The Future of Social Media

[poorpete]

Twitter is a dumpster fire, run by the richest man in the world with extremely conflicting and contradictory opinions about capitalism, speech, humor, access, and the purpose of verification. The Metasphere isn't [yet] living up to expectations and Facebook (run by another richest man with social issues) lost $250 Billion in market value (and according to Business Insider is worth less than Home Depot "a seller of wrenches and flower pots.") . People are moving to Mastodon (or trying to, I looked into it, and it's indeed confusing, just tell me what server is best, ugh I have to do research?) or searching new places to hang out. TikTok is still hugely popular, though owned by a company located in a surveillance state.

So what do you think social media will look like in the future? How should it be? And how are you going to be part of it?

[Tahlvin]

My social media future will be texting my immediately family, and that's about it. I dumped Twitter a couple years ago, and it did wonders for my mental health and frame of mind. I cut way back on Facebook, and the only reason I haven't given it up entirely is because it's the only way I can keep up with what's going on with a number of my cousins/aunts/uncles/high school friends. Never really got into TikTok, Instagram, etc., and plan to stay that way. As for what sort of hellscape lies on the horizon, who knows?

[Mike]

Yeah I don't have Twitter at all anymore and my Facebook usage is essentially the same as Tahlvin's. For what it's worth, Tik Tok isn't even really a social media for me. I don't make videos, and none of my family and friends do either, so I'm not using it to keep in touch with anybody. For me Tik Tok is just a an entertainment stream, like youtube.

If I had my druthers, I'd use Discord for all of my social messaging needs.

[poorpete]

I checked out the Godball discord for the first time in a few years and seems to be quiet.

[Eliahad]

That's because the person running the Godball discord has been working off his gourd.

[Kyle]

Wait, so if I work out enough, this gourd on the side of my head will finally fall off?

[Mike]

Wait, so if I work out enough, this gourd on the side of my head will finally fall off?

It's true. I saw it on Twitter

[Kyle]

I think twitter has been on the decline for a while when it slowly became two groups: (1) people that like to shout into their angry echo chambers (both liberal and conservative); and (2) media/influencers who are convinced it's a necessary component of your personal "platform" for self-promotion.

The next thing is impossible to tell. Who would have guessed that TikTok, which started as social media but transformed into entertainment streams, would become one of the biggest "social media" apps? As an aside, I just don't get TikTok. I'm not critical of people who are into it, but it absolutely seems dreadful to me, even though I've tried getting into it three or four times. It just always seems like a way to turn my brain off for what starts out to be a couple minutes, but then can turn into half an hour or more. I remember watching it, stopping and thinking, "It's like the last twenty minutes of my life didn't happen." This phenomenon is also why I stopped playing the "turn your brain off" phone games like Candy Crush and the like. It's also why I stopped watching poker tournaments on TV.

I feel like the next "big" thing is going to come out of nowhere. An AR phone app where you have a Tamagotchi-style avatar that you care for, but also have inserted into pictures you take in real life. And then you can communicate with other people as the avatar. Sounds dumb. But for real- who knows.

[Phoebe]

I think Kyle is right that we can't really envision what it will be because it will come at us randomly out of left field. But if I had to try I would look at the things my kids make happen with their friends right now, that one of them will figure out how to code and spread to a wider group of people. They don't want to socialize on the internet with people they don't know - they only need those platforms as a way to spy on people occasionally from a distance.
Their social lives revolve around creating pretty much as close as they can to a VR headset that is linked up in real time to all of their friends so that they are all exploring some type of virtual world together.
It doesn't really matter what the virtual world is - gamers already do this with a particular game or games, but my kids don't have one particular game so sometimes it's in a game, sometimes they all watch a movie together and text about it while they're watching it, sometimes they put on the same YouTube videos and sing together to the same video at the same time while they are on the phone together with their headphones on. It's as if they want to be like a borg having some simultaneous entertainment together.

Some really nice people I know are on Facebook and I want to stay in touch with them so that's why I stay on it. I can't do any other type of social media or site besides FB and this particular one right here in front of us. My internet experience was shaped by dial-up modem bbs and this is as close as I can get to that. I am temperamentally extremely ill-suited to be on Twitter because there are only a few people in this world who intimidate me with their brilliance and those people usually aren't on Twitter. Anyone else is fair game and I have learned about myself that my conversational internet presence is a toxin much like encountering an asp or brown recluse. Nobody likes it, even if the asp is feeling particularly cheerful and friendly.

[Phoebe]

Another interesting tidbit I've learned over the years is that many people who have my specific job have the same experience, so I think it might have something to do with what we do and have become used to considering normal and pleasant. I think normal people consider it toxic for real.

[poorpete]

Makers of insulin lost market value due to impersonators using new verification rule
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/202 ... 639067007/

What a disaster. Also a bit funny, screw the profiteers, but I hope no one will actually get hurt.

[zen]

Makers of insulin lost market value due to impersonators using new verification rule
https://www.indystar.com/story/news/202 ... 639067007/

What a disaster. Also a bit funny, screw the profiteers, but I hope no one will actually get hurt.

When you combine this with the literal dozens, if not hundreds, of fake Elon Musk accounts with the verification mark it really just puts an exclamation point on how stupid Musk's "management" has been. You can bet that Eli Lily will be suing the pants off Musk, and should win in any realistic world. They suck, don't get me wrong. But they have an iron clad case against him.

[Phoebe]

What kills me about musk is that way back in the days of Tesla, it was Martin Eberhard and the other guys who actually built the cars and the company and made a superior product. Musk was perhaps the one most responsible for the initial difficulties the company had scaling up production, and apparently he's why they turned out a product that has issues as opposed to being what the initial founders had envisioned selling. Yet musk is credited as "the genius behind Tesla". Or people act like he's an engineer at SpaceX so literally some kind of rocket scientist. No. He is a mundane smart dude, not a genius whose advice is brilliant. Pretty sure Tahlvin is at least three times smarter. Musk media tires me.

[Eliahad]

But this is always how it goes. Remember the salesman, not the talent.

[zen]

What kills me about musk is that way back in the days of Tesla, it was Martin Eberhard and the other guys who actually built the cars and the company and made a superior product. Musk was perhaps the one most responsible for the initial difficulties the company had scaling up production, and apparently he's why they turned out a product that has issues as opposed to being what the initial founders had envisioned selling. Yet musk is credited as "the genius behind Tesla". Or people act like he's an engineer at SpaceX so literally some kind of rocket scientist. No. He is a mundane smart dude, not a genius whose advice is brilliant. Pretty sure Tahlvin is at least three times smarter. Musk media tires me.

Actually, with his recent performance, I'd say Tahlvin is at least an order of magnitude smarter than Musk. I don't think he qualifies even as a "mundane smart dude". I think he's an entitled rich idiot.

[Phoebe]

I accept your friendly amendment.

[Phoebe]

What do we have to do to get journalists to leave this dimwit alone instead of discussing his tweets in breathless terms?
Maybe they think by talking about him people will realize that billionaires are just people who need to pay taxes like the rest of us schmucks, but I doubt it, so it would be better if they ignored him.
In particular I do not want to hear about how this fool is a "free speech absolutist" just because he likes the sound of that label and has made it up for himself. There's nothing remotely pro free speech about him. He pressures employees to sign agreements that curtail their speech, even when his companies are the ones "laying off" the employees against their will. In what universe is it free speech absolutism to demand that people not criticize you on pain of financial penalty?!
Why is it free speech to promote Trump and all the right wing crazies but continue to block critics from social media? I mean, there's nothing wrong with doing that in my opinion - go ahead and run your newly right wing site the way you want to run it - but it's not free speech absolutism.
Nor does that happen when you to make a structural decision about which voices get promoted and displayed more prominently. Go right ahead and do what you like with your media platform, but don't lie about it, and for pete's sake stop repeating this ridiculous and arrogant pretense that such actions are a form of free speech absolutism, or "free and fair competition in the marketplace of ideas". What a crock.
It's time for a mass migration of people away from Twitter to some other site.

[Tahlvin]

Anytime I go on Facebook lately, it seems for every post made by one of my friends, I see 2-3 ads and 2-3 spam posts like 15 behind the scene secrets of Marvel movies or 25 outstanding reasons people quit their jobs! Am I the only one seeing this, or have others noticed a similar trend?

[Mike]

I virtually never look, but I checked just now. For someone who hasn't scrolled their feed in months, I saw exactly 1 ad for every 2 friend posts. And it was clockwork... 2 friend posts, 1 ad, 2 friend posts, 1 ad, etc. I stopped looking after it cycled 10 times. And nothing political or controversial in any of it.

On the other hand, I am a firm believer that Facebook is much kinder to people who haven't been on a while. They get you back in, and then as engagement increases, so does the volume of ads and incendiary material.

[Tahlvin]

When I first log in, it’s about a 1:5 post-to-ad/spam ratio. The longer I’m on/further I scroll, the ratio gets even worse. After a few minutes, it’s about 1:15 or 1:20.

[Phoebe]

It angers me so I usually click on whatever my own last post was, and some people reacted (so I assume those are the people that are logging into Facebook recently), and then I click on their names and see what they have posted. The algorithm is probably still deciding who sees the stuff I post but at least that way I get to click to my friends directly, or if somebody has a birthday or something... It's better to click on their name and see what they've been posting.
It's such a bad "social media" - I don't know what the solution is but it feels very ripe for new things to bubble up among the Young. I don't know anyone among my kid's friends that uses things like Facebook for anything other than keeping tabs on the oldsters.

[Tahlvin]

Wow, counted 44 spam posts between two posts from actual friends. And those friends’ posts were just reposting spam posts.

[Phoebe]

They say elan doesn't want the account that tracks his flights to be seen anymore on Twitter lol. "Absolutism"!

[Phoebe]

Elon had a scare with a stalker and decided the solution was to ban a bunch of journalists from Twitter, supposedly for distributing doxxing info about him.
This is because they reported on the story about the kid who tracks Elon's private jet, and apparently even reporting on that is a no-no. Twitter took down all that guys tracking accounts, including the ones that track satellites and whatnot.
Various companies like Cnn "evaluating" the relationship with Twitter now.
One big draw of Twitter is that the entire mess of news media uses it religiously. They could, you know, choose to stop any time and use Mastodon or whatever else. They have a good reason right now.
Even people like Aaron Rupar were banned, come on. It's political nonsense. Musk has always been a thoroughly redpilled fool; only recently do people see it because he is letting it all hang out. But it's nothing new.
He kind of lost it the most after his trans kid wanted to dissociate from him and grimes was publicly dating Chelsea Manning as her choice of rebound relationship. Maybe she just knows how to upset him, that would be my bet.

[Phoebe]

Now he just deleting accounts for any journalist he doesn't like because they investigated him and wrote an unfavorable piece. Free speech! I feel cheated out of being banned because I don't have a Twitter. I've disliked this man for 15 years; I feel like I should get an honorary ban.

[poorpete]

Wild



Musk un-bans noted misogynist
Guy immediately goes after Greta
Greta mocks him and gets 22 million likes
Guy gives lame reply featuring pizza boxes he claims he won't recycle
Pizza boxes tip authorities of his location
Authorities arrest him for human trafficking

So both the worst and best in social media on display

[Phoebe]

It's like the Pilgrim's Progress of our times, morality tales for the young.

[Phoebe]

Mastodon is ok BUT one key problem is that you cannot just click on a profile you find interesting and decide to follow it. You have to go through a multi step process any time you're not on the same server. Short form comments are still required, which encourages certain kinds of conversation over others. The regular users are still not a huge group and most well known users are still straddling multiple platforms and referring/linking back to tweets. Mastodon is like where they go to put up another copy of an idea.

It's also difficult to search for things across servers.
A lot of people I would be interested in following for a professional reasons are part of one or two specific servers. In one case the server is closed and wasn't very interesting to me anyway, and in the other case the server is open to join but is run by a guy who isn't part of the profession and has unclear reasons for wanting to run this server for everyone else. If the whole point is to get away from Twitter and Facebook why would I just pledge my troth to a lesser god whose server became popular?
But I have found when searching that if I go to the specific server where most of those people have an account, I find all kinds of things that I won't find if I search on other servers. That's a real problem if you're trying to keep apprised of current conversations in a field.

None of this is terrible, but it seems like still a long road to travel before it's an alternative with critical mass.

[poorpete]

Twitter went to war against Substack a few weeks ago, because Substack created a chronological feed feature to their site. Twitter has since calmed down a little bit (it no longer adds a warning to Substack links as possible spam, virus, or hate speech), but due to the Streisand Effect it led me to check out Substack as my potential Twitter replacement.

https://justrewarding.substack.com/

What I like is mainly that the owners don't seem to be crazy. It also encourages both "hey check this out" that I like about Twitter with more long-form writing. I kinda like the colors and the at-least-currently calm atmosphere so far.

What I don't like is there's still very few people there, not enough comedians for sure, although I gained a few "subscribers" which is nice. Also their moderation rules are much closer to the new Twitter rules than not: mainly that protected groups don't get heightened protections, everyone's equal in the rules even though harmful harassment isn't equal. But giving it a chance for now...

[Phoebe]

I have never really looked into this because my only encounter with it has been as publication outlet for discredited academics and journalists who couldn't get any other outlet. But if random people can use it and share content and it's a little more content focused than the average social media, that might be good. At the end of the day what I dislike about social media is the focus on a specific individual as author of the content. So rather than gathering up what a bunch of your friends are saying about the latest happenings in the legislature, you have to encounter a random sprinkling of what your friends happen to be saying about any topic, and you may or may not stumble upon content you're both interested in. The whole model is messed up and it's why Facebook is basically superior for check-ins rather than communication. You either have to find specific people who regularly post interesting content, or you're using it to check in on family and friends who have birthdays and whatnot.
To discuss things that interest you with people you feel like discussing it with, you have to have a place like this. I used to have several of them, like one for moms of kids of a similar age and one for quilting and such, and then you naturally find people who are interesting to you on those but now almost all of it has gone by the wayside and does not seem to be the popular model. It is a shame, I damn shame I tell you! Get these kids off my lawn.

[Phoebe]

Free speech Elon apparently won't let people use the word "cisgender" on Twitter now hahahaaaaaaaaaa what a clown this man is, but people listen to him. There are lots of rich people and they aren't all jerks and morons - maybe branch out and listen to some others, media and peoples?

The saddest thing is that apparently he has a transgender child and so is having a personal tantrum in public this way. What a job in life, to be Elon's transgender kid whose dad is a complete deliberate jerk to you. When I objected to the term CIS because I felt like women's terms were being taken further away in a world of sexism where many things are taken from women, I cried alone until people came along to educate me for being dumb. I was not able to subject a global media company to my dumbness. Then I became less dumb and figured out when it was important to advocate for various women's terms and why it actually benefits people to be able to make these distinctions in language and accurately mark off groups of people. PROGRESS! The brain gets help. Who can help Elons brain tho? Nobody I guess.

[poorpete]

Free speech Elon says he's going to remove the ability to block people on his social network. An interesting vision of utopia he has.

[Tahlvin]

Does that apply to everyone including himself? Because I'm thinking he'll change his mind as soon as he gets inundated with hate posts. But he seems to be doing everything possible to drive people away from his platform.

[Phoebe]

The only rational theory is that he would benefit somehow from the destruction of the entire company. Otherwise we have to assume whatever benefit he gains is not tied to the usual reasons, or he doesn't care about "benefit" in the usual way at all. Maybe this is the unpredictable art-for-deaths-sake and death-for-arts-sake ubermensch we were warned about, and he's every bit the annoying turd you'd have expected.

[Mike]

Elon bought Twitter by leveraging his incredibly overvalued stake in Tesla. Now that many other companies are doing all-electric vehicles (and some are doing it both better and cheaper than Tesla), his stake in Tesla is quickly becoming worth less than the $40+ billion he borrowed to buy Twitter. He's fucked and he's in a spiral. That's my theory.

[Kyle]

He's fucked and he's in a spiral. That's my theory.

I think this is right. He was born into money (which is how the vast majority of rich people become rich- particularly the mega-wealthy). He's always gotten his way. I'm sure he also has an infantilized, "chosen one" vision of himself and thinks he lives a charmed life and bad things really only happen to other people. Now things are going poorly and he's acting like a twelve-year-old because he doesn't know what else to do other than to have ridiculous outbursts and then act like he didn't mean it and it was "all for the lulz." He a petulant rich brat in a 52 year old's body.

[Mike]

Yeah, even a year ago, I was still on board with the idea that this was all part of some master plan. Even though it looked to all appearances as if he was destroying his $40 billion investment, there MUST be some hidden benefit to him. And now I think the nation as a whole is starting to get over that bullshit and realize that the mega-rich all LOOK like they're always winning because they all started in first place with a 300 lap lead over the rest of us.

[Kyle]

And now I think the nation as a whole is starting to get over that bullshit and realize that the mega-rich all LOOK like they're always winning because they all started in first place with a 300 lap lead over the rest of us.

If only the MAGA crowd could come to this realization.