HN if pedantry is fatiguing?
  • 5mo ago
• andix 5mo ago
  I used to browse through my instagram feed a few times per month. Just to keep updated about those friends who often posted there. Now it's mostly crappy shorts and I can't even find the "friend feed" anymore. No idea if it's just well hidden or completely gone. Now I don't use it anymore at all.
  • zbikowski 5mo ago
    It is so well-hidden, in fact, that there is no visual indicator that it exists at all, so you cannot be blamed for thinking it is gone. On the homepage (house icon) tap the Instagram logo and select "Following." It will present you with a chronological feed of posts from only those you follow. Again, there is NO ARROW or any UI to indicate this is possible. You used to be able to set it as the default view, but that has been eradicated it seems.
    • mattbruv 5mo ago
      Wow, I've been using instagram for 5 years and I just learned that there's a following-only feed. I had always just assumed that Instagram was designed in bad faith to always interleave posts from people you didn't follow to try to capture your attention. It's incredibly annoying that I can't set this as my default.
      • andix 5mo ago
        You just discovered OG Instagram. The feed used to be just your friend's posts and nothing else. Maybe an occasional ad, but the first few years it was mostly ad free if I remember correctly.
    • andix 5mo ago
      I've found it. I'm quite sure the drop down wasn't there a few months ago. But the sad reality: nobody is posting anything anymore. I follow around 500 real people I know in person, and in the last 30 days they published only a few posts. Very short feed. So instagram became something completely different over time, and I still opened it occasionally, because I associate it with old memories. To feel closer to people I lost touch with, or didn't see for a while. But instead I get bombarded with BS and ads (and the occasional "real" social media post), without me consciously noticing the change for years.
• keybored 5mo ago
  I deleted my FB when they gave us the Your Data Or Your Subscription ultimatum. I don’t scroll TikTok, Instagram, or any other video “content”. I do watch some YouTube shorts but only while sitting at a personal computer type laptop or the ones which are connected to external monitors. I read this site. But lately it’s been more difficult since the AI “content” stresses me out. Maybe social media always did that. But it’s come to the point where I cannot kid myself. Many times it just makes me more wound-up than it winds me down. So then what’s the point? Then I intentionally search for specific topics. When I’m out of those I can stare out the window. Which is a nice change.
  • Towaway69 5mo ago
    I've started visiting quiet rooms[1], just to hear myself think again. The world and the internet has become so loud that some quietness is refreshing. Luckily for me there are several where I live so I've even got a choice. Strangely these rooms are quite different to being silent at home or somewhere else private. For me it seems to be that these spaces are public, you are being silent in public spaces - a different setting and experience than in places that are private. Being silent together can be disconcerting! It's also different to using noise cancellation or listening to music or other forms of "silence", truly unique in many aspects. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_room https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quiet_room
• PcChip 5mo ago
  I think I'm on an A/B test on the Facebook app, now whenever I open the app it goes straight to reels and starts playing videos with sound enabled. I looked through all settings to try to disable this but couldn't, so I finally just gave up and uninstalled it I open the app to keep up with what my friends are doing, and also check the dating portion of the app for new matches. I purposely always avoid reels on any app, because I hate them and what they do to people. So when I open the app and it immediately starts playing reels with sound on and no way to disable it, it feels like a slap in the face
• exabrial 5mo ago
  A new game: determine when you meet someone if they use tik-tok or not without asking them. People's opinions are groomed and programmed. It's pretty hilarious how small minded people are.
  • hdhdhsjsbdh 5mo ago
    What are the tells? Since COVID I’ve noticed that every new person I meet seems to harbor at least 1 or 2 oddball opinions. Conversation tends to veer into weirder places than it used to, creating a surreal sort of feeling of being in the world. I’ve felt that this is just a result of everyone being tuned by whatever personalized feed is amplifying or directing their base instincts.
    • boelboel 5mo ago
      I think what's more interesting is that the odd opinions don't mean anything anymore. Before someone with odd opinions tended to be either really crazy or they were intelligent and thought a long time about something. Nowadays they seem shallow, they saw something on tiktok but don't really know what they're talking about, just totally rehashing whatever they heard. It might partially come from the fact that writing essays isn't deemed important anymore, when you hear people talk about how X or Y is good/bad they can hardly write down why. I've seen articles how we're going from a written culture to an oral culture and the sort of cranks you get with social media certainly fit with the latter.
    • coffeefirst 5mo ago
      The tell is they don't know it. People who read a lot or get deep into history podcasts and have a hot take on the French Revolution know that this is some whacky shit and if they bring it up explain it first. TikTok people say the crazy thing and they're surprised when everyone gives them the look. Also the thing they bring up is usually provocative, factually ridiculous, and a little unhinged.
  • AlfredBarnes 5mo ago
    I could very quickly sus out what was on FOX news last night by the conversations my coworkers have.
• p1dda 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • masfuerte 5mo ago
    What do you think it means? One meaning of anti-social is "hostile toward society". Do you think this doesn't describe social media?
    • janmarsal 5mo ago
      traditionally anti-social behavior meant fighting, keying cars, spraying graffitis etc. A kid with antisocial personality disorder can be a danger to other kids due to their reckless behavior. social alienation caused by the internet and the social media usually manifests in asocial behavior like withdrawing from the society. in the recent years people have started calling this anti-social behavior, and they often get corrected by pedantic people such as myself. what BBC meant by "anti-social" in this article is unclear.
      • hedora 5mo ago
        They clearly mean the first definition. Ever since the Trump admin got editorial influence at the BBC, the remaining reporters have to be very careful to fly under the radar, or they will lose their jobs like their former colleagues did. Re-read the reasons it enumerates for moving genuine social interactions to E2EE platforms, or at least 24 hour self-deleting posts.
    • p1dda 5mo ago
      Read the article before you comment
• popupeyecare 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• abhaynayar 5mo ago
  I've been able to quit short-form content, but does anyone have any tips on how to quit long-form content like YouTube or Netflix?
  • baggachipz 5mo ago
    Books are a thing.
    • hedora 5mo ago
      Or, buy a bluray player, then find a library.
  • captainclam 5mo ago
    I use the firefox extension "Unhook" to completely hide suggested content on Youtube. Really effective, I kindof can't believe how much time I spent getting suckered into watching video essays that absolutely did not deliver.
  • jbd0 5mo ago
    Time box it. I play video games for 1 hour on Fridays. More than that and it makes me depressed.
• spking 5mo ago
  If this subject interests you, and you haven’t read it yet, I highly recommend the book Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amusing_Ourselves_to_Death
  • randusername 5mo ago
    40 years old now and as relevant as ever. IMO even better than Chomsky's Necessary Illusions (1989) or Bernay's Propaganda (1928) at giving you that backstage at Disney world feeling.
  • ex-aws-dude 5mo ago
    There is also a book called Infinite Jest that touches on this subject Its a breezy novella you can finish over a lunch break
    • BLKNSLVR 5mo ago
      I use it to weigh down my transportable home in tornado alley. Hasn't failed yet. Density, more-so than size, is important in such an application.
    • lou1306 5mo ago
      Well the size of IJ is itself a statement: 1. there's an awful lot to unpack once you start exploring the intersection of capitalism, addiction, and entertainment; 2. can you even _manage_ to go through it all without switching to mindless consumption every 5 minutes?
    • red-iron-pine 5mo ago
      parent poster must be referring to one of the footnotes in IJ, as those are only a few hours to get through.
• defmetrix 5mo ago
  The only social media I really use is linkedin and X. I find linkedin useful for following companies and colleagues, and im pretty picky about who I accept or request as a friend. I also find X to be insightful, but I only use it to follow people for stock research.
  • ThunderBee 5mo ago
    X is excellent for following niche research interests but they’ve been pushing quite hard to force political news/opinions into the feeds which is really annoying.
    • baggachipz 5mo ago
      It's run by a guy who literally did a nazi salute. One of their most prolific users is named "catturd". I'm astonished that anybody in research or science still remains there. Edit to add: The owner of the platform contributed millions of dollars, endorsements, and manipulation of the platform to elect a regime which actively works to dismantle scientific and research funding and institutions. By continuing to use the platform, these people are contributing to the destruction of their work and careers.
      • BLKNSLVR 5mo ago
        I feel like I'm 'old' to say this, but I'm consistently surprised (which means it's at least some kind of a personal flaw) that companies put press releases out on a third party platform. They have their own website, and yet they update on other platforms more quickly and more frequently than their own. It's unnecessary outsourcing. Even more-so now that it's impossible to see a feed in chronological order without signing up. It's a site that's supposedly for keeping up with the state of the world, and yet it's got a big wall around it. Talk about mixed messages.
        • baggachipz 5mo ago
          Couldn't agree more. It's one thing to have an account and link to blog posts, it's another entirely to depend on a service to provide your latest information. Especially that one. Even more mind-blowing is governments doing the same thing.
• close04 5mo ago
  Why is nobody here defining social media, put down the clear criteria? "I say this, I am tired of people saying that" isn't productive if everyone has their own interpretation of what's being discussed.
  • everdrive 5mo ago
    In my case, I don't think most people who claim HN is social media are making a serious argument. They are taking two different things which have a few points of inter-comparison and using that as a basis to claim those two things are actually equivalent. This is done as a retort (eg, "you say you hate social media, but you're on social media _right now_") rather than in service of a larger argument.
    • close04 5mo ago
      You wrote a paragraph to say you don't "think" the others are right. What is the definition that made you think this?
    • stickfigure 5mo ago
      I'm making it as a very serious argument. HN is social, it has an algorithmic feed, people upvote and downvote your content, hell it has a social credit score. The idea that HN somehow isn't "social media" is hard to take serious. This is Reddit for a niche audience. The main difference is that HN has a small and relatively high quality community, plus the traffic is low enough that it gets a fair amount of manual moderation. It's still social media and if there were enough people here, we'd eventually read stories of kids who offed themselves over downvotes. But we're thousands, not billions, so the law of large numbers doesn't apply. If your FB feed or Youtube feed is garbage, spend some time curating it. HN is mostly curated for you, which appears to be creating unrealistic expectations of the broader world.
      • pennomi 5mo ago
        By strict definition it obviously is social media. “Interactive forms of media that allow users to interact with and publish to each other, generally by means of the Internet.” People don’t want to admit it’s social media because that delegitimizes their argument “all social media bad!” and instead of refining their argument they just double down. It’s a very human behavior.
• j45 5mo ago
  As soon as devices inserted themselves as a barrier between people and called it social, when it was really the media in waiting, they could hide and direct the nature of interactions, and ultimately, attention.
• torben-friis 5mo ago
  If you're on Android, you can use revanced to patch social network apps, to, among other things, remove content from non-friends (and ads). It's scary how empty the feed is once you do this. It can be full days with the same post at the top. And the worst part is that I hadn't noticed how empty it was until I did the change.
  • Ajedi32 5mo ago
    Interesting, I thought Revanced was just for YouTube, I didn't realize it worked with other social media sites too.
  • al_borland 5mo ago
    As people’s default shifts to consumption, they stop posting content themselves. They also stop living a life worth posting about… especially when they start comparing themselves with “influencers”, who have made a full time job out of pretending to live an interesting life. The problem with filtering out all the junk as a solution is that it doesn’t fix the actual problem of those sites with perverse incentives having control. It seems like the real goal should be to get people off these platforms. That’s the only way to really stop it. I wonder how long companies would keep paying for ads when a site is 100% bot traffic? They could keep the ruse up for a while, but likely not forever.
    • testudovictoria 5mo ago
      The problem with some of (all of?) these is that it's becoming increasingly moot to bother posting. I posted back in the early days of social media to share with my friends. In response, my friends and acquaintances kept me up to date with their lives. Now the apps only bother to show me friend/following posts if they deem it matches my interests. I understand that this sort of algorithmic feed likely matches the metrics to keep people scrolling. This would also track with every app moving away from "friend" verbiage to something like followers, subscribers, or members. Users are encouraged to post _to_ their audience rather than sharing _with_ their friends.
      • 5mo ago
• api 5mo ago
  Social media hasn't been "social" in more than a decade. It stopped being that when algorithmic feeds and infinite scroll were introduced.
• spike021 5mo ago
  While I partly agree, I also disagree. I still use Instagram a lot to keep in touch with friends I've made in different places. Generally as long as they are making posts then my feeds have those posts. It's only when they do not and supposedly IG "runs out" that I don't. Personally what I hate more is that there are some content creators I've been happy to support over the years and now instead of doing regular content posts they now do the "collab post" thing as an ad that looks like a regular post. Some of them may do but many do not.
• anzerarkin 5mo ago
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• jrflo 5mo ago
  I built a safari extension called Scrolless [1] to try and solve this issue (Disclaimer: it's a $4.99 one time unlock). If you use social media in the web instead of the native apps, and use Scrolless, you'll only see posts from your friends, no recommendation algorithms anywhere. It's absolutely insane how much influence we have given over to social media algorithms as a society. I know so many people who I'd consider to be intelligent just completely believe whatever they see on tiktok/reels. These recommendation algorithms can create such intense polarization, I really hope we can find a way to scale back their use and encourage people to think more for themselves. [1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrolless-feed-blocker/id6758870122 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/scrolless-feed-blocker/id67588...
• nailer 5mo ago
  Yes, Tiktok staff made this point when they emerged in 2020 - "Tiktok isn't a social media platform, they're an entertainment platform". Meta's catching up.
  • mrweasel 5mo ago
    That makes talking about the issues a lot simpler. Calling HN a social media makes much more sense if we talk about Instagram, or Facebook as entertainment or advertising platforms.
• jdw64 5mo ago
  i have cut off social media related to my actual career, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Because people laughed at me for becoming a programmer. So I created my own homepage, and for communication, I mainly read posts on large Chinese tech communities, Hacker News, or dev.to. However, when I try to communicate through GitHub or something, I wonder if I'm just using another form of social media. My main daily routine is to gradually add posts to my own homepage that no one will see, and start from there.
  • hedora 5mo ago
    My bar for "is it social media?" is "is the sole benefit network effects?" Now that GitHub's availability has hit one 9, I consider it just a social network. Any code I put there is just for marketing. Real work stays far away.
• IAmBroom 5mo ago
  This thread is doomed by a common HN* affliction: People are bandying around key terms without defining them, assuming and pretending that the definitions are universally accepted. Here, the term is "social media", which can also be pronounced "boogeye man". We all seem to agree it is bad, but very few are willing to lay down a solid definition. It isn't limited to bad terms. It happens anytime we argue over whether X displays consciousness, or X has a mind, or X can think. * And other forums, obviously.
  • captainclam 5mo ago
    I don't think the quality of discussion about social media suffers from lack of specification. Whether or not you consider HN to be social media, or wherever your decision boundary is, doesn't change that most of the conversation does apply to the general class of apps/websites that have become de-facto short form video platforms. Which lots of people use, so the effects of use are consequential and worth discussing. The conversations on consciousness though...oh man. I have to steel myself before diving into that mess.
    • IAmBroom 5mo ago
      I see commenters ITT vehemently disagreeing on the point. Maybe you collapsed those conversations?
• groan 5mo ago
  This is usually why I collapse the 2-3 top-most ranked comment threads. They’re very often gamed and calibrated for engagement. Every so often anecdotes/stories that completely ignore the subject matter (sometimes dangerous if medical). I wish there were other ways to organize comments (rip slashdot) but this usually helps to make HN less social media-y.
• twodave 5mo ago
  Yes, the game is over, the corps have won. Where the Internet used to be a forum for creativity, it's now a weapon of influence. Where we used to have an anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) playground, we are now monitored more than anywhere else. Where we used to be able to genuinely connect, everything is now artificial and manufactured. And where we once had control, we are now the product.
  • saadn92 5mo ago
    We should be able to do something around this problem. I don't know myself, but I know there's a lot of smart people on this site and if we all came together to work on something, surely there could be something we can do for this problem.
    • 2OEH8eoCRo0 5mo ago
      Not all problems have technical solutions. We need a national conversation (which we seem to be having) about the corrosive nature of these algos. I personally think they should be liable for much more than they are under section 230.
    • zerobees 5mo ago
      The people on this site are, overwhelmingly, the people who already "came together" to build businesses like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and so on. We pretend we're the victims, but none of these platforms would have been built without an army of willing, enthusiastic, highly-paid engineers who made small "ethical compromises" every day. And now that there's money made in something else, many of us would accept a seven-digit offer from OpenAI in a heartbeat, leaving the task of figuring out the downstream effects to other people.
      • not_a_bot_4sho 5mo ago
        This is uncomfortably true.
      • switchbak 5mo ago
        They're also the ones that won't let their kids anywhere near the things. That really is a strong statement of the ethics here - they're happy to let "those" kids get addicted to it, have it help ruin their mental health and generally create an unhappy generation of narcissists. All sold under the tagline of "Connecting the world". But when it comes to their kids? No way. I wonder if we'll treat the folks that worked on these things the way we treat the folks that worked at Phillip Morris?
• kin-txt 5mo ago
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• throwawaypath 5mo ago
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• Isaackoz 5mo ago
  I've deleted all my social media and haven't looked back. It's safe to assume Meta tracks every little detail about you: what kind of content you like, how long you look at each post, your political stance, etc. Every single metric you can possibly think of... they're collecting. Humans are predictable (more than we'd like to admit). Now they have AI to crunch all that data and find patterns to predict your next move and find out what content will give you the most dopamine. Escape while you can.
• treebuscartruck 5mo ago
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• treebuscartruck 5mo ago
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• ChrisArchitect 5mo ago
  hot take maybe: but alot of these shifts have come with the sheer explosion in number of people on these platforms and online in general - the arrival of many/most of the mainstream/normies as it were. Perhaps the reality is that alot of these people's lives on and offline actually are dominated by 'fads' and so this is just naturally following that. Think 'keeping up with the jones', 'the latest fahsion, food, entertainment, music, x, trends' etc. People live by what I dunno, magazines, Oprah, local morning show hosts, entertainment news shows, etc, tell them. They've brought that view of things with them online.
• hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 5mo ago
  What I find unsettling is the monoculture that is being created by platforms like Instagram. You will see a 30 year old man from Alabama engaging in the same trends as a 19 year old girl from Japan. Suddenly everyone likes matcha and is posting photos of themselves in photo booths. On dating apps, tons of women from all ethnicities suddenly love sushi or have a photo at the exact same location with the exact same pose. Same people who run these platforms will preach about diversity while destroying it.
• seydor 5mo ago
  The pendulum has finally swung the other way. There is no longer the need for people to shamelessly air their life on live feeds, and when something serious happens, people prefer to share it in a messaging group. The extreme gossipy porn of the past two decades has finally worn off. I think it has little to do with privacy concerns as they are hypothesizing.
• cbold 5mo ago
  Social media does not only spread bad ideas, but degrades the symbolic machinery people use to form ideas in the first place. It trains reflexes where thought should be. There is no symbolic lattice for things to land and it turns people into reactive zombies.
• Neil44 5mo ago
  Facebook stopped being good when they took away the order by most recent option IMO.
• yurtking 5mo ago
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• hinata08 5mo ago
  I'm bored when I see how inactive platforms like Discord and forums have become snobs used to be thought on users who liked popular culture or "jejemons", "kikoolols", "eternal september,... posters who used to be actually active, experimental and creative, but at least newcommers were still posting nowadays the creative part is gone. Forums are dead. You're encouraged to use your actual identity everywhere on social media and to sign apps. You're indeed not guided to post and be creative. The internet became just passive :/
• yannis7 5mo ago
  "we were promised social networks, what we got was social media" -- Elad Gil
• phendrenad2 5mo ago
  A publicly-traded company which must increase shareholder value each year is incompatible with Social Networks. You cannot build an infinite growth machine on photos of people's dogs. So they stopped being social networks, and became a generic entertainment channel. Neither Facebook nor Instagram nor X nor Bluesky nor <fill in the blank> are Social Networks in 2026. The only true Social Network platforms are obscure things like SpaceHey.
• bradlys 5mo ago
  It’s always been this way - people just don’t realize it. Before, people were reposting memes, articles, chain letters, etc. Most of the content you’d see wasn’t created by the person you are friends with. This isn’t really new. And as someone who makes original content and posts it regularly - people do enjoy original stuff from their friends. It’s just that it’s hard for people to do. Most people are very insecure, have little original thought, and/or the interest in sharing anything they think to a broader audience than 2-3 close friends. I buck the trend here.
• Willingham 5mo ago
  I actually used hacker news to get off of social media 2 years ago. I consider it ‘medically assisted treatment’ like suboxone for heroin addicts.
• hunglee2 5mo ago
  Does anyone remember Path? Limit circle social network, I think capped at 50 people. Beautiful app, and I remember it was a great place to spend time when you really just wanted to be with true friends. Time for someone to reboot this
  • floren 5mo ago
    I honestly liked the Google+ circles thing too, felt like a similar idea.
• Aurornis 5mo ago
  This article has struck a nerve in the comment section. It's describing how traditional social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are not used for social features anymore, but for content discovery. The descriptions of how people are using Facebook to find new content anonymously are not that different from how we use Hacker News, which has reignited the debate about whether Hacker News is social media. I had to use the Wayback Machine to dig this up: > 7 Nov: Anti-procrastination features > Like email, social news sites can be dangerously addictive. So the latest version of Hacker News has a feature to let you limit your use of the site. There are three new fields in your profile, noprocrast, maxvisit, and minaway. (You can edit your profile by clicking on your username.) Noprocrast is turned off by default. If you turn it on by setting it to "yes," you'll only be allowed to visit the site for maxvisit minutes at a time, with gaps of minaway minutes in between. The defaults are 20 and 180, which would let you view the site for 20 minutes at a time, and then not allow you back in for 3 hours. You can override noprocrast if you want, in which case your visit clock starts over at zero. https://web.archive.org/web/20100414160040/http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100414160040/http://ycombinato... Even Hacker News acknowledged 15 years ago that it was a social site and that social news sites could be "dangerously addictive". The goalposts for defining social media keep moving as people try to avoid any definition that captures their own internet usage, but I think it's important to be honest about what we're all doing here. Also the noprocrast feature is still there right in your profile, though I don't know if it's documented anywhere.
  • rvshchwl 5mo ago
    Hacker News is certainly addictive. As I've started to limit my interactions on other sites like Instagram and X by removing the apps from my phone, I've seen I spend more time on this site than I did before. The content is a lot more interesting and relevant to me, so I don't see it as a problem (Yet) but I don't think that'll always be the case. I feel that this is one of the consequences of spending so much time on Social Media sites, that my brain hast just started to look forward to "distractions" when I don't have anything else to do. If I don't have Instagram, I'll open X. If I don't have X, I'll open Reddit, or LinkedIn, or Hacker News. It's hard to get away from this constant need for distractions all the time, and I've found myself to procrastinate on simple things whereas I wouldn't have done that a few years ago. I'm glad that features like Noprocrast exist. It's unfortunate that other media sites would never implement these features because their business model is entirely driven on people spending more and more time on their sites.
• jezzamon 5mo ago
  We used to call them social networking sites, now they're social media sites. But I think the problem is that people don't contribute very much too them, so if none of your friends are sharing things that interest you then the media part has to come in as a fallback
• duxup 5mo ago
  I remember trying bluesky and realizing it isn't just the services I don't like. I don't like ... what all the social media users like. The heavy memeification / gamification for attention. Trite posts, posts that seem like the middle of a conversation ... really all negative bits about internet discourse. But most everyone there likes it that way...
  • trumpdong 5mo ago
    When I joined Bluesky (late 2024) it felt like Fox News from the opposite side. Every second post was saying how we have to hang in there through Trump, or Trump is #NotMyPresident, or a cartoon of Trump doing something stupid, or saying the Democrats should just do XYZ. I got bored quickly.
    • duxup 5mo ago
      Somehow my typical filtering avoided the politics. But it didn't really matter, the medium was just as bad.
• nkotov 5mo ago
  Maybe I'm in the minority here (early 30s, married + kids), but my social media feed is primarily my friends. Though, if we go into the Reels tab, my friends and I share videos back and forth through DMs. I have an alt account for business / lifestyle content that I like consuming. That's the only place I actually follow content creators. And even then, I check the account once or twice a day and rarely view/engage with Instagram stories. Back to my personal account - I have 2-3 people out of the 198 that I follow that are trying to hop on trends and become influencers. Rest just do photo dumps + daily stories. But the reality is only 20-30% of my friends actually share something (post or story), rest are just silent observers.
• red_admiral 5mo ago
  Yes, we've moved from town squares to private parties - whatsapp chats, discord servers, even IRC still exists. (Bluesky is a bit of an exception but they'll need to get enough stable revenue at some point.) Interestingly, in-person "nerd" events seem to be going just fine - LARP, D&D, board games, historical reenactment, trading card games and tournaments like M:tG, and a lot more.
• time0ut 5mo ago
  I have never been interested in the “normal” social media apps like Instagram, Twitter, Tiktok, and the like. The content never appealed to me as a consumer enough to get started. Occasionally something would go viral enough that a friend would eventually link it to me and that was the whole experience. Recently, I made a dumb little app for my kids and decided to try marketing it on social media just to see what it is like. It is fascinating in a sense and disheartening as well. I have been very unsuccessful, but the most signal tends to come from the dumbest content I have tried. In doing this, I have come into contact with the social media feeds I never felt the need to look at and man… they are like a drug. I find myself mesmerized by random IG reels. It is one thing to understand what they are on an intellectual level and a totally different to feel it first hand. I miss MySpace.
• TrackerFF 5mo ago
  Social media feeds have been completely broken for many years. What social media used to be, has now moved to group chats and channels. But, I guess, there's still room for those channels to be run through the enshittificator. Wouldn't surprise me if we in the not-so-distant future start to see random ads and paid content in group chats.
• make3 5mo ago
  parasocial media
• daytonix 5mo ago
  It's so frustrating when this is brought up as if this hasn't been the case for almost 10 years now.
• popupeyecare 5mo ago
  I miss when social media was mostly about my friends’ lives. It actually helped us stay in touch. So much of social media now feels built around whatever is trending that week, not the relationships you actually want to keep up with. That’s why I’m building Dearest (https://dearest.co https://dearest.co) : a private, email-based Sunday photo digest for families and friends. Everyone sends a photo and a short update by Saturday night, and contributors get the group’s digest on Sunday morning. Hopefully this keeps us social and in touch.
• WarmWash 5mo ago
  The attention economy is real, your eyes have value that is surprisingly high, and buying out that attention so you can have a pure you-centered experience would just be too expensive for most people. Instagram gets ~$27/mo/user from advertisers. Would you spend $27/mo for Instagram? Probably not. Hence the financial void is filled with ads.
• otter-in-a-suit 5mo ago
  > This all means that small businesses, that have long used social media for free promotion have to up their game. I've recently tried to promote a product on social media (well, I still try, I'm just not successful) and, especially as someone who doesn't really use it otherwise (outside of HN and reddit), I can't even manage to be part of the problem: - Anything I post on Twitter, personal or corpo account, gets <20 views. Every time I scroll through it (again, on either account), it seems most things barely get any views. I am forcing myself to use it, thinking it would help, but I also find it insufferable. - Facebook has been actually reasonably useful for local things/news and had a surprisingly personalized feed until I realized half the comments (from seemingly real accounts) were clearly written with (or by) AI. When I was forced to post myself (again, for promotion), I noticed FB actively prompts you to use AI to "improve writing" or whatever it was in its own app. Lovely, so even the few islands of real human comments I found are written by robots. - Instagram auto-bans me, despite going to their verification/selfie spiel. It is literally impossible to reach a human for support, since Meta laid them all off. Seems to be a common theme and it sounds like I'm not missing much. Also locks me out of Threads (I don't know a single person who uses that). - BlueSky seemed nicer, until I realized interactions to my posts (personal account only) have largely been OF bots. Also lovely. - Mastodon etc are all enormous tech bubbles that may be interesting, but not what I am looking for. > The social platforms continue to be monetised predominantly by ad revenue. That is still the core business model. And ad revenue continues to grow," ... > Might there be a backlash coming? Don't many people go on to social media to see how friends are reacting to their posts or comments before settling down to scroll through professionally made content? Now, I suspect I can solve all these issues by paying them money - actually, I'm fairly sure that would fix the Twitter thing at least - but I _also_ suspect that all that would do is show my traffic to other bots, since I more and more get the feeling that no sane human being is voluntarily putting up with this. But clearly, that's not the case.
• jingpostmedia 5mo ago
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• nitwit005 5mo ago
  Facebook just isn't a social media site anymore. They pivoted, and did so multiple times. Remember when they were going to be a games platform, where Farmville was their big hit? They eventually abandoned that and then wanted to be a video and streaming platform. Then Metaverse VR was going to replace everything. Now they're some sort of AI company. People long ago started migrating to Whatsapp, Discord, and similar groups for actual socializing. They did seemingly panic a bit at that trend and bought Whatsapp.
  • Gigachad 5mo ago
    The thing is socialising isn’t that profitable. People moved socialising to IM apps but hardly any of them are paying for it or consuming many ads. Short form video media is massively profitable and those same people are eating it up.
• 255kb 5mo ago
  The algorithmic feeds are to blame. This would happen less with a chronological feed. I think we will see in the future algorithmic feeds addiction rehab, algorithmic feeds self-exclusion lists (like for casinos) and even algorithmic feeds ban, which would probably be a net positive for humanity.
• sunandsurf 5mo ago
  The solution is regulations to turn of recommendation systems by default in the apps. Try turning off history in youtube and see how much your time spent on it changes when you cant just mindlessly click on the next video.
• jonesai 5mo ago
  Social media down, real connection up. Unsurprising that people are buying 'dumb phones' more and more
• zem 5mo ago
  I think nothing has contributed to the depersonalization of social media more than the (facebook led, afaik) push to aggressively show as many people as possible everything you post. after the first few jarring reminders that random friends were being served up my comments on other random friends' posts, and that their friends were likewise being served their interactions with my posts, I drew back very sharply from the social aspect.
• kayo_20211030 5mo ago
  Right. Anything that matters a blind bit to me is on WhatsApp (don't judge!), I don't consume too much from other sources, and when I do I don't expect anything more than a sensible person would expect. It is what it is. Choose your channel and you'll get what you expect. That's pretty much it.
• mannanj 5mo ago
  Early in COVID I was lucky to have lots of time and a disposable budget. I was seeking experiences and practices to make me be more present, and have more time and productivity back. I ran into this guy named Tommy who led a phone-free movement called Brick. With his insight I came up with my own system around apps and the computer that I still use today. Here's how I'd encapsulate it in a nutshell, and the blocks ontop work fantastically to combat all forms of social media addiction. Notification Zero. Notification Zero is when no apps can ever give you notifications, ever. Not the phone call, not the text, or sms, not slack, etc. Even for work. Now, with that as the default, you have to manually set and think through which apps in which cases do give you notifications, and this philosophy would built itself into a fine AI notifications management system some day. So what notifies me? When my phone is not on DND (rarely, when I'm expecting a call) only starred contacts calls. Texts never notify me. People know to call if it's serious. With this path I use my technology more intentionally, and when I open my phone there's nothing nagging me for my attention because it's a blank screen with no apps with no alarms set by other people ("notifications are like alarms other people set for you" - Naval R.) I don't miss it. and it feels great, minimalist and clean, and allows my attention to stay focused on what I opened my phone or computer int he first place. (My computer is the same: blank screen, matching black, no apps or notifications. On Mac, I set the mission bar at the bottom to only show apps if they are open, and as we speak, only 7 open windows appear at the bottom though the bar is hidden unless mouse overed). The screen becomes a canvas for what I'm actively working on, tactically laid out for my particular use & focus. Happy to share more if its of help to anyone.
• firebot 5mo ago
  You're just a cost of acquisition.
• bamboozled 5mo ago
  The two single reasons I I have instagram installed are: * Keeping in touch with people / contacts. * Knowing when random cafes and restaurants I like are open. Outside of that I just hate it and want it out of my life. I’ve spoke to others and the loss of contacts is a major reason they don’t leave also.
• kachurovskiy 5mo ago
  I've stopped using YouTube and Reddit since early April and it's been a mixed bag. On one side my interest level has adjusted so that normal activities make sense again - like sitting in the garden or playing a game with my kid. I've also completed dozens of projects like replacing old silicon in the entire kitchen or updating the garden playground. On the other side I'm feeling more isolated and lacking information / stimulation for creative output because I no longer have any idea what other people are doing. However given that massive amounts of time have been freed I'm more productive both at work and at home, more effort on health too. It's definitely something to try but it's not all roses.
  • rnewme 5mo ago
    Create rss feed of few curated favorite creators.
  • anitil 5mo ago
    I've effectively dropped reddit because they've made the mobile web version near-unusable (and I find old.reddit.com difficult on mobile). Honestly, it's an improvement in my life. I don't know how I found myself spending so much time on it for so little benefit
    • red-iron-pine 5mo ago
      yeah same. old.reddit still works okay sometimes but it is annoying for regular use the mobile options are terrible. happy to be done w/ it tbh.
      • anitil 5mo ago
        Followup - my addiction is apparently worse than I thought. I'm using old.reddit in the browser, but at least in a reduced capacity. My shame.
  • switchbak 5mo ago
    You must have one high-tech kitchen!
• erikerikson 5mo ago
  Oops, they hit the 'f' key when typing the headline.
• mystraline 5mo ago
  Its capitalist 'social media' thats the problem. Doctorow's enshittification case study was exactly about Facebook and Instagram. However, you go to Mastodon, Pixelfed, or Lemmy and things are dramatically better. Well, no, not just better, but completely refreshing. You friend people and what you get is a cronological feed. No algorithm bullshit, no gamification, no adverts snuck in.
• amatecha 5mo ago
  Stop using corporate-owned walled gardens and manipulation factories.
• syngrog66 5mo ago
  topics & individuals whether something fad or not does not matter to me
• tap-snap-or-nap 5mo ago
  Never has it been more lonely in my lifetime than when I am browsing social media feeds alone. I believe in a way I hold myself to be partially responsible for allowing myself to consume cheap risk free passive interactions online. I can only do my best in person to person interaction to make it as good individually for others and myself but it is always a hit and miss to have similar risk free or positive interactions in real life.
• thrownthatway 5mo ago
  [dead]
• iovrthoughtthis 5mo ago
  Is this some sort of paid for PR to divide the category of social media in the face of governments gearing up to regulate social media apps?
• kevinmiller452 5mo ago
  The shift to private messaging groups makes sense though. No ads, no influencers, just talking to people you actually know. That's where the real social interaction went.
• adamgreen795 5mo ago
  [dead]
• markcollins05 5mo ago
  I get why young people prefer polished content over their friends' posts. Friends' stuff is boring compared to pro creators. But it's kind of sad and lonely at the same time.