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Ask HN: It's almost 2021, what social media platforms do you still use?

by smurf_t on 12/23/20, 5:20 PM with 4 comments

In the last few years, I have consumed news/content mostly via Social media, and I keep noticing the redundancy and narrowed recommendations of (FB, Twitter) algorithmic timelines. Since I didn't want to use other apps to consume news, I initially tried to manually personalize my timelines. After several attempts, FB remains a black box, without easy ways to adjust/influence the "algorithmic" timeline. I started using Lists on Twitter and manually explore new content. I have tried to hack a tool to diversify the content, and have better success with reddit/twitter APIs, FB has strict API. To my surprise, I had better results using RSS feeds + script to cluster content -> slack summaries periodically, (Old) RSS feeds helped to passively monitor good content.

It's almost 2021, what social media platforms do you still use?. Is it just me, or do you notice such problems with algorithmic timelines.

As a user, I just want to have a better algorithmic timelines, with no harmful personalization that cage us in our filter bubble.

As a (ML) developer, I want to have a better API/system that can enable me to customize or deploy my recommendation/news trending models; why do we still need to use one "recommendation model for every user on social platform" that is unknown for end user, I believe user/community should have flexibility to deploy their own recsys models.

  • by Normille on 12/23/20, 9:09 PM

    I've given up on social media entirely. I've never had a Facebook account. I gave up Twitter last year and Instagram earlier this year. Once I got over that reflex of feeling the need to respond to events by shouting my useless opinions into the same void as everyone else, I found I don't miss any of it in the slightest.

    I did subsequently and very briefly dabble with a few of the others; Scuttlebut, Mastodon, Minds...etc but found I'd completely lost interest in social media of any kind.

    Commenting on HN and The Register pretty much does me for scratching the "Someone is wrong on the internet!" itch, these days.

  • by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF on 12/23/20, 5:28 PM

    > As a user, I just want to have a better algorithmic timelines, with no harmful personalization that cage us in our filter bubble

    The solution to that, in my opinion, is and has been to just stick to the classic chronological timeline with customizable filter or priority options given to the user. The algorithmic shenanigans every big social media company performs will always lead to them trying to force us to see what they want us to see, or to maximize outrage and engagement without regard for actual quality.

  • by resynth1943 on 12/23/20, 5:33 PM

    I use Mastodon, which displays posts in a chronological order, without any black-box AI algorithms. https://joinmastodon.org if you're interested :-)

  • by techsin101 on 12/24/20, 1:33 AM

    not facebook but messenger for sharing linnks

    hangouts

    slack

    whatsapp

    reddit but comment rarely

    dont really use: twitter, linkedin, tiktok, fb, discord, insta, etc