from Hacker News

The End of Social Media

by miikavonbell on 8/20/21, 1:24 PM with 112 comments

  • by donretag on 8/20/21, 4:48 PM

    Here is my take: content creators are the problem.

    When Friendster, MySpace,Facebook, et al started, it was about connecting friends online. People that already had a connection. When you shared something, you wanted to share something personal with friends. YouTube was about sharing your home videos. Not for money, but for actually sharing. What a strange concept!

    Then people noticed you can monetize their content. No longer was it about sharing with friends, but creating for profit.

    Social networks, as they were envisioned, are a great concept. As a method for distributing content to be monetized, not so much.

  • by markbnj on 8/20/21, 2:43 PM

    >> Some time ago I tried to find information about Crocodiles, the animals. Instead, I got results about Crocs shoes and zero information about the actual crocodiles.

    I just entered 'crocodile' into Google search while signed into my normal private account, and got a ton of useful information about crocodiles. Shoes were nowhere to be found in the first 30 or 40 results that I scanned. I don't know if the OP is using a different search engine that is more blatant about ads.

  • by AlbertCory on 8/20/21, 4:35 PM

    This is a junk article. Why is it even on the front page?

    60 years ago, before even the ARPANET, there was Newton Minow giving a speech [1] about how TV was garbage (the "vast wasteland" speech). If you want to read something timeless, read that instead.

    [1] https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2011/09/the-vast-wast...

  • by duxup on 8/20/21, 3:13 PM

    Problems I see:

    - Most content produced by people on social media is not good and you probably don't want to see it. Serendipity of a bunch of crappy content "I had a bad day nobody ask me about it" is not something you want, but it is serendipity.

    - Social media isn't where you go to get info on Crocodiles, not sure how that would even work? That's Wikipedia. ... or if we're talking social media, YouTube (I searched YouTube and got a lot of legitimate results).

  • by crazy_horse on 8/20/21, 2:29 PM

    I'm not sure how to phrase this without sounding rude, but what is this saying that adds insight to what I've been reading on places like HN for a decade?

    Is it true that people are getting dumber? Big claim, no evidence. Do paragraphs exist? I'm looking for solution. Saying nobody knows what the future looks like ain't it.

  • by monkeynotes on 8/20/21, 2:38 PM

    Social media isn't over, just as trash TV, and entertainment parading as news isn't over.

  • by lsalvatore on 8/20/21, 6:29 PM

    Most instagram ads are more entertaining and insightful than this article. Advertising is actually about educating the consumer for many products, and I think we're moving more toward personal ads that don't feel like ads. Sometimes you come across an ad that helps you or even changes your life. Things like new games, books or ideas. This article has nothing to do with the end of social media.

  • by ramesh31 on 8/20/21, 2:58 PM

    YouTube is the only "social network" that I can defend. I honestly think it's the very best thing to ever come out of the Web. The key to it though is using it without a Google login and with cookies disabled. This gives you the default algorithm free experience and forces you to engage your brain to think about what you want to see, rather than being spoon fed down a rabbit hole.

  • by fsiefken on 8/20/21, 3:34 PM

    for a long while i was thinking my comments on facebook would raise the quality of interaction, but with the onslaught of disinformation my thoughtful and respectful comments (or so I think) seem to be futile and just fodder for the facebook network and the attention economy.

    So I wrote a goodbye note on instagram and facebook, felt confirmation by reading Jaron Lanier. Got a new domain and configured jekyll.

    Now I can blog and write my 'digital garden' notes on my own island and share it with a smaller circle of people outside of the regular social media which artificially disciplines my thoughts, responses and behavior like the panopticon (michel foucault). I'll keep an eye on facebook groups, will schedule some script to rss-ify some feeds from 'facebook friends' but that's it.

  • by olah_1 on 8/20/21, 4:36 PM

    This reads like an advertisement for peer to peer apps like Manyverse[1], Iris[2], or Capsule[3].

    He mentions mirror.xyz in the footnotes, but I can't figure out what that is. One of those annoyingly exclusive projects like Clubhouse. The fact that not letting people in was a "feature" really just turned me off. Sour grapes, but oh well.

    [1]: https://www.manyver.se/

    [2]: https://iris.to

    [3]: https://capsule.social/

  • by animanoir on 8/20/21, 3:15 PM

    I believe blogging will have a Renaissance since it has all the benefits from "social networks" but excluding the ads, the unnecessary "likes", and focus on the fundamentals which are sharing and discussing, just like forums, but blogs will be about individuals mainly.

  • by LOOKOUT on 8/20/21, 6:50 PM

    One of the best features of a jailbroken iPhone is the ability to hide all ads on YouTube / Spotify / Instagram / Twitter / TikTok.

    I feel impervious to social media advertising & you can too if you just go through the effort.

  • by bodge5000 on 8/20/21, 3:45 PM

    "The end of social media" is quite a lofty statement, bearing in mind that facebook, twitter, ect... are social media, but social media isnt facebook, twitter.

    It'd be like if there were some massive drama involving Netflix and YouTube. You wouldnt call it the end of streaming, or web based video. There'd be a massive shift in the market certainly, and I think eventually social media will look completely different to how it looks now, but thats not the end.

    It might sound like I'm arguing over semantics but I'd disagree.

  • by wombatmobile on 8/20/21, 5:43 PM

    "New technology, this kind or any other kind, is a kind of Faustian bargain. It always gives us something important, but it also takes away something that's important. That's been true of the alphabet, the printing press, and telegraphy right up to the computer."

    Neil Postman on Cyberspace, 1995

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49rcVQ1vFAY

  • by jaredcwhite on 8/20/21, 9:35 PM

    I don't fully understand the point of the article, but there's my take anyway. ;-)

    I pay for YouTube Premium so I don't get any ads on YouTube. And I don't really care about the (crappy) algorithm because I only watch what I subscribe to.

    I hope Twitter's utility will similarly increase as they pivot to (a) premium paid services, and (b) open protocols via BlueSky.

    Glass is a new social media photography app for iOS that feels a lot like early Instagram, but it's a paid service with no ads.

    So yeah, perhaps it's the end of social media as we knew it…but that's fine because new and existing services will adapt to provide people premium experiences (for a fee of course).

    Remember, we are the internet. If we don't like what it is, we can build something better.

  • by miikavonbell on 8/21/21, 9:57 AM

    OP Here.

    Wasn't really expecting this much discussion and attention for my article, but I am quite happy to see so much people having similar thoughts like I have, which I wrote in my article.

    I wrote a follow up post to my blog to share some of my afterthoughts: https://miikavonbell.com/posts/front-page-hacker-news/

  • by mrfusion on 8/20/21, 5:06 PM

    I think an anonymous “dislike” button could go a long way in improving social media.

  • by gpsx on 8/20/21, 4:01 PM

    I don't think anyone likes advertising, but that does bankroll the internet. There are some great content providers on youtube who do that full time and make a living from it. Even many basic sites owe their existence to advertising because running a server is not free. But the joke in on the advertisers. Internet advertising doesn't work, or at least that is what I have read.

    If we hadn't had advertising but instead came up with some micropayment formalism, I bet the internet never would have developed to be what it is today, even for today's content that is not ad driven.

  • by sillycross on 8/20/21, 8:01 PM

    I completely agree with the author's rants on machine learning algorithm.

    > consuming content through internet has become more and more manipulative.

    This is 100% true. With those ML-based "personalized" info feed, users keep getting pushed biased information that matches their prejudice and is not a reflection of the true picture.

    I'm actually dubious that what fraction of the pro-Trump conspiracy theorists had developed their conspiracy views "thanks to" Facebook et al's ML-based info suggestion algorithms.

  • by joghues on 8/20/21, 4:58 PM

    It's just that people are making the most out of social media. Others have decided to make a hustle out of it, and it's not a bad thing as it allows other people to have money to put food on their table.

  • by thickened on 8/20/21, 3:52 PM

    Miika-

    This article is a dog whistle for right-wing behaviour and is quite frankly problematic, starting with this quip in the first paragraph which sets the stage: "[...] instead of letting algorithms and machine learning decide what is good for you."

    We've spent a good twenty years now, and longer really, building the infrastructure to ensure that when it comes to the World Wide Web, FAAMNG+ companies - not just restricted to US-centric ones but globally really - can make sure that the things you see, and the way the algorithms work, are done in a way that is good for you.

    I used to be against mass surveillance, logging everything, but seeing this kind of an article in 2021 sends shivers up my spine. I'm quite worried. Is this what we should look into next?