- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
It’s not just you — no one is posting on social media anymore::Social media is on the decline. Instagram is all ads. No one’s posting on BeReal. TikTok is for influencers. The new place for sharing: group chats.
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Translation: more and more people overcome their social media addiction and adapt a healthy usage pattern.
That’s not really what the article says though. Sounds like people are just doomscrolling curated content instead of creating content themselves.
Yeah. Doomscrolling curated content is a healthy usage pattern. Right? Right?!?
I’'m doomscrolling this thread personally
Oh that’s me
That also means less interesting content in general, which leads to a decrease in doomscrollers
I dunno. According to the article, “While sharing has tailed off, consuming content hasn’t slowed”. I didn’t read the link that sentence hyperlinked to since it was behind a paywall.
Megalomaniac billionaires ruined social media in their effort to control the narrative and ruin privacy. It was a neat idea when it was just a way to keep up with people you were interested in.
Well people turning out to be mostly idiots didn’t help
That effort is the reason social media emerged. The Web before them was sufficient, it had human-curated website directories and RSS (though that I began noticing later), and web rings, and in general was fulfilling its purpose.
Now, the idea was to centralize everything under Zuck or someone else’s control. And from the very beginning it was even more ominous than now, cause people usually knew then that in the Web you should be pseudonymous, except for your personal webpage, and also that what gets out doesn’t get back in, and that an account on some site doesn’t belong to you.
What I’m disgusted with personally is how the transition to social media was spearheaded by clueless illiterate people, and instead of protecting the culture everybody else just decided that they are right and we are wrong.
“No one is posting on social media anymore”
Posted by L4sBot…
It’s not just you
Fuck spez
Good bot
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Parasocial or antisocial media would fit the function of these platforms better.
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I mean, we are on social media now.
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My big take away is that social media as we know it is likely generational. Like real time broadcast TV, it may just not be a thing at all in the future, at least not with the centrality we’ve become accustomed to.
Polls run here and especially on masto bare this out. Mastodon, for instance, leans x-gen/boomer with some millennial in its demographic. It’s hardly a young persons thing. Once you realise so much of the praise and enjoyment of the Fedi is that it reminds people of the older days of the internet, the generational picture becomes pretty clear. 15 year olds today were born after Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Forums, Usenet, old Twitter are probably like black and white tv to them.
At the moment, I think it’s a major flaw of the Fedi, that it’s fundamentally backwards looking, trying to preserve older big-social designs rather than doing something more diverse or at least different.
An obvious example being private or closed spaces like group chats and the like including public versions if desired. This seems to be a growing form of online interaction, that is in a way more humane or eusocial. But apart from matrix, which sits separately, the Fedi is still stuck redoing Twitter and Reddit.
There’s only so many ways you can arrange a group of people, what they post and their audience. The fediverse is exploring most variations right now and it came up with things like decentralization and activity pub which are unlike any of the big platforms of yore.
It resembles the internet of the 90s only superficially. The underlying infrastructure and technology is completely different today. Most of the lean towards the 90s is caused by taking inspiration from the way they dealt with similar threats.
The fediverse is exploring most variations right now
Where are:
- private spaces
- messaging
- chat rooms
- my-space style personalised pages
- Fusions of any of the variations you’re thinking of?
- Microblogging + Reddit
- Blogging + reddit
- Youtube + others
- Any and all
- Social RSS feeds like Google Reader
- Wikis
- Market places
- Subscription based content platforms for any format (eg blogs like substack or videos like nebula)
- Heavily privacy and safety focused platforms (with, eg, abilities to control who can ever respond or see your content)
- Video shorts (which I personally hate, but there’s probably something of value there)
- Computationally rich posts/pages … that is, content that is not merely static text of an embedded video but contains interactive components with highly customisable graphics.
Without wanting to be aggressive or critical of you here … there’s a good chance you, like many of us, are stuck thinking the internet can only be so many things because that’s all we’ve been given for a while (like a long time … like Twitter and Youtube have been around for longer than half the age of the internet, like we’ve arguable had real stagnation that might look like the age of Dinosaurs from the future looking back).
Fusions of any of the variations you’re thinking of?
Have a look at https://fedidb.org/software, chances are something has popped up there.
my-space style personalised pages
Now that’s a blast from the past if I ever heard one. Do people really don’t understand why MySpace died? The notion of “personalized pages” went out of style several technological and social generations ago. They’re not coming back, and not because it can’t be done, because it’s an antiquated idea in almost every way.
there’s a good chance you, like many of us, are stuck thinking the internet can only be so many things because that’s all we’ve been given for a while
Given the above it’s ironic that you perceive me as stuck in my ways. 🙂
Everything you listed can be done nowadays and there’s software for it out there, way too much to list here. Thinking in terms of centralized and/or proprietary platforms is the old way. The new way involves offering services based on open source software, using portable infrastructure solutions, and making a privacy pledge to the users.
Everything you listed can be done either by setting it up yourself or by finding a service that offers it. There’s a billion options.
I’m sorry, but I think you’re being too aggressive here and dismissive about how much is not easily doable on the fediverse. We’re not living in some open source utopia where there’s an abundance of awesome software waiting to be used.
A few quick thoughts.
- I’m familiar with fedidb. Anything that matches my list is likely to be small and niche. If I’ve missed anything, let me know … it was the point of my response to highlight that all of these variations you claim exist are not so easily identifiable if they exist.
- Plenty of people (and businesses and professionals!) still have their own web pages of some sort or another. Things don’t have to look like MySpace for that to be a thing. It’s a generic service not at all bound to myspace’s particulars and easily coupled with other platform features (see eg firefish)
- I wasn’t thinking in terms of centralised platforms, my critique is in many ways the Fedi is.
But why would you go to a centralized platform for your website?
You can do that too btw, with services like Wix or Squarespace, or specialized services for various niches, like Flickr or 500px if you’re a photographer etc.
You can also put together a website in an editor and host it on a generic service where you control your domain and everything.
How would you define and market a service like MySpace nowadays?
How would you define and market a service like MySpace nowadays?
A quick and easy landing page for something with the ability to engage and interact socially over all of the platforms of the fediverse built right in.
It doesn’t have to be centralised at all … and I’m talking about what features are offered by platforms/software that are compatible with the fediverse such that connecting across it can be baked in. All of the specialised services are the sorts of things I’m talking about in terms of what’s not on or easily possible (right now) on the fediverse, where the advantage of bringing such things to the fediverse is the possibility of easily reaching a wide audience while still owning your content and platform.
I am also going to say that nostr has all these things in some alpha form or another. However, it is very much a mess right now and it is harder IMHO to connect with others or curate my feed with stuff I like.
The advantage of small groups and fedi is starting with a small network and growing it slowly, this is more rewarding than starting with the whole world and trying to pull back.
Nostr might have all the features but its a mess right now
came up with things like decentralization and activity pub which are unlike any of the big platforms of yore.
I personally think activity pub is overrated. Not that it’s bad or anything. But many think of it, IMO, as the beginning and end of a new form of social media and people taking back the internet. In reality, I think it’s literally just a protocol and so much more than people recognise depends on what people build on top of it. So far, for example, the limited interoperability between lemmy/kbin and the microblogs/mastodon, which is not a simple bug fix away, at all, is a major friction between these two platforms that essentially forces them to be separate spaces/platforms. This is so despite both using ActivityPub and actually federating with each rather well. Because, it’s not (just) about the protocol, it’s about platform designs and structures … IE the software … and the protocol can only do or guarantee very little on that front.
From what I’ve gathered, the diaspora people didn’t adopt activitypub in large reason because of this, and I think they’ve always had a point. The pain some users have gone through trying to work out how to use lemmy and mastodon together, having been promised that ActivityPub is a whole new thing that creates a deep and wide fediverse, has been awful to see.
My big take away is that social media as we know it is likely generational
I don’t think that’s the right takeaway. The demographics of certain platforms may be skewed, but people who for example were active on Facebook 10 years ago still exist, they’re just posting a lot less.
I think engagement is down across the board because of various reasons: the continuing crappification of the various platforms, people are starting to realize the risks of oversharing and public sharing, people are getting turned off about loud toxic discussion, people are becoming aware that their data is being mined by faceless corporations who don’t have their best interest in mind, in short all the negatives of these platforms have become more obvious to the average user.
but people who for example were active on Facebook 10 years ago still exist,
What happens when they die?
So are you suggesting that posts are down because the people that were making them are dying off? I have my doubts about that one.
Facebook’s demographic isn’t skewed enough towards old people and it hasn’t existed for long enough for that to be a significant effect.
I mean, it isn’t as if octogenarians and septagenarians were making the bulk of Facebook posts 10 years ago, is it? The bulk of the people on Facebook are currently in the 18-44 range, and the 65+ group is actually a very small fraction. Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/376128/facebook-global-user-age-distribution/
I would also like to remind you that Facebook started as a way to connect college kids in 2005. Those kids are now in their 30s or early 40s and very much still around. They’ve just given up on Facebook.
So I was one of those back in 06 and I’m in my mid to late 30s now.
I don’t use Facebook anymore and stopped using Facebook a decade ago because of all the timeline changes.
My guess is they’ve continued to make the timeline stuff worse and worse and that’s why people stop posting cause you don’t actually see each others posts half the time it’s filled with random suggested shit.
Posting mostly drops to zero. Sometimes a family member will post on their account.
Death of the account holder has not been well managed.Edit: what happens to the account after the person dies is not well managed.
You’re talking about people in their 30s and 40s. Death won’t be much of an issue for a few decades.
I’m thinking along those timescales.
Strongly agreed.
Some other loose thoughts related to this:
- a very similar phenomenon is visible in Bluesky, but in that case it skews heavily towards older millenials who are trying to recreate a culture that used to exist on Twitter, and is now dead. Bluesky is fundamentally even more backward looking than AP-fedi, as ATProto really cannot do much else than microblogging
- its been striking for me for a while that the fediverse developer community isnt able to become an actual community, and instead has been trying to reinvent community initiatives outside of fedi for a while, and they all bleed out. Think there are lots of reasons for that, but if the people building a social network cannot manage to use their own tools to use that social network to become a social community, than that usually does not bode well
- there is a very loosely defined ‘community’ of people who are interested in talking about fedi on a meta (not Meta) level. youve been involved, so you know most of the names. Again, its striking to me that this group (me included) hasnt really transformed into an actual community, and instead its fleeting ephemeral posts on a feed that only some of the regulars see and comment on.
God … so sorry … just had a coffee and mashed the keyboard … looooong rant … IN SHORT … yes!!
Interesting thoughts here!
- The BlueSky situation makes a lot of sense. In another thread on here I was discussing with some people how the psychology of leaving a big long term social media staple like Twitter/Reddit is non-trivial. Someone interestingly suggested that most of the “rage” or “rudeness” you see here isn’t from a bad Reddit culture coming across but a side effect of the anger and frustration felt and expressed through the whole migration event.
- Beyond that there’s probably more to unpack about the idea, where, I’d guess that building a culture based on leaving a “bad place” is always harder than doing it based on a starting “new and good place”. A lot of the “culture problems/frustrations” over on masto seem to resonate with that idea. For me, personally, though I’m not really a social media person and have never really been committed to any platform or anything, masto and ActivityPub kinda feel like let downs, and I think the psychology of “migrating” off of a “bad place” and the way it plays out and affects culture is a major factor behind that. The others being aligned with your other points!
- I didn’t really know the developer community had failed to coalesce … I’d always figured it happened somewhere I didn’t know about. Interestingly, from what I’ve heard, the lemmy admin/developer community has kinda coalesced on a few matrix rooms and discord servers and it is working well so far. Lemmy is much smaller than mastodon though, so it might just be that there’s less room for drama/splits (though obviously it does occur).
- On the other hand … how much of this is mastodon culture? I’d bet some of it is … ?
- More generally though … a very scathing critique IMO! I’d imagine people who know about community management would have something to say about it. My intuition thinks about the lack of shared software which means no developer has any reason to cooperate with any other. If there were for instance a commonly used generic AP server or stack, or reference implementation, then there’d at least be a common development forum for people together. But, having just a common protocol and then completely diverging projects building decentralised systems means that separation and independence are the key social structures between developers and admins. Lemmy devs for instance are not fans of mastodon devs due to allegedly poor documentation and the resultant difficulties of federating with masto.
- Beyond that, I think of where communities have developed in tech, with particular languages being an obvious example, and I think that you need a commonly loved central tool (such as a language, framework, kernel, OS, app etc). ActivityPub is probably not that tool? And masto creating its own de facto standard that other platforms have to begrudgingly work with probably doesn’t help at all. I wonder how devs of mastodon forks feel about the code base? Have masto fork devs not formed a community, and if so why not?
- And then of course is your point which is bang on. I’ve said it before and also elsewhere in this thread … the lack of chat rooms on the fedi is probably getting kinda bad now. Your argument is pretty scathing (what are the initiatives you mention … places on discord/matrix?). I noticed the same when I looked into some defed drama and found the only meaningful conversation to have happened on a Discord server. But beyond that so much stuff is happening on Discord (and matrix and the like), it seems, with IMO plenty of arguments for why such a model is a good form of social media (IMO, (micro-)blogosphere-link-aggregator + chat-rooms (optionally closed) seems like an obvious mix), that the fedi might look a little stuck in the past, especially given that it still doesn’t have decent private messaging (apart from dansup’s venture).
- As for whether current fedi platforms are insufficient for facilitating communities … if true, why is that? How did communities form on Twitter for instance? Is the lack of algorithmic feeds part of this … like, can we now say that as problematic as they were they actually had pro-social effects by disproportionately promoting posts by those you have stronger connections too??! I feel like I’ve seen the community/group format work ok with the !lemmyapps@lemmy.world, !fediverse@lemmy.world and !fediverse@lemmy.ml communities.
- As to your last point … yea that’s interesting. For my experience, part of that is that I’m strewn across 3.5 different platforms (lemmy, masto, firefish and occasionally checking but not really using kbin) and that there’s no real place to go to check up on “that community”, in large part I feel because masto and the microblogs don’t have groups/communities and in the absence of any sort of algorithm that’s honestly fatal for true community development. I often wonder how much masto as a twitter substitute will be an overall “bitter victory” for the fedi at large and those who’ve bought into it. For me, the ideal of the fediverse is to give people what they need to organise online, and, IMO, masto is not that and the ecosystem, because of the reasons you highlight, hasn’t worked out how to provide the necessary diversity.
- The BlueSky situation makes a lot of sense. In another thread on here I was discussing with some people how the psychology of leaving a big long term social media staple like Twitter/Reddit is non-trivial. Someone interestingly suggested that most of the “rage” or “rudeness” you see here isn’t from a bad Reddit culture coming across but a side effect of the anger and frustration felt and expressed through the whole migration event.
fediverse developer community isnt able to become an actual community
Somewhat relevant thread I saw on masto: https://social.coop/@smallcircles/110195840314469391 (which you may have seen yourself already).
Where are the group chats happening then?
As far as I understand, Discord and WhatsApp, with maybe Slack still a thing in that space and maybe Zulip doing a decent job at eking out an open source alternative.
And from what I’ve seen, it’s a cool way to do online social media. I happened upon a Discord recently run by and for some people I was loosely in contact with online, and going in and saying hi and having and seeing some conversations, after being exclusively on the fedi for a while, opened my eyes to why it was such a thing … compared to the feed generating focus of reddit/twitter/facebook/youtube style big social platforms … it is truly SOCIAL media as it emphasises the creation of and interaction amongst an actual social group, not open ended public blog posting for the whole world to read and interact with. It also emphasises conversations, rather than “posts”.
From what I’ve gathered it is likely the phenomenon that is the Fediverse’s blindspot … the “new” form of social media that is growing in place of or supplementary to big social … that is making a better form of online social interaction without trying to “merely” modify the designs of big-social (where, let’s be real, even decentralisation is really a modification more focused on ownership than the form of social media).
So this entire article is based on a single person’s anecdotal experience, other than this bit:
Bruening isn’t alone. Despite the efforts of big incumbents and buzzy new apps, the old ways of posting are gone, and people don’t want to go back. Even Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, admitted that users have moved on to direct messages, closed communities, and group chats.
This links to another article from the same site, and the only quote I can find related to any of this is this one:
DMs are also crucial for younger users. “If you look at how teens spend their time on Instagram, they spend more time in DMs than they do in stories, and they spend more time in stories than they do in feed,”
This Instagram head guy says nothing about how “nobody posts on social media anymore”, just that teens spend more time in DMs and stories than in the feed. This just in, kids do things differently than previous generations! Mind blown, A fucking plus journalism right there. You’d think you’d be able to properly quote your own god damn article properly lol.
Honestly I don’t even give a shit about this content, I’m just so sick of biased opinion articles based on the writer’s feelings at the time filling my feed like they’ve uncovered something revolutionary. Stop giving these lazy clickbait news sites your views and fix the dumb bot that keeps posting this bullshit.
I’m 30 and as far as I remember everything always was “in the DMs” for all the different social circles I’ve had. Public posts were always a rare thing for special events or so. MSN, ICQ, Skype, WhatsApp, Discord,…
Social media is dead. Long live decentralize social media!
That’s not true. I post on Lemmy and Mastodon, which I consider social media. I don’t think that websites that communication based on algorithms aiming to serve unsocial purposes should be considered social media.
Barely anyone else does though, thus the point.
Barely anyone else does though
That’s the mantra that certain people would want others to believe.
Yes, this is a social media hit piece. MSM hates social media because it’s a way for the public to circumvent their lies. The entire article is based on (likely fabricated) anecdotal evidence:
“It’s really bizarre to me that everyone’s gone to this place in their mind that content has to be so curated,” Bruening told us. “So curated that you can’t show what you’re cooking for dinner, because that’s not cool enough.”
Everyone? Did they take a global survey? Do they see my instagram feed? This person just has shitty friends. Or they are lying.
A city and a village are both social structures. I prefer to live in a nice, small village rather than isolated in a horrible city, even if there is only a small number of people who communicate with me. I love this place. Facebook? Not really. Big media? Not at all.
Show me the stats to back that up.
I think there’s two types really. There’s the “hey family, look at my photos and shit that nobody else will care about” social media, and “screaming opinions into the void” social media.
Lemmy and Mastodon are the latter. I guess you can use Mastodon as the former, but I suspect there are better places for that, even if they’re currently spread across a dozen instant messaging apps.
From one perspective, all screaming is in the void.
I was gonna react without reading the article, because the interaction is what I use lemmy for, and what I used reddit for, the social part of social media.
Anyway, I thought the post was talking about things we like sharing with our friends, families, colleagues, and other groups of acquaintances, which was confirmed by reading the first anecdote, which is of someone talking about sharing what they cooked.
I have always preferred messaging groups for such sharing, so to me it’s not too much of a shock, but I have noticed what the article claims and have enjoyed being able to withdraw from most vapid forms of social media without disconnecting from friends entirely.
I’m not in any group chats so I’m just lonely and depressed out of my mind how about that
If you need something to talk, I’m all open ears.
User nutsack needs to confide in user Mcballs1234
I didn’t even noticed their username, its balls time
LoL same, but I apparently refuse to throw every ounce of myself into one hobby or am just a stranger so not to be trusted or invited to stuff so I too shall be lonely with you but very very separate.
What kind of things are you into?
WTF is BeReal?
Like the other comments say it’s an app which prompts users to post a picture at “the same” time. Its not actually the same time due to timezones.
The idea behind it is that you don’t ge to pick the perfect time for a pic when you’re at that great location or you’re looking especially cute. This means you’ll get an insight in the real life of someone.
Practically that means you’ll just see a lot of pictures of your friends whilst they’re laying on the couch 2 feet deep in a bag of crisps.
BeReal hit #1 on the app stores by promising a more genuine social experience. It was popular for months, but the gimmick got boring and it fell off.
Yeah, my friends and I used it a lot for about 6 months before we just stopped because it would start sending notifications at times when we were busy, but I would forget about it after a few minutes since I didn’t care much about using it. Sometimes I was in a lecture hall busy taking notes, other times I wouldn’t even check my phone and miss the notification to post.
No idea. This feels like a stealth ad for whatever that is. They’re putting it up there with social media people actually use so maybe people will consider it, but this is literally the first time I’ve seen the name.
Agree. Never heard of bereal either
It’s an app that encourages users at a random time to share an image of their immediate surroundings, trying to kind of push an authentic feel. I remember hearing about it from some memes a year or so ago
So lots of pictures of feet in front of toilets…
Isn’t that, like, a massive invasion of privacy?
It’s optional so eh, but it doesn’t encorurage healthy habits either
Clearly it’s Cypress Hill’s lead voice … oh wait… I’m old
I quit looking at Facebook so, so long ago and stopped posting anything myself well before I stopped visiting. In my experience the only people still posting are people I didn’t want to see anything from or just sponsored content, ads and people pushing their businesses. Everything’s so monetized, curated and awful.
wtf is “Be Real”? I never even heard of it. Am I that old already??
Yes. Its a social app that will randomly ask you to post about what you are doing and it will use both front and back cameras for the post.
That’s creepy af
It was suppose to portray a more causal, carefree experience. As opposed to insta where people stage or try to show off. That’s how it was explained to me.
it works well for small family groups - my parents are older and its cool to see what they are up to during the day, and they get to see their grandkids too.
WTF kind of logic is that? Something that you choose to do is not creepy. If they took your pics without telling you, then it would be creepy.
I’m sorry if you felt attacked; that was not my intent.
A lot of the Internet runs on the premise that a convenience is provided to you, and in return your data are harvested and sold to other parties without your awareness. AFAIK, none of that data harvesting and the targeted marketing that goes with it does any good for society - it just makes the wealthy wealthier and the confused more confused. We didn’t vote on this, big tech just took over. And how many people make informed decisions about how their data are harvested today? If you only know half of what you’re authorizing, are you really choosing to do it? Does choice in the digital era exist? Updates and user agreements are forced upon us. Maybe one chooses to use meta or xitter. Once downloaded, the apps choose for them. Every image you upload to BeReal is probably being used for dozens of different data harvesting projects, like training face recognition.
I’m in my 30s. I remember pre cell phones. People younger than me, who grew up with ‘smartphones,’ seem oblivious and unconcerned about how little privacy and control of their information they have. In fact, some of them seem to have contempt for others who express concerns about social media, etc.
I don’t think any individual who chooses to use this platform is creepy. I think the lack of recognition of privacy concerns with such apps - never mind when their use is mandated - is the creepy part. It’s a society thing, not an individual thing
IMO, there’s a lot of creepiness even if the app is not recording from your camera when you’re not using the app, but I respect your opinion if you disagree.
Poopin’, always poopin’
Sometimes pissin’
Uh yeah no thanks, if I wanted surveillance like that I’d just move to north korea
I mean I post pretty regularly to my fediverse accounts
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Don’t care, never will. I have abandonned all interest in social media, and centralized platforms that rely on targetted advertisements and that just keep selling your identity to corporates, through lemmy I have learned that MORE control (over your life) an some times bring MORE peace of mind. Right now i have quit fb and instagram, and for it im a happier and more cerene person
He says on his social media website
