[HN Gopher] I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience
___________________________________________________________________
I am drowning in mutes: The current Threads experience
Author : pityJuke
Score : 139 points
Date : 2023-07-08 09:57 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (internettalk.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (internettalk.substack.com)
| mvkel wrote:
| The social web today is entirely about the attention economy.
| godelski wrote:
| This is what happens to slack channels to me. The big reason is
| lack of actual control over how often my devices ping me and user
| abuse. I'm curious if others face this because people in my lab
| do too.
|
| == Slack Bugs ==
|
| Constantly I will get pings despite having had my settings to be
| "Direct messages, mentions & keywords". Including pings for
| threads that I never even participated in or were tagged in.
| Slack will also notify me for channels that are muted and grayed
| out! So my only real choice is to just kill notifications all
| together and it fixes most of these problems. But then I don't
| see any messages unless I see the icon in my dock.
|
| == False Positives/User Abuse ==
|
| Lots of users abuse the @channel (almost never using the @here).
| My advisor sends tons of irrelevant papers in the main group
| channel, so I have to ignore or be spammed, but then miss
| "important" messages. There's something I don't get, it is that
| people don't seem to understand that you can't send spam and junk
| from the same location as you send critical information. Spam and
| junk is more common and you're just teaching users to ignore
| everything. My Uni does this too and it is infuriating. I know
| they might think that this gets people to see more of the spam,
| but it just makes people not see important things.
|
| Slack people: can you fix notifications. Admin/manager people:
| can you please for the love of god stop spamming channels and
| chastise anyone who abuses tags everyone unnecessarily? I just
| want to do my work without getting distracted every 5 minutes.
| It's akin to someone knocking on my door: I don't know if they
| just want to chat or need something. This kills productivity.
| coolbreezetft22 wrote:
| Am the only one who doesn't make profiles on these things and
| just goes directly to the URL of the people whose posts I'm
| interested in reading??
|
| That way I'm only reading people I am actually interested in.
| Might reduce discoverability but eventually the people I "follow"
| in this way will mention/reply/retweet someone else worth
| following as well.
| speak_plainly wrote:
| I think there is a larger question about the role that
| celebrities, influencers, meme accounts, thirst trap accounts, or
| any other account that is incentivized to post play on social
| media.
|
| You immediately saw the energy and positivity drop as these
| groups arrived to threads. Perhaps it was a mix of egotism,
| phoniness, and shallow attempts at engagement, but you also saw
| engagement and follows rise with that group.
|
| The head of Instagram has said that news is going to be less of a
| priority for them, which coincides with Canadian legislation
| demanding pay for links and upcoming US legislation that is
| expected to be similar.
|
| I would love to see them deprioritize these financially motivated
| accounts and try to focus more on local and more genuine
| interactions, otherwise they will just fall into the same trap
| Twitter has been stuck in for years.
|
| Ultimately, these accounts drive engagement but perhaps there is
| a cost to the long-term health or viability of the platform when
| taking this approach. Given Meta has seemingly no need to
| monetize Threads, I hope they try new approaches that are
| healthier for the platform and better for their users rather than
| cheap engagement.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| > I would love to see them deprioritize these financially
| motivated accounts and try to focus more on local and more
| genuine interactions, otherwise they will just fall into the
| same trap Twitter has been stuck in for years.
|
| Meta goes farther than Twitter ever did, as they actually
| deprioritize the more news-like content.
|
| After all, why pay for less engaging content when you have
| users tripping over themselves to game engagement for free?
| Ignoring long term health (and the health of the society they
| inhabit) seems to have worked out for Meta so far.
| martinflack wrote:
| > Meta goes farther than Twitter ever did, as they actually
| deprioritize the more news-like content.
|
| I think an interesting experiment would be to also prioritize
| some "news-ish" "good news" of the type that wouldn't quite
| make major TV news broadcasts. The type of stuff that John
| Krasinski was doing with Some Good News during the pandemic.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Threads is literally just textual Instagram and TikTok. I
| don't get the feeling Twitter users ever really used those,
| and Threads is much closer to those
| jfengel wrote:
| I'm interested in the contrast between the news producers, who
| want you to pay for content, and the flood of people desperate
| to attract your attention without anything of value.
|
| It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile stuff,
| despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create it. You'd
| think with billions of people trying we'd get more things worth
| actually looking at.
|
| Is is because a lot of people just really have nothing to
| contribute to the world?
| dazc wrote:
| 'Is because a lot of people just really have nothing to
| contribute to the world?'
|
| We all have something to contribute but, like a single ant in
| a column of ants moving from one hole to another, that thing
| may be minor and not newsworthy.
| one_level_deep wrote:
| == Is is because a lot of people just really have nothing to
| contribute to the world?==
|
| Perhaps they simply have a different definition of
| "contribute"?
|
| Seems there are plenty of things for other people to look at
| given the download and signup data.
| jfengel wrote:
| There are plenty of things to look at, though it seems to
| be a constant maw that is never satisfied.
|
| And on the other hand there are "influencers" and "content
| producers" and "digital marketers" who want to slip into
| that gap, but know full well that their contribution is not
| of any value. They're trying to be middle men in a world
| that's overconnected already. They plagiarize and copy and
| SEO and use generated content in the hopes of snagging a
| fraction of a cent simply by being in the way.
|
| I don't mean that as personally derogatory as it sounds. I
| don't know them or their story. But I've seen many
| thousands of human lives spent in quiet desperation and
| wish that there was a better way to use the mind they were
| born with.
| graycat wrote:
| > It feels like there is a certain amount of worthwhile
| stuff, despite vast numbers of people seeking ways to create
| it. You'd think with billions of people trying we'd get more
| things worth actually looking at.
|
| Have thought that this was a problem so have been working on
| a solution. At some point intend to announce on HN. I'm
| supposed to do a "Show HN"?
| jfengel wrote:
| Yep, that's how it's done. Good luck!
| ddq wrote:
| Why should contribution to "the world", the gargantua of
| global culture, history, and economy, be the yardstick of
| worth? I believe almost everyone has something valuable to
| contribute to their friends, family, neighborhood, or
| community. We can step away from the chaotic, nebulous global
| village and focus on the tangible human connections of actual
| village systems, where "the defining trait of a village is
| that it's group of people where the average interaction over
| time is with people you've seen before."
|
| https://www.marginalia.nu/log/82_killing_community/
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296882
| jfengel wrote:
| In this case I'm thinking of people who are trying to make
| a living. If it were up to me everyone would automatically
| receive enough money to stay alive, and nobody would have
| to grasp at straws like that. It would be interesting to
| see what they would create.
|
| Meantime I am distressed by that grasping, which I
| understand to be necessary, or at least desperate. I wonder
| if they could do better creating something, anything, more
| useful than vast quantities of the lowest possible effort.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > and try to focus more on local and more genuine interactions
|
| It's amazing to me that people expect one of the largest
| companies on the planet to be capable of doing this with any
| measure of success.
|
| Meanwhile, there's tons of groups of people who meet under the
| banner of shared interest, probably right now, right in the
| town you live in. You can just go do that if that's what you
| _actually_ want.
| mvkel wrote:
| What amazes me is how consistently people are celebrating the
| lack of ads on Threads, when I've seen countless posts from
| brands like Wendy's saying "so what's ur favorite burger lol"
| svaha1728 wrote:
| I stumbled into threads like this one that helped me find AI/ML
| researchers:
|
| https://www.threads.net/t/CuYdZ_oBX8v/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ...
|
| Seems bearable now.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Genuine ask (I'll never use threads, same as i never used
| facepalm): could these researchers have been found using any
| other method?
| hhh wrote:
| Muting like this is in my opinion dumb. Just move on, you don't
| need to 'purge' their ability to reach your eyes. Threads is
| brand new, and the home feed is not meant to be only people you
| follow as of now.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| I haven't used threads, but I mute channels on youtube
| frequently. It only takes literally one second and I never have
| to scroll past that person's videos again. This is a lot easier
| than playing the 'manipulate the recommendation algorithm'
| game.
|
| You know the Gell-Mann Amnesia meme? You realize somebody is
| full of shit after reading/watching their content, but then you
| move on and forget what you learned, falling for them again in
| the future. Well if you block their content, this problem goes
| away. The block system remember what you might otherwise
| forget.
| bowsamic wrote:
| > Just move on, you don't need to 'purge' their ability to
| reach your eyes.
|
| Why not? Why shouldn't I? I don't get it
| ykonstant wrote:
| I don't know about Threads, but in Mastodon mutes, filters and
| the occasional block make the experience vastly better.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Because Mastodon only has a linear feed, I don't even see the
| point, you're only going to see what you explicitly followed.
| It actually takes a lot of time just to build up interesting
| content to follow. One of the more frustrating things is when
| someone I find interesting goes crazy posting and the lack of
| algorithm just means I see way too many posts from them in a
| row. Maybe the mobile apps improve on this, I dunno.
| timbit42 wrote:
| The key to Mastodon is to follow hashtags so you instantly
| get any content relevant to your interests. I'm only
| following a few people because most people who have a
| similar interest to me will also post stuff not related to
| our common interest. By following hashtags, I get every
| post I want to see and none of the noise.
| pferde wrote:
| Nonsense. As with any and all "social media", block early,
| block often. It's your time, your attention, so you should get
| to choose what you see.
|
| Of course, you run the risk of enclosing yourself into an echo
| chamber, but that's up to each individual user to consider.
| Reason077 wrote:
| I feel like Twitter has gotten worse for this lately too: I've
| had to use the mute button much more frequently than I used to.
| In the past, Twitter's feed was almost _too_ smart /focused, and
| kept giving you basically only the same subjects and content over
| and over again.
|
| Now day's it's broadened what you see, but also keeps giving
| random (and sometimes, offensive) nonsense that I have to mute.
|
| It also doesn't seem to learn from mutes very well: shouldn't
| mute not only mean "I don't want to see tweets from this
| account", but also "I'm not interested in Tweets on this
| subject"?
|
| Similar issue with Spotify. I feel like it used to be better at
| finding me NEW tracks based on what I'd liked in the past. But
| now it just mostly wants to play the same things I've listened to
| before, over and over?
| mantas wrote:
| Turns out quality content targeting hurts views and engagement.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Reddit app does this too, it's risky but it can help discover
| new content areas. Threads has that dialed to 11
| roody15 wrote:
| Already deleted Threads... just a bunch of celebrity promoted
| garbage. Cannot search or sort by hashtags... just a stream of
| corporate promoted nonsense mixed with ads. Not sure I where this
| app fits in with Instagram and Facebook already overlapping.
| pornel wrote:
| The app is obviously an MVP. The force-fed feed makes a lot of
| sense when there's little content, plus helps set the intended
| style/atmosphere/topics they want on there.
|
| They've probably underestimated how quickly people will rebuild
| their social graph.
| idlewords wrote:
| It's obviously an MP; whether it's V remains to be seen.
| uptownfunk wrote:
| Threads is just tiktok meets Twitter, stuff you didn't ask for
| but hopefully stuff you really like. They nailed the first part,
| the second part not so much. I quit it once I figured out they
| were trying to hook me like all the other social media.
|
| Twitter, for all it's controversy, doesn't feel that way.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Saw this from a mile away.
|
| My wife owns a company. I told her to get on Threads early so she
| can get ahead of the algorithm.
|
| I had 0 interest.
|
| That is the demographic. Influencers and marketers.
| rburkej wrote:
| I feel this; I also have only found the app usable after spending
| a significant amount of time muting accounts that I don't want to
| see.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| I was surprised by having no option and forcing everybody to
| their algorithm when their other platform either show you content
| from accounts you follow first and tell you when you're done
| (instagram) or have an option to show you content from your
| friends only or friends + group (Facebook's "your feed" and
| "friends").
|
| I personally don't mind ads, somebody needs to pay for the
| service and I prefer ada over forced paid for content wasting my
| time.
| giarc wrote:
| I suspect they will launch "Following/Friend" soon. Part of me
| thinks they pushed the launch when Elon was limiting tweets.
|
| I don't mind ads either if they are obvious and targeted (no
| more penis ads like the early days of the internet). I suspect
| Meta won't turn on ads for awhile, but when they do, they have
| one of the biggest ad markets to tap into. I suspect soon
| enough advertisers will see an additional button in their
| preferences. Run ads on Instagram _and_ Threads.
| dorfsmay wrote:
| > they pushed the launch when Elon was limiting tweets.
|
| Isn't Musk hinting that twitter implemented rate limits
| because Meta/Threads were scraping them agreaaively?
| claudiulodro wrote:
| AFAIK originally he said it was 100 AI companies using it
| for training data and then eventually morphed that to this
| line of reasoning, but why would Meta possibly need to
| scrape Twitter and, even if they did, why would they be so
| hamfisted about it given that they already have the
| `facebookexternalhit` scraper which hasn't been causing
| issues. I'd take Musk's statement with a big grain of salt.
| esafak wrote:
| So people don't want an unfiltered, chronological list after
| all...
| J_Shelby_J wrote:
| Twitter is popular in the zeitgeist, but Reddit is the dark
| horse.
|
| A Reddit replacement with the reach of meta is a very fertile
| opportunity.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| For me, Reels has never been able to zero in on my interests in
| the way that TikTok has. Reels mostly shows stupid, low
| denominator content compared to TikTok which is showing me math
| videos, videos about ML, etc.
|
| Algo-feed only Threads means trusting the same sort of algo
| behind Reels and I am not convinced that it will work. Twitter
| allows for much easier bootstrapping.
|
| Already, I am pretty turned off by how inundated Threads is with
| celebrity content that I really could not care less about.
| codekansas wrote:
| It's very possible that ranking will be a lot better for
| threads though, simply because NLP models are currently so much
| better than what exists for video
| distantsounds wrote:
| Yes, when you have no followers/new posts from followers the feed
| with fill itself with what it thinks you might like. It's not
| very good right now because it probably needs more data points,
| but if I can suggest one thing, it's this: Get More Friends. That
| way the feed has people you want instead. Algorithms can only
| help so much in that space. I can't believe this isn't obviously
| pointed out.
| mgbmtl wrote:
| It would be great if all these sites (including Reddit) just
| had a button "show me content I might like", instead of
| distracting me with click-bait.
|
| I get too distracted and end-up wasting too much time doom-
| scrolling. I've deleted all my accounts.
| distantsounds wrote:
| you can't search hashtags yet, once when that works I'm sure
| it will be much better. discoverability on the platform sucks
| right now, for sure.
| grishka wrote:
| This forced recommended content is infuriating. It's the platform
| rudely getting in the way of the one purpose I want to use it for
| -- staying up to date with things happening in my followees'
| lives, with _zero_ entertainment. Their promised ActivityPub
| support can 't come soon enough.
| notatoad wrote:
| it's not like they tricked you into using it, and then changed
| the algorithm to make it harder to "stay up to date with things
| happening in your followees lives".
|
| this is clearly not a platform that caters to that use case, so
| if that's what you want then you shouldn't use it. if you're
| infuriated because the entire world isn't designed to
| specifically cater to your expectations, you're going to spend
| a lot of time being infuriated
| sethhochberg wrote:
| I'm sincerely asking: has any modern social media platform
| delivered this? I know it used to be that way on many sites,
| but over the last decade, we seem to really redefined the
| expectations.
|
| Personally, I've really come around to the idea. I follow a few
| baseball accounts - if an amazing highlight gets popular over
| on the LA Dodgers account, I want to see it without needing to
| trust the Mets might repost it or it'll make the MLB's accounts
| or whatever else. I don't make a habit of following public
| entities like teams or brands or sports meme accounts, but
| sometimes they post things that really resonate with people who
| follow the accounts I do follow
|
| A big part of "social" is the buzz in your corner of the world,
| and recommendations help me be far more clued in
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| The irony being that it's twitter's use of the same that drives
| so many to seek alternatives. At least twitter has a
| 'following' feed, even if it's far from ideal.
| molave wrote:
| Being active in an ActivityPub space lately, a bunch of folks
| there are very vocal against Threads being part of the
| ecosystem. They're confident Meta will Embrace, Extend, and
| Extinguish.
| timbit42 wrote:
| Also, a number of Mastodon servers already plan to block
| Threads' servers.
| vitorgrs wrote:
| Doesn't seem likely that mastodon.social will block it (and
| they are the largest)
| idlewords wrote:
| Meta is courting the risk of going full Orkut, where people come
| by to check out early hype on an unfinished product, find the
| feature set underwhelming, and head off elsewhere. The tradeoff
| with getting tens of millions of users at launch is that it will
| be harder to get a disappointed user to come back and try again
| than it was to get them to try the first time.
|
| I'm sure for the dev team this is a busy time, and the work they
| need to do to accommodate so many new users creates a feeling of
| forward progress. But none of that work (from what I'm seeing in
| discussions) seems to involve adding basic functionality, while
| in the interim people are forming a durable first impression of
| the service.
| deepfriedbits wrote:
| Good insight. I think what might help them a little bit,
| however, is that the features they're sure to add in the coming
| weeks are known commodities at other networks, so people will
| already be aware of the value the features add, such as a
| timeline that only shows folks you're following.
| notjoemama wrote:
| Slight twist on dead internet theory.
|
| It's not that the internet is full of bots, it's that the
| internet is full of self promotion. Finding real people to have
| real conversations is more difficult because so many want your
| engagement/attention for their "brand".
|
| Similar to the Black Mirror episode about social credit score.
| worrycue wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror) ?
|
| Reminds me of Reddit. Can't post if your karma is too low - of
| course you start with zero as a new poster.
| Kuinox wrote:
| This is a rule put in place by people being drowned in
| spambots.
| flangola7 wrote:
| Do you have a better suggestion for mitigating spam and
| abuse? Reddit could do what everyone else does and tie your
| account to a phone number or video selfie, but I'm personally
| not hot on that idea.
| firecall wrote:
| At the risk of sounding mean, Threads really is the dumbest
| place on the Internet.
|
| It's vapid beyond anything I've ever experienced.
| kzrdude wrote:
| It seems like it's too early to judge it on almost anything
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| It's a Meta product directly tied to Instagram, I'd be
| genuinely shocked if this isn't the high point.
| rewmie wrote:
| > It seems like it's too early to judge it on almost
| anything
|
| It's specially too early due to the trainwreck which is
| Elon Musk's Twitter acquisition. If Musk continues to
| destroy Twitter, we might see the whole world drop it in
| favour of Threads.
| ipaddr wrote:
| We are seeing corporate and brand promoting types and 50
| million signups the first day. Compared to Mastodon where
| real people are having real conversations and the numbers
| are much lower even with a head start. This tells me
| threads will be a very corporate platform. At least it's
| offering something different
| riidom wrote:
| How is the onboarding process? Are people logging into
| their instagram and then see some big new button "Threads
| is here, click to try out!", or along these lines?
|
| Because if I can trust my very quick internet search,
| instagram has 500 million DAU. So this means 9 out of 10
| are not interested in threads?
| spacemadness wrote:
| Is it worse than LinkedIn?
| PM_me_your_math wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| rewmie wrote:
| > At the risk of sounding mean, Threads really is the dumbest
| place on the Internet.
|
| Have you met Twitter?
| mcpackieh wrote:
| More vapid than tiktok? Could that even be possible?
| bdw5204 wrote:
| I think there's a good bit of truth to that. Even the platforms
| where self promotion is a rule violation such as Wikipedia and
| Reddit tend to be dominated by cliques of unpaid mods with an
| agenda either ideological or related to the interests of a
| government's national security apparatus.
|
| The main reason why I'm pessimistic about the prospects for
| Threads to be a success is because it seems to be leaning very
| strongly towards LinkedIn on the scale of authenticity vs
| inauthenticity and that is death for a social media platform
| unless people literally use it to find jobs. I don't think most
| actual human beings want to use a platform dominated by
| corporations and people trying to turn themselves into a
| "brand". They're basically attracting all of the spam accounts
| from Twitter and amplifying them which might be a good way to
| attract advertisers but it isn't a good way to attract users.
| [deleted]
| tiffanyg wrote:
| Big part of it, as far as I can tell.
|
| Slight further (and darker) twist: our economic model is dying,
| but nothing substantive is being done to make appropriate
| revisions.
|
| Essentially: we have excessive, but still increasing, numbers
| of people with skills and in economic classes / roles that are
| "tertiary" and beyond. As processes have been made more
| efficient over time, and the surplus wealth has been accrued in
| an ever more concentrated fashion, we increasingly seem to have
| a sort of "surplus" (oh boy, can it get more Dickensian?) of
| people in something of a "middle class limbo".
|
| Of course, the very efficiency that has pushed workers out of
| roles, is efficiency that means we (can) produce plenty for the
| people presently around. Further, it's basically always the
| case that people ultimately pushed out of roles contributed in
| substantial ways, even if just indirectly, to "our" ability to
| replace them. But, the "tally sheets" we use to divvy up
| resources, account for contributions and "deductions", etc.,
| are more and more fundamentally broken.
|
| Throwing the so-called "AI" into the mix only makes this worse.
|
| ... I'm a bit too tired and pressed for time right now to try
| to really tie this off nicely, but, hopefully the outline of
| this (current iteration of this) hypothesis is clear enough.
| It's an argument (in the sense of dialectical &/ rhetorical
| debate) that has come up many times. For example, Vonnegut's
| "Player Piano" springs to mind. But, I do think we're finally
| at a point where there will need to be some adjustment in
| economics, culture, etc. Or, we're heading into "French
| Revolution" territory.
|
| Also, it's not as though humans haven't been through this
| before - not only at times like during the "Reign of Terror",
| but also, when people like John D. Rockefeller were in their
| heyday. At that time, Rockefeller, for example, became quite
| community-oriented himself. He made substantial contributions
| to the well-being of society / humanity, in ways that often
| went beyond simple provision of money for charitable efforts.
|
| No idea which way things go this time...
|
| Edit: correction - when I wrote "produce plenty", I was in a
| mindset focused on NA / Europe, in particular. Simply the areas
| I'm most familiar with. Throwing countries like India, China,
| etc., into the mix, makes the situation more complicated and
| difficult. Far too much there to touch on right now.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| I don't think the economic model is dying, it seems to be
| going stronger worldwide. Even with protectionist pushbacks,
| capitalism seems to come out on-top. (Sure there are issues
| like regulatory capture, but those are bumps in the road to a
| free-er market)
|
| > the surplus wealth has been accrued in an ever more
| concentrated fashion, we increasingly seem to have a sort of
| "surplus" (oh boy, can it get more Dickensian?) of people in
| something of a "middle class limbo".
|
| I know you are saying that billionaires have a ton of money.
| But I see this in the lower class. Every teen and every lower
| class person has an iphone, a Veblen good. Status seeking
| people have it even easier than ever to present an image of
| being rich. This means middle class people can pretend to be
| even more rich (A middle class person could afford a 250k car
| given the 8 year loans, or rent one for an IG photoshoot). It
| has people feeling insecure.
|
| The French revolution was driven by bad food harvests. This
| is an issue of status, not starvation. 100% of people can't
| be billionaires.
|
| Not sure what that will mean.
| 26fingies wrote:
| That seems to be the logical conclusion of commodifying
| literally everything. Now that everything is commodity every
| interaction is a sales pitch.
| adventured wrote:
| > Finding real people to have real conversations is more
| difficult because so many want your engagement/attention for
| their "brand".
|
| Humanity breaks into three groups: originators, amplifiers,
| mimics.
|
| Probably 95-97% of humanity or more are mimics. They will never
| produce much of anything original, that includes writing long-
| form blog posts or original media content (eg YouTube). They
| have little to no interest. This is backed up by stats on
| pretty much every platform, including Reddit and HN (the
| extreme majority are voyeurs not contributors). It's one of the
| reasons TikTok was so successful, it enabled the mimics to
| easily participate and pretend they were creating something new
| (while they were actually doing nothing but copying what
| someone else created, and getting a mental reward for it via
| likes/watches/followers). It's also why modern cameras in
| smartphones are so popular for the masses (+ Instagram),
| anybody can take a photo and feel at least ok about it (you
| don't have to be an expert photographer, you don't have to
| really create anything interesting and or new).
|
| It doesn't matter what you do or what you change, the extreme
| majority will never meaningfully contribute. Even on services
| like TikTok and Instagram the masses have little to no interest
| in meaningful contribution, they produce a couple of videos or
| photos and then largely stop; the same holds true on Facebook,
| most people don't contribute very much into the network. They
| don't want to. They lack the desire to put in the time and
| effort (people are tired after work, have children/lives to
| tend to, etc etc), and they lack the creativity to originate
| persistently (the feedback isn't there because what they're
| producing won't get much attention).
|
| Everybody isn't the same. Everybody isn't Picasso or Hunter S.
| Thompson and can't be. So what you're mostly left with are the
| people desperately seeking attention/self-promotion and the
| rare slice of originators.
|
| You have to specifically build a platform to cater to the
| smaller slice of originators and intentionally block/disrupt
| the aggressive self-promoters that often don't contribute much
| new value. And if you do that, your platform will never be
| overly popular (which isn't what most VC backed services aim
| for obviously).
| Lammy wrote:
| This is why Peter Thiel is so obsessed with Rene Girard
| olddustytrail wrote:
| [flagged]
| Cpoll wrote:
| Your comment isn't adding anything.
|
| Bizarre or no, they explain their reasoning, so it's worth
| explaining why you disagree. The "largely voyeurs" effect
| observed on Reddit is well attested to, and the idea that
| TikTok targets those is interesting (though I have no idea
| if the numbers agree).
| 26fingies wrote:
| I think the phrasing is what's objectionable here. Sure
| most users are lurkers, but does that mean they'll never
| produce anything original? Give me a break. This is just
| a roundabout way of calling other people "NPCs"
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| I disagree with their term "mimic", as if anything mimics
| would be their own social class (see for instance
| clickbait/"prank" channels on YT, content creators on
| TikTok), but the underlying principle is correct.
|
| He is not stating they will never produce anything
| original ever, that's simply absurd. However he is saying
| consistent content creation is few and far between
| compared to the masses who lurk. And that it's
| unreasonable to expect different given that real life
| obligations such as work sap away a good portion of our
| energy.
| Izkata wrote:
| All three terms are a bit odd to me, but I think the
| theory is valid. In the advertising and fashion worlds
| don't these map to "trendsetters", "influencers", and
| "followers"?
|
| Fashion companies look for trendsetters to see what may
| be coming next, and pay influencers to advertise to
| everyone else (followers).
| smokel wrote:
| Hm, I doubt that not actively contributing on a forum makes
| you a "mimic". Perhaps your wording is a bit too strong?
|
| I agree with you that these people may lack the energy or
| creativity, but there could be dozens of other valid reasons
| for not contributing. For one, I think most people who ignore
| social media are quite wise. A lot of time is lost here on
| more important matters.
| p3rls wrote:
| As long as we're throwing out stupid triadic models of
| humanity -- [Pythagoras said that] human life seemed to him
| comparable with the festival to which people flocked form
| all over Greece in order to see those magnificent [Olympic]
| Games. This is an occasion for which some people have gone
| into physical training in the hope of winning the splendid
| distinction of a crown, while others are attracted by the
| prospect of buying or selling for profit, whereas a further
| category again - and these represent an especially good
| class of people - are interested in winning neither
| applause nor profit, but come merely for the sake of the
| spectacle, to get a thorough look at what is going on and
| how it is done. And we too, said Pythagoras, as we enter
| this life from some other kind of existence [as he believed
| in reincarnation], behave like people who have moved out of
| town to join the crowds at this sort of show. Some of us
| are enslaved to glory, others to money. But there are also
| a few people who devote themselves wholly to the study of
| the universe, believing everything else to be trivial in
| comparison. These call themselves students of wisdom, in
| other words philosophers ["lovers of wisdom"]; and just as
| a festival attracts individuals of the finest type who just
| watch the proceedings without a thought of getting anything
| for themselves, so too, in life generally, the
| contemplation and study of nature are far superior to the
| whole range of other human activities. (Cicero, Tuscalan
| Disputations, 5.9)
| endofreach wrote:
| I find that experience a lot in real life too though. Just
| recently, i went to an event i have heard of with a variety of
| topics. It almost felt like the schedule was picked was
| designed with a good diverse hn homepage. I was so hyped,
| because i don't know anyone in real life to talk about a
| variety of topics like that in depth.
|
| I went there. After the first day, i was so incredibly
| disappointed. Everyone, even the ,,anti capatialist" speakers,
| were so eager to hand out their business card. It's not like
| the were scharlatans, they were experts in deed, much more
| knowledgeable than me in their fields of course, but it seemed
| all they truly cared about, is being expert in something that
| way easy to them. It was just one of those marketing events,
| that exists for companies to feel good & important to find
| people to transfer big loads of money to, to get a pet on their
| back by the boss. I mean business tickets were about 1000
| euros.
|
| OT: All i wanted was to find people like here, who love to jump
| from discussing coding, AI and climate change, to explorations
| silly ideas, like how beauty is a weird thing, as it's just the
| product of natures waste... the green nature we love, is just
| their of excess energies and a fun evolutionary luck for our
| eyes, that we see color & reality like that. Because if we
| perceived the basic reality much differently, who knows what
| sense of beauty was the filter for source of true inspiration:
| the urge to live, which is, the need for control (at least
| whatever makes our mind feel we are in control, which is much
| easier & keeps humanity going), because of what color actually
| is the frequencies of the excess energy, ,,thrown away", for
| stupid humans to come along, and adore the nature for it... oh,
| when did people start planting plants for beautys sake? Or was
| the beauty in the protectice plants / good plants, there,
| before we learned and adapted our human reality? Was this a
| hint from the nature? Does it reward us for something? Lure us
| in? Is natures poop, what we perceive as powers, but are just
| by design uncapable to see it? Are humans like GPT to GOD(s)?
| Now, what if this was a simulation? It must be like a room with
| no windows or doors, you just woke up in this room, and don't
| even know words, have no memory, nothing to hunt, no need to
| fulfill, no one to learn from, because of lack of other beings
| like you and even if, no needs means no need to learn anything,
| or teach, or remember, there is nothing and you don't even
| think about what difference could exist... there is no light in
| this room, no features or any similarities of the real laws of
| physics, no light, nothing happens, no time, no need, no pain,
| ,,consciousness" (whatever that is), but nothing else... how
| could humans, possibly breakout? Or just grasp, what that is?
| How would you view the outside of the room, from the inside, if
| no windows, no doors, no experience(s)? Either through
| technology which works in a dimension we either haven't fully
| figured out yet, or, don't even know about... maybe, yet. If
| not, it must be Phantasia. If we develop such a technology,
| then it must serve a purpose within that room, right? And even
| if no purpose or even if this just a stupid question, but
| wouldn't that mean, that either looking for the ,,real"
| technology, might lead us into a trap? If the room is
| constructed like that, it must be, because no one wants you to
| look outside. And if there was, why is it there? Which makes me
| think: even if Phantasia is not the actual key to making us
| look at the outside, how would we find the real way? Probably
| not, without imagining what it could be like, which shouldn't
| be too close to the reality of the outside... which means two
| things: either way, phantasia is the only thing we could rely
| on, in that case... and: if true, it means, that the further
| away from reality, the realer it gets. But not as a figure of
| speech, and not just based on the assumption that in that room,
| the ,,perceived" (whatever that is) laws of physics couldn't
| resemble the ones outside of the room. Even within this very
| weird explorative silly idea, this assumption seems a stretch.
| But that doesnt matter still. Because the idea Phantasia must
| be the furthest away from reality, is the way our minds work
| either way. Most ideas are based on reality. Even the thoughts
| i find unique, they aren't for most of you. But i haven't read
| many of them yet anywhere. But they are just combinations of my
| experiences of the way i perceive the world. So even as unique
| as they seem to myself, the experiences creating these ideas,
| only exist because of the reality, so the ideas are real... and
| if reality is the room, then these ideas are based on what's in
| the room. But if there was any ,,beam of light" (or any other
| physical ground for the real reality) coming from the outside
| of the room ,,shining" (not real light, just examplatory- if it
| wasn't light but sound, that we imagine as coming into the room
| from the outside, i'd write ,,being audible") into the room, in
| a way, so that we can perceive it, can either come from, yet
| again, technology or phantasia. But even if the former: the
| route to this technology leads to an end, without phantasia
| itself... this seems like actually phantasia is the basis for
| reality either way... Or imagine, as weird as a lot of the
| ,,aliens" and ,,ufo" stuff sounds, what if... i mean a species
| that would come here to this planet, must have interesting
| technology (or whatever that ability would be to them, maybe no
| technology, maybe something natural, if they even have
| ,,nature" as a concept as the basis of reality), if they had
| abilities to come here and thus ,,travel" faster than light,
| faster than time, couldn't a million human years be nothing to
| them, so maybe once every 50k-10m years they come here? Or
| maybe they haven't... maybe they have put one of their own into
| some kind of advanced jail, just like the room i described
| above, and maybe this jail is not constructed as a physical
| space confinement, but a state of nil... and because it has
| nothing to do, since 10m human hears, it end up briefly
| thinking ,,thinking" about a world like ours, as if it was a
| thought, a phantasie of that prisoner, who somehow by doing
| that ,,creates" us, which we can't understand because of these
| multiple nested realities, and maybe we only exist for an
| equivalent of a split second in the respective mother-reality.
| And maybe less in the real reality?... and then talk about how
| all the fear mongering should be under punishment, because if
| all our minds have the same fantasies, we end up changing
| ,,reality" (whatever that is)... i mean the opposite effect
| seems to be easily visible, but is garnered with facts &
| logic... i mean, i am typing this on my phone via mobile
| internet access, just because a long, long, long time ago
| someone started the idea of ,,more advanced", or even a
| ,,future" at all which is only possible because of the way
| humans perceive reality and how this artificial concept of
| reality based on time, is a lie but it works much better than
| not having one, and no other seems reasonable from this biased
| point of view, this one human looked at a stone, and found
| inspiration in ,,natures" (whatever that is) poop (which seems
| like it is all there is), which led everything after that...
| all the way up to me with a smartphone... doing nothing, but
| typing symbols into the void, being lonely, thinking how
| interesting these thoughts are to me, and nothing else excited
| me, but how pointless, because even if they weren't as silly, i
| ain't even smart enough to be a good software developer... and
| even if, it would still just be pointless... will i be a good
| father? Will my mind still be occupied when my child is here?
| Must i stay in this room forever? Why not make the best out of
| the room? Can't see shit in here anyway... might as well be
| naked... so that's why i just post this random chain of
| thoughts. I wish they wouldn't captivate my mind, i can't focus
| on the things that matter... i always wanted to create, now
| that i did, i didn't... aaaand then back to the next thought
| that i had much earlier when gyping this but totally lost the
| way... the thought was about how the octopus mind might have
| unimaginable potential, but is limited by their short life span
| & anti-social behaviour, excluding them from having culture &
| knowledge transfer... which made me think about how i behave
| anti-social with my weird arrogance... and rather writing crazy
| words that i know people will perceive as crazy and that i
| didn't even proof-read because i know it wouldn't be worth the
| effort any way... which might limit my potential as well...
| just like the octopus... hmm... maybe i must... hm... well...
| maybe... _revelation_ ... why don't you just follow me on
| twitter to find out more about this journey? There is also a
| book, podcast, vlog, social-media, influencing stuff &
| propaganda (that i myself am unaware of) & of course:
| advertisement deals!
|
| ...
|
| Back to reality: sorry, usually i would delete all of this
| again, after writing (if i don't write this into my notes or on
| pen & paper). I just wish i'd know what to do with this... i
| wish i could somehow spend all day thinking about things like
| that... but i am mute and blind... at least in real life... i
| think...
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I started participating in a Discord server and it was awful in
| all the ways that have been said. Strange UI, info scattered
| everywhere, mediocre search, can't find anything. I can chat
| with real people though.
|
| Then I realized, maybe all this is good in a way. Discord
| allows you to chat with real people, but if you want to promote
| yourself or do some stealth advertising, it sucks. In the end
| it's seems to be full of honest to goodness normal people who
| share an interest.
| rcme wrote:
| I'm not commenting on your theory, but what I love about HN is
| that, for the most part, people comment purely to talk about a
| topic. There's very little self promotion. It's very nice.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Unless you're posting a show HN, in which case every brother
| and their mother chimes in with "this is nice but here's my
| cloud service that does a similar thing but better"
| sideswipes
| bodge5000 wrote:
| I seem to remember someone saying on here that if you're
| looking for suggestions on something, the best thing to do
| is put up a half baked version of your own and watch as
| swarms of people come in to talk about their version.
|
| I guess it tracks as well, in general on the internet I
| find you get better advice claiming something is the case
| and then getting corrected than just asking for advice
| rewmie wrote:
| > Unless you're posting a show HN, in which case every
| brother and their mother chimes in with "this is nice but
| here's my cloud service that does a similar thing but
| better" sideswipes.
|
| I don't understand why you are classifying as "sideswipes"
| posts in a "Show HN" where others chime in to "Show HN".
|
| I mean, "Show HN" is about showing and discussing stuff,
| not a pulpit to worship a submitter.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about this. From the perspective of
| the HN audience, it's useful to see what other startups are
| serving a particular need/niche. From the perspective of
| the poster of the Show HN, this is probably annoying.
| However, it is at least marginally useful to see what the
| competition looks like, so you can figure out how to
| differentiate your product (or whether there are too many
| free competitors, and you should give up).
| rchaud wrote:
| Yeah but Ask HN is clearly marked. I don't have to click it
| if I don't want to see self promo stuff. With social
| networks, you don't get a choice at all, just an endless,
| unpredictable feed.
| wruza wrote:
| Personally I find this useful, because it's rarely just a
| pitch (at least I tend to assume some degree of honesty
| from an active HN user). Also it allows to explore a
| subject area even if you're not interested right now. I
| often make bookmarks or simply threadshots of other
| products people talk about in show hns.
| chaosbolt wrote:
| haha good one.
|
| HN has become as much of an echo chamber as re*dit, I'm only
| 31 and I still remember when engineers still had common sense
| here, plus most people here at least shared libertarian
| values, today people defending censorship here have become
| the norm, and the site is as dead as reddit.
| rcme wrote:
| The thing I absolutely love the most about HN is that
| political discourse is generally discouraged. I genuinely
| believe people who like talking about politics are
| miserable humans.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| > I genuinely believe people who like talking about
| politics are miserable humans.
|
| I dunno, maybe they're just in a place where talking and
| acting politically is important and useful to them?
| Perhaps that does make them miserable, if I was a white
| and rich guy in the US I probably wouldn't have to ever
| talk about politics.
| alemanek wrote:
| At least for me it is nice to have some places which
| aren't political where we can just geek out about super
| technical stuff. There are lots of places online where
| political discourse is the norm.
|
| No reason every space online has to be political.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Sure, I feel you on that. I don't need to have an
| explanation on, I dunno, the imperial origins of silicon
| chip production or something when I wanna show you my
| cool Raspberry pi homebrew. Still, if we're talking about
| the Silicon Valley banking collapse, don't be surprised
| if it gets political.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| > if I was a white and rich guy in the US I probably
| wouldn't have to ever talk about politics.
|
| Semi-rich. (What do you call a 1-10%er? depending on the
| year since biz owner problems)
|
| Politics affects us sooo much. My wife/biz owner is paid
| based on how much the government gives her for a specific
| healthcare treatment. Since 2019 the payments actually
| went down. Meanwhile the AMA got their physicians
| raises...
|
| Not to mention, there is an upcoming regulation that
| affects my physical product...
|
| Oh and even though we are well-off, I still hate paying
| 30k/yr whenever we give birth to 1 child.
|
| And taxes are insane. You make decent money and the taxes
| are absurd. Meanwhile if you invest your money and don't
| do anything, its a mere 15% capital gains tax. Seems like
| the system prioritizes the 0.01% and actively prohibits
| the 1-5% from breaking out of it.
|
| Not to mention economics. Interest rates basically decide
| what we do next, rather than sound strategy. Tariffs
| changed things back in 2018...
|
| Basically everything is economics on my end. Social
| policy seems so obviously silly to me, but its easy to
| say that as a married white dude.
| rcme wrote:
| Is it exhausting looking at every offhand HN comment
| through a racial lens? Plenty of rich white people like
| discussing politics. There are only two main political
| parties in the U.S. One of them has rich white people as
| their entire shtick. Or, log on to Facebook at look at
| the type of stuff boomer grandparents post.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Is it really so bothersome to you to hear it pointed out
| that people who aren't rich white men have very real
| needs that could be solved with political action and as
| such they might be more inclined to talk about politics?
| I'm assuming you're talking about the GOP. That party has
| a lot of poor white voters, they also have a very real
| need for political action on their part.
| [deleted]
| rcme wrote:
| Yes, it is bothersome. You mentioned race issues, but you
| could have easily mentioned climate change: "is it really
| so unreasonable that people want to talk about keeping
| the planet hospitable?" Or abortion "is it really so
| unreasonable women want to talk about having control of
| their own bodies?" Or the war in Ukraine: "is it really
| so unreasonable people want to talk about their own
| political self determination?"
|
| There will always be important political considerations
| that affect groups in disproportionate ways. That doesn't
| mean we need to talk about politics all the time or that
| there is something wrong with not wanting to talk about
| politics. And yes, if someone expresses a desire to avoid
| political discussion, I think it's a dick move to violate
| that desire and subtly imply they don't care about race
| issues.
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I agree as a minority. The constant virtual signalling is
| a plague. It's just too excessive and not productive.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| I did mention both gender (guy) and economic (rich)
| status, clearly this race thing is very sensitive to you.
|
| > I think it's a dick move to violate that desire and
| subtly imply they don't care about race issues.
|
| There was no subtle implication, only your own fantasy.
| rcme wrote:
| Ah, the "you're just a rich white guy" argument. Okay...
| How can I refute that? I would have responded the same
| way if you made a comment about climate change or any
| other political topic. It seems exhausting to think about
| your entire worldview through a political lens. I think
| my previous comment made a coherent argument that you
| can't talk about all important things all the time. The
| fact that you've ignored it makes me think you don't have
| a good retort.
|
| Also I do think you're a jerk. You've gone from subtly
| implying I'm racist to an overt accusation. That's
| inappropriate imo.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Dude, take a break and come back to this in a day or two.
| I have not said that you're a rich white guy, and I have
| not said that you're a racist. If you want to talk about
| this with less emotion and with the assumption that I do
| listen to you and respect you, then we can do that.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| It is easy for me, personally, to just...Not Talk About
| Politics. But I'm also a white cis het man. For me,
| "politics" isn't an actual physical - sometimes _mortal_
| - threat.
|
| But the _very_ least I can do is recognize that for many,
| many people "politics" is a literal matter of life and
| death. Can you blame them for recognizing and voicing
| that?
| [deleted]
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| I'm 44 and I remember back when politics was more or less
| left out of hacker news altogether. Noone cared about your
| libertarian values or my progressive ones, everyone just
| talked about tech.
| lacrimacida wrote:
| HN is one of the most stable platforms for discussion
| though. Sure, new influxes of users has brought different
| colors to the community but mostly people continue to
| discuss various topics, from philosphy to science or
| personal anecdotes. It continues to be a treasure's trove
| of wisdom.
| rewmie wrote:
| > I'm 44 and I remember back when politics was more or
| less left out of hacker news altogether.
|
| Politics is still more or less left out of hacker news.
| How many politics-related posts fo you see daily on HN?
| Zero?
| zdragnar wrote:
| I've flagged a few myself. More frequently than posts,
| though, are politically charged comments.
|
| There's not a lot of thoughtful debate around them,
| mostly just people repeating the same tired points back
| and forth.
| foldr wrote:
| That's what it feels like if you're not interested in
| politics. A lot of the threads on programming also
| consist of people repeatedly making the same points back
| and forth (see e.g. about 5000 threads on Go and
| generics). Most discussions are like this, really. New
| ideas don't come along very often.
| watwut wrote:
| Genuinely this sounds more like complain that old echo
| chamber changed in ideology.
| n42 wrote:
| it didn't, they're full of shit.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Eh, the big name corps/marketers/astroturfers are so good,
| its impossible to notice them. Especially as HN mods made it
| a bannable offense to call it out.
| roarcher wrote:
| They banned it because that sort of call out is meaningless
| in an age when everyone accuses everyone they disagree with
| of being a "shill", "astroturfer", "troll", "fake news",
| and what have you.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The internet is full of monopolies.
|
| They stifle innovation. They lock up funding. They buy anything
| that looks remotely competitive then stick it inside their
| walled garden. They demand 30% of your revenue for simply being
| middlemen.
|
| Of course, in this environment, all that's left for people is
| to constantly self aggrandize in the hopes that one of these
| monopolies will hire them and give them a decent salary.
| matrix_overload wrote:
| Or a dead society theory. The less people need each other for
| creating value, the more of their communication goes down to
| attention seeking and identity pandering.
| araes wrote:
| Its what society promotes. Social media just happens to be
| very fast and visible. Almost all signalling from society
| says the most important people are the attention seekers.
|
| In my view, a lot of society only want to win, and don't
| especially care how. Society signals and says, "those people
| are winners." They attention seek relentlessly. They say
| anything, as long as it's said confidently. If there's some
| scandal or controversy, its probably better, cause everybody
| wants to watch catfights and trainwrecks anyways (see Trump).
|
| Its like that Goodhart quote everybody likes recently, "when
| we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an
| incentive to manipulate the measure." I've talked to music
| artists recently that were also very blunt about music making
| these days. "What do you make?" "We make what gets more views
| on streams."
|
| Its not "they don't need each other for creating value", its
| that what society has determined "valuable" represents is
| effectively paradoxical.
|
| Another issue is Productivity Punishment. See this article on
| "loyal work punishing" [1]. Short abstract. If we have John,
| in Loyal and Disloyal versions, with reputations for those
| behaviors. And management wants extra work with no pay. We
| give the scenario to 1000's of managers and then see who they
| try to exploit for extra work repeatedly. Uniformly try to
| get extra work with no pay out of guy with Loyal reputation.
| Nearly everybody says, "you're Loyal, that means we can
| exploit you. You're valuable in the sense that a mine is
| valuable." And if they're punishing Loyal John, then who are
| they rewarding? "Wanna go play some golf?"
|
| See my previous comment on 'what society has determined
| "valuable" represents is effectively paradoxical.'
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00
| 221...
| lacrimacida wrote:
| I think attention seeking is either pathological or for
| making money. The great majority of people continue to need
| eachother to create value but that is mostly hijacked by
| venture capital trying to monetize, extract value, etc
| rewmie wrote:
| > I think attention seeking is either pathological or for
| making money.
|
| For a few decades we've been bombarded with the idea that
| our career depends mostly on our visibility instead of our
| qualifications and experience, that our next job will
| certainly be dictated by our social graph, and that getting
| ourselves known is key to have a good career.
|
| Consequently, we see a whole universe of self-promoting
| loudmouths generating noise just to get themselves out
| there.
|
| Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| >Perhaps this is a US thing that's leaking.
|
| This is a human thing.
|
| The US culture is less shameless about it.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Wow this hits home.
|
| I quit reddit a few times, but kept coming back to ask
| engineering questions.
|
| Now with chatgpt, I've found myself not using it for
| engineering, but rather to talk politics that would benefit
| me.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, same has been happening here for years too.
|
| Whoops, what I meant to say was:
|
| Hi! As a developer at ACME inc (http://example.com/ACME) I have
| been following the trend of self-promotion here too, while
| sitting at my utra-comfortable ACME Comfy(TM) chair, and I have
| noticed that some people, even the ones not using our ACME Inc.
| TNT-as-a-service(TM), have a tendency to self promote. I have
| written more about it on my block on our ACME site,
| http://example.com/ACME/blog.
| passwordoops wrote:
| Would be interesting to see the rate of this self-promotion
| here. It's definitely not as present or in-your-face as other
| places, but it is noticeable
| gnicholas wrote:
| I find that HNers are generally respectful about this.
| There are some outliers, but the posts they make tend to
| get downvoted and therefore rendered invisible.
|
| But there are probably at least as many instances where
| someone refers to their experience with a topic and
| pointedly leaves out the name of their company, and then
| other commenters ask for more details and the company name.
| theknocker wrote:
| [dead]
| fullshark wrote:
| Who else would want to talk to everyone on the planet
| simultaneously?
| thomasz wrote:
| The hyper commercialization of the internet has turned people
| into spam bots. That's why todays internet, with billions of
| users _feels_ less populated than what we had in the early to
| mid 2000s.
| lamontcg wrote:
| And it looks like there's a lot of psychosocial maladjustment
| in GenZ where to not get drowned out in the crowd a lot of
| them lead with being obnoxious, WRITING IN ALL CAPS, spamming
| out 1-3 word messages with broken sentences, calling
| themselves stupid (which never incentivizes me to bother to
| help them?), etc. Not exactly trolling, but obnoxiousness to
| try to get attention and engagement. It seems like they're
| drowning in how complicated technology has gotten and how
| impersonal social media has become.
|
| And reddit has just turned into the same hundred jokes
| repeated over and over again with the same desperate-to-look-
| clever pun thread at the top.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| I know it sounds very "old man yells at cloud" but I truly
| miss many parts of the old internet, when YouTube was new and
| social media was still in its fledgling phase. There are a
| lot of perks and quality of life improvements thanks to all
| the advancements, but being subjected to 4 ads per 11 minutes
| on YouTube, Google being much less useful thanks to SEO
| optimization and all the self-indulgent self- promotion on
| just about every site has gotten incredibly old. It's all so
| boring and repetitive yet seemingly impossible to escape.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Take a walk into the past and use the before: after:
| operators on youtube. I have recently and discovered the
| past feels rosey but the amount of content, length, quality
| keeps increasing. When you go back the rooms feel much
| empier
| motoxpro wrote:
| Grab YouTube premium to not see ads. You have to pay for it
| somehow, either you watch ads for free or you swap out your
| LTV for cash by just paying outright.
|
| This isn't a mark of degradation at all. "Back in the day"
| of non-monetization isn't sustainable for any decent length
| of time because eventually the people donating (VCs) will
| want a return or will run out of money.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| Are there truly no ads? Have been putting it of thinking
| it just removes the google injected ads, but keeping all
| the promotions and such
| mvdtnz wrote:
| There are no ads at all provided by YouTube. Obviously
| Google can't prevent content creators from embedding
| their own ads, which is becoming increasingly common.
| least wrote:
| Sponsorblock[1] works pretty well for the creators'
| advertisements.
|
| [1] https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock
| thomasz wrote:
| That's not really what I meant. Ads rarely get through my
| Adblock anyways. No, the problem with the dead internet
| isn't that powerful entities flooded it with artificially
| generated bullshit, the problem is that the hyper
| commercialization incentivized real, living people to
| behave like inauthentic robots, mindlessly maximizing
| everything they do to drive engagement metrics.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Once I saw giant Gary V hustle culture threads pop up on my
| timeline 1 day into trying Threads I knew I had seen enough.
| firecall wrote:
| Yep, same here.
|
| Immediately saw a sanctimonious GaryVee thread and was
| instantly turned off.
|
| It's all so cringe, as the kids say.
| damnesian wrote:
| This is Meta. In no time it will be the same old "tailored for
| you" experience. Soon his timeline will be spammed with tractor
| ads. He and other early adopters should just enjoy this wild-west
| phase, it will be tamed soon.
| chmod775 wrote:
| If you have to put in that much effort to fine-tune the machinery
| that is supposed to trickle-feed your brain with short-lived
| dopamine hits, maybe you should try a different product. Not all
| junkies are the same. You may not be the target audience.
|
| Tongue-in-cheek response aside, when YouTube managed to trick me
| into wasting a couple hours with YouTube shorts, my reaction
| after reflecting on what I just did wasn't to try and make it
| even better by curating it - instead I blocked YouTube shorts
| recommendations with my adblocker.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Sounds just like Twitter. Just more garbage.
|
| The only thing I ever found useful on Twitter was notifications
| from government agencies. Mostly recently, changes in ferry
| schedules in NC.
|
| I feel like I need a "Twitter for governments and public
| services". Verified accounts and none of the influencer garbage.
| stubybubs wrote:
| Threads may end up being the best place for exactly that.
| Uncontroversial content on a stable platform.
| alistairSH wrote:
| What will prevent it from being filled with influencer and
| other garbage like Twitter.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| It must be heavily censored to have low controversial content
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| It's shocking to me how bad the algorithm is in it, especially
| when they already have your interests from IG, maybe there are
| some data rules preventing that? But even so it's quite pitiful
| when you compare how fast TikTok can figure you out from a bare
| account.
|
| Really think they dropped the ball not offering followers only
| feed when shipping with the algorithm in this state.
|
| According to screen time I've spent 45 minutes in it but have no
| desire to look at it again.
| bunga-bunga wrote:
| You don't have to use it. I don't understand this obsession to
| _have to_ do something because it 's trendy.
| segmondy wrote:
| You can set it to see only notifications from those you follow.
| intrasight wrote:
| Where?
| gumballindie wrote:
| I just find it hilarious how people pivoted from crypto to ai to
| threads. What's next on the list? Deffo not something useful. But
| like i said before - anything that puts twitter out of its misery
| is welcome.
| infinitezest wrote:
| If you have to put that kind of work into a platform to make it
| usable, I would suggest putting it into a platform that aligns
| with your values. I just can't understand why anyone, even
| "normals", would be so eager to jump into bed with Facebook again
| after the last decade.
| carlossouza wrote:
| I can only imagine 2 use cases right now:
|
| 1. You are a celebrity or influencer and you are trying to
| "colonize" the place
|
| 2. You have a business that sells products or services to this
| people: celebs and influencers are your primary target
| hairofadog wrote:
| I agree with you and I have no plans to sign up for threads,
| but I have to admit that there's some part of my monkey brain
| that has softened on meta throughout all this. I am _not_
| saying that feeling is justified; only admitting it 's there. I
| think the last decade has given us events and people who went
| out of their way to make "normal" levels of malevolence seem
| quaint or even charming.
| subroutine wrote:
| Perhaps the softening is related to the open sourcing of
| LLaMa? I softened a bit on Microsoft after it started
| embracing the open source approach in the 2010s... even if
| the motivate was being late to the party.
| brucethemoose2 wrote:
| The LLaMA weights still have a restrictive license.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I have a hard time giving up FB because so much family and
| old friends are on it, but intellectually I _know_ it 's
| awful. Probably worse than Musk's Twitter, TBH. Zuckerberg
| has personally done a better job of not being public-crazy
| than Musk (just cringey), but his platform has arguably net-
| effects worse on society.
|
| They crossed the line last fall when they put me in FB jail
| for posting a picture of my son at the beach in his bathing
| suit as "violating community standards", and then extended my
| jail-time further when I appealed and complained. The
| implication being that I was posting .. CSAM... because their
| image detection algorithm & moderation sucks... that's awful.
|
| Meanwhile they continually try to show me far right or
| climate change denial material presumably to try to get me to
| "engage"; yesterday was a meme encouraging people to run over
| cyclists, complete with a picture of a cyclist being hit by a
| car, and when I reported it as encouraging violence they
| rejected my report.
|
| Meta depends on outrage-engagement to make $$. Zuck talks a
| big talk about creating online community, but he's actually
| kind of created the opposite. Even the active FB groups I've
| been in around niche topics have become kind of awful in tone
| recently, like they're doing the same outrage engagement
| algos in them, too. Or people are just bigger assholes after
| COVID, I dunno.
|
| They really are the worst, in actuality, and getting worse. I
| think I will delete my account ... but it means losing
| contact with a lot of friends and family.
| nick-of-time wrote:
| Facebook is even worse in other countries, where they
| promote outrage algorithmically then don't hire any
| moderators to even try and keep it in check. This way
| they're implicated in the genocide of the Rohingya people
| in Myanmar: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/oct
| /07/facebooks...
| joker_minmax wrote:
| I've seen it too, I personally think it's a bit of the old
| "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" type of thing kicking
| in. But once you realize how far cyberdespotism can go...
| normal levels of exploitative do seen a little more chill in
| perspective.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| I saw some posts urging people to "get in on the beginning" in
| order to take advantage of the primitive ranking and go viral.
| Everyone wants a chance at that. Just like the promise of pump
| and dump crypto's or the still private startups that told me
| "you just don't understand how equity works, we are about to
| IPO soon, take our lowball offer"
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| It's 2023, and people are still grasping for Internet Points?
| [deleted]
| bentcorner wrote:
| Yes? I don't really get it either, but for better or worse
| if you want to build something that caters to the kind of
| people that use Threads/Twitter, its obvious that it would
| be better to do it now rather than in 6 months.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you're good at it, you can parlay it into a million
| dollars like that Medlock guy.
| mchanson wrote:
| I don't think it's fair to call it getting into bed. More like
| trying out the new ice cream place that everyone is trying.
| [deleted]
| meitham wrote:
| I think in this case we ---the customers--- are the ice-cream
| and Facebook's tongue licking all over us, as if they haven't
| had enough taste of our metadata yet!
| FridgeSeal wrote:
| (Continuing this analogy)
|
| Except that the icecream place is run by a group known for
| extremely poor hygiene, manipulating customers and lacing
| their other food products with nicotine to ensure chemical
| dependency issues.
| internetter wrote:
| So basically fast food?
| whartung wrote:
| "This Carolina Chocolate is amazing! I just keep coming
| back!"
| paddw wrote:
| people love twitter. they want twitter run by "normals". zuck
| has said threads will be twitter run by "normals". this is what
| they want. this is what they will use.
| 542458 wrote:
| If I already use Instagram, Meta isn't getting much _new_
| information from my use of threads that they didn't already get
| from IG.
| alexandre_m wrote:
| Well they're capturing additional text-based interactions
| associated with your identity and demographic.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I started onto Threads.
|
| I really tried to make Mastodon work for me, but the lack of
| discoverability killed it.
|
| As somebody with trans people in my family, getting away from
| Musk's Twitter is a priority. But Twitter is where I get a lot
| of news and entertainment.
|
| I would rather have seen Mastodon win, but their product just
| isn't good enough.
| coldcode wrote:
| Mastodon seems like nice people, but it's not well designed.
| So far, it seems people are posting stuff in the void and
| creating little conversation because everything rolls past
| you unless you are looking continuously. Even notifications
| are poorly designed as it keeps posting your content
| repeatedly for favorites, etc., so you have little overview
| of your interactions. I think it could be designed better but
| apparently, few changes are made to make it more usable.
| swayvil wrote:
| >looking continuously.
|
| Ahhh! That is the key to the design.
|
| A network of users consuming and producing in real time.
| Weird feedback amplification effects.
|
| A vast beast with a million heads, muttering to itself.
|
| (Having your notifications turned on might be important for
| this to work. Remember that Black Mirror episode where
| having your notifications turned on was legally mandated.)
| jabradoodle wrote:
| As somebody with humans in my family, staying of democracy
| subverting Facebook is a priority.
| swayvil wrote:
| I can't deal with the way posts are arranged in mastodon. The
| "timeline" or whatever you call it.
|
| I want a tree of threads. Posts and replies. Like reddit and
| hn. It's the only way that makes sense.
|
| Boggling that they do it this way.
| jackmott wrote:
| [dead]
| exabrial wrote:
| As an alternative, you could just not use the product
| berkle4455 wrote:
| Seriously. I didn't sign up for Threads and I haven't had to
| mute a single account.
| eatonphil wrote:
| Follower feed is said by the head of Instagram (and I guess thus
| the head of Threads) to be coming eventually. There doesn't seem
| like much to do but wait.
|
| https://mashable.com/article/threads-following-feed-feature
| wetpaws wrote:
| Or you could use other platforms, you know.
| wnevets wrote:
| Until they add a real following only feed I don't see it
| replacing any existing social media platform.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| if you go the threads from twitter, it's likely gonna ng to be a
| worse experience content wise, but most don't care because they
| are there to pull the middle finger at Elon. When that wanes it
| will be back to twitter
| seydor wrote:
| > insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting
| different results
| soldeace wrote:
| One of the most useful features on Twitter for me was the option
| to mute retweets. After doing this, my feed's signal-to-noise
| ratio skyrocketed.
| revskill wrote:
| The number of sign up on Threads can show how much broken the
| world is today.
| bakugo wrote:
| I just uninstalled after 10 minutes of use because of this.
| Absolutely 0 interesting or organic content in the feed, just an
| endless stream of blue checkmark celebrity and corporation
| accounts making painfully cringy "hip with the kids" tweets.
|
| Easily one of the most forced product launches I've seen in
| years.
| Julesman wrote:
| Half hour of blocking and I have no problems at all. No brands or
| big celebrities. This is not rocket science.
| Zigurd wrote:
| You should see my block list on Twitter. It used to only be
| obnoxious people, but lately the number of shady ads that need
| blocking has shot way up.
| tazjin wrote:
| I'd link to the Paris Hilton tweet where she wrote "If you're not
| having fun, then just leave.", but alas ...
| ta1243 wrote:
| I remember when she first entered news headlines with the
| "Paris Hilton Sex Tape". Couldn't give a stuff so never read
| it, but for years I assumed this was some important business
| person or world leader who had been discovered having some
| illicit affair in a hotel in France.
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
| [dead]
| dboreham wrote:
| Oh, not "mutexes".
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is a fools errand. Stop using it for a week. The product is
| a literal MVP right now and lots of stuff is in the pipeline.
| You're spinning your wheels on this when shortly you'll be able
| to see a different timeline.
| mvkel wrote:
| Unless I don't want to hook my Insta friends to Threads.
| firecall wrote:
| That may be true, but I really don't think I want to.
|
| It's Instagram in words, and Instagram by and large is an
| awful, fake and vapid place.
|
| Threads might be decent software, but the content is horrible.
| flangola7 wrote:
| What is so bad about Instagram? It's my most used "normie"
| platform. I don't choose to have fake friends or follow awful
| creators, so I don't see that on the website.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I use instagram occasionally but it's mostly for eye candy
| and maybe a few will post stories with vids, it's really a
| pure form of internet junk food.
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| If Instagram is eating junk food then Twitter/Threads is
| trying to find bits of steak in a pool of toxic waste
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| It's not intellectual.
|
| I love it, it's great for workout and vacation pics and
| seeing what people you know are up to. I get the feeling
| Twitter powerusers hate it
| whalesalad wrote:
| Instagram is my most used platform. All my closest friends
| are there. All the top tier meme content is there. Group chat
| is lit.
|
| It's not a fake and vapid place. All social media are just
| vehicles to communicate with other people. If you feel it's
| fake and vapid you're just following the wrong crowd.
| pdntspa wrote:
| Or just don't use it.
|
| LOL at the clown trying to mute accounts, that's like trying to
| attack waves in the sea.
| 542458 wrote:
| Yeah, I used threads for a few minutes and quickly discovered
| that's it's just not a product that caters to me... yet. Right
| now I think it's probably only great if you're really into the
| e-celeb scene. But this is Meta/IG we're talking about, I'm
| sure they'll get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content
| targeting precision in there soon enough and my feed will
| become full of stuff I care about. I'll check back in on it in
| a couple months.
| xeromal wrote:
| I just signed up for threads to hopefully help annoy Elon
| which is very petty and useless of course but I ended up
| following a bunch of nat geo photographers who are all over
| threads and really enjoy my feed at the moment. Nothing wrong
| with admiring beautiful pics of the world. That sounds like
| instagram and you're not wrong, but the photographers
| themselves are more present so you can ask questions which
| feels different enough. Also, now is the time to annoy anyone
| famous on their because even the big dogs only have a few
| thousand comments. lol
| joker_minmax wrote:
| Do you mind dropping the names?
| xeromal wrote:
| Yeah, first follow
|
| * natgeo : Then you'll start seeing that account replying
| to its photgraphers and you can build your own list.
|
| * michaelgeorge
|
| * reuben
|
| * cosmic_background (I don't think he's natgeo but still
| neat)
|
| * benashtonart (Also not natgeo but fun)
| joker_minmax wrote:
| The algorithm on Instagram has never been freaky in how well
| it targets my interests. It cares not. It just wants me to
| look at ads. It's always freaky on how well it advertises
| stuff that would be the most annoying to me based on
| something I said a few days ago, though. However I haven't
| been on since April, so maybe they've changed it again.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I discovered that it doesn't cater to me before actually
| using it. Googled how to use it on desktop, found that there
| is no way other than emulating the mobile app. Not for me, I
| pass.
| intrasight wrote:
| I expect that they'll add a web client this year. And then
| we'll be able to add whatever filters we can dream up (and
| implement)
| internetter wrote:
| > But this is Meta/IG we're talking about, I'm sure they'll
| get their near-freaky level of algorithmic content targeting
| precision in there soon enough
|
| I keep hearing this. "Oh! The Algorithm gets me so well! It's
| so freaky!" about TikTok, IG, everything really... But let me
| tell you how my IG feed goes:
|
| I get 3 posts at the top, posted by my friends. I like all of
| them - even if I didn't _like_ it. I 'm just pleading to the
| algorithm to show me more from the people I care about. I
| then scroll for another 30 seconds through endless muck of
| golden retrievers, frat boys, etc. I'm hoping to see another
| post from my friends, but it just doesn't come. I leave the
| app for another week, until my friend shows me a post she
| made 2 weeks ago that was never shown to me.
|
| The algorithm makes social media a painful experience I
| avoid. I've enjoyed Mastodon, Snapchat, and BeReal MAGNITUDES
| more... Platforms without one, platforms where I'm actually
| "social".
| permo-w wrote:
| exactly. the instagram algorithm is horrendous. until this
| thread I'd never heard a single person praise it.
| suspicious? I don't know
|
| for example, a while ago a friend sent me 3 or 4
| relationship memes. I didn't like the posts, I may, at
| most, have reacted to one or two in chat, but since then my
| suggested posts have been 20-30% relationship memes. no
| matter how many times I say "I am not interested in content
| like this" or after blocking about 30 of the most common
| relationship meme hashtags, I still get the same 20-30% of
| posts, just now they have no or unusual tags. and then more
| recently, seemingly appropros of nothing this time -
| bodybuilding/fitness memes! it's the opposite of freakily
| good
| fotta wrote:
| I've stopped using the algorithm on IG. Instead I use the
| "Following" feed (tap the Instagram logo in the top left on
| the home pane) which is a reverse chronological feed of
| only the people I follow.
| internetter wrote:
| Yeah. That's better, agreed. I've been muting lots of
| accounts I want to follow, just to get the feed down to a
| clean friends only feed. It's better, but I guess my big
| point is that algorithms suck, at least from a user's
| perspective (I'm sure 90% junk mixed with 10% content to
| keep users engaged does wonders for profits)
| msravi wrote:
| Twitter unambiguously separates out the feed of people
| you're following and the algorithmic feed ("For you") in
| separate tabs (plus you can pin separate lists as tabs). It
| also opens up the feed you last used when you open a new
| session. Plus, the algorithm for the "For you" feed is open
| source[0]
|
| 0. https://github.com/twitter/the-algorithm
| joker_minmax wrote:
| I primarily use Instagram to follow artists, but yeah, my
| experience is about the same as what you listed. Before I
| took a hiatus from it, I just started going directly to my
| friend's pages to see if they shared anything new, and
| directly to the artists' pages to see if they were selling
| prints. Better than being forced to look at ads for
| essential oils vape pens.
| iszomer wrote:
| Same here. These days I only use Instagram to post art
| made and rendered during my commutes and consume
| similarly fashioned content. I haven't reached the point
| in "making prints available" nor have the desire to at
| this point in time.
| xg15 wrote:
| Yeah, it's not like meta has any other social media platforms
| to have gathered experience from...
| NullPrefix wrote:
| But why would you mute Aldi UK??
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