> Social media is about me feeling that what I say matters.
I agree with where you are coming from, but I'm not sure social media is actually about that. Making you feel like your content is important is only a goal in-so-much as it incentivizes you to create hype-able content. Social media is a hype engine designed to take randos on the internet and make them famous in front of other randos on the internet. If caring for the needy generates hype, that's what gets hyped. If pranks generate hype, that's what gets hyped. If twerking generates hype, thats what gets hyped.
It's about maximizing engagement to maximize monetization. And that monetization ends up getting balanced with social pressures, PR nightmares, political pressure, and legal pressure. We have a hype machine willing to promote anything that doesn't get moderated away.
I'd say social networking actually captured what you are talking about here. It's goal was to connect friends, families, communities, peers, etc. I've seen that level of connection, that level of community building, manifest in real-world love/kindness.
I don't see that happen on social media outside of people going against the grain and forcing social networking through social media. I have first-hand experience of how surprisingly difficult social networking on social media is; primarily because of the recommendation algorithms drowning out social networking content.
> The problem isn't in the technology
But the issue is the technology. Centralized social networking failed because of the technology. Centralized social networking is expensive. Being a "free proxy server" and archivist for the entire world's communication is a hard technical and financial problem to solve. It's also legally expensive to host a bunch of other people's content for free. And it's socially expensive, people get very upset about what other people say, and get mad at you for proxying that content.
Offering to let the entire world communicate through a single central "town square" for free just doesn't appear to be viable.
The result was that it stopped being about social networking. That entire class of product silently died.
Social networking is dead. What we have now is social media.
I agree with where you are coming from, but I'm not sure social media is actually about that. Making you feel like your content is important is only a goal in-so-much as it incentivizes you to create hype-able content. Social media is a hype engine designed to take randos on the internet and make them famous in front of other randos on the internet. If caring for the needy generates hype, that's what gets hyped. If pranks generate hype, that's what gets hyped. If twerking generates hype, thats what gets hyped.
It's about maximizing engagement to maximize monetization. And that monetization ends up getting balanced with social pressures, PR nightmares, political pressure, and legal pressure. We have a hype machine willing to promote anything that doesn't get moderated away.
I'd say social networking actually captured what you are talking about here. It's goal was to connect friends, families, communities, peers, etc. I've seen that level of connection, that level of community building, manifest in real-world love/kindness.
I don't see that happen on social media outside of people going against the grain and forcing social networking through social media. I have first-hand experience of how surprisingly difficult social networking on social media is; primarily because of the recommendation algorithms drowning out social networking content.
> The problem isn't in the technology
But the issue is the technology. Centralized social networking failed because of the technology. Centralized social networking is expensive. Being a "free proxy server" and archivist for the entire world's communication is a hard technical and financial problem to solve. It's also legally expensive to host a bunch of other people's content for free. And it's socially expensive, people get very upset about what other people say, and get mad at you for proxying that content.
Offering to let the entire world communicate through a single central "town square" for free just doesn't appear to be viable.
The result was that it stopped being about social networking. That entire class of product silently died.
Social networking is dead. What we have now is social media.
I expand on this here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37300826