I think they are not social anymore, having been overrun with politics and ads. However they are still a network. There is a network effect (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect) that makes it valuable to the participants and advertisers alike, which is the large number of users. It’s just that the network’s value went from being driven by positive actions (sharing photos with friends) to something negative - which is preventing others’ political views or business competitors from winning by influencing the network. All sides feel like they have to participate because others participate and they’ll be irrelevant otherwise. In that sense it’s more like a war zone.
I hope we can come up with a new phrase that sticks for these. Some good ones have been posted here in the comments. Ideally, an altruistic entity will trademark them.
"User Engagement Networks" Sounds perfectly fine to me. At least there would be an idea of what these apps are trying to accomplish at the expense of the user.
This might sound like a nit, but I'd call it habit-forming, not addictive. I watched friends go from obsessed with Facebook when it launched to mostly using it for sharing family photos, and this is at a time when there was a focus on user engagement. It just seems like people lost interest too easily for it to be actual addiction.
According to the theory of the author, I've found that Twitter can be used like an actual social network and I do use it like this with a group of friends. It is kind of a cluster and anyone can join only by answering our tweets and hanging out.
Is there now a gap for a new social platform that goes back to chronologically ordered content from those you choose to follow/friend rather than algorithmically curated content from other sources designed to lure you in?
There is, but anyone who would fund it would require it to be monetized in the same way. This situation will continue to persist until people are willing to pay for such a service, and subvert the advertising motive. And, even then, we have the example of cable to show us that ads will probably creep back in, and come to dominate it all over again. When people are willing to drive dump trucks full of money to your loading dock, what else can you do? </s>
Very true. I have to confess to a very leading question there, as I am building exactly this and thinking long and hard about monetisation. I do like the cable analogy and think it's very true.
I think ads can be done better/more ethically than currently as well though - whether that be less of them, less "native" so they don't appear exactly like posts from your family/friends and with less granular targeting - whether advertisers would go for it is another matter entirely though...
I don't want Facebook to show me anything that isn't posted by one of my friends... are there any settings that allows that? Sure it's kind of interesting to look at a bear being washed by a human, but who cares.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 109 ms ] threadI hope we can come up with a new phrase that sticks for these. Some good ones have been posted here in the comments. Ideally, an altruistic entity will trademark them.
"We are Borg. You will be red pilled. Resistance is futile. Where we go one we go all!"
I think ads can be done better/more ethically than currently as well though - whether that be less of them, less "native" so they don't appear exactly like posts from your family/friends and with less granular targeting - whether advertisers would go for it is another matter entirely though...
EDIT: but I probably wouldn't use it either.
https://fediverse.party/en/fediverse