Its already frustrating enough having to use Facebook just to look up a restaurant's information, the set times for a concert, or whatever about a local business or event. If all that stuff starts to disappear behind a meta-verse wall, I might just leap off the nearest bridge instead.
Same! What a sad state the internet is in when a megaevil corp is used by local services to provide updates. I thought that was what Twitter was for?
I know several pacific islands were going to ban Facebook but apparently it's heavily in use by businesses.
Regina Lepping, a young entrepreneur from capital city Honiara, said the announcement had sent many small business owners scrambling to find alternatives to Facebook.
I've interacted with local businesses that use a Facebook page as a replacement for maintaining a website that they own. The rationale I've read is that their time is best spent providing their quality service versus learning website development (even with a block-based website builder), and hiring a web developer is too pricey, when they can create a Facebook page that is easy to set up.
Most importantly, it's easy for them to update and maintain a Facebook page, versus an independent website.
The federal government should launch its own platform for the US government and state and local governments to push all their updates. Something like Star Wars' Holonet.
This has always irked me. Perhaps it's heavy handed, but I would love a law that (1) requires governments at all levels to use open-access websites (and radio, a local newspaper of record, &c.), and (2) requires services like Facebook to syndicate any news and updates.
This is probably already the case : I can access my local government entities' FB pages without logging in to FB. Google indexes the pages so you don't need the FB search feature to find them.
Interesting that you would name a newspaper of record as a valid outlet for government news/updates. I feel like Facebook could make an argument for being essentially that today - after all, it is where the eyeballs are, which is why people use it for marriage announcements, birth announcements, classifieds, obituaries.... and on and on.
A newspaper of record has additional advantages. For example, the newspaper can't accidentally delete or automoderate an already published article, and anybody can cut the article out of the newspaper and save it without having to pay for electricity and digital storage media in perpetuity.
There is also comparatively more at stake when a newspaper gets facts wrong, versus misinformation on a Facebook post. When a newspaper mistakenly publishes false information at the time (which should not happen too often due to internal fact-checking teams or at least a trained editor and journalist), they issue a correction out of journalistic ethics. But when a Facebook post publishes a falsehood, there is far less obligation to issue a correction notice or remove the post.
A "straw man" is an intentionally weak opponent in an argument. I don't think I've done that (where, in this thread, would I have the occasion to?)
I'm not comparing physical newspapers to Facebook. The Internet has obviously won. What I've said is that governments of all levels should not be allowed to solely distribute important public information solely via private platforms. A newspaper was just an obvious example, one that already has a legal precedent.
You can download scanned versions of respectable local newspapers for free (or at least, already paid for by taxes) in many US and Canadian cities if you have a public library card, by checking if you have a PressReader resource with the library. For example (just because it's a big city), the New York Public Library offers the service [0]. This is useful if there is interest in reading in-depth content about local news.
But newspapers can't ban you permanently from ever reading again (including bans that track you via device or IP or other factors) for a one-time mistake like a drunk rant where you said the wrong thing. Imagine a hormonal 16 year old makes a violent (but ultimately just them spouting off with no real intent to follow through) threat against a local police department.
In the modern world, they basically lose digital citizenship for their mistake. There's no route for reconciliation or re-entry into society when it comes to major tech platforms and bans. With prison, you theoretically pay your time and then can re-enter society. Not so with online bans.
By doing this, you are making them legally legitimate to convey imprudent information.
No, the simple solution is to enforce public authorities not to use Facebook (or similar platform) as their main communication channel.
You know the saying "it’s easy to make a Twitter clone, it’s not easy to become Twitter". Well government don’t need to become Twitter, so what is stopping them to provide a "public" Twitter clone just for those communications ?
If by 'lose digital citizenship' you mean 'kicked off Facebook' I think that's probably overstating. I got my first domestic internet connection in 1996 and have never had a Facebook account yet don't in any way feel deprived of 'digital citizenship'. Perhaps I'm unique!
I understand that in Italy without a facebook (ie whatsapp) account it is very difficult to live a day-to-day life due to the fact that most vendors (eg doctor's offices) assume all customers have one.
The US already has a federal law mandating Government Access Television, and many states have corresponding laws[1]. The costs for it are already built into our cable and other distribution costs.
Similarly, every state that I'm aware of has both a Public Access Radio station and carries NPR broadcasting.
The government should be creating their own services for both state and local governments to create websites. Instead, you got a 10,000 vendors charging outrageous prices that can't even get something like security right. Something like 18F would be awesome for these cities to start using. Unfortunately, politics is very corrupt so politicians are always going to want to pay a friend of a friend a million dollars to say that it was the vendors fault than to do something right, and the vendor will have some reason why it wasn't their fault. Rinse, recycle, repeat.
I basically still log in for interest group posts (e.g., photos from my son's preschool) and to RSVP for party invites. I'd love to see alternatives take over for these.
You're right, it's dismal. I appeal you make it the furthest away bridge, give yourself plenty of time to reconsider, and maybe find a nice restaurant, concert, business or event along the way.
Yes, it feels like a return to the walled-garden days of America Online, Prodigy, CompuServe, etc. Essentially, they seem to be want to create a separate network that they control--one that is not "internet-ed" to other networks in an open fashion.
It's also a very American-centric view. The rest of the world is going back to forums and single-platform chatrooms and avoiding reddit/twitter/facebook, but never had an AOL/ProdigyCompuServe phase to go through.
If we could just get discord to <insert short feature wishlist> then I reckon the golden IRC days would be back with a vengence.
IRC’s UX never went away for the masses, people use IRC semantics all the time on Slack and Discord. The UX that never became mainstream once the internet was, is the same as it ever was: people by and large don’t value decentralization and don’t understand how to use it effectively. The closest it’s ever gotten was torrents, and even then most people didn’t branch out from TPB.
No, the only similarity Slack on Discord have is that they are "chat like" and have "chat rooms"/"channels".
But the whole UX around using them is very very different.
And that is what matters for the normal user.
Just the list of lacking default features is quite long, like: predictable display of formatting, emoji, pictures, file sharing, voice chat, nested conversations/threads, chat history,
different user roles, user avatars, etc.
And yes you can bolt all of this on top of IRC, but that doesn't matter. Defaults matter. At least for the common users UX.
And as long as the IRC standard doesn't include most of this points by default (especially chat history, avatars, etc.) it won't have another golden time.
Also no msg-commands as the default way to do things, programmers might like them, the common user doesn't.
Future archaeologists are going to be sifting through the landfills and determine that AOL discs are going to either be some sort of currency or curious religious artifacts.
I was on AOL for a big stretch of that time, and those archaeologists wouldn’t be wrong. It was so pervasive that it was a thing of wonder and majesty on the actual www (eg the classic viral Web 1.0 post about getting a license plate starting with ASL).
I almost remember the exact moment I realised that AOL in fact wasn't the internet but rather some shovelware that sat above it. As soon as I got winsock working I never went back.
Well, yeah you make a fair point there. I can't speak to who used them but it at least felt like free AOL and Compuserve hours were in heavy use. Might just have been in my tiny sphere though.
Unless “short feature wishlist” is “open source both the client and the server”, then the golden IRC days are not coming back. The whole point of IRC is that there isn’t a central point of control.
> The rest of the world [snip] never had an AOL/ProdigyCompuServe phase
In the Phillipines, Facebook is tied in with your mobile provider so most people only got Facebook (when I was there some years ago). Facebook is what some people there called the internet. Definitely a walled in garden, and definitely a strategy by Facebook to create a moat in some countries.
I'm aware of this 'colonising strategy' of FB in developing markets and I find it really sad that many people's first experience of the net and the web will have been FB.
It was a walled garden in a slightly different sense. AOL tried their best to force companies to buy AOL “keyword” so that the clueless user doesn’t have to type .com or .net at the end. If you want a comparison, that is like Google putting “I am feeling lucky” as the only option and then auctioning off that result.
Yep I guess the pull to be a walled garden is too great. Even Twitter, a product that should have been the true antithesis to walled garden pigeon holed themselves into walled garden state. I wrote a blog post about it a long time ago https://medium.com/@shareU/we-built-this-city-2cb97437942f
I'm not a huge fan of medium either, but I was able to scroll through the whole article without logging in. There's a prompt at the top, but nothing too obtrusive. I even tried with ublock origin off. What am I missing?
Medium is extremely inconsistent with their account-/pay-walling. I think it’s intentionally chaotic and confusing to drive signup/subscription rates that wouldn’t happen if they communicated clearly what limits you’ve actually encountered.
To be fair (to myself and my feelings about walled gardens) I updated the post in 2018 but first I wrote it in 2012 when Medium was this cool new anti-wordpress blogging platform and it proves my point exactly.
Thanks for putting into words what I've been noticing and feeling. There's something dreadful that ephemerally appears whenever a service or someone links to an FB page.
This is my question too. I’ve never used Facebook, yet I’ve never had any trouble finding the information I am looking for. Is it just very very specific places?
A lot of small businesses in the UK seem to use Facebook rather than putting up a web page. I can see why they do it, it doesn't cost anything and they don't need to worry about renewing domains or hosting issues. It's not a great experience for their customers though, especially if you don't have a Facebook account.
It's possible you're not in the same market as us. Lots of small businesses have no interest in running and updating a website, especially when there's a free alternative that most of their customers have access to.
I didn't have facebook for the last few years and I was wondering if I'd have to come back to it to be able to access local news/info. Never happened and never needed to. It's true though that in some countries that's the primary communication channel for businesses and even governments unfortunately.
All of your customers will continue to be Facebook users if you post things on a Facebook page that only Facebook users can view. And Facebook users are an apparently diminishing portion of the population, as per the article this thread is discussing...
Not a good plan for any business, I would think. Would be nice to see more businesses on Mastodon or (gasp!) just run their own websites again. Can you imagine how difficult it must be for a business to buy a domain, hosting, and slap together a static site in this day and age?
Many restaurants don't have a website anymore. Yes, you can google for directions and opening times, but you can find menu or daily lunch on their Facebook only.
I'm not sure if Google put a stop to it, but in my area there was an issue about 6-8 months ago with the business hours listed on Google being changed by competitors. Usually they would alter opening or closing hours by an hour or two, so it wasn't obvious.
I have never used Facebook and I’ve never had trouble finding that kind of information on non-Facebook sites. Are you just used to looking on Facebook first?
There are many businesses (Restaurants, doggy daycare) that no longer have websites but have transitioned solely to a Facebook page for cost and technical ease of maintenance reasons.
I only use it to find local events. If it weren’t for fb and insta you’d think nothing was happening at all. The old local publications were all mothballed by the pandemic.
I wonder what percentage of Facebook's users are only there because of 3 or fewer friends, bands, groups/clubs/interests, or businesses that still use Facebook as their primary means of communication.
This is the reason I went anti facebook years back not because of privacy implications but I felt with facebook the web will become less open. As most business will make a facebook page instead of a website accessible to everyone
Which is impressive because I still have Facebook I just don't login and never use any of its services - the account now exists to simply hold a lock on my name on the service.
https://backlinko.com/facebook-users claims "Official Daily active users (DAUs) definition: Daily active users or DAUs is defined as a registered and logged-in user to Facebook who visits the site through a mobile device application or web browser on any given day."
> I still remember it and the changes that came after it, the McDonalds of today is nothing like the McDonalds of 2003.
Building remodels aside, what are you referring to? They have chicken wraps and salads? Otherwise it seems more or less the same McDonalds of my childhood?
More likely FBs network effort is the weakest in those markets: less internet penetration, weaker brand loyalty, Fb is also relatively new in these markets, more competition from tiktok and others.
It is just me or there seems to be a strange lack of criticism about TikTok on the same or stricter level than FB. Especially that it is a Chinese company HQ’ed in Beijing. Neither do I ever see discussion about the asymmetry in China’s trade policies with regards to FB/Tiktok. Tiktok enjoys free market access (except India), whereas FB is banned in China just like many other US-based platforms. On the contrary, there seems to be praise about TikTok on HN!
How come we don’t see scathing articles on NYT about TikTok but on WSJ? Has this become a partisan issue (Trump wanted to ban Tiktok)?
I think it's because of the perception TikTok=cat and dance videos, FB=misinformation. At least that's what my feeds looks like. Also: TikTok=kids, FB=adults
I use Instagram daily. I love it. And so do my friends. Ads are also very on point and small business oriented. No scams. Instagram has super cool retro computing and countless vaporwave aesthetic channels that frankly are unique to IG. It’s incredible. I have curated my own feed using the save feature. Never used FB but IG seems to be better than Tiktok mentally and otherwise.
Could “misinformation” be a misnomer? I think the problem is in the way it’s consumed that is similar to a rhyme or a chant, rather than accuracies of information contained therein.
LOL at the downvotes. Seems like a lot of comments critical of TikTok are being downvoted in this thread. I wonder if they are hiring vote farms to manage their reputation online.
I don't use either service, but it's my impression that the misinformation on TikTok is more on the "petty harm to individuals" level and less on the "destroys the social and political fabric of societies" level.
There are tons of questionable political propaganda in Tiktok too.
It's not just a kids app anymore, if you start dismissing content aimed at teenagers, you quickly get into a bubble of content made for more mature audiences: daddy jokes, bloopers, political content and more. It's surprising the number of creators above 20, 30 and more years old there.
In my country, there are even congressmen and runner-ups that post content there daily.
Anyway, the problem with it, in my opinion, is how content is promoted in the app. The next video is just a swipe away (and every time an user swipes too early, you loose "points"). It encourages sensationalist and alarmist content, the creator must keep the audience engajed without swiping it, so the more chocking, the best - just like any other social media platform nowadays. And that's where the fabric of society starts ripping.
The problem with TikTok is that it's even more opaque than Facebook.
Content can be said to exist or not exist on Facebook, and that's usually it. Sure they monkey with the feed, but it's still essentially user-derived.
TikTok effectively exposes one interaction: get next.
What that returns is completely at the mercy of whatever TikTok decides it should be. They've optimized for virality. But it would be pretty easy to tweak that and optimize for something else.
I think researchers are starting to notice mass psychological phenomenon specific to the platform already, though maybe 'tiktok tics' just sounds nicer than any of the other social media networks and 'tics'
Don't worry, tik tok is just new. Wait a few more years and they'll be put through a similar rigamarole, although I don't think it will be as severe as FB. Maybe youtube level?
Why do I feel like I've read hundreds of comments saying "is there a strange lack of criticism about China?"
We literally almost banned TikTok, and statements were made about the necessity of doing it from the President of the United States. For weeks. Almost resulting in a government mandated forced sale.
Perfect Facebook: Break off groups, silo it. I've been off FB for almost a decade but I'm at the point where I have to actually use it for the first time, as it's where all the types of events I want to go to exclusively get organized. For amateur racing at least, it's pretty much all Facebook.
Groups used to be broken off into a separate iOS app. That time period was blissful. Then they removed that app because it allowed users to escape the newsfeed.
Platforms like Facebook just expose some of the bad parts of human nature such as cult like behaviour. Tech is neither the source of all evil nor the solution to all our problems like people in tech like to treat it to be.
Theres so many ads on instagram Im considering dumping it. Thats the only social platform I ever liked because I dont have to hear peoples opinions on things. But Im at a breaking point.
Exactly. The main feed doesn't hold any meaning for me now. I find I miss around 50% of my friend's posts and reels if I don't check their profile manually. I only use it for seeing and posting stories now. I'm sure stories would get similarly ad-clogged in 1-2 years as well.
Just to clarify, I'm fine with seeing some ads in between chronological posts. But the feed is entirely ads after 5-6 posts. Hoping some brave instagram PM reads this comment.
It's almost impressive how much of Instagram is just ads. I keep it around to follow a few people, but it seems like more than half of what scrolls by is either ads or totally off-base account recommendations (Which are themselves, essentially ads)
Instagram is arguably fast becoming the 21st century version of the glossy fashion magazines my parent's generation often read to kill time, where every second page would be a full page advert for a perfume or a watch.
I disagree with everyone about Instagram on HN. Instagram is amazing to me. But, I also love Pinterest which most people here hate (may be because of search results spamming). Where else can you curate a feed of vintage airline tickets? Or vaporwave aesthetics?
Also, ads that I see on IG are always promoting small businesses and never scammy. Actually it is a source of discovery for me.
All friends that I have love IG, been using it since 2013 daily. Visual culture is far more interesting than crap on FB or ephemeral social toxicity on TikTok/Snapchat. My IG contacts/feed never discuesses politics or activism.
When the metaverse actually launches they will skyrocket. They were smart to pivot early. Saying the 'metaverse' is on FB right now is similar to people selling acres on the Moon before anyone landed. FB is planting an imaginary flag on the 'metaverse' hoping they can technically catch up to their claims and capitalize on it.
The 'metaverse' in terms that there will absolutely be a VR cyber/world/land/facebook/sims2/second life experience. Will it be what FB wants it to be (they want to cash in), probably not but this is 100% coming. Looks at every immersive games (WOW, Second Life, etc...) in the past, even if its just that it will be hugely lucrative and successful.
Eh, not really. Video game design is hard. You won't succeed trying to make social media into a video game. People like to point to things like Ready Player One, but honestly both the book and the movie's depiction of the game were stupid. They would not work. That's not how games work.
Does Facebook really have the infrastructure in place to host the metaverse? Are they buying up the best gaming firms, have extensive enterprise architecture experience?
Look at Microsoft. My bet is on big enterprise/cloud tech + video game companies.
No they don't. At all. That is why I related it to people selling real estate on the Moon when moon landings were yet feasible. They are clearing trying to associate the brand Metaverse with Facebook right now, and hoping they can fill in the backend when they (possibly) have the capability to. They are trying to steal brand recognition for vaporware right now. Playing the long game.
Another analogy would be the infamous Segway marketing failure. Here [1] is an article from 2015, drawing an analogy between the Segway failure and a different failed VR project (Google Glass).
It seems like they also don't have users' trust, which is well deserved. And like a person standing in your bedroom IRL feels more invasive than online tracking, user tracking in VR will feel more invasive than on a website.
Anecdotally, of my ~5 game programming friends, all with 15+ years experience, 4 did a stint at Facebook.
But all 4 left pretty quickly. They all described the experience as good for their bank account but bad for their mental health. That's saying a lot coming from game devs.
I agree. It doesn't carry anything intrinsically interesting. You'd have far more luck porting VR into an existing popular game that is fun and making it more of a social hang out scene. You'll struggle greatly trying to make it a mainstream social media platform. Imagine a social media player that you could only log into from your computer at home.
I'll sell you up to 50,000,000 acres on Mars for 1/5,000,000th of a bitcoin each, lmk if you want me to send a btc address. Proof of ownership will be provided as a convenient and portable .txt file
If you but the whole amount, I'll write into my will that my decendant's also have to honor your claim. If any of them becomes king or queen of mars, could be quite lucrative!
What is it, besides an ugly, much less functional Second Life? Who's launching it? What is it good for? Why would someone use it over...well, you have to define what it's good for before I can even ask that question.
What you're forgetting is the 3D TV aspect of this version of Second Life that will push it over the top. What Second Life was missing is a pair of goggles that you had to wear and a Facebook login.
You'll be able to have work meetings at a virtual office. You can do that now, but the experience will be better. You'll be able to socialize with friends across the world, meet up at virtual replicated areas (like a rooftop bar in NYC..) and meet other people while you're there. You'll be able to go on virtual dates with a long-distance partner. You'll be able to put on your lightweight VR headset and be stationed at a better workstation, with larger monitors where you can manipulate the interface with movements of your hands without the cost of buying such a work set-up in real life. You'll be able to sit on your couch, put on your VR headset and watch movies on a 100 inch TV screen without having to furnish your home with a TV.
The possibilities are endless. Where's your imagination?
None of these applications are going to take off until the XR hardware becomes a lot more seamless. It needs to be as easy as pulling out a phone or putting on a pair of sunglasses. The metaverse will not succeed as long as it is tied to clunky VR strap on headsets with bad FOVs and low resolution that make you look like a dork.
Maybe I'm just getting old but I have zero interest in "socializing" that way. It sounds horrible, regardless of how good the VR is.
When I watch movies at home often I'm only halfway paying attention to the TV while simultaneously eating or talking to my family or working on my laptop. There's no way I'm going to wear a VR headset most of the time. The TV is hung on the wall so it takes literally zero space.
Your first sentences and last sentences contradict each other in my mind. They're selling nonense. I don't know why they're pushing the metaverse so hard in media. It feels as astroturfed as crypto is. I'm not putting on a VR headset to go to a meeting, I would literally never want that.
That is why I related it to people selling real estate on the Moon when moon landings were yet feasible. They are clearing trying to associate the brand Metaverse with Facebook right now, and hoping they can fill in the backend when they (possibly) have the capability to. They are trying to steal brand recognition for vaporware right now. Playing the long game.
I'm curious, how do you expect promotion to actually happen if you feel like "this" (this being a change in branding by a large company) is astroturfing? What is a non-astroturfing way to promote a new idea/product/thing? Or do you think any form of promotion is astroturfing?
I'm long on Meta as well and I really like the Quest (2), but the metaverse already had a soft launch. What Meta has been able to accomplish so far is impressive, but it's still not enough.
What's the status quo with VR problems?
- Price: This was fixed with Quest 2
- Complexity: This was also fixed with Quest.
- Socially acceptable: Nope. Even when you remove the issue of the toxicity surrounding Facebook's brand, most people refuse to either try or use VR regularly. Case in point, Meta is giving away Quest 2's to their employees and contractors. imo it's surprising to me that not all of them took the offer. One common answer I get is, "This is going to be as gimicky as the Wii right?". imo the form factor is what drives normal people away. It has to be smaller and closer to goggles before mass acceptance happens. Apple is most likely right on their approach, based on their patent submissions. Conversely, Apple's weakness will be price.
VR is gimmicky, like the Wii. Its full of worlds with great freedom of movement that are designed to hide the fact that you have very limited freedom of movement.
> designed to hide the fact that you have very limited freedom of movement.
That highly depends on your setup. The more physical space you have, the better if you want to move.
> VR is gimmicky, like the Wii.
Have you even used modern VR yet before panning it? Google Cardboard is ancient and doesn't count as modern VR. I ask because this answer tends to come from people who haven't tried it.
I have an index with a ton of room. I've tried a quest 2. It all still kind of sucks. I've also done a VR warehouse thing with the gun. It also sucked. Admirable efforts on the game designers to overcome its limitations, but the limitations are real.
> I have an index with a ton of room. I've tried a quest 2. It all still kind of sucks.
If that's true, why? I'm especially curious about your complaint regarding "very limited freedom of movement" when you claim to have a large physical space for VR. VR has lot of problems, but that is a very strange complaint. Which games or apps did you experience this in?
Pretty much all vr games are just an illusion of freedom. Physically walking is rarely particularly useful aside from idle curiosity of getting a slightly different vantage point or getting behind cover in a shooter. Real movement happens on point and click teleportation or some of the other fake locomotion schemes. I don't think I've ever moved with any sort of... conviction. It's always just a couple steps in any direction, almost always fairly slowly.
> Physically walking is rarely particularly useful aside from idle curiosity of getting a slightly different vantage point or getting behind cover in a shooter.
This is not an illusion of freedom of movement, but it's actually real freedom of movement vs sitting on a chair and getting an avatar to do it via a controller.
> Real movement happens on point and click teleportation or some of the other fake locomotion schemes.
I think this is your problem. Stop using teleport and actually move. You can get feet trackers to bring more immersion, but nothing kills immersion more than teleportation.
> Stationary games like beat saber don't count.
Why wouldn’t it count? I’m pretty sure it does just like ping pong and boxing.
> I don't think I've ever moved with any sort of... conviction. It's always just a couple steps in any direction, almost always fairly slowly.
I think it's highly dependent on your setup and game. imo playing Quest 2 wireless helps a lot. If you have a lot of physical space for VR, but you fail to actually use it; it defeats its purpose. It's akin to complaining about the lack of tactile feedback in a video game, when you have both vibration and sound turned off.
> I think this is your problem. Stop using teleport and actually move. You can get feet trackers to bring more immersion, but nothing kills immersion more than teleportation.
Nope, that's not a real choice. I have 10m^2 of free space, which is far more than the average person has, but its still not enough. I also can't move very quickly. Running in VR is not advisable, but walking in video games sucks. Go to a VR warehouse and watch people play with a warehouse scale game with no physical limitations. They still just kind of walk around slowly.
> Why wouldn’t it count? I’m pretty sure it does just like ping pong and boxing.
I already got the standing still experience with the wii. I mean its fine, those games are among the best vr has to offer. Wii boxing and table tennis was also solid. But I'm not going to trick myself into believing that its substantially different than what we had before. Were it not for the head motion tracking, these games could be played on a TV. I can play beatsaber expert+ levels without wearing the headset so long as there aren't walls to dodge. The headset isn't adding much. It's just that motion detection remains a fun gimmick.
> I think it's highly dependent on your setup and game. imo playing Quest 2 wireless helps a lot. If you have a lot of physical space for VR, but you fail to actually use it; it defeats its purpose. It's akin to complaining about the lack of tactile feedback in a video game, when you have both vibration and sound turned off.
It's more like someone trying to convince you that video games are completely different with vibration, when in fact, they're more of a nice touch.
> Nope, that's not a real choice. I also can't move very quickly.
That sounds like a personal issue, and not a VR problem.
> Running in VR is not advisable, but walking in video games sucks.
There's obviously not enough space to run, but that's not to say that you can't move quickly within your designated physical space. It's not like you can't run in place, or buy a movement rig either.
> Go to a VR warehouse and watch people play with a warehouse scale game with no physical limitations. They still just kind of walk around slowly.
1. Those games usually have 1st time players or players not familiar with the levels. Of course, they're going to move with caution.
2. Run & gun doesn't work in reality. In real life, you can't effectively shoot while running or moving fast.
3. Contrary to your personal experience, people do run in those games when they have familiarity with everything.
> I already got the standing still experience with the wii. But I'm not going to trick myself into believing that its substantially different than what we had before.
I can't help to think that this is just disingenuous. 6DOF VR is no where near comparable to Wii games. With Wii, it doesn't track your position so you can play everything sitting on a couch; the amount of movement needed isn't as drastic. It also doesn't fully envelop you visually. This is just a really bad argument. Beat Saber and other VR "single room" games like ping pong still count for movement.
> It's more like someone trying to convince you that video games are completely different with vibration, when in fact, they're more of a nice touch.
That's a bad analogy to VR because vibration is no where near as immersive, which is why I mentioned sound in mine.
This is going no where. We'll just agree that we're probably never going to reach consensus. imo the issue is that for unknown reasons, that are likely personal, you have problems with moving your body which is the real underlying reason for your issues with VR.
I find its a tiring gimmick that is just being reused in every game. The novelty is less for every subsequent title. People like fast movement and action. Nobody walks in games. People won't like game design that encourages slow walking for long. Your human meatbag is not particular dexterous and it shows in the VR games coddle you with their enemy design. And the experience of shooting and taking cover is very hard to differentiate in VR across titles.
I think classic controller games will end up being a popular format for VR when the motion control gimmicks wear off.
> People won't like game design that encourages slow walking for long.
You don't have to do "slow walking". By default the controller included in almost every VR platform allows you to move faster if you want within an VR FPS game. Anything available in a pancake game is also available for VR so I still don't understand this complaint. If you want more immersion, then you can get a movement rig like KatVR or run in place with Vive Sensors using NaLo.
> Your human meatbag is not particular dexterous and it shows in the VR games coddle you with their enemy design.
I would disagree. It works just fine, because it's actually easier to aim with a blaster in your hand vs indirectly with a mouse. If you have issues with hand eye coordination, that is not an issue with VR itself.
> And the experience of shooting and taking cover is very hard to differentiate in VR across titles.
Because the actual physical mechanics of taking cover doesn't change. The only reason it's different in 3rd person games is due to the controls. Again, I don't understand this complaint unless you just don't like physically moving.
> I think classic controller games will end up being a popular format for VR when the motion control gimmicks wear off.
I feel that this is only true for anyone who have issues with physically moving their body. I don't feel that this applies for most of the populace. Then again I could be wrong.
VR does have many issues and problems, but the issues you bring up seem more like personal ones.
> You don't have to do "slow walking". By default the controller included in almost every VR platform allows you to move faster if you want within an VR FPS game. Anything available in a pancake game is also available for VR so I still don't understand this complaint. If you want more immersion, then you can get a movement rig like KatVR or run in place with Vive Sensors using NaLo.
You can but its not really advisable. Games are not designed to work like this. They might not break, but its contrary to the design of the game and will harm the experience in numerous little ways.
> I would disagree. It works just fine, because it's actually easier to aim with a blaster in your hand vs indirectly with a mouse. If you have issues with hand eye coordination, that is not an issue with VR itself.
It is undeniably easier to aim with a mouse. There's simply no question and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. As someone who can shoot decently irl and tap heads with a mouse. Alyx is yet again another example of this. Enemies don't move fast for the explicit reason that its pretty hard for most people to shoot a moving target with a gun. It's very easy for someone familiar with a mouse to do so. I would bet that most games adopt a heavy amount of aim assist in he near future.
> Because the actual physical mechanics of taking cover doesn't change. The only reason it's different in 3rd person games is due to the controls. Again, I don't understand this complaint unless you just don't like physically moving.
The controls are incredibly important. They are your interface to the game.
> I feel that this is only true for anyone who have issues with physically moving their body. I don't feel that this applies for most of the populace. Then again I could be wrong.
I think you are wrong, given the decline of health and fitness, but aside from that, we shall see again.
> You can but its not really advisable. Games are not designed to work like this. They might not break, but its contrary to the design of the game and will harm the experience in numerous little ways.
No, it won't. It works as designed in VR. This is a completely baseless claim.
> It is undeniably easier to aim with a mouse.
No, it isn't because it's not natural or intuitive compared to pointing a firearm with a laser pointer. There have man machine, industrial engineering studies surrounding this.
> The controls are incredibly important. They are your interface to the game.
Yes, and something to mirror real life's physical objects and environments is a lot more intuitive and natural. Again, you have a completely baseless claim.
I'm very confident that your opinion of VR highly tied to your personal dislike of physical movement. That is not an issue with VR, that is just your personal preference.
i am not op, but as someone who owns 2 vr headsets it's true. for the first few months i definitely played vr games but frankly at this point the only reason i get out the rift is to sink even more hours into beat saber, possibly the furthest thing from the shitty second life/vrchat clone facebook is making
I think renaming was a massive strategic mistake. The metaverse, even if it succeeds from a technical standpoint, will need to be deemed 'cool' for people to adopt it. And generally, if you have something cool, you don't prematurely blurt it out to the rest of the world.
Agreed, and they also could have named this concept after something cooler than the metaverse from Ready Player One. It was a pretty bad book and movie IMO. They should have chosen the "Holodeck" and renamed themselves "Holo".
Didn’t Ready Player One call their VR world the OASIS? I thought the term metaverse came from Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which was actually a pretty good book (even if the ending was a bit off the rails)…
The metaverse already exists. It has for 10+ years.
FB isn't betting on the metaverse existing. They are betting that they can make some new walled portion off it that will be so big that it will esentially be the whole thing.
The main issue with selling "the metaverse" is that Facebook can't do it. Zuckerberg has made sure that the would be early adopters are steering clear of anything coming out of Facebook/Meta.
You can't piss of the tech entusiasts, reviewers, podcasts and everyone in between by constantly exhibiting poor judgement, arrogant behavior and blatantly invading peoples privacy, and then expect them to be excited about your next venture.
Facebook has burned pretty much any goodwill it might have had, and now it want's you to emerge yourself in it's VR world? Zuckerberg has to be incredibly delusional if he think that's going to sell.
Yes, unfortunately I bought in 2 days ago. The market is irrational. Facebook literally missed its projections by 3% and loses 0.15% of its active users (mostly due to things opening up) and investors panic. Good time to buy in.
Expectations were that it would do like the other internet giants and beat by miles. Yes it's weird that the expectations are not just their own performance, but that's often how the market works.
When Facebook first started getting users I tried to access it from a script using Lynx. I don't remember why but it was nothing nefarious, I think I simply wanted to download something for GF periodically.
I got a message that said "We aren't cool enough to support your browser".
Something about the sarcastic snootiness of the message really angered me and prevented me from ever opening a Facebook account. Later I blocked all Facebook domains in Host files and it's been that way ever since.
For awhile it was a bit awkward with people demanding to know why I didn't have a Facebook page but apparently I hold grudges for a long time. It's been delightful to see people come around to my point of view on Facebook.
They really are like a seedy bar in the bad part of town. With snooty messages for circumventors. But I have to thank them for that snooty message otherwise I would have probably caved and opened an account years ago.
> I got a message that said "We aren't cool enough to support your browser". Something about the sarcastic snootiness of the message really angered me and prevented me from ever opening a Facebook account.
Really? I think Facebook's message is kind of nice compared to the standard "Please use a different browser". Whereas the common message implies that you are the problem for using an unusual browser, Facebook's message acknowledges that they are the problem for being less cool than you.
Tbh, you don’t have a point of view on Facebook that people have come around to. You didn’t like FB for their condescension. Today people are walking out of fb for their business practices (and ppbly a myriad other reasons).
Your reason and theirs have little overlap though it could be argued that condescension is a symptom of internal malaise which is also reflected in shady business practices which is causing users to now abandon FB.
I'm sure that was the intent. Maybe I was just mad I couldn't complete the task but somehow the tone of the message really angered me and I never forgot it. It just seemed sarcastic and condescending.
Don't try to be cute in your messaging, just straightforward and direct is my takeaway. Some people might appreciate the cute but others you might anger if you don't get the tone just right.
Literally all Zuckerberg has to do is not be the kind of person he is... his product itself did achieve success in that a huge number of people are using it, but then he had to prove himself to have no ethical standards
Facebook succeeded because it made money, which is the primary objective of for-profit companies. The government (and people) represent the interests of the people, usually.
Hitting quarterly numbers, amassing wealth and power is difficult to do if he is not doing what he does.
Human greed has no limits. And once someone gets a taste of that amount of wealth and power, it is difficult to not get morally and ethically corrupt, either directly, or by turning a blind eye to reality.
It's funny because Zuckerberg isn't even a public figure. I'm sure someone will make some ethical claim, but I've read all the articles and they are hardly conclusive. It's probably better to just wait for a regulatory decision, otherwise you're just going to be reading someone else's agenda.
Peak oil production (global): unknown, maybe 2020-2030
Peak Facebook: ??
That's an incomplete peer group, but I find it interesting that at some point, society does start to unplug from addictive substances. The tapering off is quite slow, though. Unclear whether heavy users cut back, or new generations just don't develop the habit as older ones die off
I think it has more to do with alternatives (except perhaps in case of cigarettes which have direct measurable health effects) availability rather than society starting to unplug from addictive substances.
Peak coffee is in 1946, but what have consumers moved onto from then? Alcohol, Tea, Energy drinks, Soft Drinks ?
- Gatorade and similar stuff
- A movement to drink water (HydroHomies)
- High caffeine energy drinks (Red bull and the likes)
- Healthy alternatives (juices, smoothies, etc)
Here is an article [1] that shows consumption of coffee and soft drinks in 1946/47 and 2005. Adding coffee and soft drinks together there has been an increase of approx 32% in consumption since 1946.
Coffee 1946: 46.4 gallons per person
Coffee 2005: 24.2 gallons per person
Soft drinks 1947: 10.8 gallons per person
Soft drinks 2005: 51.5 gallons per person
Total caffeinated consumption in 46/47: 57.2 gallons / person
Total caffeinated consumption in 2005: 75.7 gallons / person
The chart seems to indicate tea has stayed relatively flat in the same time period. I'm not sure the history of caffeine pills or ADHD medicine, but those may also contribute to an increased consumption in 2005.
I'm genuinely curious: why are soda/pop/coke/soft drinks so popular? I've never liked them because they're too sugary, and they represent like empty calories (like I'll gain weight without feeling full) from drinks that aren't hydrating. When purchased in a restaurant, it costs money that could be saved or spent on a side dish. I'd much rather eat candy if I want sugar, or drink cold water if I want to hydrate myself.
I don't say this to condemn these drinks (if people like them that much, they're free to spend money on the little things in life they enjoy), but I'd like to square my experience of not caring for them versus their clear popularity from statistics.
Hard to explain! I think I picked up a taste for soda as a kid, I love me a Barqs, any sort of Cream Soda, and a cold Coke on a hot day. That said, I can't drink soda daily or I feel I'll, nor do I drink beer or other carbonated drinks frequently, maybe tops once a week. I drink the most tea out of anything (herbal, green, white) besides water.
Thanks for sharing. From your and noah_buddy's comments, it looks like it was a treat from childhood that stuck.
My parents forbade me from soda growing up, but my cousin once snuck me some sugary orange pop once (I didn't like the fizz when I first tried it, but I liked it more when I tried it again). I still have a preference for it sometimes due to the memories (along with root beer, which I also tried when younger) if it's free, though just a small cup. I never tried Coca-Cola or Pepsi until an abnormally older age, so that's probably why these two never stuck for me.
It's about caffeine and carbonation as much as sugar. Caffeine and sugar are highly addictive substances, with obvious habit-forming potential. Carbonation is a unique effect that stimulates and satisfies people, and probably provides a physical "hook" for addiction, like how many heroin addicts crave the feeling of the needle.
I really enjoy carbonated beverages, the whole sensory package the bubbles bring to the drinking experience. I have had an easy experience substituting the soda I drank as a child for a more healthy carbonated beverage.
> I've never liked them because they're too sugary
This is the crux of the matter. Whether something is too sugary is a matter of taste and habit. It tastes too sugary to you, but great to other people.
That also makes a lot of sense (my other hypothesis, which doesn't necessarily contradict, is that I wasn't introduced to much soda growing up). This could also explain a personal preference for salty food (taste and habit) that other people I've met don't seem to share.
I'm not sure about that. My mother was from a developing country and only tried soda for the first time when she tried it in a developed country as an adult, and fell in love with it immediately. She doesn't drink sugary sodas anymore but still loves sparkling water, champagne, and anything bubbly.
I think the same way about cigarettes, weed, and coffee, wtf is so good about it that you go out of your way to get it?
But this is the thing about addiction, to the person who isn't hooked it seems odd.
As a kid I used to wake up at night and drink Coke. I just craved it, that's how it was. I still like something sweet to drink but I control it these days, and my taste is not quite the same as an adult. Still, there's no accounting for it, you want something because you want it. Best explanation I can find is that it triggers something connected to reward paths in a way that isn't how that reward path evolved.
It's a lot but it is the total consumption so it includes all stuff that was sold not necessarily consumed. Fast food sells massive portion that people regularly throw away half full, auto-refills, expired stuff, hell just think of all the coke+menthol videos.
I find the coffee at 46 gallons stranger. 570ml a day of coffee? What's even more wtf is that in Central Europe during and after the war coffee was very expensive/difficult to get so people were drinking coffee substitutes (chicory root for example) while people in the US drank half liter a day.
Half a litre isn't that much in the grand scheme of things. It's maybe two decent mugs, or less than a pint. Especially when you consider American filter coffee is on the weaker side.
I'd assume it's all included. There is more than 1 way to brew coffee, and even those there is a standard for it, there would be no way to normalize consumption to it.
Wow I had no idea Americans used to drink more coffee than now. Surely serving sizes have grown and grown - absolutely nobody was having a 20-ounce coffee in 1946, but now that's normal. Doesn't seem to add up but I'm sure you're right.
I am assume this doesn't refer to "volume of coffee beverage" consumed. As far as I'm aware only the US seems to gravitate towards these extremely large coffee beverages. Other nations drink more coffee, but in smaller serving sizes less diluted by milk/sugar.
Perhaps the US used to drink espressos in the 1940s, I'm not sure. That's if this fact is even accurate.
US consumption in 1946 was apparently ~20 pounds of coffee beans annually per capita, or an average of around 2.5–3 (8 oz?) cups of coffee per day for the ~3/4 of adults who were regular coffee drinkers.
> Most people [in the UK] made coffee in a jug. You boiled the water and added it to ground coffee already in the jug. You let the ground coffee settle and it was ready to pour through a strainer and drink. Some people then boiled the coffee again.
My impression is that coffee preparation was comparable in the USA. Neither paper filters nor instant coffee were common until decades later.
The percolator is coming back into fashion. The two issues main issues are caffeine concentration and taste: a slow drip gets you crazy strong Vietnamese style coffee, a percolator can do some of that but you don't want to burn it.
The difference is, the US population kept growing, so while per capita figures falling is noticeable, total coffee/cigarette consumption may not have fallen.
Facebook's numbers are falling despite a growth in world population, and I'd bet a larger growth in the internet-connected population. That's worse, especially for a platform heavily reliant on network effects.
This one interested me. We're at a local maximum in terms of coffee consumption in recent years. After WWII coffee fell off in popularity and due to the substitute of carbonated soft drinks. Most likely in simplest terms it was a cheaper energy drink for the poor.
Right, if anything -- coffee consumption has only gone down because we've moved on to more efficient stimulants. Either higher concentration/lower cost artificial substitutes or prescription drugs.
Hardly the best example of America getting over an addiction.
Facebook has been primarily displaced by Tiktok, which is considerably more addictive than FB. It's like zonking out in front of cable TV in the olden days, if the cable TV had access to an essentially unlimited content library of short-form dopamine hits, was capable of determining exactly what you like, and showing you exactly that forever.
That's exactly what TikTok is. I've tried to use it several times, but it was just too dystopian for me to keep going. It was an intensely disquieting experience seeing the algorithm try to "addict" me to the product. I just don't see the appeal in being an utterly passive consumer of entertainment generated by an AI (yes, I know humans nominally generate the content, but the secret sauce is the AI playing conductor). It reminds me of Elsa-gate. Just surreal.
I get hypnotized by tiktok even by seeing it over other people's shoulders. HN and reddit already makes me feel guilty. I am not even starting with that one.
Except TikTok’s also is controlled or controllable by a foreign government whereas we know all Facebook is after is more profit. One of these seems more malicious and abusable than the other.
Yeah TikTok has yet to convince anyone I know that there is a globalist plot to replace white people with Jews and blacks for um, reasons? One of these is more malicious and has already been more abused than the other.
Right because anti-semitism and replacement theory didn't exist until Facebook..
And uh, does the genocide of the Uigher population somehow not count as an evil? I mean I know they are Muslims and not Jews but seems like we should be concerned about them being forced into camps and sterilized...
Of course the lunatic cult existed before, but none of my relatives were at risk of getting suckered into the John Birch Society orbit before about 2010. And it seems like the PRC has been repressing Uighurs in Xinjiang since well before TikTok, and I doubt the leadership circles in China are swapping dance videos about the subject.
This is not to say TikTok is some wonderful, innocent thing. But the harm done by it compared to Facebook is just not remotely comparable, at least not yet, and that may be partially due to the nature of what the platform pushes and to whom.
Yeah, the CCP's finger on ByteDance isn't awesome and it's possible it feels less evil merely by chance (it hasn't been worth it to weaponize, nobody has thought that far ahead, etc).
I do wonder if ByteDance does really just want to chase profit here though, and letting TikTok be weaponized by the party would hurt that.
That's what I fear. I usually join social networks too late but I joined TikTok just in time to have a good time before it all turns to shit. It's already happening, my bubble is being slowly invaded by conspiracy/political/gamed videos even though I try to avoid them as hard as I can. I dread to see what new user experience looks like these days.
Early Facebook was wholesome as well, relatively speaking. It's the cycle of addiction. The early days of addiction are always nostalgic. It's only later that an addiction starts to produce anger as much as it produces relief. I see no safeguards preventing Tiktok from going down the same path, if not worse.
Big difference in comparing an entire product area with a specific company and brand. Individual cigarette companies, coffee shops etc. have been going in an out of fashion the entire time. Similarly, the total number of social media users is nowhere near its peak.
I'd say it is actually remarkable just how long Facebook (the site) has been able to maintain relevance, whereas people should have been bored and migrated to something newer and shiner a long time ago (as is now finally happening with apps like TikTok).
I think 2014. Just by looking at things like wall posts on my personal page, around 2015, things went downhill and after 2016, it became really quiet. Almost none of my friends (23 to 33) use Facebook anymore except for the occasional photo dumps. Most are on instagram but even the number of stories posted has gone down as well.
How is the coffee one even possible? I don’t drink coffee, but almost everyone else I know does. There is a Starbucks on every corner. Every coffee shack always has lines.
If you include Facebook then you may as well include all other social media platforms.
Facebook is the least of my problems when it comes to addictive substances. Youtube, Reddit, Hackernews, TikTok. They're all the same even if they don't go out of their way to insight addiction.
I am thankful to these evil companies. Thanks to them - I spend less time online, try to read more books, appreciate real-life conversations, rely on locals for information and news, and let my mind wander.
There is nothing facetious or self-flattering here, these things aren't achievements, rather reactions to dependence on some massive facets of modern life, which, as it turns out, are not critical or even necessary.
I think this has been pretty obvious for a while... MAU doesn't tell the real story and I think we all have anecdotal evidence that the engagement and demographics changed substantially over the last 5 years.
I went back to my forums, find myself easily disengaging from Reddit (around the election, Reddit was nothing but stress), Check Twitter maybe 10 minutes a week, go to Instagram once a week because my kid posts his artwork there.
But in general, ALL of the sticky sites aren’t…sticky anymore. I took 2 weeks off at the worst of it and it did an amazing job of breaking the feedback loop.
Facebook tried to take over forums and mailing lists, their market was full of scams (which had me going round and round with Paypal and the bank when ‘Sally’ selling an iPad from Massachusetts sent a receipt with an email from a Guy in Turkey.
Then they started poking around with VR and Meta and man, I really don’t want to use this headset if I’m forced to log into Facebook and you’ve got 6 outward facing cameras, Zuckerberg.
reddit used to be great until they pulled their great bait & switch, then added all kinds of authoritarian features.
A brief history of reddit:
>We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.
— Reddit FAQ 2005
>We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content
— u/kn0thing 2008
>A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets.
— u/kn0thing 2012
>We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.
— u/reddit 2012
>We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse).
— u/yishan 2012
>Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech
For a platform built on user contributions, they got too big (everybody ends up saying the same thing and getting downvoted as a result) and the moderation got hostile to the point you don’t WANT to contribute. Eventually you find the site that used to be fun, with lots of interesting things from interesting people…turned into a chore.
Circa 2005 reddit was a forum for nerdy young tech people, talking about miscellaneous web links but mostly focused around nerdy tech stuff. Nobody I know who read reddit circa 2005 wanted it to become a white supremacist hate forum. When it started to attract large numbers of white supremacists who deposited their steaming piles of bullshit (hate speech, vicious personal attacks) all over the site, lots of people reading the site (including those who had been there since 2005) were appalled. Obviously advertisers also don’t want to associate their brands with hate speech (or child porn, etc.).
I joined Reddit around 2007, and my perspective is completely the opposite of yours. Reddit was a place where you could create your own community, and moderate it as you see fit (as long as it's legal). It was a place where people respected free speech, and that you don't have to agree with someone but you'll defend their right to see it.
White supremacy or hate wasn't really a thing on reddit until the past few years. The controversial content on reddit were r/jailbait (which I'd say a majority of the community agreed with; although many did begrudge the shifting of the overton window on 'we host anything that is legal'), but then "social justice" became a thing and a new crowd of redditors seemed to want to de-platform people.
I don't have a time machine, but I suspect if you polled a majority of redditors in 2017 whether they'd support the de-platforming that is happening today, a majority would vehemently disagree.
But my impression is that being the central hub of one of the most aggressively hateful online pro-Donald-Trump communities in 2016 attracted a larger number of abusive users and increased the visibility of the problem.
That frame of mind assumes that there’s only two camps, the Racists and Non-Racists…when there’s a third: Parties that want to sew discord for thier own interests, be it civil discord, ad revenue, or ‘user engagement’.
You Could NOT escape the stuff towards the end of the Trump administration. It wasn’t only Reddit.
It attracted a large enough number of toxic users that many parts of the site (those not aggressively moderated) were littered with personal attacks and hate speech, which was unpleasant for everyone else.
AFAIK it’s still pro-atheism. And Ron Paul was basically the only Republican not in bed with the Halliburtons of the world, which was considered progressive in 2008.
I think a more fair characterization of reddit at that time was firmly anti-theism. I'm not religious, but I definitely remember those days from when I was still the primary demographic of Reddit (early 20s male in college, hyper-jacked into to news, IT-worker and programmer, science-focused, etc.).
Somewhere along the way, Reddit (and HN?) drifted SO left-wing that it started non-ironically referring to “libertarian” and “far-right” as interchangeable.
The beauty of reddit, in theory, is that you don't have to subscribe to subreddits you don't like. This worked really well, and still does, to a large extent. Of course, if you have political content on /r/videos, /r/pics etc as is the case today, you're gonna have a bad time. I wish there was more aggressive modding in non-political spaces, and less modding in the places that are.
It never was though? Not the site. Some subs might've been, but the site overall never was. Most I've seen is having to leave some subs I used to frequent because the mods became crazy, and their madness definitely didn't lean right. Most I've seen of odious subs like that is people complaining of their existence, but they didn't contaminate the rest of reddit.
The place used to be far more liberal both in the sense of openmindedness and in the sense of people having the ability to tolerate people they didn't actively like. That atmosphere is mostly gone.
Reddit should break off all political content into its own site, porn into another, and keep the rest in place. If a post is porn or political, mods can click a button to move it to the dedicated site. This would be similar to the “move topic” functionality from phpBB and vBulletin.
This might solve a lot of problems, but it would create issues on the edge, like r/pics content that may not be overtly political but clearly has an agenda.
Personally I use Reddit exclusively for political flamewars on one account, and in-depth technical content on another account.
I’m starting to feel pretty unwelcome, though, when it comes to anything “misinformarion” related. Once you get banned from one subreddit, if you have a post reported on the same subreddit from another account, then both your accounts get banned site-wide. Combine this with the dragnet, unsolicited bans that some mods are sending to anyone who posts in certain subreddits and you have a real chilling effect.
The average IQ on Reddit is also about 110, which is just boring in most cases. When you can predict the top comments on a thread, reading them is probably a waste of time.
You're ignoring the way that subreddits like r/ChoosingBeggars are full of trivially faked texts that tick off every box to rile people up on political and social issues.
In the current polarized era, all discussion online is inherently political. The only way to escape it is in small groups with other people you have mutually agreed not to talk about it with.
This is the result of Citizens United; when elections are decided by who has the most money, it’s a zero-sum game until politics have consumed the totality of our lives.
Is HN "small"? Political discussions at HN (which are quite rare) seem obviously low-quality compared to the rest of the site, but still rank well above much of the Internet. I assume that the same would go for many niche-focused spaces, where curiosity and intellectual interest can dominate.
I actually don’t feel the discussion on any topic on HN is any higher quality than other sites with a similar age demographic. And yeah, HN is kinda small by internet standards.
It feels like reddit changed in line with the rest of the Internet though.
In 2022 you have the choice of a) "suppressing free speech" or b) "platforming racists" and there is no middle ground and no way to win. You can't pass the buck to moderators.
Self moderation was and still is a way out. If there were better tools to allow users to say "I don't like this person, I don't want to hear more from then" and "Bill likes this person, maybe I'll hear him out." or "I don't want to deal with this kind of thing in this room, can you talk about it elsewhere"? The tools we have for those things are not nearly as sophisticated as what exists in real life with body language, facial expressions, physical distance, symbols, demeanor, conversation timing, etc. Our tools to self moderate and separate into amicable groups which still permit crossover in real life are much better.
The major problem with most internet platforms is the boundaries and user controls are non existent. Everything is open for everyone to see and no one can control who is in their network. Only a handful of moderators and platforms have control over both visibility and membership/rules, and those controls are limited and primitive.
Feeds which magically select content users are supposed to like and the attempt to eliminate user settings to make platforms more accessible and magical contribute to this problem. Creating effective and easy to use self moderating tools is a difficult enough problem on its own; when you also have to fight a lot of entrenched design philosophy, it's even harder.
> If there were better tools to allow users to say "I don't like this person, I don't want to hear more from then"
That's not a solution in the cases when those people, are using the platform to gather a group of angry people and then will go and kill you and your family and those who look like you.
Now, I'm guessing this isn't a problem in _your_ case -- but it is, for some others (see e.g. FB and Myanmar, or WhatsApp lynch mobs).
Another problem is when the one's you don't want to hear, are spreading propaganda supporting a want-to-be-dictaor. And then eventually they succeed, because those who didn't like the dictator, just ignored them (let them spread the propaganda unhindered). -- What's the likelihood that the US is still a democracy in 30 years. (Btw I didn't downvote your comment)
I'm surprised that other comment wasn't received well. Will try to articulate myself more and see if that changes anything.
I'm not saying self moderation would eliminate bad groups. I think it would better contain them. I think having more siloed, fragmented, and naturally evolving online ecosystems would prevent any of the problems you mention from spilling over and infecting the entire culture.
I don't think any of those risks you mentioned are solved by centralized moderation. I think they're made worse, as everyone becomes incentivized to fight for control of moderation and is pulled towards ousting the other to recreate the groups those in power naturally feel most comfortable with. I firmly believe the social dilemma people are currently in is a result of the entire world trying to make rules for one big room, and no one is happy because people come from vastly different contexts that could never be properly accounted for in one room and one set of rules.
Allowing people to make their own decisions about association and information is far more scalable, democratic, and corruption resistant than trying to make platforms that appeal to all and respect all people from top down moderation. It allows people to let off steam privately and meet in designated rooms in the middle. That may seem terrifying given some of the people and groups out there. But I think recent history is a pretty good indicator that trying to forcibly educate and moderate people that are deemed a problem backfires severely. Malicious and violent groups can and should be contained and watched by others, but trying to prevent association and people deciding whats good and whats bad for themselves drives more people to opposition and affiliation with potentially violent groups than they would otherwise associate with. If people are able to express certain ideas without being automatically ousted from certain groups and affiliated with extremists, that lessens the pull to extremism.
There is no perfect solution, and I do not think that every forum should avoid top down moderation or that certain associations shouldn't be watched or potentially dealt with in the real world if dangerous enough. I just think more user directed moderation is in general the least worst option.
What's worse: a group spreading messaging encouraging mobs to go out and kill people made up of those who voluntarily choose that group over others in a world where other groups can counter message and organize and defend themselves, or a group that controls global messaging encouraging mobs to go out and kill people and bans all counter messaging?
What's worse: propaganda supporting a want to be dictator spreading in a forum of voluntarily associated zealots which bans and ignores criticism, but has no power over alternative group organization, or propaganda supporting a want to be dictator spreading on a global platform that bans and ignores criticism of all other groups?
> "Another problem is when the one's you don't want to hear, are spreading propaganda supporting a want-to-be-dictaor. And then eventually they succeed, because those who didn't like the dictator, just ignored them (let them spread the propaganda unhindered). -- What's the likelihood that the US is still a democracy in 30 years."
Is a two party system backed by billions, elaborate social media timelines (from experts of sociology, psychology, K street, and NGOs) even close to a democracy at this point in time?
Regards of which hand you consider the correct one, we have deeply flawed versions of the world being marketed and sold at unprecedented scale and scope.
Imagine if you worked for a company and every 4 years workers voted to keep or replace them. What if the companies main customer had a controlling vote?
Just because you think the choice needs to be framed that way doesn't make it true. This reminds me of the political mailers that the Canadian conservatives used to send out: it was something like "do you support our reform of law X or do you support keeping child molesters on the street". Its a pretty low form of rhetoric.
Um, the upstream post presented a false dichotomy of either supporting free speech (as in reddit allowing people to say whatever) or racism. The parent comment to yours cited the ACLUs defence of public speech as a precedent for the importance of letting people say what they want even if you dont agree with it.
Nobody argues that reddit is constitutionally bound to host free speech. The point is that what's right in a public forum is also right for a company. You appear to be focusing on an irrelevant technicality or parroting the "they can build their own Twitter" defence, but neither of those is relevant here, the only point being made is that free (independent of constitutional obligation) speech is good, and should be broadly supported by platforms
> The point is that what's right in a public forum is also right for a company.
I don’t think we’ve established that, and I’m fairly confident that the ACLU doesn’t think so either for that matter.
If corporate speech, or individual speech had to embrace all viewpoints without restriction it would cease to be independent at all wouldn’t it? In other words, protecting the right of individuals to express the viewpoints they choose to is in fact the more democratic ideal isn’t it?
Separately, please refrain from speculation about what I or others _appear_ to be saying. If I intend to say something I have no problem doing so.
The ACLU are full throttle political partisans today, and don't give a fuck about free speech except in the same sense Stalin does: What they like should be allowed and what they don't like should be banned, and they act accordingly.
And? Are racists really worse than other types of bigots (misogynists, intellectuals, anti-intellectuals, eugenicists, radical anarchists, religious zealots, anti-religious zealots, republicans, democrats, etc.)?
There are definitely approved forms of bigotry that are tolerated on just about every social media platform. I’ve never seen a post promoting death to unvaccinated moderated, for example. I really hate the idea that because a site has racist users that it would be considered a racist platform. That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water.
On sites like reddit, I can ignore hateful subreddits just as easily as other topics I’m not interested in. I don’t think it’s reasonable that there is an expectation that every platform police everything that might offend someone and I don’t know of any platform that attempts to. Certain bigotry is just less tolerated by admins than others.
r/conspiracy is an interesting example. Opposing views on just about any topic are accepted and there’s genuinely a lot of critical thinking and research that goes into many of the comments. Sure it’s filled with crap posts, loonies, and paranoids, but constructive, respectful discussion is had about topics considered too taboo for most other subreddits. And they are maligned by most of Reddit to the point where certain subs will ban you just for subscribing or posting to it.
Disclaimer: of course racism is awful and stupid. I’m not advocating promoting racists or misogynists or any other hate group. I just think the benefits of open, free discussion out way the drawbacks of hateful, stupid discussion.
They disrupted reddit to the core and got the ceo fired. The hijacking of “freedom of speech” in order to sustain a fascist movement was about the most bullshit thing ever and it nearly ruined reddit for good.
I'm not sure to what you're referring. I can't find reference to any reddit CEO being fired. Ellen Pao resigned, but the catalyst for her resignation wasn't related to fascism as best I can tell, it was related to firing the person most responsible for AMAs without any suitable replacement.
In 2022 you have the choice of a) "suppressing free speech" or b) "platforming racists"
There's a great example of the False Choice fallacy. "Free Speech" = "Racism" is the implication of your choice -- one which authoritarians would indeed embrace. The Soviets considered free speech dangerous, too; and so does the CCP.
That happens when you ban witches from everywhere. Anytime you get a platform that's not an insufferably clamped-down moderation hellhole, the cranks concentrate there and the site's just too cranky to be useful, even if cranks in small numbers could even be valuable.
Sadly, what passes for moderation at most places nowadays is even worse. It's hideous and stifling. If the cranks make places too annoying to stay at, woke moderation makes places feel pointless to participate in.
Reddit also stopped showing users the red background on their mod-removed comments. So when you're logged in it looks like your comment is live [1]. You can try it here [2].
I once tried looking through their archived code base to find when they made that change but couldn't decipher it. It's possible they never showed authors the red background at all.
yes they do! i read this website for months before posting and then all my posts would always get deleted or deleted secretly. so i realized ive just been reading propaganda this whole time. i was gutted. feels like ive been lied to the entire time. you just naturally assume youre reading what people actually think. i wish there was a way to go back to the old internet where there wasnt massive amounts of money involved in policing peoples conversations
I'm not sure that's justification for continuing the policy. Most people are surprised to discover mods can "remove your comment and it still shows up on your side as if it wasn't removed". [1]
Reddit gave mods the ability to shadow ban about 5 years ago via automod [2]. Now even crowd control can remove comments [3]. These features would be fine, in my opinion, if users could discover when their comments were removed.
Reddit stopped using shadowbans to ban actual users a while ago, it's only for spammers now. Of course, it still happens now and then accidentally, but it's not meant to be a punishment for real users that break sitewide rules.
I think you mean the automod setting that autodeletes your comments if your account is too new? That's something entirely different and not a sitewide ban like a shadowban would be. That's up to the moderators of the subreddit.
> I went back to my forums, find myself easily disengaging from Reddit (around the election, Reddit was nothing but stress), Check Twitter maybe 10 minutes a week, go to Instagram once a week because my kid posts his artwork there.
Are you a teen or a young adult. I am guessing you are in between age of 35 - 45 because, I am that age myself and have started weaning off of social media lately. The dopamine rewards are just not worth it.
I have, however, moved on to saner places like HN.
There are definitely parts users of HN that are not same, but the conversation is normally at auch higher level and most people welcome a different viewpoint instead of seeing it as an attack.
Every social network (including so many bulletins and forums from ≤90's) models the relationships and culture of its initial cohort, and it always becomes self-isolated to that imprint, so as people change their life priorities they leave and the network dies. The same will happen to hacker news.
I’m not the poster, but I’m between 16-19 and seeing the same thing over last 2 years I’ve been almost completely out of social media,
- 0 minutes of facebook
- 0 minutes of Instagram
- 0 minutes of Twitter
- 20 minutes of Telegram per day to catchup on messages
- 10 minutes of Matrix
A few years back the aggregate was easily 10-12 hrs per day (rest were spent watching movies and writing code) . Nowadays my brain automatically will close the sites if I spend more then 2 minutes on them.
But it’s not just social media, I lost my appetite for movies, tv shows too.
Most of this purge was unintentional , however now that it’s done. I’m glad. Other than that I come on HN once or twice a day to have fun and comment and read stuff.
I wouldn’t say HN is more saner then other social media, most of the peers I engaged with in the more popular social media apps were equally as nice, amicable and fun to talk with.
But these days I mostly spend my days reading story books, blogs, write code, make drinks and cook food, and solve fun puzzles that I design.
Who knows, maybe it’ll all change to something else in 2 years again.
52, and I’m getting tired of a lot of things. May be the testosterone. From a VR standpoint, Battle Royal zombie shooters with bow and arrow mechanics in a game with crafting and skill trees holds NOTHING for me anymore
They finally monitized their products and customers to a breaking point. They run on engagement metrics without common sense or empathy to how fear and anger impact their user's wellbeing.
I most definitely do not need or want a VR immersed version of that toxicity.
VR has nothing to do with facebook, at least at the moment. Just logging in with your facebook account doesn't mean its suddenly sucking all your life from you and piping it right to facebook. If you enjoy video games, its hands down the best way to game right now.
Which just KILLS me. They’re clearly on another level with the Oculus hardware, it just feels like a deal with the Devil that’s going to have a downside sooner or later and they’re trying to get you locked in before that.
Is it? Last I understood, most games have no real locomotion to prevent motion sickness. Is it really the pinnacle of gaming if you have to teleport from A->B all the time?
> Facebook tried to take over forums and mailing lists, their market was full of scams (which had me going round and round with Paypal and the bank when ‘Sally’ selling an iPad from Massachusetts sent a receipt with an email from a Guy in Turkey.
What blows my mind are all of the blatant scam replies on sponsored content. You'll get sponsored content from, say, Bloomberg or CNBC, and half of the replies are cryptocurrency scams. I've even seen top replies that were 'ads' for witch doctors that will cast spells for you if you send them money on Venmo.
It makes both Facebook/Meta and the sponsored brands look terrible.
reddit is great if you curate your feed. If you go to "popular" or "trending" it's a dumpster fire. I still love reddit though with my 10 or so subreddits that I follow.
People like to hate on Facebook, but how is any other social media different? They are all free services that profit from your personal information. Some just have better PR than the other.
Because it is rotten to the core? Because of its utterly unsympathetic upper management? (Ok, Bezos as runner up). Because of all of the deceptive things it has done over the years?
TikTok is essentially a mobile-first reincarnation of YouTube. I’ve yet to see any users use it to socialize with friends and family they know in real life. I’m hesitant to call it a “social network” when there’s little to no socializing there in the first place
It's still a social media network. People socialise there with the broader world. And socialising with friends and family may be passé for young people nowadays.
You have profile, you publish content, people leave comments, you can message anyone. It is a social network. Don’t confuse its format for YouTube because that’s now how the youth is using it
Fair point. I do agree with others though, the damage other apps like TikTok do is less for me to be happy about it overall. It's like Transitioning people from an alcohol addiction to a weed addiction, one is much more dangerous than the other, either might not be great for you.
I hope platforms that are focused on topics instead of people will prevail. There is still some exaggerated self-promotion, but it is far less pronounced.
Oversharing is a really bad idea in the long run. Your opinions from 30 years ago are probably hated today. Imagine the trauma that is caused if you could read what your parents thought before you were born.
Exactly. It is no different to the rest of them. This game is simply one tyrant (TikTok) dethroning another (Meta) and all of them make money out of our personal data.
Facebook (the social network) was known to be in decline for years. The real attention is on Instagram and WhatsApp are still adding users. I wouldn't rush to rule them out yet over this.
At least I have the feeling that newcomers like TikTok don’t have this "embrace the web" thing that Facebook had during a decade with embedded tracking scripts everywhere on any website.
I feel like TikTok is more closed and that I don’t have a shadow profile on it like Facebook did.
But it’s also because the web (especially the browsers and mobile OS) learnt its lessons.
OTOH, it also means that newcomers will have to make even more efforts to to "compete" with the historical open web which can create even more situations of information disappearing from the open web.
Hacker News and other relatively smaller forums are different. They are free social media networks that aren't optimized to maximize engagement, promote outrage, or instill a fear of missing out.
That stuff matters too but I think the size is what matters. HN stays clean because it stays small. Lots of posts are boring for the average person’s interests. I’ve seen the same thing on Reddit. Once you go above a certain size, a subreddit completely degrades.
They’re not completely absent, but design decisions by Hacker News make these three factors less visible.
>maximize engagement
It encourages engagement with upvotes and additional privileges when an account gets more points. However, the site’s design doesn’t maximize it. I don’t get push notifications to check the site, awards, or suggestions for other relevant articles in the comments.
>promote outrage
Outrage can be a factor that causes posts to rise, but deliberate policies avoid optimizing for it. Specifically, the avoidance of editing the submission title, unless the purpose is to make it less clickbait.
>instill a fear of missing out.
This is most subjective, but I get the sentiment that if someone posts an amazing project, there’s a good chance of constructive critique in the comments, or more information from the developer about how they made it.
Other social media websites don’t have the depth of discussion (just photos of the best parts of their life, without talking about the challenges). This is relatively more of a cultural/user base observation versus an interface decision, however.
For conspiracy theories, antivax, and misinformation, the alternative is heavier moderation. It looks like a judgement call by HN moderators to err on being less interventionist with user discussion. There are tradeoffs, but I think the benefits of free discussion outweigh exposure to misinformation, so long as one reads skeptically and critically.
All social networks with voting systems are optimised to maximise engagement and promote outrage. Just look at how every single country subreddit is a constant flamewar.
HN _mostly_ prevents this by having strong and good moderation, but there's still a fair amount of negative metrics coming from it.
The problem is that there is social media. Facebook is the biggest success, which is why people focus on it. Facebook displaces other forms of communication I prefer to use. I used to use email heavily to communicate with friends. Email was the best format for me, now no one uses it. Everyone is on 12 messaging platforms, Facebook started that trend with messenger.
I used to be able to go to business websites and get the information I needed, now everyone primarily uses Facebook pages to post information, which means I have to log in on many occasions to view the content. The Internet before Facebook was much more convenient for me.
Facebook hasn’t resulted in any positive interactions for me. Something about the platform drives people to be confrontational. Years ago when I participated on the platform I would reply to friend’s posts. Sometimes I would get replies from their friends and they tried to argue with me. It boiled down to them believing I said something in my post that I did not write. That drove me to not write my thoughts about something, and when I did reply, it was with shallow positive comments. That is a very boring way to interact with people, so I stopped using the platform.
NO thanks, I am not planning on using yet another service that is trying to psychologically milk every ounce of my attention. Reddit and Hackernews is bad enough. I am also not interested in looking at lewd teenagers dancing to the latest tune or whatever the kids are doing these days.
"I don't understand this 'Internet' thing the kids are using, have no intention of trying it, and I already don't like the newspapers!"
"at lewd teenagers dancing to the latest tune or whatever the kids are doing these days." ... is a seriously dim view.
TikTok is literally the #1 app in the world, and for someone curious enough to read HackerNews but unwilling to even try app to understand the nature of its impact is a bit odd.
Personally, I despise Twitter, but I read it occasionally, and understand why it works, and what kind of content is on there. I would find it problematic to work in tech with someone who doesn't understand 'why people like Netflix' having never even bothered to stream a video before.
In particular, the feed algorithm is unlike anything else in tech and the content is definitely a lot less toxic.
You should definitely try it, that doesn't mean you have to like it.
I don't mean to be rude but anyone unwilling to even 'try' something like 'Netflix' or 'Facebook' or 'TikTok' or 'Email' - ie the universally popular, generationally defining experiences, is woefully ignorant, and that goes beyond those just working in tech.
It's fine to not want to use those services (I personally avoid most of them), but to ignore them, or worse, purposely avoid even understanding what they are is straight, self imposed ignorance. It's ridiculous.
What is there to know about anything? Until you experience it yourself.
Self imposed ignorance is a guaranteed path to obsolescence and irrelevance.
It would be ridiculous if a colleague never 'tried' streaming, email, or 'Video Conf'. because they were too narrow to even care to understand.
It doesn't mean we have to care about HN, the Arab world, video conferencing or streaming, but it does imply a hefty dose of ignorance to not even bother to try to understand.
The range of content on TikTok is unlike anything else, and there are definitely a few forms of niche content forms that have never existed before, and a bit hard to explain. So see it for yourself or remain in the dark.
"who cares what you find problematic? People don't work for you."
Well people do actually, but that's besides the point.
If you want to be 'the old man who can't use email' among your peers, of course it's your choice.
Tiktok is a bunch of videos. A lot of them, according to you. You open the app and play a video. Then it suggests the next one.
How does this conceptually bring anything new, other than it working well? I mean, I know what an app is. I have Youtube, which also has lots of videos. It's an app to watch videos. Shocking?
>People like to hate on Facebook, but how is any other social media different?
I think the main reason for it is that most of us are just old enough to remember what facebook was before they started filling the site with ads and recommended/paid/suggested/etc posts. It was really fucking great back when you would logging and there would be literally no content/ads other than what your friend manually took the time write/post.
they gave us a taste of what a great minimalist social media platform could be and then turned monetisation/engagement to 9000.
Imagine if HN was bought by reddit and they decided to use the reddit platform (new skin only, no "old.XX...") with all the ads and everything. That's kinda what happened to facebook.
- they have/had a critical size. No other social media was that big, and size matters.
- they required (still do?) real IDs. Forcing people to use their real name is a special kind of awful, especially when it's the main network
- they push a unified account platform for everything they owned. Other companies tried too but most failed (I also hate Apple for that, if you were to ask).
The fact of the matter is they still have close 2 billion active logins each day. Even if they have settled in matters of user acquisitions they haven't stopped harvesting increasing amounts of profit from each users. I would like to know how the statistics of revenue per user would be from this point on.
They're still growing year-over-year. They were just off their target in the last quarter by 3%. They're valued at $3.67 per share versus the $3.78 expected. Their stock literally dropped ~25% because they were only 3% off expected earnings. And lost 0.15% active users, which is expected as the world opens up again. I don't see what the big deal is. The market is overreacting.
Post close trading can be swing by a lot. The reaction I think is not because that they are off by 3%, the future growth looks only to be pretty dull , perhaps also why FB is making such huge gamble on VR.
The high P/E big tech companies enjoy is on basis of the implicit expectation to keep growing fast[1], if that on confidence on growth is no longer there, then price will reflect closer to a more traditional tech stock.
Tesla trades at P/E of 185x, Amazon - 58x, Microsoft - 35x, Google - 29x and FB - 23x[2]. I think it accurately reflects the market expectation of their respective future growth.
---
[1] Same reason Tesla is valued so high despite relatively modest revenue, the expectation is massive growth on the back of their lead in the space and the accelerating shift towards EV.
[2] SAP, IBM, ORCL all trade in the same range today.
I'd like clear qualifying of what a login means. Does that mean I goto facebook.com or open FB app at least once a day? I imagine "daily login" could be artificially inflated in all sorts of ways like having fb.com tab open on my browser and never actually going to it as one example.
Yeah, I "log in" a few times a day to answer messages. I don't think that should be considered a user since I'm not consuming anything facebook-related, just responding to messages because everyone is on facebook
Do you know what sort of posts they were? There are some real nutty pro-violence Republicans in WA state (ex: Shea) which could trigger bans or suspensions.
Most of the “not so young” people I know do not even have an Instagram account. Of my two teens, only one of them uses it (the other has zero interest).
I’m trying to do my part in keeping my teens off social media. I’m about 50% successful.
Eh… anecdotes are anecdotal, but in my experience the only reason people use Instagram is for messenger. Almost everyone is on Instagram, so it makes it really easy to connect with people. Kind of like a giant phonebook.
I almost never see any of my friends posting on Instagram anymore. The only ones that do are artists and people with some “personal brand” to promote (aka, they have a business interest in posting to IG). Some more people post on stories, but even that’s rare.
Like Facebook, most people I know hate using Instagram, so I figure it’s only a matter of time before it’s engagement numbers go down.
I’m in my 20s for reference.
I feel like in the coming years we’ll see these Gen Z kids almost entirely eschew posting on social media. Most young people I know are almost entirely socializing with their friends via messaging apps, while very rarely making posts on social media. Instagram will fade from relevance for the youth, much like Facebook, and I don’t expect that any social media platform will replace it. Yes, TikTok is popular, but it’s more akin to YouTube that twitter/Facebook/Instagram.
We’ll probably see some dramatic headlines about “the death of the social network” at some point over the next few years. Messaging will be the future of digital socializing.
I think this is ultimately driven by young people coming to the realization that posting to social media is either completely unfulfilling, or actively detrimental to their mental well being. Platform owners thought they could ignore the issue, without considering that their target demographic may very well just reject social networking all together.
I've literally never logged in to any one of those. I have to say, I'm kind of proud of that.
Occasionally people will send me a link to something and it's on Instagram. Clicking for me give me a Login modal. They make it too easy for me, click.
It's completely unlike other social media and it's addictive without being negative, which kind of goes against our current instinctive thinking about social media.
At the start, it's completely dumb videos that kids will find funny.
But the algorithm is smart and will find content you like.
My feed is now ultra cute cat and cat rescue stories, and really, really sharp non-professional comedians acting out vignettes, they are better than anything pro, and better than anything on TV, and, amateur musicians playing solos, odd instruments etc..
I enjoy TikTok more than Television or Netflix.
It's very hard to describe to non-users because on paper it's very much like YouTube, but the format is so short, and the kinds of bits are so much more ephermal ... and for some reason most of the toxicity is not there.
Also, you get to see first hand some 'live events' because people stream from everywhere, and it gives you neat perspective. For example, the 'Trucker Convey' in Ottawa Ontario. After watching the event live from various perspectives on TikTok, while simultaneously watching broadcast news cover the event, it became unsettlingly clear how aggressively misinformative broadcast news was of the event. (Even if I fully disagree with the protesters, they should be represented fairly)
TikToks has radically changed my view of content moderation and demonstrated that it additivity does not have to be based on fear and anger.
They censor aggressively, and get away with it partly because it's not really seen as a platform for 'information'. So you won't see a lot of controversial things there, and also I don't mind that technically 'Tiannamen Square' content will be absent. I mean, it's just TikTok (is what I tell myself).
It's disturbingly addictive without being particularly political or controversial and for that reason alone it's worth having a look at for those who care to pay attention.
Yeah I find a lot of toxic stuff on TikTok, but whenever I bring this up people say something like "ahh, the algorithm has discovered that you actually like toxic stuff, so it's your own fault".
It's a bit distressing the number of negative commenters indicating that they don't even want to try something that's the #1 digital in the world. It's like saying 'I don't want to see what TV is because I already don't like the radio'.
TikTok is nothing like Instagram at all, which is mostly oriented towards imagery.
It definitely is a bit like Vine, but the longer segments allow for a lot more creativity, moreover, I think the number of people with smartphones and 'decent cameras and willing to make content' is just considerably bigger than it was previously.
I watch cat rescue videos, and then the 'day after follow up' appears in my feed the next day, I find it intriguing.
It's certainly not for everyone, but it's definitely something that anyone working in tech should try out, so they get a grasp of what is happening in the world.
Why would anyone want to go against their judgment just to try out an app which is, in the absolute best case scenario, a brainless waste of time? What is it about cat videos that is making you so adamant that everyone download this app? Nobody on this planet needs exposure to more media content.
I'm a bit shocked to see such self imposed ignorance implied as a virtue.
-- First - we are curious, we try things 'just because'. Of course, nobody has to be.
-- Second - if you want to work in an industry, you're going to have to have at least some baseline understanding of what's going on. 'Experiencing' something gives you quite a lot of insight into the nature of the system that cannot be described otherwise. It doesn't mean you have to like it.
For example, the content moderation algorithms in TikTok are unlike any other app. So different in fact, that it's revelatory.
The 'consensus view' among most people in the industry is that FB and other social media drive attention via toxicity. The TikTok algorithm turns that view on it's head. For most people, it's completely the opposite of toxic, it's quite fun and it's frankly more 'addictive' than FB.
Some deride the notion of 'additivity' as 'toxic' but I'd argue that's not necessarily the case, for most people it just means 'it's good and they like it'.
-- Third - " in the absolute best case scenario, a brainless waste of time?" - this bit is really dim, seriously, I can't believe I'm reading it.
The whole point of my claim that 'you should try it to see what it is' would be to take a moment to grasp actually the reality at hand, instead of coming to arbitrary conclusions that make you seem completely out of touch, like the 'Boomer who can't use Zoom' (as a negative stereotype).
Some examples of unique content on TikTok that doesn't exist the same way on other sites:
1) Vignette soliloques - actors playing short-hand hilariously comedic characters, snarky bits of satire and comedy. There are few accounts I follow that I consider funnier than anything on TV.
2) 'Cat Rescue Series'. There are memes of mostly middle aged married white women tracking down federal cats and rescuing them from sometimes harrowing situations. You can see the transformation of feral cats, through their episodes at the vet, sometimes through rehabilitation. Sometimes the animals are permanently injured and learn to live blind, or without a limb. You can follow along with their recovery process in almost a 'real time' basis, with videos coming out sometimes more than once day. They're 'just cats' but it's incredibly invigorating, because it's real. It's more engaging than any 'reality TV'.
Cats being rescued from trees. There's a few channels for that, the videos are almost live.
Other animal related memes include animals being born on farms, for example a liter of goats, with the 'runt' being saved by the farmers wife, and their growth.
The semi-domestication of a pet Coyote etc.
3) 'Intelligent Pet Meme's - there's a dog called 'Bunny' who has learned to 'talk' with a series of 50 or so buttons, and the creator provides content updates almost daily. You can literally see an animal learning to communicate with words, learning 'tenses' (like tomorrow, yesterday, this morning, this afternoon) etc. and it's incredible.
4) 'Live Streams' from events all over the world, for example, the current 'Truckers Sit In' in Ottawa, which I do not support, however, seeing inside the protest, the kinds of people, how they are acting ... it's enlightening.
And all sorts of other bits of content the algorithm brings up.
Some of it is ridiculous, arguably much of it is a 'waste of time' but not more so than television or Netflix, but in the end, it's a unique and new experience, essentially it's unlike anything else.
Personally, I can see this being a bit of a fad over time, but the sheer number of people using it, the nature of the creators, the explosion in 'variety' of content will permanently make its mark.
Why would someone who doesn't enjoy television or movies want to try Netflix? That's not ridiculous, that's spending your time on what you value. Every example you posted sounds completely inane to me, and I wouldn't consider wasting my valuable life on any of that inanity for a moment, if I'm being honest. There is no type of content I would consider valuable which comes best in the form of very short videos. And if we go beyond value to just wanting an app to relax and turn my brain off, I'd prefer to relax in ways that don't destroy my attention span and that aren't designed to be addictive.
It’s funny that you describe Instagram as being more about imagery and therefore distinguishes itself from TikTok. My perception is that Instagram is about vanity. Front and center. Look at me. I find the premise offputting in and of itself. And in that sense, TikTok is no different. Look at me. But with motion instead of still images. Doesn’t change the crux of it.
For now yes, but I would say it's really meant as replacement for Instagram rather than Facebook. So videos only seems fine compared to a service that was primarily for pictures.
They can always expand, but I feel like these social media services usually have a hard time pivoting to a different medium after their initial success.
TikTok feels like YouTube. It has hundreds of millions of users, but only a small fraction will ever post anything. Unless the dynamics of TikTok radically change, I can’t see it being an Instagram replacement.
I guess the business model of social media companies is coming to fore.
FB has a captive audience, that is aging with facebook and will continue using it.
It is clear why FB purchases IG / WA. They are paying money to capture audiences with money earned from FB.
Going ahead, the cycle will repeat. Once the teens in IG grow into adults, FB will use money from that to buy / make another platform.
In this context, the metaverse makes sense. It is a virtual world, where new SM platforms are churned, with all future populations being part of one or more platforms. FB wants to be the owner of all the platforms.
From a business point of view, it makes more sense, in that, FB can now target ads across platforms, meaning, they target the same number of individuals, but with ads being channeled through different platforms, the ad density comes down, and the feeling of "the feed is all ads" might reduce.
Or perhaps your daughter will start using it in here early 20's when life gets busier and people dont have the same interaction expectations?
I dont know the answer but as a non-FB user I do see limitations when people organise events or group chats on messenger. If my wife wasn't connected to most of my friends I'd probably miss out on a bunch of relevant things. So for youth not on FB, I guess time will bring them back into the fold.
33 years old here. Deleted my FB acct in 2012. I stay in contact with everyone I care to be in contact with still over text/Signal/Slack/email. I cannot say I have regretted not having a FB account once in the last ten years.
I'm the same age and deleted my FB account around the same time. Got rid of Instagram a few years ago. I used to think I had a LOT of friends because they would 'like' all of my photos and I was in my 20s so I'd see lots of these social-media-friends out at parties. Once I dropped out of the night life and got rid of social media, I made a big effort to text a large portion of my friend group, but gradually I realized that I was the one putting in most of the effort and the social media interaction was shallow. Now I have a core group of friends in a group chat, and occasionally meet up with people IRL for coffee/lunch/whatever. Social media amplified my perception of social life in my 20s, but for the most part it wasn't nearly as important/real/deep as I once believed it was.
1. Even if FB isn't forced to divest their recent acquisitions, the regulatory environment will make it much more difficult to do the equivalent of buying Instagram in the future.
2. Any good ideas on how I can short "The Metaverse"? I still think the Metaverse is bullshit and will continue to be bullshit for the near future. The very first time I got on Facebook I was pretty enthralled - I was connecting with friends that I hadn't seen in years, and I really liked reconnecting. I have heard basically nobody say they are looking forward to the Metaverse, besides aging tech giants trying to push it.
I'm sorda looking forward to the Metaverse. Or rather, I'm pleased that FB is baiting the rest of the tech giants into an arms race on VR hardware and software development.
I'm a huge fan of VR gaming. The state of the art is incredible right now, but it'll get so much better the more money is shoveled in.
I'm skeptical about Metaverse and collaborative VR in general:
* much higher barrier to entry (requires specialized hardware)
* much more difficult to produce content (3D worlds to build from the ground up vs text and images of the real world)
* less cool than most video games (YMMV, there might be good VR games, but toons with amputated legs flying around are not cool, and that's what we saw in the Facebook demo)
* several safety and social acceptance issues (basically, you don't see the real world when you're using a VR headset)
* VR is not fun to spectate (checkout twitch, there is not much VR content)
* VR has been around for many years already, and it stays... a niche game accessory.
I agree with you, but I find it important to note that it seems like the people who are most into VR gaming also hate the broader concept of the Metaverse.
That is, VR gamers just want to play games, including collaborative games. They don't want to sign in to Facebook to do it, they don't want to "live" in the metaverse, they don't want some shyster hocking their NFTs in VR while they're just trying to play a game.
This whole Metaverse BS just completely feels like Second Life 2.0 (Third Life??)
You know how some people still think we can live in a world where covid is eradicated? I still think we can live in a world where major social media companies are eradicated. Or at least can't churn out new dangerous variants to re-infect the immunologically naive 14 year olds who think it's a brand new generational trend every year.
I've watched this marketing turnover at least three times now in the music industry, and I really think the killer antibody is exposure to history. The operative question for a 14 year old hearing a super "original" band isn't what does this say to you... because they know what it says to them but they don't know how easily they're being manipulated by the distillation of time-worn, shop-worn, lazy songwriting. The question is: Hey, do you realize who they're ripping off? You'll be a lot cooler if you know.
That's the pill every human needs when they encounter a new and addictive social media platform.
I mean... add text and you can describe most of the internet and digital information in general. I don't think it's a useful way to make a comparison at all.
The commonality between FB, IG, Tiktok, Snapchat, Twitter (and YouTube to some extent) is that they're primarily personalized algorithmically generated infinite feeds of stories. The particular algorithms and their objective functions differ from app to app but the underlying model is just the same. These sites generally do have other ways of consuming information, but the dominant mechanism is the algorithmically generated personalized feed.
There are alternatives, such as sites like HN (single feed for everyone), Reddit (per-subreddit ranking which is global rather than algorithmically targeted), many news sites (organized by department vs infinite scroll, newsletters (here's today's set of stories for everyone), etc.
I see what you mean but this string of social network website all have this "come together to do nothing but comment" basis. And that's probably why they spin into data hoarding nothingness, because there was no evolved purpose in the first place.
I'd have a hart time comparing HN, deviantart and a few other places with facebook and instagram..
In my circles the only time I have to use Facebook is when Gen Xers are organizing something that requires my participation there, and I delete the account afterwards.
Or I wind up in small town America and the people there believe that Facebook marketplace + groups has better resources for sale and meetups. My experience with that was that generally accessible forums (even with being private and an “approval” process) all being full of scammers and time wasters. I found resources and niches in person. I checked the same groups 6 months later and nobody was getting anywhere with anything. YMMV of course, but the scammers are integrated everywhere.
Small town America is a big place so there is a market for the illusion of utility!
If she uses Instagram she's using Facebook. If she has a Facebook account and goes anywhere on the web while she is logged in, she's giving money to Facebook. It is not so simple now. She doesn't have to "use" Facebook for them to monetize her image, her privacy, her network of friends. A company like Meta will always have new products to take in kids. That's what their new "Reels" is about, trying to compete with TikTok. They know that their old product is not cool. This is why they changed their name to "Meta"!
This is a battle you and your kids can't win unless your kids know how to identify when a nasty company is trying to steal their data. If your daughter thinks something else is cool, I bet that's another nasty company trying to steal her data instead of Facebook. Our society can't get out of this trap until your daughter says, "they all SUCK"
Yeah but that's what I mean. I'm in my 40s. I can vaguely guess the age differences between Instagram and TikTok kids. I'm sure some new great thing (like Facebook's "Reels") will be next, for the under-12 set. My point is IT'S GOING IN FUCKING CIRCLES and it's still run by the same few companies, and it's always the same. Oh it's NEW? for your 12 year old?
NO: Teach your 12-year old that ALL these things are COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT. Not just Facebook. All of them.
I should also add... when I was young, music from the 50s was dated. When I was starting a company, startups from the 90s felt dated. Yet we are all recycling the same concepts and emotions and hooks and human longing, in a marketing sense, just using one generation's innocence after another, so they all feel like they're new and they're the first. You can't build on a platform like that. In a pissant way that's why facebook doesn't matter, but in a bigger way it's why you need to teach children to see patterns, not just objects of good and bad.
What service did you have as a kid that was "cool" but didn't engage in dubious marketing practice nor sell your data around ?
My personal favorite is Chevignon selling cool clothes for teenagers for years, to then enter the cigarettes market because why not.
Some might argue Facebook/Meta is on another scale, but everything is on another scale, I think we'd need to adjust expectations like we adjust for inflation.
Video games were popular and well selling, but to my recollection they had an uphill battle in the wide public’s perception. If we were to ask, I’d wager Sony had a way stronger “coolness” factor in the 80s 90s.
I mean ... "cool" when I was a kid was having a stereo with two tape decks so you could copy and trade music mixes. Or getting together with 14 year old friends to drink 40s in an abandoned house where someone would bring an air rifle and girls would drink Zima. Doing anything online wasn't "cool" as it was all CLI anyway, but for me trading cracked games and porn gifs on BBSs was cool before we got a dialup internet connection and I discovered IRC. Spending hours browsing in a used record shop or book store was a cool use of a Saturday. Going to a party or the beach was cool. Surfing was cool although I sucked at it. Roller hockey was semi lame but I thought it was cool.
Watching TV or talking about shows wasn't cool. Movies were. Having a pager or godforbid a giant cell phone was extremely uncool as it meant your parents could find you. The closest thing to a smart phone was a TI-82 calculator and that wasn't cool at all. I had a Palm Pilot... I even got a cell cradle for it and could browse the web in black and white in 1996. That was considered insanely not cool, and something only a total nerd would do. (But a Lynx or a Game Gear was alright - and a neogeo meant your parents were super rich). Clove bidi cigarettes were cool but they could make your lungs bleed. Weed and LSD were cool. Fake IDs were cool and making them made you popular. Playing in a band even if you didn't have a lot of shows was cool, and if you did have a show half the kids from your school would be there.
I can't really think of anything I did as a teenager that collected data about me or anything that was a "service" run by a company that was cool or would have been considered cool. AOL was extremely uncool, the way facebook is now. A bit later, I guess a lot of us used Friendster and Myspace (and boards like LnC) but none of those things were central to daily activity or something you spent a lot of time on. It wasn't even the third or fourth thing you'd do to waste time, let alone a place to spend time with friends. So just because it wasn't very central to the teenage experience, and the technology wasn't there to track your interactions and location, there was by definition a lot less data to collect.
I'm describing a world that is for all practical purposes dead, buried and forgotten, in which human interaction was mostly unmediated by corporate grifters.
They did use IG ~2y ago, but then it went out of vogue. Same fate for SnapChat. It is very likely there will be something new next year end they will all move on from TikTok.
Fascinating to observe how they have zero product loyalty. And I realized FB can have a problem, unless they want to spend billions on acquisitions every single year. It’s good for everyone that their monopoly is crumbling a bit.
It’s not hating your family obviously, it’s the fact that all your stupid and embarrassing stuff you typically discuss/share with your friends when you are young is now visible to your extended family.
Nothing wrong with old people. There's quite a few of them in our world, and only increasing. Also, old people have money, unlike teenagers. Also, old people stick around, unlike teens that switch networks every year or so.
So...what is the appeal of teenagers again? Is it being "cool"? What can I buy for cool?
You're not wrong but what Facebook needs for its investors is growth. If your audience is only old people then the possibility for growth is much more limited. If you frame it like resources then a young audience is renewable. While an aging audience is more like oil, less exciting, and requiring more and more effort to aquire over time.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 357 ms ] threadI know several pacific islands were going to ban Facebook but apparently it's heavily in use by businesses.
Regina Lepping, a young entrepreneur from capital city Honiara, said the announcement had sent many small business owners scrambling to find alternatives to Facebook.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-15/solomon-islands-backt...
Most importantly, it's easy for them to update and maintain a Facebook page, versus an independent website.
I'm not comparing physical newspapers to Facebook. The Internet has obviously won. What I've said is that governments of all levels should not be allowed to solely distribute important public information solely via private platforms. A newspaper was just an obvious example, one that already has a legal precedent.
[0] https://www.nypl.org/research/collections/articles-databases...
In the modern world, they basically lose digital citizenship for their mistake. There's no route for reconciliation or re-entry into society when it comes to major tech platforms and bans. With prison, you theoretically pay your time and then can re-enter society. Not so with online bans.
Seems like a simple solution.
No, the simple solution is to enforce public authorities not to use Facebook (or similar platform) as their main communication channel.
You know the saying "it’s easy to make a Twitter clone, it’s not easy to become Twitter". Well government don’t need to become Twitter, so what is stopping them to provide a "public" Twitter clone just for those communications ?
Similarly, every state that I'm aware of has both a Public Access Radio station and carries NPR broadcasting.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-access_television
<< We found this slower route instead >>
If we could just get discord to <insert short feature wishlist> then I reckon the golden IRC days would be back with a vengence.
But the whole UX around using them is very very different.
And that is what matters for the normal user.
Just the list of lacking default features is quite long, like: predictable display of formatting, emoji, pictures, file sharing, voice chat, nested conversations/threads, chat history, different user roles, user avatars, etc.
And yes you can bolt all of this on top of IRC, but that doesn't matter. Defaults matter. At least for the common users UX.
And as long as the IRC standard doesn't include most of this points by default (especially chat history, avatars, etc.) it won't have another golden time.
Also no msg-commands as the default way to do things, programmers might like them, the common user doesn't.
Likewise, everyone was familiar with the 'Prodigy' and 'CompuServe' icons on our desktops with earlier versions of Windows, but nobody used them.
In the Phillipines, Facebook is tied in with your mobile provider so most people only got Facebook (when I was there some years ago). Facebook is what some people there called the internet. Definitely a walled in garden, and definitely a strategy by Facebook to create a moat in some countries.
>links medium blog post which can only be accessed behind a login
Admittedly I use Google for the answers. But I’ve never once needed FB. Is this a regional thing? Some areas exclusively use FB for a storefront?
Some random website containing a restaurant's information simply isn't worth maintaining if all your customers use Facebook anyway.
Not a good plan for any business, I would think. Would be nice to see more businesses on Mastodon or (gasp!) just run their own websites again. Can you imagine how difficult it must be for a business to buy a domain, hosting, and slap together a static site in this day and age?
I suspect I'm not the only one doing this.
I wonder if that counts unique/distinct people, taking into consideration a person with multiple accounts -- FB, IG, WhatsApp, etc.
So according to that, no.
What do you use for your friend group chats?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/2688665.stm
I still remember it and the changes that came after it, the McDonalds of today is nothing like the McDonalds of 2003.
We'll see what Facebook does, I assume buy out Snapchat or Tiktok or some other product where the kids hang out.
Building remodels aside, what are you referring to? They have chicken wraps and salads? Otherwise it seems more or less the same McDonalds of my childhood?
These markets likely to first have user attrition
How come we don’t see scathing articles on NYT about TikTok but on WSJ? Has this become a partisan issue (Trump wanted to ban Tiktok)?
Or just block them. Maybe that would be better.
It's not just a kids app anymore, if you start dismissing content aimed at teenagers, you quickly get into a bubble of content made for more mature audiences: daddy jokes, bloopers, political content and more. It's surprising the number of creators above 20, 30 and more years old there.
In my country, there are even congressmen and runner-ups that post content there daily.
Anyway, the problem with it, in my opinion, is how content is promoted in the app. The next video is just a swipe away (and every time an user swipes too early, you loose "points"). It encourages sensationalist and alarmist content, the creator must keep the audience engajed without swiping it, so the more chocking, the best - just like any other social media platform nowadays. And that's where the fabric of society starts ripping.
Content can be said to exist or not exist on Facebook, and that's usually it. Sure they monkey with the feed, but it's still essentially user-derived.
TikTok effectively exposes one interaction: get next.
What that returns is completely at the mercy of whatever TikTok decides it should be. They've optimized for virality. But it would be pretty easy to tweak that and optimize for something else.
I think researchers are starting to notice mass psychological phenomenon specific to the platform already, though maybe 'tiktok tics' just sounds nicer than any of the other social media networks and 'tics'
We literally almost banned TikTok, and statements were made about the necessity of doing it from the President of the United States. For weeks. Almost resulting in a government mandated forced sale.
In poker they call this a bluff
Just to clarify, I'm fine with seeing some ads in between chronological posts. But the feed is entirely ads after 5-6 posts. Hoping some brave instagram PM reads this comment.
Also, ads that I see on IG are always promoting small businesses and never scammy. Actually it is a source of discovery for me.
All friends that I have love IG, been using it since 2013 daily. Visual culture is far more interesting than crap on FB or ephemeral social toxicity on TikTok/Snapchat. My IG contacts/feed never discuesses politics or activism.
No one I personally know cares about Metaverse, including young people and Facebook users.
The comment that tells me facebook is on to something.
Metaverse is like a video game, except every time you play you are forced to have an awkward family and high school reunion (both at the same time).
Look at Microsoft. My bet is on big enterprise/cloud tech + video game companies.
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/01/well-didnt-work-segway-technol...
But all 4 left pretty quickly. They all described the experience as good for their bank account but bad for their mental health. That's saying a lot coming from game devs.
And if they're basing it on VR they don't have to scale very fast either.
If you but the whole amount, I'll write into my will that my decendant's also have to honor your claim. If any of them becomes king or queen of mars, could be quite lucrative!
I think you need to define "metaverse".
What is it, besides an ugly, much less functional Second Life? Who's launching it? What is it good for? Why would someone use it over...well, you have to define what it's good for before I can even ask that question.
- Work meetings
- Socializing
- Dating
- Creative endeavors
- Improved workspace
You'll be able to have work meetings at a virtual office. You can do that now, but the experience will be better. You'll be able to socialize with friends across the world, meet up at virtual replicated areas (like a rooftop bar in NYC..) and meet other people while you're there. You'll be able to go on virtual dates with a long-distance partner. You'll be able to put on your lightweight VR headset and be stationed at a better workstation, with larger monitors where you can manipulate the interface with movements of your hands without the cost of buying such a work set-up in real life. You'll be able to sit on your couch, put on your VR headset and watch movies on a 100 inch TV screen without having to furnish your home with a TV.
The possibilities are endless. Where's your imagination?
When I watch movies at home often I'm only halfway paying attention to the TV while simultaneously eating or talking to my family or working on my laptop. There's no way I'm going to wear a VR headset most of the time. The TV is hung on the wall so it takes literally zero space.
I'm guessing what will happen is that this will open enough doors and develop some early talent to go on to something worthwhile
I'm curious, how do you expect promotion to actually happen if you feel like "this" (this being a change in branding by a large company) is astroturfing? What is a non-astroturfing way to promote a new idea/product/thing? Or do you think any form of promotion is astroturfing?
What's the status quo with VR problems?
- Price: This was fixed with Quest 2
- Complexity: This was also fixed with Quest.
- Socially acceptable: Nope. Even when you remove the issue of the toxicity surrounding Facebook's brand, most people refuse to either try or use VR regularly. Case in point, Meta is giving away Quest 2's to their employees and contractors. imo it's surprising to me that not all of them took the offer. One common answer I get is, "This is going to be as gimicky as the Wii right?". imo the form factor is what drives normal people away. It has to be smaller and closer to goggles before mass acceptance happens. Apple is most likely right on their approach, based on their patent submissions. Conversely, Apple's weakness will be price.
That highly depends on your setup. The more physical space you have, the better if you want to move.
> VR is gimmicky, like the Wii.
Have you even used modern VR yet before panning it? Google Cardboard is ancient and doesn't count as modern VR. I ask because this answer tends to come from people who haven't tried it.
If that's true, why? I'm especially curious about your complaint regarding "very limited freedom of movement" when you claim to have a large physical space for VR. VR has lot of problems, but that is a very strange complaint. Which games or apps did you experience this in?
Stationary games like beat saber don't count.
This is not an illusion of freedom of movement, but it's actually real freedom of movement vs sitting on a chair and getting an avatar to do it via a controller.
> Real movement happens on point and click teleportation or some of the other fake locomotion schemes.
I think this is your problem. Stop using teleport and actually move. You can get feet trackers to bring more immersion, but nothing kills immersion more than teleportation.
> Stationary games like beat saber don't count.
Why wouldn’t it count? I’m pretty sure it does just like ping pong and boxing.
> I don't think I've ever moved with any sort of... conviction. It's always just a couple steps in any direction, almost always fairly slowly.
I think it's highly dependent on your setup and game. imo playing Quest 2 wireless helps a lot. If you have a lot of physical space for VR, but you fail to actually use it; it defeats its purpose. It's akin to complaining about the lack of tactile feedback in a video game, when you have both vibration and sound turned off.
I still find this a really strange complaint.
Nope, that's not a real choice. I have 10m^2 of free space, which is far more than the average person has, but its still not enough. I also can't move very quickly. Running in VR is not advisable, but walking in video games sucks. Go to a VR warehouse and watch people play with a warehouse scale game with no physical limitations. They still just kind of walk around slowly.
> Why wouldn’t it count? I’m pretty sure it does just like ping pong and boxing.
I already got the standing still experience with the wii. I mean its fine, those games are among the best vr has to offer. Wii boxing and table tennis was also solid. But I'm not going to trick myself into believing that its substantially different than what we had before. Were it not for the head motion tracking, these games could be played on a TV. I can play beatsaber expert+ levels without wearing the headset so long as there aren't walls to dodge. The headset isn't adding much. It's just that motion detection remains a fun gimmick.
> I think it's highly dependent on your setup and game. imo playing Quest 2 wireless helps a lot. If you have a lot of physical space for VR, but you fail to actually use it; it defeats its purpose. It's akin to complaining about the lack of tactile feedback in a video game, when you have both vibration and sound turned off.
It's more like someone trying to convince you that video games are completely different with vibration, when in fact, they're more of a nice touch.
That sounds like a personal issue, and not a VR problem.
> Running in VR is not advisable, but walking in video games sucks.
There's obviously not enough space to run, but that's not to say that you can't move quickly within your designated physical space. It's not like you can't run in place, or buy a movement rig either.
> Go to a VR warehouse and watch people play with a warehouse scale game with no physical limitations. They still just kind of walk around slowly.
1. Those games usually have 1st time players or players not familiar with the levels. Of course, they're going to move with caution.
2. Run & gun doesn't work in reality. In real life, you can't effectively shoot while running or moving fast.
3. Contrary to your personal experience, people do run in those games when they have familiarity with everything.
> I already got the standing still experience with the wii. But I'm not going to trick myself into believing that its substantially different than what we had before.
I can't help to think that this is just disingenuous. 6DOF VR is no where near comparable to Wii games. With Wii, it doesn't track your position so you can play everything sitting on a couch; the amount of movement needed isn't as drastic. It also doesn't fully envelop you visually. This is just a really bad argument. Beat Saber and other VR "single room" games like ping pong still count for movement.
> It's more like someone trying to convince you that video games are completely different with vibration, when in fact, they're more of a nice touch.
That's a bad analogy to VR because vibration is no where near as immersive, which is why I mentioned sound in mine.
This is going no where. We'll just agree that we're probably never going to reach consensus. imo the issue is that for unknown reasons, that are likely personal, you have problems with moving your body which is the real underlying reason for your issues with VR.
I find its a tiring gimmick that is just being reused in every game. The novelty is less for every subsequent title. People like fast movement and action. Nobody walks in games. People won't like game design that encourages slow walking for long. Your human meatbag is not particular dexterous and it shows in the VR games coddle you with their enemy design. And the experience of shooting and taking cover is very hard to differentiate in VR across titles.
I think classic controller games will end up being a popular format for VR when the motion control gimmicks wear off.
You don't have to do "slow walking". By default the controller included in almost every VR platform allows you to move faster if you want within an VR FPS game. Anything available in a pancake game is also available for VR so I still don't understand this complaint. If you want more immersion, then you can get a movement rig like KatVR or run in place with Vive Sensors using NaLo.
> Your human meatbag is not particular dexterous and it shows in the VR games coddle you with their enemy design.
I would disagree. It works just fine, because it's actually easier to aim with a blaster in your hand vs indirectly with a mouse. If you have issues with hand eye coordination, that is not an issue with VR itself.
> And the experience of shooting and taking cover is very hard to differentiate in VR across titles.
Because the actual physical mechanics of taking cover doesn't change. The only reason it's different in 3rd person games is due to the controls. Again, I don't understand this complaint unless you just don't like physically moving.
> I think classic controller games will end up being a popular format for VR when the motion control gimmicks wear off.
I feel that this is only true for anyone who have issues with physically moving their body. I don't feel that this applies for most of the populace. Then again I could be wrong.
VR does have many issues and problems, but the issues you bring up seem more like personal ones.
You can but its not really advisable. Games are not designed to work like this. They might not break, but its contrary to the design of the game and will harm the experience in numerous little ways.
> I would disagree. It works just fine, because it's actually easier to aim with a blaster in your hand vs indirectly with a mouse. If you have issues with hand eye coordination, that is not an issue with VR itself.
It is undeniably easier to aim with a mouse. There's simply no question and you're fooling yourself if you think otherwise. As someone who can shoot decently irl and tap heads with a mouse. Alyx is yet again another example of this. Enemies don't move fast for the explicit reason that its pretty hard for most people to shoot a moving target with a gun. It's very easy for someone familiar with a mouse to do so. I would bet that most games adopt a heavy amount of aim assist in he near future.
> Because the actual physical mechanics of taking cover doesn't change. The only reason it's different in 3rd person games is due to the controls. Again, I don't understand this complaint unless you just don't like physically moving.
The controls are incredibly important. They are your interface to the game.
> I feel that this is only true for anyone who have issues with physically moving their body. I don't feel that this applies for most of the populace. Then again I could be wrong.
I think you are wrong, given the decline of health and fitness, but aside from that, we shall see again.
No, it won't. It works as designed in VR. This is a completely baseless claim.
> It is undeniably easier to aim with a mouse.
No, it isn't because it's not natural or intuitive compared to pointing a firearm with a laser pointer. There have man machine, industrial engineering studies surrounding this.
> The controls are incredibly important. They are your interface to the game.
Yes, and something to mirror real life's physical objects and environments is a lot more intuitive and natural. Again, you have a completely baseless claim.
I'm very confident that your opinion of VR highly tied to your personal dislike of physical movement. That is not an issue with VR, that is just your personal preference.
FB isn't betting on the metaverse existing. They are betting that they can make some new walled portion off it that will be so big that it will esentially be the whole thing.
Personally, I don't like their odds at all.
You can't piss of the tech entusiasts, reviewers, podcasts and everyone in between by constantly exhibiting poor judgement, arrogant behavior and blatantly invading peoples privacy, and then expect them to be excited about your next venture.
Facebook has burned pretty much any goodwill it might have had, and now it want's you to emerge yourself in it's VR world? Zuckerberg has to be incredibly delusional if he think that's going to sell.
Nope
Without taking into account fiscal responsibility, it's in the realm of possibility that FB could buy TikTok with credit + options.
Mark Z talked about S curves 10 yea to ago
I got a message that said "We aren't cool enough to support your browser".
Something about the sarcastic snootiness of the message really angered me and prevented me from ever opening a Facebook account. Later I blocked all Facebook domains in Host files and it's been that way ever since.
For awhile it was a bit awkward with people demanding to know why I didn't have a Facebook page but apparently I hold grudges for a long time. It's been delightful to see people come around to my point of view on Facebook.
They really are like a seedy bar in the bad part of town. With snooty messages for circumventors. But I have to thank them for that snooty message otherwise I would have probably caved and opened an account years ago.
Really? I think Facebook's message is kind of nice compared to the standard "Please use a different browser". Whereas the common message implies that you are the problem for using an unusual browser, Facebook's message acknowledges that they are the problem for being less cool than you.
Your reason and theirs have little overlap though it could be argued that condescension is a symptom of internal malaise which is also reflected in shady business practices which is causing users to now abandon FB.
Don't try to be cute in your messaging, just straightforward and direct is my takeaway. Some people might appreciate the cute but others you might anger if you don't get the tone just right.
Human greed has no limits. And once someone gets a taste of that amount of wealth and power, it is difficult to not get morally and ethically corrupt, either directly, or by turning a blind eye to reality.
I'm genuinely confused.
Can someone please explain this to me?
I want to understand better.
Peak cigarette consumption (per capita/US): 1963
Peak oil production (global): unknown, maybe 2020-2030
Peak Facebook: ??
That's an incomplete peer group, but I find it interesting that at some point, society does start to unplug from addictive substances. The tapering off is quite slow, though. Unclear whether heavy users cut back, or new generations just don't develop the habit as older ones die off
Peak coffee is in 1946, but what have consumers moved onto from then? Alcohol, Tea, Energy drinks, Soft Drinks ?
https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/charts/58920/finding_buzbyf...
- Gatorade and similar stuff - A movement to drink water (HydroHomies) - High caffeine energy drinks (Red bull and the likes) - Healthy alternatives (juices, smoothies, etc)
Coffee 1946: 46.4 gallons per person
Coffee 2005: 24.2 gallons per person
Soft drinks 1947: 10.8 gallons per person
Soft drinks 2005: 51.5 gallons per person
Total caffeinated consumption in 46/47: 57.2 gallons / person
Total caffeinated consumption in 2005: 75.7 gallons / person
The chart seems to indicate tea has stayed relatively flat in the same time period. I'm not sure the history of caffeine pills or ADHD medicine, but those may also contribute to an increased consumption in 2005.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2007/june/coffee-consum...
Wow, no wonder Diabetes has skyrocketed.
51.5 gallons is almost 900 ml a day. That is about 100 grams of sugar per day.
This is like a epidemic of sugar addiction.
I don't say this to condemn these drinks (if people like them that much, they're free to spend money on the little things in life they enjoy), but I'd like to square my experience of not caring for them versus their clear popularity from statistics.
Your logic is sensible adult talk ..
ps: my body crashed I'm now borderline allergic to processed foods and sodas, it's still strange to me :)
My parents forbade me from soda growing up, but my cousin once snuck me some sugary orange pop once (I didn't like the fizz when I first tried it, but I liked it more when I tried it again). I still have a preference for it sometimes due to the memories (along with root beer, which I also tried when younger) if it's free, though just a small cup. I never tried Coca-Cola or Pepsi until an abnormally older age, so that's probably why these two never stuck for me.
This is the crux of the matter. Whether something is too sugary is a matter of taste and habit. It tastes too sugary to you, but great to other people.
But this is the thing about addiction, to the person who isn't hooked it seems odd.
As a kid I used to wake up at night and drink Coke. I just craved it, that's how it was. I still like something sweet to drink but I control it these days, and my taste is not quite the same as an adult. Still, there's no accounting for it, you want something because you want it. Best explanation I can find is that it triggers something connected to reward paths in a way that isn't how that reward path evolved.
I find the coffee at 46 gallons stranger. 570ml a day of coffee? What's even more wtf is that in Central Europe during and after the war coffee was very expensive/difficult to get so people were drinking coffee substitutes (chicory root for example) while people in the US drank half liter a day.
>Coffee 2005: 24.2 gallons per person
24.2 gallons per person.. so that is 24.2 gallon / 365 days * 128 oz/gallon / 8oz/cup = 1.06 cup / day.
1 cup per day? That seems crazy low. I guess that must include kids/young adults..
Perhaps the US used to drink espressos in the 1940s, I'm not sure. That's if this fact is even accurate.
US consumption in 1946 was apparently ~20 pounds of coffee beans annually per capita, or an average of around 2.5–3 (8 oz?) cups of coffee per day for the ~3/4 of adults who were regular coffee drinkers.
Per https://www.retrowow.co.uk/food_and_drink/coffee/coffee.html
> Most people [in the UK] made coffee in a jug. You boiled the water and added it to ground coffee already in the jug. You let the ground coffee settle and it was ready to pour through a strainer and drink. Some people then boiled the coffee again.
My impression is that coffee preparation was comparable in the USA. Neither paper filters nor instant coffee were common until decades later.
Espresso was unknown in America back then. Rumor has it that GIs, when exposed to it, diluted it with hot water, giving us the modern Americano. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_Americano
Facebook's numbers are falling despite a growth in world population, and I'd bet a larger growth in the internet-connected population. That's worse, especially for a platform heavily reliant on network effects.
This one interested me. We're at a local maximum in terms of coffee consumption in recent years. After WWII coffee fell off in popularity and due to the substitute of carbonated soft drinks. Most likely in simplest terms it was a cheaper energy drink for the poor.
Hardly the best example of America getting over an addiction.
And uh, does the genocide of the Uigher population somehow not count as an evil? I mean I know they are Muslims and not Jews but seems like we should be concerned about them being forced into camps and sterilized...
This is not to say TikTok is some wonderful, innocent thing. But the harm done by it compared to Facebook is just not remotely comparable, at least not yet, and that may be partially due to the nature of what the platform pushes and to whom.
I do wonder if ByteDance does really just want to chase profit here though, and letting TikTok be weaponized by the party would hurt that.
I'd say it is actually remarkable just how long Facebook (the site) has been able to maintain relevance, whereas people should have been bored and migrated to something newer and shiner a long time ago (as is now finally happening with apps like TikTok).
Facebook is the least of my problems when it comes to addictive substances. Youtube, Reddit, Hackernews, TikTok. They're all the same even if they don't go out of their way to insight addiction.
Coffee consumption begin 15th century
Tobacco 18th century
Oil: 347 AD
Social Networks: circa. 2002.
And the indians of America consumed it much earlier.
Just to clarify.
But in general, ALL of the sticky sites aren’t…sticky anymore. I took 2 weeks off at the worst of it and it did an amazing job of breaking the feedback loop.
Facebook tried to take over forums and mailing lists, their market was full of scams (which had me going round and round with Paypal and the bank when ‘Sally’ selling an iPad from Massachusetts sent a receipt with an email from a Guy in Turkey.
Then they started poking around with VR and Meta and man, I really don’t want to use this headset if I’m forced to log into Facebook and you’ve got 6 outward facing cameras, Zuckerberg.
Good. Can’t come soon enough.
A brief history of reddit:
>We want to democratize the traditional model by giving editorial control to the people who use the site, not those who run it.
— Reddit FAQ 2005
>We've always benefited from a policy of not censoring content
— u/kn0thing 2008
>A bastion of free speech on the World Wide Web? I bet they would like it," he replies. [reddit]'s the digital form of political pamplets.
— u/kn0thing 2012
>We will tirelessly defend the right to freely share information on reddit in any way we can, even if it is offensive or discusses something that may be illegal.
— u/reddit 2012
>We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it. Not because that's the law in the United States - because as many people have pointed out, privately-owned forums are under no obligation to uphold it - but because we believe in that ideal independently, and that's what we want to promote on our platform. We are clarifying that now because in the past it wasn't clear, and (to be honest) in the past we were not completely independent and there were other pressures acting on reddit. Now it's just reddit, and we serve the community, we serve the ideals of free speech, and we hope to ultimately be a universal platform for human discourse (cat pictures are a form of discourse).
— u/yishan 2012
>Neither Alexis [u/kn0thing] nor I created Reddit to be a bastion of free speech
— u/spez 2015
White supremacy or hate wasn't really a thing on reddit until the past few years. The controversial content on reddit were r/jailbait (which I'd say a majority of the community agreed with; although many did begrudge the shifting of the overton window on 'we host anything that is legal'), but then "social justice" became a thing and a new crowd of redditors seemed to want to de-platform people.
I don't have a time machine, but I suspect if you polled a majority of redditors in 2017 whether they'd support the de-platforming that is happening today, a majority would vehemently disagree.
But my impression is that being the central hub of one of the most aggressively hateful online pro-Donald-Trump communities in 2016 attracted a larger number of abusive users and increased the visibility of the problem.
they're a tiny part of the population online and in real life
you can mute users and stick to your own subreddits because you only see what you choose to follow
you're feeding into the narrative and creating the problem of censoring everything
You Could NOT escape the stuff towards the end of the Trump administration. It wasn’t only Reddit.
“Far-right atheists”. Okay.
The place used to be far more liberal both in the sense of openmindedness and in the sense of people having the ability to tolerate people they didn't actively like. That atmosphere is mostly gone.
This might solve a lot of problems, but it would create issues on the edge, like r/pics content that may not be overtly political but clearly has an agenda.
Personally I use Reddit exclusively for political flamewars on one account, and in-depth technical content on another account.
I’m starting to feel pretty unwelcome, though, when it comes to anything “misinformarion” related. Once you get banned from one subreddit, if you have a post reported on the same subreddit from another account, then both your accounts get banned site-wide. Combine this with the dragnet, unsolicited bans that some mods are sending to anyone who posts in certain subreddits and you have a real chilling effect.
The average IQ on Reddit is also about 110, which is just boring in most cases. When you can predict the top comments on a thread, reading them is probably a waste of time.
This is the result of Citizens United; when elections are decided by who has the most money, it’s a zero-sum game until politics have consumed the totality of our lives.
In 2022 you have the choice of a) "suppressing free speech" or b) "platforming racists" and there is no middle ground and no way to win. You can't pass the buck to moderators.
The choice did not feel so stark in 2005.
The major problem with most internet platforms is the boundaries and user controls are non existent. Everything is open for everyone to see and no one can control who is in their network. Only a handful of moderators and platforms have control over both visibility and membership/rules, and those controls are limited and primitive.
Feeds which magically select content users are supposed to like and the attempt to eliminate user settings to make platforms more accessible and magical contribute to this problem. Creating effective and easy to use self moderating tools is a difficult enough problem on its own; when you also have to fight a lot of entrenched design philosophy, it's even harder.
That's not a solution in the cases when those people, are using the platform to gather a group of angry people and then will go and kill you and your family and those who look like you.
Now, I'm guessing this isn't a problem in _your_ case -- but it is, for some others (see e.g. FB and Myanmar, or WhatsApp lynch mobs).
Another problem is when the one's you don't want to hear, are spreading propaganda supporting a want-to-be-dictaor. And then eventually they succeed, because those who didn't like the dictator, just ignored them (let them spread the propaganda unhindered). -- What's the likelihood that the US is still a democracy in 30 years. (Btw I didn't downvote your comment)
I'm not saying self moderation would eliminate bad groups. I think it would better contain them. I think having more siloed, fragmented, and naturally evolving online ecosystems would prevent any of the problems you mention from spilling over and infecting the entire culture.
I don't think any of those risks you mentioned are solved by centralized moderation. I think they're made worse, as everyone becomes incentivized to fight for control of moderation and is pulled towards ousting the other to recreate the groups those in power naturally feel most comfortable with. I firmly believe the social dilemma people are currently in is a result of the entire world trying to make rules for one big room, and no one is happy because people come from vastly different contexts that could never be properly accounted for in one room and one set of rules.
Allowing people to make their own decisions about association and information is far more scalable, democratic, and corruption resistant than trying to make platforms that appeal to all and respect all people from top down moderation. It allows people to let off steam privately and meet in designated rooms in the middle. That may seem terrifying given some of the people and groups out there. But I think recent history is a pretty good indicator that trying to forcibly educate and moderate people that are deemed a problem backfires severely. Malicious and violent groups can and should be contained and watched by others, but trying to prevent association and people deciding whats good and whats bad for themselves drives more people to opposition and affiliation with potentially violent groups than they would otherwise associate with. If people are able to express certain ideas without being automatically ousted from certain groups and affiliated with extremists, that lessens the pull to extremism.
There is no perfect solution, and I do not think that every forum should avoid top down moderation or that certain associations shouldn't be watched or potentially dealt with in the real world if dangerous enough. I just think more user directed moderation is in general the least worst option.
What's worse: a group spreading messaging encouraging mobs to go out and kill people made up of those who voluntarily choose that group over others in a world where other groups can counter message and organize and defend themselves, or a group that controls global messaging encouraging mobs to go out and kill people and bans all counter messaging?
What's worse: propaganda supporting a want to be dictator spreading in a forum of voluntarily associated zealots which bans and ignores criticism, but has no power over alternative group organization, or propaganda supporting a want to be dictator spreading on a global platform that bans and ignores criticism of all other groups?
Is a two party system backed by billions, elaborate social media timelines (from experts of sociology, psychology, K street, and NGOs) even close to a democracy at this point in time?
Regards of which hand you consider the correct one, we have deeply flawed versions of the world being marketed and sold at unprecedented scale and scope.
Imagine if you worked for a company and every 4 years workers voted to keep or replace them. What if the companies main customer had a controlling vote?
/rant
Nobody argues that reddit is constitutionally bound to host free speech. The point is that what's right in a public forum is also right for a company. You appear to be focusing on an irrelevant technicality or parroting the "they can build their own Twitter" defence, but neither of those is relevant here, the only point being made is that free (independent of constitutional obligation) speech is good, and should be broadly supported by platforms
I don’t think we’ve established that, and I’m fairly confident that the ACLU doesn’t think so either for that matter.
If corporate speech, or individual speech had to embrace all viewpoints without restriction it would cease to be independent at all wouldn’t it? In other words, protecting the right of individuals to express the viewpoints they choose to is in fact the more democratic ideal isn’t it?
Separately, please refrain from speculation about what I or others _appear_ to be saying. If I intend to say something I have no problem doing so.
There are definitely approved forms of bigotry that are tolerated on just about every social media platform. I’ve never seen a post promoting death to unvaccinated moderated, for example. I really hate the idea that because a site has racist users that it would be considered a racist platform. That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water.
On sites like reddit, I can ignore hateful subreddits just as easily as other topics I’m not interested in. I don’t think it’s reasonable that there is an expectation that every platform police everything that might offend someone and I don’t know of any platform that attempts to. Certain bigotry is just less tolerated by admins than others.
r/conspiracy is an interesting example. Opposing views on just about any topic are accepted and there’s genuinely a lot of critical thinking and research that goes into many of the comments. Sure it’s filled with crap posts, loonies, and paranoids, but constructive, respectful discussion is had about topics considered too taboo for most other subreddits. And they are maligned by most of Reddit to the point where certain subs will ban you just for subscribing or posting to it.
Disclaimer: of course racism is awful and stupid. I’m not advocating promoting racists or misogynists or any other hate group. I just think the benefits of open, free discussion out way the drawbacks of hateful, stupid discussion.
Sadly, what passes for moderation at most places nowadays is even worse. It's hideous and stifling. If the cranks make places too annoying to stay at, woke moderation makes places feel pointless to participate in.
I once tried looking through their archived code base to find when they made that change but couldn't decipher it. It's possible they never showed authors the red background at all.
[1] https://imgur.com/E3bFvKh
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/CantSayAnything/about/sticky
Reddit gave mods the ability to shadow ban about 5 years ago via automod [2]. Now even crowd control can remove comments [3]. These features would be fine, in my opinion, if users could discover when their comments were removed.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/jp4j76/google_a...
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/6bj5de/state_of_sp...
[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/qhpr6i/crowd_contr...
I get it, and I don’t have to keep attempting to contribute to it.
Are you a teen or a young adult. I am guessing you are in between age of 35 - 45 because, I am that age myself and have started weaning off of social media lately. The dopamine rewards are just not worth it.
I have, however, moved on to saner places like HN.
- 0 minutes of facebook
- 0 minutes of Instagram
- 0 minutes of Twitter
- 20 minutes of Telegram per day to catchup on messages
- 10 minutes of Matrix
A few years back the aggregate was easily 10-12 hrs per day (rest were spent watching movies and writing code) . Nowadays my brain automatically will close the sites if I spend more then 2 minutes on them.
But it’s not just social media, I lost my appetite for movies, tv shows too.
Most of this purge was unintentional , however now that it’s done. I’m glad. Other than that I come on HN once or twice a day to have fun and comment and read stuff.
I wouldn’t say HN is more saner then other social media, most of the peers I engaged with in the more popular social media apps were equally as nice, amicable and fun to talk with.
But these days I mostly spend my days reading story books, blogs, write code, make drinks and cook food, and solve fun puzzles that I design.
Who knows, maybe it’ll all change to something else in 2 years again.
I hope you have a lovely day !
I most definitely do not need or want a VR immersed version of that toxicity.
You don't have to login into Facebook to have it build a profile of you: https://www.vox.com/2018/4/20/17254312/facebook-shadow-profi...
What blows my mind are all of the blatant scam replies on sponsored content. You'll get sponsored content from, say, Bloomberg or CNBC, and half of the replies are cryptocurrency scams. I've even seen top replies that were 'ads' for witch doctors that will cast spells for you if you send them money on Venmo.
It makes both Facebook/Meta and the sponsored brands look terrible.
Oversharing is a really bad idea in the long run. Your opinions from 30 years ago are probably hated today. Imagine the trauma that is caused if you could read what your parents thought before you were born.
Facebook (the social network) was known to be in decline for years. The real attention is on Instagram and WhatsApp are still adding users. I wouldn't rush to rule them out yet over this.
I feel like TikTok is more closed and that I don’t have a shadow profile on it like Facebook did.
But it’s also because the web (especially the browsers and mobile OS) learnt its lessons.
OTOH, it also means that newcomers will have to make even more efforts to to "compete" with the historical open web which can create even more situations of information disappearing from the open web.
>maximize engagement
It encourages engagement with upvotes and additional privileges when an account gets more points. However, the site’s design doesn’t maximize it. I don’t get push notifications to check the site, awards, or suggestions for other relevant articles in the comments.
>promote outrage
Outrage can be a factor that causes posts to rise, but deliberate policies avoid optimizing for it. Specifically, the avoidance of editing the submission title, unless the purpose is to make it less clickbait.
>instill a fear of missing out.
This is most subjective, but I get the sentiment that if someone posts an amazing project, there’s a good chance of constructive critique in the comments, or more information from the developer about how they made it.
Other social media websites don’t have the depth of discussion (just photos of the best parts of their life, without talking about the challenges). This is relatively more of a cultural/user base observation versus an interface decision, however.
For conspiracy theories, antivax, and misinformation, the alternative is heavier moderation. It looks like a judgement call by HN moderators to err on being less interventionist with user discussion. There are tradeoffs, but I think the benefits of free discussion outweigh exposure to misinformation, so long as one reads skeptically and critically.
HN _mostly_ prevents this by having strong and good moderation, but there's still a fair amount of negative metrics coming from it.
I used to be able to go to business websites and get the information I needed, now everyone primarily uses Facebook pages to post information, which means I have to log in on many occasions to view the content. The Internet before Facebook was much more convenient for me.
Facebook hasn’t resulted in any positive interactions for me. Something about the platform drives people to be confrontational. Years ago when I participated on the platform I would reply to friend’s posts. Sometimes I would get replies from their friends and they tried to argue with me. It boiled down to them believing I said something in my post that I did not write. That drove me to not write my thoughts about something, and when I did reply, it was with shallow positive comments. That is a very boring way to interact with people, so I stopped using the platform.
"at lewd teenagers dancing to the latest tune or whatever the kids are doing these days." ... is a seriously dim view.
TikTok is literally the #1 app in the world, and for someone curious enough to read HackerNews but unwilling to even try app to understand the nature of its impact is a bit odd.
Personally, I despise Twitter, but I read it occasionally, and understand why it works, and what kind of content is on there. I would find it problematic to work in tech with someone who doesn't understand 'why people like Netflix' having never even bothered to stream a video before.
In particular, the feed algorithm is unlike anything else in tech and the content is definitely a lot less toxic.
You should definitely try it, that doesn't mean you have to like it.
Don't mean to be rude but you appear to have a quite limited concept of what 'working in tech' can entail.
It's fine to not want to use those services (I personally avoid most of them), but to ignore them, or worse, purposely avoid even understanding what they are is straight, self imposed ignorance. It's ridiculous.
Further, who cares what you find problematic? People don't work for you.
What is there to know about the Arab world?
What is there to know about Hacker News?
What is there to know about AI?
What is there to know about anything? Until you experience it yourself.
Self imposed ignorance is a guaranteed path to obsolescence and irrelevance.
It would be ridiculous if a colleague never 'tried' streaming, email, or 'Video Conf'. because they were too narrow to even care to understand.
It doesn't mean we have to care about HN, the Arab world, video conferencing or streaming, but it does imply a hefty dose of ignorance to not even bother to try to understand.
The range of content on TikTok is unlike anything else, and there are definitely a few forms of niche content forms that have never existed before, and a bit hard to explain. So see it for yourself or remain in the dark.
"who cares what you find problematic? People don't work for you."
Well people do actually, but that's besides the point.
If you want to be 'the old man who can't use email' among your peers, of course it's your choice.
Tiktok is a bunch of videos. A lot of them, according to you. You open the app and play a video. Then it suggests the next one.
How does this conceptually bring anything new, other than it working well? I mean, I know what an app is. I have Youtube, which also has lots of videos. It's an app to watch videos. Shocking?
I think the main reason for it is that most of us are just old enough to remember what facebook was before they started filling the site with ads and recommended/paid/suggested/etc posts. It was really fucking great back when you would logging and there would be literally no content/ads other than what your friend manually took the time write/post.
they gave us a taste of what a great minimalist social media platform could be and then turned monetisation/engagement to 9000.
Imagine if HN was bought by reddit and they decided to use the reddit platform (new skin only, no "old.XX...") with all the ads and everything. That's kinda what happened to facebook.
- they have/had a critical size. No other social media was that big, and size matters.
- they required (still do?) real IDs. Forcing people to use their real name is a special kind of awful, especially when it's the main network
- they push a unified account platform for everything they owned. Other companies tried too but most failed (I also hate Apple for that, if you were to ask).
The high P/E big tech companies enjoy is on basis of the implicit expectation to keep growing fast[1], if that on confidence on growth is no longer there, then price will reflect closer to a more traditional tech stock.
Tesla trades at P/E of 185x, Amazon - 58x, Microsoft - 35x, Google - 29x and FB - 23x[2]. I think it accurately reflects the market expectation of their respective future growth.
---
[1] Same reason Tesla is valued so high despite relatively modest revenue, the expectation is massive growth on the back of their lead in the space and the accelerating shift towards EV.
[2] SAP, IBM, ORCL all trade in the same range today.
Worse, Logged in once, then told Facebook to keep themselves logged in forever. This technically means users who have logged in.
Facebook is a shadow of what it use to be after running off everyone.
Yes, everyone ran off, leaving only 1.9B subscribers.
Instagram is for moderately old people.
Snapchat is for moderately young people.
TikTok is for young people.
I’m trying to do my part in keeping my teens off social media. I’m about 50% successful.
I almost never see any of my friends posting on Instagram anymore. The only ones that do are artists and people with some “personal brand” to promote (aka, they have a business interest in posting to IG). Some more people post on stories, but even that’s rare.
Like Facebook, most people I know hate using Instagram, so I figure it’s only a matter of time before it’s engagement numbers go down.
I’m in my 20s for reference.
I feel like in the coming years we’ll see these Gen Z kids almost entirely eschew posting on social media. Most young people I know are almost entirely socializing with their friends via messaging apps, while very rarely making posts on social media. Instagram will fade from relevance for the youth, much like Facebook, and I don’t expect that any social media platform will replace it. Yes, TikTok is popular, but it’s more akin to YouTube that twitter/Facebook/Instagram.
We’ll probably see some dramatic headlines about “the death of the social network” at some point over the next few years. Messaging will be the future of digital socializing.
I think this is ultimately driven by young people coming to the realization that posting to social media is either completely unfulfilling, or actively detrimental to their mental well being. Platform owners thought they could ignore the issue, without considering that their target demographic may very well just reject social networking all together.
Instagram : millenials
TikTok : gen z
snapchat is sort of irrelevant from what I can gather.
Occasionally people will send me a link to something and it's on Instagram. Clicking for me give me a Login modal. They make it too easy for me, click.
It's completely unlike other social media and it's addictive without being negative, which kind of goes against our current instinctive thinking about social media.
At the start, it's completely dumb videos that kids will find funny.
But the algorithm is smart and will find content you like.
My feed is now ultra cute cat and cat rescue stories, and really, really sharp non-professional comedians acting out vignettes, they are better than anything pro, and better than anything on TV, and, amateur musicians playing solos, odd instruments etc..
I enjoy TikTok more than Television or Netflix.
It's very hard to describe to non-users because on paper it's very much like YouTube, but the format is so short, and the kinds of bits are so much more ephermal ... and for some reason most of the toxicity is not there.
Also, you get to see first hand some 'live events' because people stream from everywhere, and it gives you neat perspective. For example, the 'Trucker Convey' in Ottawa Ontario. After watching the event live from various perspectives on TikTok, while simultaneously watching broadcast news cover the event, it became unsettlingly clear how aggressively misinformative broadcast news was of the event. (Even if I fully disagree with the protesters, they should be represented fairly)
TikToks has radically changed my view of content moderation and demonstrated that it additivity does not have to be based on fear and anger.
They censor aggressively, and get away with it partly because it's not really seen as a platform for 'information'. So you won't see a lot of controversial things there, and also I don't mind that technically 'Tiannamen Square' content will be absent. I mean, it's just TikTok (is what I tell myself).
It's disturbingly addictive without being particularly political or controversial and for that reason alone it's worth having a look at for those who care to pay attention.
In what way? It seems like something between vine an instagram.
It's a bit distressing the number of negative commenters indicating that they don't even want to try something that's the #1 digital in the world. It's like saying 'I don't want to see what TV is because I already don't like the radio'.
TikTok is nothing like Instagram at all, which is mostly oriented towards imagery.
It definitely is a bit like Vine, but the longer segments allow for a lot more creativity, moreover, I think the number of people with smartphones and 'decent cameras and willing to make content' is just considerably bigger than it was previously.
I watch cat rescue videos, and then the 'day after follow up' appears in my feed the next day, I find it intriguing.
It's certainly not for everyone, but it's definitely something that anyone working in tech should try out, so they get a grasp of what is happening in the world.
-- First - we are curious, we try things 'just because'. Of course, nobody has to be.
-- Second - if you want to work in an industry, you're going to have to have at least some baseline understanding of what's going on. 'Experiencing' something gives you quite a lot of insight into the nature of the system that cannot be described otherwise. It doesn't mean you have to like it.
For example, the content moderation algorithms in TikTok are unlike any other app. So different in fact, that it's revelatory.
The 'consensus view' among most people in the industry is that FB and other social media drive attention via toxicity. The TikTok algorithm turns that view on it's head. For most people, it's completely the opposite of toxic, it's quite fun and it's frankly more 'addictive' than FB.
Some deride the notion of 'additivity' as 'toxic' but I'd argue that's not necessarily the case, for most people it just means 'it's good and they like it'.
-- Third - " in the absolute best case scenario, a brainless waste of time?" - this bit is really dim, seriously, I can't believe I'm reading it.
The whole point of my claim that 'you should try it to see what it is' would be to take a moment to grasp actually the reality at hand, instead of coming to arbitrary conclusions that make you seem completely out of touch, like the 'Boomer who can't use Zoom' (as a negative stereotype).
Some examples of unique content on TikTok that doesn't exist the same way on other sites:
1) Vignette soliloques - actors playing short-hand hilariously comedic characters, snarky bits of satire and comedy. There are few accounts I follow that I consider funnier than anything on TV.
2) 'Cat Rescue Series'. There are memes of mostly middle aged married white women tracking down federal cats and rescuing them from sometimes harrowing situations. You can see the transformation of feral cats, through their episodes at the vet, sometimes through rehabilitation. Sometimes the animals are permanently injured and learn to live blind, or without a limb. You can follow along with their recovery process in almost a 'real time' basis, with videos coming out sometimes more than once day. They're 'just cats' but it's incredibly invigorating, because it's real. It's more engaging than any 'reality TV'.
Cats being rescued from trees. There's a few channels for that, the videos are almost live.
Other animal related memes include animals being born on farms, for example a liter of goats, with the 'runt' being saved by the farmers wife, and their growth.
The semi-domestication of a pet Coyote etc.
3) 'Intelligent Pet Meme's - there's a dog called 'Bunny' who has learned to 'talk' with a series of 50 or so buttons, and the creator provides content updates almost daily. You can literally see an animal learning to communicate with words, learning 'tenses' (like tomorrow, yesterday, this morning, this afternoon) etc. and it's incredible.
4) 'Live Streams' from events all over the world, for example, the current 'Truckers Sit In' in Ottawa, which I do not support, however, seeing inside the protest, the kinds of people, how they are acting ... it's enlightening.
And all sorts of other bits of content the algorithm brings up.
Some of it is ridiculous, arguably much of it is a 'waste of time' but not more so than television or Netflix, but in the end, it's a unique and new experience, essentially it's unlike anything else.
Personally, I can see this being a bit of a fad over time, but the sheer number of people using it, the nature of the creators, the explosion in 'variety' of content will permanently make its mark.
Refusin...
What motivated you to post this?
[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/18/tiktok-usage-topped-instagra...
It doesn't really seem useful for sharing the same kind of information that people use Facebook for (mostly text based information, questions, etc).
They can always expand, but I feel like these social media services usually have a hard time pivoting to a different medium after their initial success.
FB has a captive audience, that is aging with facebook and will continue using it.
It is clear why FB purchases IG / WA. They are paying money to capture audiences with money earned from FB.
Going ahead, the cycle will repeat. Once the teens in IG grow into adults, FB will use money from that to buy / make another platform.
In this context, the metaverse makes sense. It is a virtual world, where new SM platforms are churned, with all future populations being part of one or more platforms. FB wants to be the owner of all the platforms.
From a business point of view, it makes more sense, in that, FB can now target ads across platforms, meaning, they target the same number of individuals, but with ads being channeled through different platforms, the ad density comes down, and the feeling of "the feed is all ads" might reduce.
I dont know the answer but as a non-FB user I do see limitations when people organise events or group chats on messenger. If my wife wasn't connected to most of my friends I'd probably miss out on a bunch of relevant things. So for youth not on FB, I guess time will bring them back into the fold.
1. Even if FB isn't forced to divest their recent acquisitions, the regulatory environment will make it much more difficult to do the equivalent of buying Instagram in the future.
2. Any good ideas on how I can short "The Metaverse"? I still think the Metaverse is bullshit and will continue to be bullshit for the near future. The very first time I got on Facebook I was pretty enthralled - I was connecting with friends that I hadn't seen in years, and I really liked reconnecting. I have heard basically nobody say they are looking forward to the Metaverse, besides aging tech giants trying to push it.
I'm a huge fan of VR gaming. The state of the art is incredible right now, but it'll get so much better the more money is shoveled in.
* much higher barrier to entry (requires specialized hardware)
* much more difficult to produce content (3D worlds to build from the ground up vs text and images of the real world)
* less cool than most video games (YMMV, there might be good VR games, but toons with amputated legs flying around are not cool, and that's what we saw in the Facebook demo)
* several safety and social acceptance issues (basically, you don't see the real world when you're using a VR headset)
* VR is not fun to spectate (checkout twitch, there is not much VR content)
* VR has been around for many years already, and it stays... a niche game accessory.
That is, VR gamers just want to play games, including collaborative games. They don't want to sign in to Facebook to do it, they don't want to "live" in the metaverse, they don't want some shyster hocking their NFTs in VR while they're just trying to play a game.
This whole Metaverse BS just completely feels like Second Life 2.0 (Third Life??)
https://www.oculus.com/horizon-worlds/
I've watched this marketing turnover at least three times now in the music industry, and I really think the killer antibody is exposure to history. The operative question for a 14 year old hearing a super "original" band isn't what does this say to you... because they know what it says to them but they don't know how easily they're being manipulated by the distillation of time-worn, shop-worn, lazy songwriting. The question is: Hey, do you realize who they're ripping off? You'll be a lot cooler if you know.
That's the pill every human needs when they encounter a new and addictive social media platform.
That already happened btw, teens are on TikTok not IG
There are alternatives, such as sites like HN (single feed for everyone), Reddit (per-subreddit ranking which is global rather than algorithmically targeted), many news sites (organized by department vs infinite scroll, newsletters (here's today's set of stories for everyone), etc.
Man I'd love this for actual stories. Turn the Facebook advertising AI on finding exactly the right passage of the right book at the right moment.
I'd have a hart time comparing HN, deviantart and a few other places with facebook and instagram..
A hybrid of Vine and Instagram designed to make you stare into your screen with the smallest of interactions.
In my circles the only time I have to use Facebook is when Gen Xers are organizing something that requires my participation there, and I delete the account afterwards.
Or I wind up in small town America and the people there believe that Facebook marketplace + groups has better resources for sale and meetups. My experience with that was that generally accessible forums (even with being private and an “approval” process) all being full of scammers and time wasters. I found resources and niches in person. I checked the same groups 6 months later and nobody was getting anywhere with anything. YMMV of course, but the scammers are integrated everywhere.
Small town America is a big place so there is a market for the illusion of utility!
This is a battle you and your kids can't win unless your kids know how to identify when a nasty company is trying to steal their data. If your daughter thinks something else is cool, I bet that's another nasty company trying to steal her data instead of Facebook. Our society can't get out of this trap until your daughter says, "they all SUCK"
NO: Teach your 12-year old that ALL these things are COMPLETE FUCKING BULLSHIT. Not just Facebook. All of them.
My personal favorite is Chevignon selling cool clothes for teenagers for years, to then enter the cigarettes market because why not.
Some might argue Facebook/Meta is on another scale, but everything is on another scale, I think we'd need to adjust expectations like we adjust for inflation.
Video games were popular and well selling, but to my recollection they had an uphill battle in the wide public’s perception. If we were to ask, I’d wager Sony had a way stronger “coolness” factor in the 80s 90s.
Now, tables have sure turned.
Watching TV or talking about shows wasn't cool. Movies were. Having a pager or godforbid a giant cell phone was extremely uncool as it meant your parents could find you. The closest thing to a smart phone was a TI-82 calculator and that wasn't cool at all. I had a Palm Pilot... I even got a cell cradle for it and could browse the web in black and white in 1996. That was considered insanely not cool, and something only a total nerd would do. (But a Lynx or a Game Gear was alright - and a neogeo meant your parents were super rich). Clove bidi cigarettes were cool but they could make your lungs bleed. Weed and LSD were cool. Fake IDs were cool and making them made you popular. Playing in a band even if you didn't have a lot of shows was cool, and if you did have a show half the kids from your school would be there.
I can't really think of anything I did as a teenager that collected data about me or anything that was a "service" run by a company that was cool or would have been considered cool. AOL was extremely uncool, the way facebook is now. A bit later, I guess a lot of us used Friendster and Myspace (and boards like LnC) but none of those things were central to daily activity or something you spent a lot of time on. It wasn't even the third or fourth thing you'd do to waste time, let alone a place to spend time with friends. So just because it wasn't very central to the teenage experience, and the technology wasn't there to track your interactions and location, there was by definition a lot less data to collect.
I'm describing a world that is for all practical purposes dead, buried and forgotten, in which human interaction was mostly unmediated by corporate grifters.
They did use IG ~2y ago, but then it went out of vogue. Same fate for SnapChat. It is very likely there will be something new next year end they will all move on from TikTok.
Fascinating to observe how they have zero product loyalty. And I realized FB can have a problem, unless they want to spend billions on acquisitions every single year. It’s good for everyone that their monopoly is crumbling a bit.
So...what is the appeal of teenagers again? Is it being "cool"? What can I buy for cool?