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Comment by kobayashi | Hacker News Reader

Well, you're right that the ad problem drives people away, but you're wrong in saying that they deliver the same information in a functionally different but essentially similar method.

I broadcast and ingest very different information on Snapchat than I ever did on facebook. The ephemeral nature of Snapchat, combined with the lack of public "likes" makes it a much more positive experience to post, and thus I in turn see more interesting posts from friends.

edit: you all are starting to use the downvote button like a bunch of redditors

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> you all are starting to use the downvote button like a bunch of redditors

This breaks the HN guidelines in a bunch of ways. Please (re)-read them and edit this kind of thing out of, not into, your comments here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11828253 and marked it off-topic.

Sorry, my mistake. Though I can't edit it out of my comment any longer.

Thanks! I meant for future comments (editing closes after a couple hours). By the way, if you want to give yourself an extra editing assistance, you can set 'delay' in your profile to between 0 and 10 minutes. Your comments won't appear to others until the delay period expires. That's what I do, because often I have to physically post a comment before I notice something that shouldn't be in there.

Because you got into Facebook so late.

People who are 20 are doing on Snapchat today what I did on Facebook when I was 20: multicasting. I either want to send a message to everyone or to a group. Sometimes in a personal message. I see almost no real difference in content. Snapchat might be a little racier in personal messages, but that happened on FB and Twitter as well.

The ephemeral nature was built into Facebook and Twitter as well, to some extent, as the services weren't searchable. You'd post something and after a few more posts it was essentially "gone from view".

Outside of marketers and people trying to "build an audience" I really see almost no difference at all in the way people use it. It's just a matter of how old you are and what service was popular at the time.

Don't believe me? Do this as an experiment: Create a new account on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Follow only 30 real people. No more, no less. 30 people you know. No marketers or self promoters or any of that nonsense. Just follow 30 real people, maybe a celeb or two the way a 20 year old might. Look at the content. It's all the same stuff. Having fun here, doing this with person X, Y, and Z. Cute dog photo. Inspiring quote. Maybe a DM with some nudes. There is nothing to "get" other than to understand that as you become older the thing that's changing is you. The biggest difference between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat is how old you and your friends were when you started using it, and what what point in the lifecycle of the service you were at.

Those are thought-provoking points. I'm trying to remember how I originally used facebook back in high school, and before the News Feed and Like eras we definitely used facebook much differently. Still, I think people use Snapchat to share more inconsequential parts of their lives than we ever did on facebook, but maybe that anecdotal experience isn't true, or maybe the difference is so minute that it doesn't even matter.

You've definitely changed my view of these social media platforms. I'm not sure that I absolutely agree with you, but I'm not sure where I disagree, either. Great points, all around.

>"Still, I think people use Snapchat to share more inconsequential parts of their lives than we ever did on facebook"

Actually, I think this can be chalked up to the age of you and your friends. Snapchat feels very "middle school", when a status update could have been something like "I just saw a cute dog!!" -- a very low bar. Now as a 20-something a status is something I would use to say "Flying back home for a week!" -- more major events.

The old remember what it was to be young.

The young do not remember what it was to be old.

> The old remember what it was to be young.

Not what, how.

(The emotional perspective is blown away, a skeleton of selected facts remains.

Besides no man being a hero to his valet, usually his older self is not a fan either.)

I'm not quoting anyone particularly.

But I'll stand corrected, if that's what makes you happy, kid ;-)

Great post.

> There is nothing to "get" other than to understand that as you become older the thing that's changing is you

For proof of this, look no further than when Facebook introduced the timeline, making it easier to view old wall posts.

People went crazy, claiming their private messages had been made public [0]. In truth, they just couldn't remember how unconcerned with privacy they used to be.

[0] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-19699205

It's not about privacy directly, but about the expectation for their old posts to be "forgotten." This is why the so-called "right to be forgotten" is/was a big deal in Europe.

It was more than that. People were looking at old wall posts (which were always public) and they couldn't believe that they'd ever had those conversations in public. Hence jumping to the conclusion that their private messages had somehow been converted into public posts.

I think it's fascinating on two counts. Firstly that the accepted etiquette of how we use social media changed so quickly. And secondly that people's brains can simply reject something they did in the past, if it doesn't fit their current sense of self.

I just wanted to login and say that you are reading my mind. I have been saying this for years but everyone within the industry looks at me as if I am a retarded monkey!

> ephemeral nature of Snapchat, combined with the lack of public "likes" makes it a much more positive experience to post

That's an interesting observation, something's gone highly dysfunctional with social media feeds - every platform I've watched, they used to be good but have all become a mental tar-pit for depression, fwd:fwd:fwd-ing viral outrage, virtue signaling, othering, etc.

You can free yourself from those in the tar-pit and simultaneously solve the cycle of ads/monetization-fuckery simply by switching to something like Hubzilla, but the pattern suggests something deeply rotten at the core of social media that you still might not be escaping, and perhaps this persistence and instant ratings is what feeds it - encouraging the careful sculpting of precious(sss) virtual identity, probably triggering brain reward pathways like a social one-armed bandit.

Cheers. It hadn't occurred to me that innocent things like "like" buttons might be a part of the deeper problem.

Hellbanned's Law: Those who comment on Internet voting will, on average, get downvoted.

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