[HN Gopher] Quit Social Media (2016)
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Quit Social Media (2016)
Author : skadamat
Score : 36 points
Date : 2024-10-24 20:04 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (calnewport.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (calnewport.com)
| johnea wrote:
| So, should I join so that I can quit?
|
| The coming of the current cluster fuck was clear decades ago.
| Anyone who wasn't enamored by meme illiteracy never took that
| train...
| malfist wrote:
| I quit any non small community social media a few years ago and
| it's been really nice. My tolerance for trolls and thinking with
| people on the Internet is has dropped away down and I think I'm
| better for it.
|
| Certainly feels better
| elpocko wrote:
| >thinking with people on the Internet is has dropped away down
|
| What?
|
| Also, congrats for being less tolerant. I like that.
| Clubber wrote:
| I quit social media after the Snowden revelations.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Isn't it on the decline yet?
|
| Facebook is for boomers.
|
| Twitter is weird and we all realised how pointless it is to spend
| time falling out on there.
|
| Instagram feels a bit long in the tooth.
|
| LinkedIn is a parody of itself.
|
| Reddit feels like it's growing but I think that avoids the worst
| of social media.
|
| TikTok and YouTube shorts seem popular but aren't really social
| media. It's just time wasting junk.
|
| All in all, social media feels like it peaked a while back.
| jjordan wrote:
| Twitter/X is fantastic for breaking news. For example during
| the first assassination attempt you would find new details on
| there that would then appear on MSM newscasts one to two hours
| later.
|
| It also helps immensely to curate lists of interests to help
| filter out the noise and politics.
| eterm wrote:
| How is your life improved by getting that news minute by
| minute instead of an hour, or even a day, later?
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| or indeed, not at all? :)
| SimianSci wrote:
| There is a marked difference between "Breaking new
| developments" and misinformation being spread to juice
| engagement.
|
| Nobody should pretend that Twitter is a place where accurate
| information travels at light speed. It is in desperate need
| of moderation and being run by a man with clear monetary
| incentive to mislead the public.
| seanw444 wrote:
| > It is in desperate need of moderation and being run by a
| man with clear monetary incentive to mislead the public.
|
| I don't think you wrote that the way you meant to.
| swatcoder wrote:
| Unless it's regarding immediate local emergency that you
| might need to respond to, breaking news has _zero_ value
| besides a brain tickle and something to talk about.
|
| If you feel you have any kind of mood or attention
| challenges, as many now do, you might want to double check if
| it's something you should be optimizing for.
| dimal wrote:
| Honest question, why is breaking news important? How exactly
| does knowing unsubstantiated details about an event
| immediately male one's life better?
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I don't know how you can possibly say TikTok isn't social
| media. That seems like a rather absurd claim. What's your
| justification?
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| I haven't used it much but I think the main feed is very
| algorithmic, so you swipe for your dopamine without paying
| much attention to the profile. Because of that it's not
| really tied to your identity in quite the same way.
|
| It also seems quite professionalised in that the big content
| producers fill the feed.
|
| There's also something about it being video which makes it
| feel harmful but in a different way than a text based
| platform.
|
| I tend to think of TikTok as more of an entertainment
| platform rather than peer to peer social media.
|
| I'm not the target audience though so could be wide of the
| mark!
| mingus88 wrote:
| TikTok is 100% social media
|
| Although the line can get interesting. When I was active on
| Reddit I would argue that Reddit was not SM. From my
| perspective, Reddit was end stage web forum technology and
| link aggregators
|
| All the bespoke forums of the late 90s and early 2000s died
| for the most part and there is now a subreddit for every
| niche hobby that used to have a forum
|
| This stuff all predates Facebook, MySpace, Friendster,
| livejournal, that I would argue were new paradigms and the
| start of what we know as social media
|
| However to anyone not online during those times, Reddit is
| just another site where people post details of their own
| lives. Reddit responded by adding profiles and followers and
| all kinds of pseudo SM features
| freediver wrote:
| I would rephrase it to "quit ad-based social media". The
| incentives are perverse, there is an inherent conflict of
| interest in the business model and there is an intermediary
| between the user and information/community they want to
| participate in. This leads to most problems we see in legacy, ad-
| based, social media.
|
| Most successful social circles are ones where there is a barrier
| to entry. In life we do not let everyone into the friend circle.
| Having a barrier to entry model may work well for an online
| community, although this remains to be seen. Were there any
| successful experiments with paid social media?
| decasia wrote:
| I would love to pay for social software on a coop model (like a
| food coop, etc) -- we would be "members" and, theoretically, we
| pay a small monthly fee that covers the costs of hosting and
| platform development. I've tried to think about what I would
| want that to look like -- spoiler, something different than the
| model of "posting + reactions" that is so familiar from
| twitter+fb -- but then when I think about the barriers to entry
| for a project like that, even though the technological part
| might not be that difficult (assuming it was Less Than Web
| Scale), I just give up hoping for it.
|
| I've been following a lot of the bluesky + mastodon stuff but I
| don't like that their basic model of social interaction is just
| a clone of Twitter.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| I can't remember the name of it, but over a decade ago I saw
| something like this - it was a single Linux server shared by
| (I think) hundreds of people. Really trying to do the multi-
| user paradigm. They advertised it as a private kind of social
| network, it was invite-only and I think you had to pay to
| help keep the server lights on.
|
| Hopefully by posting something incorrect, A Person On The
| Internet Who Knows Better will come along and provide the
| correct details. :)
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Maybe SDF?
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SDF_Public_Access_Unix_Syst
| e...
|
| https://sdf.org/
| pram wrote:
| This is called a forum.
| seqizz wrote:
| We also do not let people into the friend circle just because
| they have money (I hope). IMHO healthiest "social media" I
| could think is interest groups. They eventually need some kind
| of donation from one or more people, but with no or minimal
| barriers.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| It's not a coincidence that Facebook started out as a college-
| only social network. That was the real barrier to entry.
| Kye wrote:
| (2016)
|
| Especially important because most of his commentary focuses on
| the dominant social media paradigm of the time. Mastodon barely
| existed when this post went live, Mike Masnick was years from
| writing the paper that inspired Bluesky[0], and it would be
| strange if someone whose whole thing is getting away from social
| media kept up on new developments.
|
| This post is an interesting historical artifact, but shouldn't be
| mistaken for contemporary commentary.
|
| [0] https://knightcolumbia.org/content/protocols-not-
| platforms-a...
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Mastodon and Bluesky are still such minor players (even though
| I enjoy these projects and am optimistic about their future)
| that I don't see anywhere where this doesn't pass for
| contemporary commentary.
| immibis wrote:
| Isn't Bluesky just a copy of Twitter from that era, anyway?
| solomonb wrote:
| He states:
|
| > What the market values is the ability to produce things that
| are rare and are valuable.
|
| > what the market dismisses are activities that are easy to
| replicate and produce a small amount of value. Well social media
| use is the epitome of an easy to replicate activity that does not
| produce a lot of value [...] by definition the market is not
| going to give those activieis a lot of value [...]."
|
| Yet in the years since this TEDx talk we have seen the rise of
| influencer and streamer celebrities who have gained an immense
| amount of wealth and power.
| nimbius wrote:
| perhaps a decade or more ago? not now.
|
| you will never become a streaming millionaire. talking heads
| like beast and pewdiepie employ literal armies of Hollywood
| editors and writers. For every organically grown insufferable
| content monster created on Youtube, ten more are vat-grown by a
| billion dollar industry designed to shepherd you into a fantasy
| consumerist lifestyle.
|
| These powerhouses of industry control the flow of capital at a
| level you will never be able to. they secure rights to music
| and video clips at rates you could never get, have tie-ins to
| major brands media and celebrities on day one, and are
| programmed with an endless firestorm of bots and preferential
| algorithmic treatment on every FAANG product in order to
| guarantee their success.
| redundantly wrote:
| > ... we have seen the rise of influencer and streamer
| celebrities who have gained an immense amount of wealth and
| power.
|
| For most influencers, they're not the ones with the wealth and
| power. Many of them are barely getting by. They rent content
| houses, clothing, cars, and other things they need to put on
| their facade.
|
| Pretty much all of the wealth and power is in the hands of the
| people that employ the influencers.
| poppycock wrote:
| Programmers (cs students, "engineers") are one of the most
| pompous group of people who think their ability to #include
| <stdio.h> gives them some special ability to speak about
| efficiency, physics, math (other than your run of the mill
| discrete or remedial linear algebra) or pretty much any other
| topic on the face of the Earth.
|
| Don't worry about your active Facebook account. People who make
| it a point to signal otherwise are just people who have no one in
| their personal lives to connect with (e.g. nieces, nephews,
| family, friends). They are outliers not the rule.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _People who make it a point to signal otherwise are just
| people who have no one in their personal lives to connect with
| (e.g. nieces, nephews, family, friends)._
|
| What credentials do you hold to make this claim? It better not
| be a CS degree.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It. (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38720087 - Dec 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It (2016)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16697004 - March 2018 (262
| comments)
|
| _Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13714509 - Feb 2017 (1
| comment)
|
| _Quit Social Media, Your Career May Depend on It_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12998698 - Nov 2016 (548
| comments)
|
| The NYT piece those were about is
| https://web.archive.org/web/20171114021224/https://www.nytim....
| Not the same as OP but same topic, author, year.
| motbus3 wrote:
| I won't advertise but I work for a company which holds a social
| media for cooking and recipes. Folks there are totally averse to
| those and based stuff.
|
| It has been hard for the company. The owner decided the company
| will die before using ads (for many reasons). The paid plan is
| stupidly cheap and when people sign and use for a month they
| stick with the company for years.
|
| But it is hard. Company laid off 80% of the team some time ago
| and is fighting to survive. I won't defend the owner or anyone,
| but things came to a point where people think they are not having
| consequences by giving infinite permission for being tracked all
| the time. They think if they are not logged they are not
| identified so they can't be exploited.
|
| It sucks because no one appreciates that. Though I have my
| opinions about business and whatever I kinda appreciate for the
| company not running on money from ads and not collecting a single
| piece of user information which is not required for work.
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