Great news — social media is falling apart
(www.businessinsider.com)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6408240
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 2023 20:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6408240
Great news — social media is falling apart::I don’t know where to post: there are too many social platforms, and the old giants are dying. The age of social media is splintering.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
As people grow tired of toxic and addictive platforms that undermine real social connection, this new wave of social-focused upstarts could end up producing a healthier online environment.
Major platforms such as Facebook have long abandoned their goal to “bring the world closer together” in favor of “profit-motivated and engagement-inducing designs” that keep us hooked and drive growth, Ben Grosser, an artist and faculty associate at Harvard University’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, told me.
No matter how fun group chats and breakout social apps such as BeReal are, I’ve missed the borderless experience that large platforms offer — a place where I can discover viral content, expand my network, and participate in global conversations.
At its best, Steve Teixeira, the chief product officer at Mozilla, said that social media facilitated connection, regardless of geographic or temporal boundaries, and helps people stay informed, encounter novel ideas, and access vital services.
And experts have found that a collection of networks would “optimize itself solely for public good,” rather than fall into the pitfalls of traditional platforms — an unhealthy obsession with metrics and meaningless interactions.
It’s hard to predict the future, least of all when it comes to online services where new apps can go viral — and then fail — in a flash, but the breakup of monolithic social-media platforms and the rise of myriad new social experiences has felt like an urgent, long-overdue turn of events.
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Very good bot!
This is probably an overreaction. I do, however, think their growth is reversing and that’s why platforms like Facebook are diversifying rather rapidly. Things like Facebook marketplace and instagram are still hugely popular.
Us that are tech literate tend to not see the giant mass of tech illiterate who will always use the stuff they know aka Facebook.
As google put it, you have to go 100% on being the first search engine people experience for the first time.
Everyone on Lemmy keeps saying Facebook is dead, but it just hit it’s all time high of 4B monthly active users.
Doesn’t that include people who log in once per month to check their messages, scroll down two posts in their feed and log out?
Yes, as it always has. It hit it’s highest daily active users too.
It’s still 4B, even if just a fraction interact meaningfully is still a lot… And if it’s growing it certainly isn’t indicative of death
Facebook will never die. Too many people in third-world countries rely on Facebook for internet access. Facebook is happy to provide free connectivity to keep people hooked in countries like Philippines. They mask the images and videos in FB Messenger, but then provide a very ad-heavy Facebook lite experience for free. They brokered a deal with the carriers in these countries for this. Facebook is here to stay for a very, very long time.
“social” Media
I wished they mentioned Lemmy, but at least they are talking about Mastodon. I don’t understand why more media outlets aren’t switching away from Twitter, given how brazen Elon is with his enshittification.
EDIT: Away from Twitter, not to Twitter.
Inertia and that it still has a large userbase. The media outlets and corporations won’t leave until something causes a mass exodus – like Twitter/X becoming subscription only.
Yeah, seeing a lot of places capitulating, replacing the Twitter bird with an X. Though the BBC has been experimenting with Mastodon for a few months, lately…
Along with MSNBC, ProPublica, The Intercept, Voice of America, The Mirror, Rolling Stone, Al Jazeera, and a bunch of others.
The number of users is two orders of magnitude smaller for Mastodon…
Use both Mastodon and Twitter, and then jump ship from Twitter once the time is right. Once Twitter is completely gated by a paywall, the whole thing will just collapse.
Elon’s enshittification of Twitter would be a reason to switch away from, not to, Twitter.
Part of the reason could be that when there was a large wave of people switching, including journalists on their own instance, that instance promptly got blocked by a large percentage of the fediverse based on some unclear moral grounds.
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The business model has always been unsustainable and plain stupid, imo.
You could make a valid argument that that goes for the concept of capitalism as a whole as well.
True, but I think its more that the United State’s version of capitalism lacks safeguards against corporations influencing government regulation, and that leads to unsustainability.
Although I suppose the same could be said about social media, except the corporation in control would have no incentive to curb their own control.
Isn’t this one of the big factors why they are so shitty (excluding donations/non profit)?
Will other platforms accept these companies exploitation or want to have anything with them? I would guess they will rot/enshitify along with them if so
With very few exceptions, when a company goes public it goes to shit because they get stuck in the race to the bottom in order to appease the investors and completely fuck their loyal customers
When FB came along it was the first service that made connecting with both your close friends and acquaintances fairly convenient. Myspace had a thing going for sure but if I remember my experience was connecting with my closest friends (which we could already do with chat or email) + randoms.
FB actually found your friends and acquaintances for you. In the beginning, that was the only thing you saw too… not a page full of ads and people you don’t know.
As we all know it’s gone. That’s why we’ve all stopped going there to connect. It’s gone and the information we posted to share with friends was used inappropriately.
There is also nonstop pressure coming from potentially disruptive social startups. The people have fractured into many many different apps now.
But I don’t see a problem with that. The total number of people online is higher then ever. Old phpBB forums were awesome with only a few thousand users, and something like that will come again. We don’t need Facebook groups that are filled with adspam.
Seems like there’s a ripe opportunity for a federated group system.
I’m fine using Lemmy
Technology was a mistake.