[HN Gopher] Attention Media [?] Social Networks
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Attention Media [?] Social Networks
Author : susam
Score : 195 points
Date : 2026-02-22 12:36 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (susam.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (susam.net)
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| "Over time, my timeline contained fewer and fewer posts from
| friends and more and more content from random strangers. "
|
| It still baffles me that Facebook fills up my feed with random
| garbage I have no interest in. I barely use it now because their
| generated content gets in the way of the reason why I opened
| facebook to begin with. These algorithmic feeds clearly work for
| someone but its not what I am looking for, I want to see what I
| follow and nothing else unless I explictly go looking for it.
| keyraycheck wrote:
| While number of active users still grows, one have to ask a
| question, who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies
| and bots.
|
| The only reason why I didn't delete facebook is messenger,
| where I chat with old folks.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Plot twist: all old folks were also on Facebook only to chat
| with other old folks. Once this fact was spotted, they all
| just moved to Discord.
| ben_w wrote:
| > who is left on facebook aside from dopamine junkies and
| bots.
|
| Political activists, like a former partner of mine.
|
| ... who I mute, because I am a British person living in
| Berlin, I don't need or want "Demexit Memes" and similar
| groups, which is 90% of what they post ...
|
| ... which in turn means that sometimes when I visit Facebook,
| my feed is actually empty, because nobody else is posting
| anything ...
|
| ... which is still an improvement on when the algorithm
| decides to fill it up with junk, as the algorithm shows me
| people I don't know doing things I don't care abut
| interspersed with adverts for stuff I can't use (for all they
| talk about the "value" of the ads, I get ads both for dick
| pills _and_ boob surgery, and tax advisors for a country I
| don 't live in who specialise in helping people renounce I
| nationality I never had in the first place, and sometimes ads
| I not only can't read but can't even pronounce because
| they're in cyrillic).
| naravara wrote:
| I take poorly directed targeting advertisements as a
| performance indicator for how well my data privacy efforts
| are working. When the ad targeting has you dead to rights
| is when you need to worry.
| ben_w wrote:
| To an extent, sure, but I think also a sign their
| analytics were never as good as they claimed.
|
| For example, so far as I know my name is strongly
| gendered male, so why the boob surgery ads?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > my name is strongly gendered male, so why the boob
| surgery ads?
|
| Probably so you can suggest it to your partner.
| ericmay wrote:
| "Who is left on Facebook besides dopamine junkies and bots?"
|
| "I only use it in this limited circumstance"
|
| _You_ are on Facebook. That's who. It's like saying you're
| not a drinker because you have a glass of wine every once in
| a while. Sure you're not an addict (probably) but you still
| drink.
| theodric wrote:
| I'm happy they've been able to build a $1,660,000,000,000
| company on the back of me logging in once every two months,
| scrolling 3 posts, getting disgusted with slop, and closing
| the tab. Gives me hope that my harebrained ventures may
| also succeed!
| ericmay wrote:
| I don't buy it. You use it more than that - otherwise
| you'd just delete your account.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > It's like saying you're not a drinker because you have a
| glass of wine every once in a while.
|
| https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/animals-and-
| us/20110...
|
| > Take a 2002 Times/CNN poll on the eating habits of 10,000
| Americans. Six percent of the individuals surveyed said
| they considered themselves vegetarian. But when asked by
| the pollsters what they had eaten in the last 24 hours, 60%
| of the self-described "vegetarians" admitted that that had
| consumed red meat, poultry, or fish the previous day.
| hippo22 wrote:
| Your friends don't produce much content yet people had a need
| for frequent entertainment. Also, people realized that posting
| things to social media meant that it was there forever. This
| led to a bifurcation: friends / family updates are mostly
| relegated to temporary formats like stories while "feed"
| content is professional produced.
| BorisMelnik wrote:
| hey you know there is a feed on mobile, built into the app that
| only shows you your friends feed? not a fb employee or
| defending them just relaying info.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Too late. (And I don't do mobile anyway.)
|
| I don't wish to sound like I am shooting the messenger here,
| but Meta just has way, way too much baggage for me to ever
| consider returning.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| People seek novelty. Real social networks do not change as fast
| as that.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Instagram followed a similar trajectory for me. For a while, as
| a photography hobbyist, it was a far more "active" social
| community for photography enthusiasts than whatever came before
| (Flickr, Smugmug, photo.net, various niche forums). I made
| photography friends thru it that I met in person even when
| traveling overseas. This lasted maybe 2 years.
|
| Then all the "normies" got on it and my feed started to just be
| casual snaps by people I knew in real life... which rapidly
| lead to its final form.
|
| It is now fully an influencer economy of people making a full-
| time job out of posting thirst traps / status envy / travelp*rn
| / whatever you wanna call it. It is a complete inundation of
| spend spend spend.
| benjiweber wrote:
| This reminded me of this video from a more optimistic time
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| Thank you for posting this. Despite being an old video, I had
| never come across it, and it almost made me tear up. It showed
| me the hope that I wished the web would be, despite it never
| realizing that ambition, with businesses that only pursued
| engagement metrics, and governments who saw value in
| vassalizing tech companies to pursue their political goals.
| creamyhorror wrote:
| I was always perturbed by the shift from calling them "social
| networks" to "social media". It signalled a friends-to-famous
| shift (plus ads) that I didn't particularly want.
|
| Why fill my personal feed with stuff I normally get on dedicated
| discussion/news sites? (Rhetorical; it's obvious why.)
|
| They still call it SNS (social networking service) in Japan. We
| need to keep moving to a new iteration of this - hopefully one
| that funnels less money and influence to a small group of
| players. (I'm working on my own ideas for this.)
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| I guess social networking service is actually a more appropiate
| name for the thing.
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| Any other platforms like Mastodon which are doing things well -
| are you guys on lemmy?
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Lemmy is mostly a clone of reddit with a lot less people on it.
| That is to say it works fairly well and doesn't yet seem filled
| with bots, but its got the same issues as Reddit since its
| based on the same design.
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| What were the main issues of reddit according to you?
| AdamN wrote:
| I'll answer - too many bots and most communities don't
| demand high quality comments. I still use it though - it's
| my only social network (although I don't think it's really
| a social network since I have no durable social connections
| with anybody there and I presume most other people don't
| either).
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| Reddit does give a lot of value - despite the
| shortcomings.
| bloggie wrote:
| The idea that community votes will result in the best
| content floating to the top is flawed, because what happens
| is the most popular content gets upvoted and not
| necessarily the most insightful or pertinent. This effect
| is magnified as the network or communities grow and welcome
| more a more general audience. The most prominent commentary
| is often useless jokes, memes, reactions etc. Slashdot, HN,
| lobsters have similar flaws with different strategies to
| overcome them.
| dhruv3006 wrote:
| Yep - true I do see things being easily gamed but then
| also lemmyverse does seem to be a personal favourite now
| - i hope things don't change down the line.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I still think it's worth reflecting which of the toxic patterns
| we want to, or don't want to reproduce on non-commercial networks
| like mastodon. Infinite scroll, quote reply, the like button...
| all these aren't neutral, and discussions were rightly heated
| about introducing them.
| ceayo wrote:
| You're so right... Some of these patterns are, to their very
| core, parts of what make these social media bad.
| adithyassekhar wrote:
| This might be controversial. Please disagree with me.
|
| When these were social networks, I remember my friends and later
| myself too, changed our profiles to public, send requests to
| random strangers, messaged them to like our pictures. We were
| teenagers and we were competing on who's more famous by having a
| bigger number next to our friends list or likes. There was no
| influencer culture back then yet everyone was trying to be this
| new thing. There were rarely any influencer type features on
| these platforms.
|
| So I won't blame facebook or Instagram for being what it is
| today, moving away from friends to social media stars. They saw
| what people were doing and only supported them. People did what
| people did.
| blurbleblurble wrote:
| "We deserve it" is the tldr I gather from you here, just like
| people addicted to opiates are ultimately responsible for the
| way those drug companies systematically set them up for that,
| right?
|
| I disagree with you. These companies employ PhD scientists who
| know exactly what they're doing to find and exploit the kinds
| of vulnerabilities you confess to along with ones you and I
| don't even remotely realize we have. It's not innocent by any
| means whatsoever.
| wiseowise wrote:
| That's nonsense. Nobody asked for algorithmic feed pushing
| schizo agenda on you.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > They saw what people were doing and only supported them.
| People did what people did.
|
| Imagine the government saw the fentanyl crisis and started
| making fentanyl to support the habits of its citizens.
|
| Not every single trend humans take on should be encouraged. We
| can be dumb as individuals, as well as collectively. At least
| in bursts.
| tolerance wrote:
| Between the history of crack cocaine in inner cities, safe
| injection sites and the current trajectory of American
| governance, I'm flummoxed by your incredulous posture here.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| IMHO, any social network that offers an "explore" section (i.e. a
| feed of strangers' posts) is doomed, independently of whether it
| is algorithmically filtered or chronologically. I ultimately
| dropped Mastodon because the "dumb" feed from my instance was
| already enough to waste my time.
|
| To prove this, just use Instagram or Facebook from your browser
| with the proper extensions and they'll stop being absolute
| worthless time sinks
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| I have never used the explore function of any social media app
| ever. I never want it, I have never found it useful. If I want
| random submitted content by strangers I go to message
| boards/forums/etc. That was a great space reddit filled for
| years, now HN for me.
|
| Social media is at its best when it's just stuff from people I
| choose to follow or know.
| Jeff_Brown wrote:
| This feels like the most important comment here. Do other
| Mastodon users feel the same? The OP Madden me want to try
| Mastodon.
| asim wrote:
| Mastodon really isn't the answer. You frequent enough servers and
| you realise social media has taught people bad habits..not
| everything needs to be expressed online. Genuinely I think people
| need something else. The format fails.
|
| What's the alternative? I don't know. But I'm trying to figure it
| out. Why? Because walking away from it all isn't the right
| answer. Why? Because we leave behind all those people addicted to
| it. So I think there are new tools to be created but they strip
| away the addictive behaviours and try to avoid the forms of media
| that caused the issue in the first place.
| everdrive wrote:
| I'm glad you said so. So many people take the wrong lessons
| from social media, and just keep trying to rebuild it more-or-
| less as-is and inherit most of the flaws that made it awful in
| the first place. What People fail to understand is that in a
| very narrow sense, it's better to think of social media like
| alcohol. It feels good to get a buzz and relax, but the next
| day you're worse off. Drinking a lot of the time makes your
| life actively worse even if in the moment you feel good. Social
| media should be thought of through that lens -- if you think
| you want to preserve "the good parts," you're like an alcoholic
| who keeps finding a reason to continue drinking. "No, the
| problem was just drinking alone. Now that I'm drinking at the
| bar, socially, it's OK!" To an extent, but mostly it's harming
| you.
| OneMorePerson wrote:
| When you say leave behind...do you mean you lose something by
| not interacting with them, or do you mean that you have some
| kind of duty to help get them un-addicted? I don't think you
| are obligated to go hangout at your local bar once a week just
| because alcoholics exist.
| naravara wrote:
| I think the challenge is that the addictive formats will
| naturally outcompete the healthy ones because they're, well,
| addicting. They exert a force pulling people into their orbit
| and starving anything designed for healthier (less frequent)
| engagement.
|
| I don't think you can do it without pushing people away
| somehow. It wouldn't have to be regulatory, but I don't know
| how else. Social shame might work if you could convince people
| it's dorky and cringe to be on it too much, but the insidious
| nature of it is that the social media itself starts to comprise
| a big chunk of people's social universe so it's self-
| reinforcing.
| wussboy wrote:
| And the social media companies, who have essentially
| unlimited resources, would fight it tooth and nail
| procaryote wrote:
| > Because walking away from it all isn't the right answer. Why?
| Because we leave behind all those people addicted to it.
|
| Don't start drinking or smoking, because with this logic you'll
| have a really hard time quitting
| dangus wrote:
| The title of the article is arguing semantics. Like it or not,
| the term "social media" is what we use to describe scroll apps
| like TikTok.
|
| The content makes sense, though. It's nice to just follow people
| you actually know and see nothing else.
|
| I think this is what keeps YouTube usable for me: the
| subscriptions tab stays in its lane. I only use the home
| (algorithm) tab when I want to.
| pvtmert wrote:
| Unrelated to the topic described in the blog itself, I overall
| like the theme of `susam.net`. The name itself reminded me of a
| sesame seed in Turkish for a while. (I think author had recently
| mentioned one of the recent posts that they wanted to get
| susam.com but that was already taken by a Turkish company selling
| some spices...)
|
| The content (that shows up in HN) is also good. Since I am on
| mobile device, I cannot tell the exact font used, but seems like
| Georgia to me. While https://github.com/susam/susam.net hosts the
| actual source code of the website.
|
| Another remark: Would be really nice to have a same theme
| adaptation for BearBlog and similar places.
| MinimalAction wrote:
| Agreed! I thought this site was generated in Hugo for some
| reason. Never knew Lisp was used until I saw that GitHub you
| linked.
| grishka wrote:
| I myself started making the same distinction when I talk about
| these things in English, except it's "social _media_ " vs "social
| _networks_ ". Though I have no idea how to make that distinction
| in Russian, social "media" never caught on as a term there.
|
| An extra annoying problem about social _media_ for me is that
| while I can make most of the platforms give me a chronological
| feed of content authored only by people I follow, most other
| people see mine in an algorithmic feed. This includes people I
| have zero social connections with. For example, I just gave up
| trying to discuss politics on Twitter, because every time I post
| anything political, that tweet ends up in the feeds if hundreds
| of people who hold the radical version of opposite views, with
| predictable results. And there 's nothing I can do. I can't opt
| out of being recommended.
| wussboy wrote:
| Sure you can. You can not post political things on social
| networks. They're not doing any good anyway. They're not
| changing anyone's mind. They're not providing depth or width to
| the discussion. I don't say this to be insulting, but rather a
| realist.
| lapcat wrote:
| Why do you assume that there needs to be a purpose other than
| discussing a topic that you're interested in?
| wussboy wrote:
| Politics is a complex topic. If you want to learn more,
| social media is not the way to do it. Well reasoned books
| and essays are. If you want to convince others of your
| positions, social media is not the way to do it. Personal
| relationships in real life are.
|
| What's left?
| lapcat wrote:
| Again, you seem to insist on an ulterior motive,
| completely discounting the value or pleasure of
| conversation. In contrast, reading is a solitary
| activity. Have you heard of book clubs? People read
| books, and _then_ they get together to discuss the books.
|
| Hacker News itself is all about reading articles, and
| then discussing the articles with others. "If you had to
| reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything
| that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
| grishka wrote:
| My point is that I just want to be able to discuss _any
| topic_ with my followers without self-policing lest a bunch
| of anonymous accounts butts into the conversation and
| completely derails it.
| Simboo wrote:
| Why won't their stock crash and burn already???
| blfr wrote:
| Sure, the modern Twitter/X feed is not like the original reverse
| chronological timeline but the latter is still available right
| next to it. Maybe it's the power of the default but I find the
| algorithmic feed much better.
|
| The chronological timeline is only manageable up to a point. I
| follow just under 2000 accounts on Twitter. They at least
| occasionally at least in some period in the past must have been
| posting interesting stuff or I wouldn't have followed them. But
| not all of them all the time. Algorithmic feed surfaces the good
| stuff, or at least popular, but lately it picks some very niche
| stuff successfully. Same on TikTok.
|
| The modern feed is a clever generalization of the previous age
| tech. And sometimes you just like the previous gen more but there
| is a reason the new version got traction.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I struggle to see anything "social" about social media. Look at
| short videos of others and ads is anything but social activity.
| vaylian wrote:
| The problem is that people who don't know the history of the
| internet just call everything "social media" where people can
| post additional content on a web site. Web 2.0 has some overlap
| with social networks. But it is still a different concept. And
| social media is a meaningless term at this point.
| gradus_ad wrote:
| I will admit, one thing the crowd attention model does
| exceptionally well is surface the best comments on content.
| Whether it's HN, Instagram, YouTube, etc... the top comments are
| usually the "best", depending on how best is defined in the given
| context. On the silly Instagram meme videos my algo serves up,
| the top comments are invariably hilarious, often funnier than the
| actual content, and as you scroll it's impressive how the
| ordering by like count matches hilarity quite well.
| bananaflag wrote:
| This works on platforms like HN, Less Wrong or niche
| subreddits, which
|
| i) work on the reddit model (submissions + comments on them)
| ii) are heavily moderated (e.g. no memes but also specific
| restrictions like on a book series subreddit to not discuss the
| movie adaptations)
|
| Then this vote-based ranking makes cream rise to the top, I
| agree.
|
| In general, your "depending on how best is defined in the given
| context" does a lot of heavy lifting.
| julianeon wrote:
| This post has convinced me to give Mastodon another try.
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